Modersohn-Becker / Rilke The Modersohn-Becker/Rilke Correspondence

1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-1-916809-73-4
Verlag: ERIS
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 156 Seiten

The painter Paula Modersohn-Becker and the poet Rainer Maria Rilke first met in 1900 at the Worpswede artists' colony-a focal point of the kind of artistic innovations that were set to transform twentieth-century European culture. Modersohn-Becker and Rilke went on to enjoy an intense friendship over a period that saw both of them having to confront personal and financial challenges as they pursued their artistic vocations. This friendship was cut short by Modersohn-Becker's tragically early death in 1907, but it left in its wake a remarkable series of letters. As fascinating and evocative when discussing the nature of married life and the difficulty of furnishing one's home as they are when exploring the expressive possibilities of art and poetry, the letters exchanged by Modersohn-Becker and Rilke are a testament to both correspondents' exceptional descriptive gifts and penetrating social intelligence. Brought together in English for the first time here and introduced by an illuminating essay by the art historian Jill Lloyd, The Modersohn-Becker/Rilke Correspondence provides a fascinating view of everyday life during an exceptionally fertile and exciting period of cultural production.Praise for Paula Modersohn-Becker: 'Among the painters, along with Picasso and Matisse, who created modernism in the first years of the twentieth century.'-John Colapinto, The New Yorker '[A] brilliant early twentieth century painter.'-Sheila Heti, The Brooklyn RailPraise for Rainer Maria Rilke: 'Rilke unquestionably is one of the essential poets who wrote in German during the twentieth century.' -Harold Bloom 'The poetry he left behind is priceless.'-John Banville, The New York Review of Books

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876-1907) was a German painter associated with the Expressionist movement. She was one of the most significant artists of her age. Her posthumously published letters and diaries have also led to her becoming widely admired as a writer.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Modersohn-Becker, Paula

Rilke, Rainer Maria

Weitere Mitwirkende

Baer, Ulrich

Leseproben

The Modersohn-Becker/Rilke Correspondence
  1 To Paula Becker [Worpswede, 4 October 1900] I have a request: would you kindly hold on to this little sketchbook, which contains many of my most beloved verses, while I am travelling? Here, mixed in with other writings, nobody will be able to enjoy it. With you, it will be like an instrument that you can gently handle sometimes in the evening. I would like for you to use this small book whenever you are by yourself and in a quiet mood—whenever you are just as you were during those hours for which I am so grateful to you. Read also those poems that you have yet to be introduced to through my voice: until the time when I retrieve the sketchbook and then read all the poems you would like to hear in my voice, loudly or softly, just as each one requires. I am writing this because I did not find you at home and don’t know when you will return. Also: our plans have changed. I am already supposed to be in Berlin tomorrow; this is why we will be taking the five o’clock post train in the morning, which is in any case too early for you. You will probably travel to Bremen some time during the day, when I will already be sitting in the train with many memories and the wish to make a swift return. Farewell and goodbye. Gratefully yours, Rainer Maria Rilke   2. To Rainer Maria Rilke Worpswede near Bremen
Thursday, 15 October 1900 Dear Mr Rilke, We had actually all wanted to write a joint Sunday letter to you. But then not all of us were here, so I decided to do it by myself. Then the tricky nature of the thing got in the way yet again, because I knocked over my inkwell, which spilled over my red blanket from Abruzzo, and I had no pen with a working nib. Will this little note still reach you? If not, all the better. Because in that case you will once again be sitting with us on our heath. And that is the most beautiful thing of all. With the sketchbook you have given me some beautiful and quiet hours during—and in spite of—your absence. It has been the only thing I have cared to read during this time. We had wonderful, moonlit evenings. There I was, sitting in my little chamber with its golden light, with the blue moonlit night breathing outside. Once I was all done with looking and thinking, I would reach for your little book.— —Today it almost feels like winter. It has snowed, and a fierce storm is bending the birch trees’ courage. I took a long walk through the roaring wind and beating rain, singing and rejoicing, but I could barely hear my own voice amid the clashing battle of the great elements. But it did not depress me in the least. It was so entirely natural. Pay us another visit soon. It is good to be here. We all look forward to seeing you and are happy that you exist. Goodbye. Yours, Paula Becker   3. To Paula Becker Schmargendorf, 18 October 1900 Your letter, dear miss, still reached me here and would also have done so after two weeks and even after a full month, the reason being that I cannot begin the winter in Worpswede as I had been so looking forward to doing, day after day. It dawned on me here: for the sake of my studies I must stay here—close enough to the big city and connected to all the material and human help that it can provide to a person such as myself, who is completely intent on achieving his purpose. You know what these studies, which I have turned into the foundation for my most personal work, mean to me: daily routine; stability; a way back from each of my flights; the life above which one can rise only once one has come into full ownership and mastery of it; the quiet shoreline of all my waves and words. For me, Russia has become what your landscape means to you: home and heaven above. All that belongs to you gathers around you as fact, reality, and warmth; all the love of life surges toward you with weather, wind, and water to envelop you in care and concern and to ennoble the pettiest of your daily activities. My surroundings are not gathered around me. The cities I inhabit are faraway places I’ve visited on long-distance trips, and the gardens that rustle above me are many rivers away from me. My mornings and evenings toll with the great, steady bells of churches that stand near the Volga River, whose flowing waters reflect back their whites and golden cupolas in softer and less distinct tones, while songs sung by blind people and children waft around me like lost travellers gently touching my cheeks and hair. This is my landscape, my dear friend. And I must not replace these surroundings, which envelop me like scent and sound, with a more concrete reality, because I want to live and create in such a way that what surrounds me now—half memory and half intuition—gradually adapts itself to actual space and truly gathers around me—silent and secure like something that was there all along but which my eyes have only now acquired the power to see. Do you understand that it would be disloyalty on my part to pretend to have already found a completely settled hearth and home elsewhere? I am not yet permitted to have my own small home, not yet permitted to settle. To wander and to wait—that is my lot. The fact that a home exists somewhere for beautiful people who are in the process of becoming, a home which one can feel and grasp with all of one’s senses; the fact that what I can reach only remotely and by greatly straining my senses has already become a reality somewhere for grateful people—this experience overwhelmed me to the point that I decided to stay put. Every home keeps one well and warm, like every mother. But I have yet to search for my mother, don’t you agree? I am writing to you in the early evening. Not a great or golden hour. It is instead one tightly hemmed in on all sides by rain, and I am not yet in my own home, which is still being set up. I feel warm nonetheless, as at certain times during your beautiful dusk, of which I am unforgettably fond. We have not yet taken our leave of each other, so we are actually still together—as often as we meet somewhere in related thoughts, or as often as my gratitude searches for you among the dear figures of my most recent past. Today I am sending you poems by Jacobsen and his novel Marie Grubbe to add to your library and belongings. Later I’ll send more to read from among the things we talked about. And you must allow me always to send you a book whenever I happen to like something; there is never a rush to return it to me. If you care to write a few words to me about any one of them, you will make many books worthwhile to me. Please send the sketchbook to me, once you can dispense with it, via registered mail, simply to my name: R. M. Rilke, Schmargendorf, near Berlin. But hold on to it for a few more evenings, if you care for it. There is time, as long as I have it by early November. Thank you for what you said about it in your letter—I had indeed left it to give pleasure and sound to your evenings.—Give my kind regards to everything and everyone from someone who is filled with gratitude, even when he seems so ungrateful. And when you think of me, judge me as a friend, which means according to the hours when I have been at my poorest and least remarkable. I am not wealthy. Not yet. Yours, Rainer Maria Rilke   4. To Paula Becker [Schmargendorf, 21 October 1900] Sunday night. I know you are listening: there is a voice, on Sunday evening in the white salon. The stillness that surrounds my head, wilts and turns pale. I would like to hear you train your ears once more on vocal prayers.— Beethoven spoke…my senses tremble still, And all that’s dark in me reverberates. …We were but children, starting out in life, sitting quietly with lowered chins: Beethoven spoke… From childhood we grew up strangely straight like rods into abundant maturity; things were so vast, things of which life was but one part; we were wider than the grave and felt complete… suffering itself seemed nearly a gift— Beethoven spoke. I am alone. The house is loud and hostile, full of a Sunday raging with blind hate for me. But somewhere I am called upon: The feeling secretly takes hold of me, that this is the hour when a guest sings to delight you in the white salon. And the awareness that the evening resounds drapes over my shoulders like damask and makes my hands feel as if heavy with rings… As a token of my greeting and longing Yours, Rainer Maria Rilke 5. To Rainer Maria Rilke   Worpswede, 25 October 1900 We are waiting for you during the hour of dusk, my small room and myself, and there are autumn mignonettes on the red table, and the clock has also stopped ticking. But you do not come. We are sad. And then we are grateful again and happy that you exist at all. This knowledge is beautiful. Clara Westhoff and I recently spoke about how you are an idea of ours that has come to life, a wish fulfilled. You are very much alive in our small community. Each of us is filled with gratitude towards you and would so much like to make you happy once more. It is such a nice feeling to make you happy, because one does it without realising...