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Speaker 1: Hey, history fans, if you want a double dose of history,

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Speaker 1: here's a rerun for today, brought to you by Tracy V. Wilson.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to this Day in History Class from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot Com and from the desk of Stuff you

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Speaker 1: Missed in History Class. It's the show where we explore

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Speaker 1: the past one day at a time with a quick

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Speaker 1: look at what happened today in history. Hello, and welcome

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Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson, and it's December four.

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Speaker 1: Ryiner Maria Rilka was born on this day in eighteen

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Speaker 1: seventy five. He was a poet, a novelist, and essayist.

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Speaker 1: He primarily wrote in German and in French, but his

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Speaker 1: work has been translated into numerous other languages, and he's

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Speaker 1: become particularly studied and beloved in the English speaking world

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Speaker 1: in a way that's not really all that common among

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Speaker 1: non English language poets. He was his parents only surviving child,

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Speaker 1: and for a lot of his early life his mother

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Speaker 1: actually dressed him in skirts. She was trying to recover

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Speaker 1: from the death of his older sister, who had died

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Speaker 1: as a baby. His first formal education was at a

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Speaker 1: military school, although it wasn't a particularly good fit for him.

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Speaker 1: It wasn't just because of his temperament, which was not

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Speaker 1: well suited to being at a military school. It was

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Speaker 1: also because of his health. He had a series of

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Speaker 1: chronic illnesses that affected him throughout his life. Health problems

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Speaker 1: led to his being discharged from the second military school

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Speaker 1: that he attended. He went on to study philosophy and art,

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Speaker 1: and he wasn't a particularly good student. He moved from

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Speaker 1: one university to another, not being all that engaged with

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Speaker 1: the work that he was doing. And he also started

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Speaker 1: writing when he was still a young man. His early work, though,

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Speaker 1: was really derivative of the writing of other poets, to

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Speaker 1: the point that some critics today don't really describe it

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Speaker 1: as derivative. They describe it as plagiarized. But he started

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Speaker 1: to reinvent himself when he was two. Part of this

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Speaker 1: was through a relationship with lou Andreas Salome, who was

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Speaker 1: a writer who was connected to numerous other writers. She

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Speaker 1: had a whole reputation for being a just astonishing woman.

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Speaker 1: She was also married, but the relationship inspired him to

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Speaker 1: basically remake his whole life. At the age of twenty five,

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Speaker 1: he married a sculptor named Clara Westof and they had

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Speaker 1: a child together. Although they didn't live together for very long,

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Speaker 1: a lot of their marriage took place through letters, and

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Speaker 1: he would later go on to describe marriage as two

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Speaker 1: people protecting one another's solitude. For a lot of his life,

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Speaker 1: including during and before his marriage, he just moved continually.

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Speaker 1: At one point he lived in twenty five different places

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Speaker 1: over the span of five years. He learned numerous languages.

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Speaker 1: He pursued passionate relationships with women in all of these places.

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Speaker 1: Later on, he started writing poems about philosophy and God

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Speaker 1: and beauty, using imagery to express his ideas. His writings

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Speaker 1: on God, though we should be clear, they're not so

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Speaker 1: much about religion or a divine figure. They're more about

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Speaker 1: God as a universal consciousness, or as a life force,

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Speaker 1: or as a natural presence, not so much as a

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Speaker 1: divine being. He also had friendships and working relationships with

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Speaker 1: so many other philosophers and writers and poets. One of

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Speaker 1: them was Auguste Rodin, who was a major influence on

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Speaker 1: his work. He also worked as Rodance secretary for a time,

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Speaker 1: but was let go after Ordan alleged that Rilco was

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Speaker 1: answering his letters without his permission. Bilka died of leukemia

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Speaker 1: on December twenty nine, and there's a story that he

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Speaker 1: pricked his finger on a rose and that when he

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Speaker 1: did that, this led to an infection that hastened his death.

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Speaker 1: It's not totally clear whether that is a reel of

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Speaker 1: or apocryphal. After his death, though, he became hugely influential

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Speaker 1: to poets and multiple languages, with some of them naming

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Speaker 1: him as the greatest poet of his age when it

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Speaker 1: comes to English language readers, though only a few of

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Speaker 1: his poems were really available in very good English language

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Speaker 1: translations until the nineteen seventies. Instead, a lot of the

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Speaker 1: admiration for him comes from his prose, in particular the

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Speaker 1: Letters to a Young Poet, which was a response to

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Speaker 1: the aforesaid young poets request for advice because we're just

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Speaker 1: about writing, though there were also really about life. Roca's

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Speaker 1: reputation is one of being just a profoundly thoughtful and conscientious,

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Speaker 1: introspective person, someone who really crafted himself into the person

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Speaker 1: that he wanted to be and in the process transformed

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Speaker 1: himself into a remarkable poet. Although he definitely has detractors,

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Speaker 1: people who instead read him as a pretentious woman eyes

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Speaker 1: are rather than a more intuitive and passionate soul. Thanks

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Speaker 1: very much to Eve's Jeff Cope for her research work

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Speaker 1: on today's show, and thanks to Casey Pigram and Chandler

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Speaker 1: Maze for their audio work. You can subscribe to the

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Speaker 1: Stay in History Class on Apple podcast, Google podcast, the

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Speaker 1: I Heart Radio app, and wherever else you get your podcasts,

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Speaker 1: and you can tune in tomorrow for a mystery at

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Speaker 1: sea that still persists till today.