The Life and Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 -1926) with Distinguished Professor Dr. Rolf Goebel

The Following video is a continuation of my Series on Classical German Philosophy, German Romanticism with an extra important video on German Modernist Poetry.

I sat down with the Distinguished Professor of German & Emeritus, Dr. Rolf Goebel from the University of Alabama in Huntsville to discuss The Life, Poetry, and Philosophy of Rainer Maria Rilke. Dr. Goebel was able to navigate us through Rilke's life with a detailed biography, followed by an in-depth understanding of Rilke's artistic influences, which included a discussion on Rodin and Cézanne and of course Hölderlin.

We discussed at length Rilke's reading of Hölderlin as a springboard for his own thinking on metaphors, such as the groundlessness of being, and the relationship between transcendence and immanence.

After reading Rilke's poem to Hölderlin we discussed Rilke's poetic imagery on the fundamental aspects of human existence such as: loneliness/love; happiness vs. joy; sadness and despair, these emotions and moods lead to an important disclosure to the sensitivities to poetic openness, the new, and the future; old things, buildings, gardens as repositories of a vanishing past; farness and nearness and the intermingling perceptions of death as a part of meaningful living.

We also discuss Heidegger's distinctive reading of Rilke

We end the video discussion on Rilke's exploration of music and auditory experience as a challenge to arts own visual predisposition and this discussion by reading Rilke's poem, "To Music."

(We do three thorough readings of Rilke's poems: “To Hölderlin”, the First Duino Elegy, and “To Music”?

If you are interested in Dr. Goebel's work you can find his articles and publications here: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/...