Poverty

To feel beyond into the roots and into the earth itself

December 12, 2017 by Elena Maslova-Levin

One even has to be poor for those who preceded one, otherwise one only reaches back to the time of their rise, of their first brilliance. But one has to feel beyond them into the roots and into the earth itself. One has to be able at every moment to place one’s hand on the earth like the first human being.

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

This is one letter I decided to leave without pictures: just Rilke’s words in the sheer power of their purity.

He doesn’t mention any pictures himself, and adding my own visual associations would, as you will see, go completely against the spirit of this letter.

October 20, 1907

<…> I took my Sunday walk to the Salon again; through the quiet Faubourg Saint-Germain, past the palaces, above whose high front gates the old, great names are sometimes still visible: Hôtel de Castries, Hôtel d’Aravay, and over one of them: Hôtel Orloff, belonging to the rich family who rose to superabundance and princely estate with the help of the great Catherine; it produced brilliant chevaliers and also beautiful women whose smiles endowed their lineage with a past, Princesses Orloff, admired by all of Paris.

You know: there’s the highly arched gateway in the front building, massive and heavy, windows on the right and left which are so uninterested in looking outside that they turn their backs on the street; only the concierge’s window is clear and attentive in front of its modestly parted curtains. But as soon as one of the weighty wings of the gate opens, refulgent in its smooth dark green, the gaze can no longer be restrained.

Beyond the semidarkness of the gateway, the palace steps back as if to show itself (the way someone might show off a new dress), far away from the street.

Its middle door, which is all of glass, tosses a few stairs down toward the gravel of the untouched courtyard, and standing behind all the windows, which are scarcely smaller than the door, are curtains, as if in beautiful dresses. Where they are missing, one can see the ribbon of the staircase being gently led up in tranquil ascent.

And one senses the coolness of a vestibule, with cold walls that are reserved and unparticipating, like servants at the table, and whose only purpose is to pass the candelabras around in the evening.

One senses, too, and believes, that these palaces have royal rooms in the interior, there is something in one’s blood that belongs in there, and for a second the whole gamut of emotions rests between the heaviness of bronze-encased ancient Chinese porcelain and the lightness of a chime’s voice:

—but one goes to the picture gallery, where none of this means anything, at least not the way it stands there in the rue Saint-Dominique, nor the way it can be in a little bit of blood that occasionally runs through one’s heart with a scent like that of an old perfume.

But all this will have to be shed, dismissed, put away.

Even someone who had such palaces to utter would have to approach them innocently and in poverty, and not as someone who could still be seduced by them.

Surely one has to take one’s impartiality to the point where one rejects the interpretive bias even of vague emotional memories, prejudices, and predilections transmitted as part of one’s heritage, taking instead whatever strength, admiration, or desire emerges with them, and applying it, nameless and new, to one’s own tasks.

One has to be poor unto the tenth generation.

One even has to be poor for those who preceded one, otherwise one only reaches back to the time of their rise, of their first brilliance. But one has to feel beyond them into the roots and into the earth itself. One has to be able at every moment to place one’s hand on the earth like the first human being.

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

STORYLINE: POVERTY

Rilke returns to the storyline of poverty. Not so much material poverty, but rather letting go all cultural associations, emotional memories, heritage, identity.

All this, however precious and cherished, has to be shed if one is to cleanse the doors of perception.

SEEING PRACTICE: POVERTY

As we look at the world around us, we usually don’t notice the background stream of associations and memories unless something really stirs us, just as we don’t usually hear the sound of our own heartbeat.

But the first step to being able to see the world “like the first human being” is to notice this stream of associations, yo pay attention to it.

Apples indestructible in their stubborn thereness

November 17, 2017 by Elena Maslova-Levin

In Cézanne they cease to be edible altogether, that’s how thing-like and real they become, how simply indestructible in their stubborn thereness.

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

Earlier in this letter, Rilke wrote about the evolution of the colour blue in painting, and Chardin as the intermediary on the path from the eighteenth-century blue to Cézanne’s blue.

Here, he traces a fundamentally similar development in the way objects are treated in painting.

OCTOBER 8, 1907 (Part 3)

… Chardin was the intermediary in other respects, too; his fruits are no longer thinking of a gala dinner, they’re scattered about on kitchen tables and don’t care whether they are eaten beautifully or not.

Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin. The Silver Goblet. 1728.

In Cézanne they cease to be edible altogether, that’s how thing-like and real they become, how simply indestructible in their stubborn thereness.

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

POVERTY

In this letter, the theme of poverty may not be obvious (elsewhere, Rilke writes that Cézanne’s apples are all “cooking apples”; that is, a poor man’s apples). Here, it is not about poverty in the narrow, literal sense, but about the lack of pretenses, cultural symbolisms, refinements — these hallmarks of civilized, wealthy society.

Cézanne’s apples are simply things, seen and painted as they are, without any human meanings attached or implied (including being edible).

Paul Cezanne. Still life with apples and pears. 1887

SEEING PRACTICE: SIMPLY THINGS (APPLES)

We go through life projecting meanings and emotions onto things, and not even noticing that we do it most of the time. These projections shape our reality, which essentially means that they prevent us from SEEING reality.

Just notice how hard it can be to see an apple as it is, in its plain, objective thereness, without attaching any words and sensations to it, so that it is not tasty, or fresh, or healthy, or beautiful, or anything like this at all. It is neither a sign of autumn harvest, nor the symbol of the fall of man. It simply is.

It is in this plain THERENESS that Rilke feels affinity with Cézanne.

A great splendor from within

November 11, 2017 by Elena Maslova-Levin

But in his paintings (the arbre fleuri) poverty has already become rich: a great splendor from within.

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

In this letter, Rilke is still under the impression of Van Gogh’s reproductions. He writes:

Would that you were sitting with me in front of the van Gogh portfolio (which I am returning with a heavy heart). It has done me so much good these two days: it was the right moment.

Isn’t that what we are doing here, trying to be with him in front of these paintings?

But this letter is as much about van Gogh’s life as it is about his paintings. Rilke recounts his biography — from his work in an art gallery, to service as an evangelical pastor, and then to being a painter, and then to madness. This is where the part of the letter included below begins…

OCTOBER 3, 1907

What a biography. Is it really true that everyone is now acting as if they understood this and the pictures that came out of it?

Shouldn’t art dealers and also art critics be really more perplexed about or else more indifferent to this dear zealot, in whom something of the spirit of Saint Francis was coming back to life?

I am surprised by his quick rise to fame. Ah, how he, too, renounced and renounced.

His self-portrait in the portfolio looks needy and tormented, almost desperate, but not devastated: the way a dog looks when it’s in a bad way. He holds out his face and you take note of the fact: he’s in a bad way, day and night.

But in his paintings (the arbre fleuri) poverty has already become rich: a great splendor from within.

Vincent Van Gogh. Peach trees in blossom. 1886.

And that’s how he sees everything: as a poor man; just compare his parks.

These too are expressed with such quietness and simplicity, as if for poor people, so they can understand; without going into the extravagance that’s in these trees; as if to do that would already be taking sides.

Vincent Van Gogh. Park at Asniers in spring. 1887.

He isn’t on anyone’s side, isn’t on the side of the parks, and his love for all these things is directed at the nameless, and that’s why he himself concealed it. He does not show it, he has it.

And quickly takes it out of himself and into the work, into the innermost and incessant part of the work: quickly: and no one has seen it!

That’s how one feels his presence in these forty pages: now, haven’t you been next to me after all, just a bit, in front of these pictures? …

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

STORYLINE: POVERTY. SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE

Rilke returns to the concept of poverty several times.

In this letter, it can be understood as literal, material, “real-life” poverty: the lack of money. But as this storyline unfolds, the more profound, inner meaning becomes more apparent — touching the biblical meaning of poverty as a prerequisite for reaching the kingdom of heaven.

Poverty as the lack of heritage, the lack of cultural baggage we bring to any new experience. In the modern parlance, the lack of “cognitive biases” and social conditioning.

This concept is intrinsically linked to the theme of not being “on anyone’s side”, of love being so completely spent in the act of painting that what remains is simply reality as it is.

SEEING PRACTICE: AS A POOR MAN

In my lifetime, I have certainly spent more time in front of van Gogh’s painting than Rilke did at the time he was writing this letter (if only because I am much older than Rilke was at the time).

And it would have never occurred to me to say that van Gogh sees things “as a poor man”. That is, that something in his vision is set free by his poverty. That he sees something that a rich person would never be able to see.

Can you see in van Gogh’s paintings what Rilke is writing about? More interestingly, is it possible to pause the flow of daily life and see one’s surroundings “as a poor man”, without the baggage of our possessions, our heritage, our experiences, our identities?