YOU DON'T HAVE TO UNDERSTAND LIFE - Rilke’s Days and Dreams

When Rainer Maria Rilke died 100 years ago, he left behind decades of restlessness. Whether in the Worpswede artists' colony, with his mentor Rodin in Paris, or among the women who sustained him throughout his life, he never stayed long in one place. A well-connected loner across Europe, whose travels took him as far as Tolstoy’s Russia, he sought freedom of movement, human touch, and resonance. He never allowed himself to be claimed by any single ideology. He mistrusted anything fixed or permanent in thought or love, just as he mistrusted rigid boundaries between man and woman. Perhaps for this reason, he embodied so many of the apparent contradictions and awakenings of his time: life reform, the religion of the earth, spiritualism, the critique of progress and technology, the culture of the old European aristocracy, and the modern Paris of Baudelaire. On his own unique path, Rilke found words and images for the connection between life and death - a connection that, as he recognized, ultimately eludes cold reason.

You Don't Have to Understand Life: Iris Radisch accompanies Rilke on his quest - and observes how he transforms his experiences into timelessly beautiful poetry.