Concert Reading — Rainer Maria Rilke, “We Are More Than Flesh and Blood” Readers: Julia Boegershausen and Andreas Rüdiger Music: Johannes Menzel, piano
Life stages, emotional moments, places, people, dreams, and desires have shaped this writer’s work, which is undoubtedly one of the most comprehensive accounts of 19th- and 20th-century German and European (literary) history. In this context, the man named Rene—who was later given the name Rainer by Lou Andreas-Salome—becomes at once the medium, the art, and the artist. And he is the focus of the evening.
Poems, short stories, his novel, and many biographical moments span the arc of the evening—from childhood “bisexuality” and his relationship with “mothers,” through his stance on war, love of nature, a longing for the new, “openness” toward life, travel, patrons, to social eloquence and devotion.
Rainer Maria Rilke transformed his life into poetry; through poetry, the objective world becomes an inner experience. The women who admired and accompanied him became a mirror of his feelings.
