Reading Rilke by William H. Gass

Author:William H. Gass [Gass, William H.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-8041-5092-7
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2013-08-13T16:00:00+00:00

Now Rilke knew what the glue was.

SCHADE

One might sentimentally imagine that Rilke’s separation from his wife, Clara, or his break with Rodin, especially his rejection by Lou, would be decisive in his life. Certainly, the onset of the Elegies was one such stroke, and not altogether salutary in its character either. Taking a more prosaic tack, one could be practical and suggest that the surprising popularity of his youthful prose poem The Lay of the Love and Death of the Cornet Christoph Rilke, which furnished him a much-needed income after it was published in a cheap pocket-size edition in 1912, was very significant. The dismal early Paris days were critical. World War I threw Rilke into a profound and enduring gloom—for both personal and humanitarian reasons. That might reach the Top Ten. In lives, it is hard to measure such things. Vital factors are sneaky and, like our internal organs, do most of their work out of sight. With Rilke, however, I think we always need to accept the cliché and cherchez la femme. So near the head of such a list, however suspect such lists of wounds and awards are, I should want to place the death of Paula Modersohn-Becker, the blond painter of Rilke’s Worpswede journal.

In the early days of his acquaintance with the colony’s artists, it is fairly obvious that Rilke was most taken by Paula Becker, and that she responded to his interest is also clear; but Paula had grown close to Otto Modersohn as he waited out his wife’s death through a lengthy illness. He was a painter of some reputation, mostly for work in a style that was called Naturlyrismus, which aimed at not only the adoration of Nature but the veneration of the peasant whose relation to the soil was simple, noble, and direct. Modersohn’s sentiments and Rilke’s Russian boots and tunic would find much to talk about. As a suitor, Modersohn got several things right: he was enthusiastic about Paula’s paintings, which few others were; he found her attitude toward art admirable; and he thought that her personality—“charming, sweet, strong, healthy, energetic”—filled in the blanks in his own. Had Rilke wished to woo her, he’d have gotten off on the wrong foot, for he took no notice of her work, nor did he discuss either Paula or Clara in his Worpswede monograph.

Older, established, with a manner some called “magisterial,” Modersohn’s greatest advantage was the sympathy his ailing wife could elicit for him. In any case, Paula soon, and rather passively, it appears, found herself framed for marriage. Since her middle-class Bremen family was urging her to find a position as a governess, she may have thought that marriage to a painter would be a good escape. She’d have a husband knowledgeable about, and sympathetic with, her aims. To his credit, Modersohn did sincerely encourage and support his wife’s work, but Paula confesses to her diary how little understanding from him she feels she has, and how frequently she weeps. Marriage, she writes, does not make one happier.

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