Auguste Rodin: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

Auguste Rodin, credited to Rainer Maria Rilke, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of Auguste Rodin by Rainer Maria Rilke. (Translated by Jessie Lemont.) Read in English by David Wales Rodin has pronounced Rilke's essay the supreme interpretation of his work. (From the translators’ Preface) Auguste Rodin, 1840-1917, was a French sculptor. Although Rodin is generally considered the progenitor of modern sculpture, he did not set out to rebel against the past. He was schooled traditionally, took a craftsman-like approach to his work, and desired academic recognition, although he was never accepted into Paris's foremost school of art. Sculpturally, Rodin possessed a unique ability to model a complex, turbulent, deeply pocketed surface in clay. … Rodin… modeled the human body with realism, and celebrated individual character and physicality. From the unexpected realism of his first major figure… to the unconventional memorials whose commissions he later sought, Rodin's reputation grew, such that he became the preeminent French sculptor of his time. By 1900, he was a world-renowned artist. Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) was a Bohemian-Austrian poet and novelist, "widely recognized as one of the most lyrically intense German-language poets", writing in both verse and highly lyrical prose. Several critics have described Rilke's work as inherently "mystical"…. [Rilke’s] encounter with modernism was very stimulating: Rilke became deeply involved in the sculpture of Rodin, and then with the work of Paul Cézanne. For a time he acted as Rodin's secretary, also lecturing and writing a long essay on Rodin and his work. Rodin taught him the value of objective observation… - Summary by Wikipedia and Translators' Preface

Recording facts

• Recording title: Auguste Rodin
• Author credits: Rainer Maria Rilke
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 4
• Listed recording duration: 1:52:54

Catalogue topics

• art
• interpretation
• scupture
• rodin

Track guide

1. 00 - Initial Verse and Translators' Preface — 3:22
2. 01 - Part 1 — 26:09
3. 02 - Part 2 — 38:09
4. 03 - Part 3 — 45:14

Listen to this recording

Open the complete recording and player on Internet Archive. The player includes the full track list and available download formats.

Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.