Auguste Rodin

Sculptor Auguste Rodin was fortunate to have his secretary Rainer Maria Rilke, one of the most sensitive poets of our time. These two pieces discussing Rodin's work and development as an artist are as revealing of Rilke as they are of his subject. Written in 1902 and 1907, these essays mark the entry of the poet into the world of letters. Rilke's description of Rodin reveals the profound psychic connection between the two great artists, both masters of giving visible life to the invisible. Michael Eastman's evocative photographs of Rodin's sculptures shed light on both Rodin's art and Rilke's thoughts and catapult them into the 21st century.

Daniel Slager is an editor at Harcourt, a contributing editor to Grand Street, and a widely published translator from German.

William Gass (The Tunnel, Omensetter¢s Luck, and Reading Rilke) received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism, a Lannan Lifetime Achievement award, the Pen-Nabokov Prize, and a gold medal for fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Michael Eastman has received a National Endowment for the Arts grant and has been published in The New York Times, Life, American Photographer, and Communication Arts.