Rilke in Paris: Rainer Maria Rilke - Softcover

Rilke, Rainer Maria; Betz, Maurice

Softcover

ISBN 10: 178227474X ISBN 13: 9781782274742

Verlag: Pushkin Press, 2019

Inhaltsangabe

Rainer Maria Rilke offers a compelling portrait of Parisian life, art, and culture at the beginning of the 20th century.

In 1902, the young German writer Rainer Maria Rilke traveled to Paris to write a monograph on the sculptor Auguste Rodin. He returned many times over the course of his life, by turns inspired and appalled by the city's high culture and low society, and his writings give a fascinating insight into Parisian art and culture in the last century. Paris was a lifelong source of inspiration for Rilke. Perhaps most significantly, the letters he wrote about it formed the basis of his prose masterpiece, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge.

Much of this work, despite its perennial popularity in French, German, and Italian, has never before been translated into English. This volume brings together a translation of Rilke's essay on poetry, 'Notes on the Melody of Things' and the first English translation of Rilke's experiences in Paris as observed by his French translator.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) is one of the great German writers. A master of both poetry and prose, he is probably best known for Duino Elegies, Sonnets to Orpheus, and The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. Maurice Betz (1898-1946) was a writer and translator who worked closely with Rilke on the French translations of his works.

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Rainer Maria Rilke offers a compelling portrait of Parisian life, art and culture at the beginning of the 20th century

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Rilke in Paris

By Rainer Maria Rilke, Maurice Betz, Will Stone

Pushkin Press

Copyright © 2019 Pushkin Press
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-78227-474-2

Contents

Translator's Introduction, vii, 
Rilke in Paris by Maurice Betz, 1, 
Notes on Places, 61, 
Notes on the Melody of Things by Rainer Maria Rilke, 81, 
Appendix I: Rilke's Residencies in Paris 1902–25, 103, 
Appendix II: A Note on the Original Edition of Rilke in Paris, 105, 
Appendix III: A Note on Photographs, 109, 
Acknowledgements, 110, 
Biographical Notes, 111, 

CHAPTER 1

Rilke in Paris

by Maurice Betz

Ah, The achievement of a small moon!

Days where around us all is clear, barely an outline in the luminous air and yet distinct. Even the nearest things have a distant tone, shrink back, show only from a distance, are not exposed; and all that draws on this expanse of distance – the river, the bridges, the long roads and the squares which expend themselves – hold that distance within them, and are painted there as if on silk. Who can say what a bright green motorcar on Pont Neuf might be, or this vivid red rushing forth, or even simply that poster, on the wall adjoining a cluster of pearl-grey buildings. All is simplified, restored to a few planes, sharp and clear, as a face in a portrait by Manet. Nothing is insignificant or without relevance. The bouquinistes on the quais open their boxes, and the yellow freshness or weariness of the books, the brown violet of the bindings, the more sovereign green of an album, all harmonise, count, take part in the whole and converge in consummate perfection ...

From The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (1910)

The 'French Component' In Rilke's Work

The case of Rainer Maria Rilke is rather extraordinary: a Germanic poet in the deepest sense, who represents, in both its most intense and subtle form, a singular branch of German romanticism, at the point where he encounters the final ripening of the Slavic spiritual universe and discovers his own true identity through his relationship with a French city.

In Paris, this German poet discovered not only a temporary home and more or less enduring friendships, but also an inner inspiration, which guided him towards the secret configuration of his entire being. For some twelve years he returned almost year on year, both contented and disappointed to encounter there ever renewed ecstasies and anxieties, and a virtually eternal landscape. This city lent him the framework and themes of a work through which he felt able to express himself to the very limits of the inexpressible, to the threshold of reflecting on and accepting death with a calm heart, following The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, in which he was conscious of having marshalled the entire resolve of his existence. He gave himself so utterly to this work that after its completion he remained for many years stricken by sterility. For Rilke, Paris had been much more than Venice for Byron, or Toledo for Barrès: a revelation of the most profound possibilities, the 'dividing line of his inward waters' and the touchstone of his art. He declared on several occasions, with distinct emotion, what a debt he owed to this 'incomparable city which represents a world in my development and memory' and whose 'immense and generous hospitality' allowed him to bring into the light those feelings and thoughts which were tentatively seeking their form.

However important the 'French component' in Rilke's work, it did not manage to govern alone the deeper reaches of his being. This inveterate traveller criss-crossing the very soul and landscape of Europe, nourished himself on the nectar of all latitudes, without his fundamental architecture being altered. From one country to the next, he ploughed his unique furrow, scoring deep, sometimes losing himself in the most unfathomable subterranean labyrinths, but everywhere searching only that he might ultimately emerge into authentic existence.

In these scenic variations for the poet, one observes certain cycles. Some are of major significance: principally the Russian and French ones. The Danish and Spanish cycles allowed Rilke, on the one hand, access to the fantastic and the intimate acquaintanceship of ghosts, and, on the other, to that wide expanse of sky inhabited by Greco's supernatural angels, which haunt the Elegies and sustain the disembodied poetry. The Italian and Valaisan cycles frame these primary experiences: Florence and Venice are places of residence for the youthful poet who harmonises the first variegations of his impressionist palette, while towards the close of his life, the Valais afforded, following the deliverance which was the achievement of the Duino Elegies, the relaxation and relief enjoyed by a genial rustic poet.

In terms of foreign experiences, Rilke's discovery of Paris follows directly on from his encounter with the Slavic world, a religious and mystical phase which found expression in The Book of Hours written between 1899 and 1903. France presented Rilke with a 'human landscape', which was mirrored at the same time in the works of her painters, in the lessons and example of her poets, and by that life so naturally expressive which is reflected in the faces of the Parisian street. 'It is ever more difficult for the writer to find in action the exterior equivalent to the soul's movements' he wrote with Ibsen in mind. The landscape of Paris offered one of those equivalents. For Rilke, that revelation would only deepen, until it spread throughout his entire oeuvre.

CHAPTER 2

The Discovery of Paris

At the dawn of the century, a young man who had just published his first verses in Germany arrived at a modest hotel in the Latin Quarter. He had blue eyes, his curly hair was brush-like; his manner furtive and he bore the countenance of a dreamer. His high waistcoat and blouse buttoned to the neck lent him the appearance of a seminarian or young priest. A Russian priest more precisely, for his chin was graced with a faint blond beard and he sometimes assumed one of their characteristic smocks with deep folds.

After a journey of several months in Russia, during the course of which he paid a visit to Tolstoy in his residence at Yasnaya Polyana, Rainer Maria Rilke spent a period with a group of North German painters, at Worpswede, and in this Barbizon, set amidst the ponds and heaths of Lüneberg, had first heard pronounced the name of Rodin, by a young German woman who had for a time been the student of the great sculptor. This meeting was in many respects decisive, for Rilke began by marrying the young woman, after which, impatient to approach the master to whom he would shortly be pledging his profound admiration in person, Rilke abandoned this newly discovered home and departed for Paris, determined to meet Rodin and better study his work.

In the eyes of this young poet, whom an intimate experience or discovery relating to art bore so effortlessly over all practical and social realities, Rodin was the unique master, without rival. This lyric poet, still permeated by Slavic mysticism and fluidity, experienced a sense of revelation before the powerful blocks of stone on whose surface this man's sacred hand had the power to summon so many desires, sufferings and passions. And while waiting to be admitted into the court of the sculptor to whom he proposed to dedicate a work, Rilke wrote a series of moving letters to Rodin in which he compared the man to a God and his art to a daily miracle.

But...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Pushkin Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2019
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 178227474X
• ISBN 13: 9781782274742
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 112
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Anja's; service@anja-karge.de; ; Von-Gumppenberg-Str. 94; Pöttmes; 86554; Deutschland