Which poet served as Auguste Rodin’s secretary from 1905 to 1906?

Rainer Maria Rilke served as Auguste Rodin’s secretary from 1905 to 1906.

Rilke, the Prague-born German-language poet, first met Rodin in 1902 while preparing a monograph about the sculptor. He later worked as Rodin’s secretary, helping with correspondence and administrative matters. The experience brought Rilke into close contact with Rodin’s methods, studio discipline, and ideas about artistic work.

Rilke’s writing about Rodin helped introduce the sculptor’s art to a wider literary and intellectual audience. He admired Rodin’s ability to study form patiently and to discover expressive possibilities in the human body. Their relationship eventually became strained, and Rilke left the position in 1906.

Rilke later became one of the major German-language poets of the twentieth century. The connection is sometimes misremembered because Rodin also had relationships with writers such as Octave Mirbeau and Anatole France, but Rilke specifically held the role of secretary.