Seminar addresses R. M. Rilke’s literary work around a central question in modernist cultural production. If the conditions of human existence in modernity have rendered the category of experience itself problematic, what possibilities remain for the production and reception of works of art? Close study of the work of artists whose practices informed Rilke’s writing (Rodin, Cézanne), as well as readings in philosophy (Simmel, Heidegger) address questions concerning the phenomena of modernity and modern culture and the ways in which artists, writers, and philosophers attempted to come to terms with them in 20th-cent. Europe.
