Six Podcast Episodes on Rilke's Letters To a Young Poet

In November, I resumed editing my video lectures into episodes in the Sadler's Lectures podcast.  After finishing up a series on Aristotle's Metaphysics book 1, I started work on the set that I shot earlier this year on the great Existentialist poet, novelist, and writer Rainer Maria Rilke, specifically on his short work, Letters To a Young Poet.

It's a great little book, a sort of crystallization of key themes of Rilke's own creative process, his own reflections, and his engagement with a young would-be writer.   It thus offers a window into Rilke's own ideas, commitments, and process. But generations of creative people in all sorts of fields have also found it useful for clarifying their own work and lives.

If there is one most central idea in the work, it is that of "solitude" (Einsamkeit, in German), and I devoted one entire lecture just to that notion.  But Rilke explores many other key concepts and realities as well - love, desire, criticism, development, time, just to name a few.  

All told, these podcast episodes amount to about an hour and a half of listening time.  Here are those six lectures:

• Criticism and Art
• Developing Solitude
• Time, Patience, and Growth
• Conventions & Superficiality
• Sex, Love, and Development
• Sadness and Transformation