Love, Beauty and Solitude: Translating Rilke with Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy

At the turn of the 20th Century, a teenage military cadet and budding poet began a correspondence with Rainer Maria Rilke. The young man expected some guidance and criticism from the great German poet but received something far greater: instructions on love and solitude, beauty and art, spirituality and life. Almost 100 years on, two grand dames of literature – Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows – have delivered a new translation of Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet, unveiling new insights in the context of today's world.