Work

Devotion to what is nearest

November 12, 2017 by Elena Maslova-Levin

But this devotion to what is nearest, this is something I can’t do as yet, or only in my best moments, while it is at one’s worst moments that one really needs it.

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

OCTOBER 4, 1907

… one is still so far away from being able to work at all times.

Van Gogh could perhaps lose his composure, but behind it there was always his work, he could no longer lose that. And Rodin, when he’s not feeling well, is very close to his work, writes beautiful things on countless pieces of paper, reads Plato and follows him in his thought.

But I have a feeling that this is not just the result of discipline or compulsion (otherwise it would be tiring, the way I’ve been tired from working in recent weeks); it is all joy; it is natural well-being in the one thing that surpasses everything else.

Perhaps one has to have a clearer insight into the nature of one’s “task,” get a more tangible hold on it, recognize it in a hundred details. I believe I do feel what van Gogh must have felt at a certain juncture, and it is a strong and great feeling: that everything is yet to be done: everything.

But this devotion to what is nearest, this is something I can’t do as yet, or only in my best moments, while it is at one’s worst moments that one really needs it. Van Gogh could paint an Intérieur d’hôpital, and on his most fearful days he painted the most fearful objects.

Vincent Van Gogh. Ward at the hospital in Arles. 1889.

How else could he have survived.

This is what must be attained, and I have a definite sense that it can’t be forced. It must come out of insight, from pleasure, from no longer being able to postpone the work in view of all there is to be done.

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

THE WORK

Is it possible to “work at all times”? Science tells us that it is not (but then, its findings change so dizzyingly rapidly nowadays…)

For Rilke, staying “within the work” all the time is unequivocally a prerequisite for any real achievement. This is the lesson he reads in the lives of Rodin, van Gogh, and then, later on, Cézanne… He looks at them, and finds himself lacking.

But in the course of these letters, one sees how his work unfolds when he as it were is not looking, effortlessly.

This book itself, undoubtedly one of his major achievements, is being written while he is trying to force himself to do something else (and even, at some later point, resolving that he must never write about Cézanne at all…).

SEEING PRACTICE: FEARFUL OBJECTS

Rilke writes: “… on his most fearful days he (van Gogh) painted the most fearful objects — how else could he have survived”. Here is another example, a drawing from the asylum van Gogh stayed in after his breakdown.

Vincent van Gogh. Vestibule in the Asylum. 1889. Click to zoom in (on van Gogh museum website).

We now know it must have been one of the bad, most fearful days, because when van Gogh felt up to it, he ventured to paint outside. And he is drawing the most fearful things: the walls he imprisoned himself in, the door which only seems open, because he cannot cross the threshold.

Can we, too, look at our fears with this courage, with this kind of attention?

Utter lack of prejudice or of pride

November 10, 2017 by Elena Maslova-Levin

… how much there is in all this that reminds one of the “saints” he promised himself and resolved to paint at some much later time! (In that one letter.)

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

This is the second part of Rilke’s description of van Gogh’s portfolio (the first part is here).

Van Gogh’s letter he mentions here is one of his many letters to Theo Van Gogh . On September 10, 1889, he writes:

Had I had the strength to continue, I’d have done portraits of saints and of holy women from life, and who would have appeared to be from another century and they would be citizens of the present day, and yet would have had something in common with very primitive Christians.

OCTOBER 2, 1907 (PART 2)

… Or an old horse, a completely used up old horse: and it is not pitiful and not at all reproachful: it simply is everything they have made of it and what it has allowed itself to become.

Or a garden, or a park, which is seen and shown with the same utter lack of prejudice or of pride;

Vincent Van Gogh. Public park with weeping willow. 1888.

or, simply, things, a chair for instance, nothing but a chair, of the most ordinary kind: and yet, how much there is in all this that reminds one of the “saints” he promised himself and resolved to paint at some much later time! (In that one letter.)

Vincent Van Gogh. Van Gogh’s chair. 1889. Click to zoom in (on the website of National Gallery, London).

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

STORYLINE: THE WORK. REALITY

Another recurrent motive: all aspects of reality are equal in their profound realness, be their chairs, or lawns, or saints. For Rilke, recognition of this fundamental equality is an essential quality of a newly emerging art.

And van Gogh makes this equality more visible to us than we are capable of seeing it ourselves.

SEEING PRACTICE: SIMPLY, THINGS

A click on the reproduction of “Van Gogh’s Chair” will lead you to the high-resolution version on the website of National Gallery.

But what if we could recall this image whenever we see a chair, and realize that they all have the same striking, saint-like, realness of presence and color? I sometimes think that this alone could awaken us from the slumber we tend to call “real life”.

On the trail of the law of our own growth

November 7, 2017 by Elena Maslova-Levin

Basically it’s none of our business how somebody manages to grow, if only he does grow, if only we’re on the trail of the law of our own growth …

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

Rilke first came to Paris in 1902, to write a book on Auguste Rodin (he had been introduced to the language of sculpture by his wife, Clara Rilke-Westhoff, who studied under Rodin in 1901).

Rodin and his work had a profound impact on Rilke’s own growth. Now, in 1907, he is working on the second part of his book on Rodin (the first was published in 1903).

JUNE 28, 1907

Auguste Rodin. The Cathedral. 1908. Click to see the details (on Rodin Museum site)

.. and that Rodin does not “think about” his work but remains within it: within the attainable—that is just what we felt made him so exceptional, this humble, patient path he trod through the real: and I have not yet found another faith to replace this one.

In art, you can only stay within the “well done,” and by your staying there, it increases and surpasses you again and again.

It seems to me that the “ultimate intuitions and insights” will only approach one who lives in his work and remains there, and whoever considers them from afar gains no power over them.

But all that already belongs in the area of personal solutions. Basically it’s none of our business how somebody manages to grow, if only he does grow, if only we’re on the trail of the law of our own growth …

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

STORYLINE: THE WORK

The artistic process, THE WORK, is another major theme of the book. For Rilke, art is fundamentally the same work, be it poetry, painting or sculpture.

What he sees in Rodin (and later, in Cézanne and van Gogh) is something he strives for himself (and finds himself lacking): being always, unwaveringly “within the work”.

Here, ever-presence “within the work”, within the simple and unambitious “well done”, is opposed to “thinking about it” (and having grand ideas about it).

Here is a more precise description from his monograph on Rodin:

August Rodin. The Hand of God. 1896. Click the image to see the details (on Rodin museum website).

Rodin discovered the fundamental element of his art, as it were, the cell of his world. And this was the plane, the exactly defined plane, of varying size and emphasis, from which all else must be made.

From this time onward it was the subject of his art, the object of all his efforts, of his vigilance and his endurance. His art was not based upon any great idea, but upon the conscientious realization of something small, upon something capable of achievement, upon a matter of technique.

There was no arrogance in him. He devoted himself to this insignificant and difficult aspect of beauty which he could survey, command and judge. The other, the greater beauty, must come when all was ready for it, as animals come to drink when night holds sway and the forest is free of strangers.

In 1903, Rilke wrote to Lou Andreas-Salomé:

Somehow I too must discover the smallest constituent element, the cell of my art, the tangible immaterial means of expressing everything.

SEEING PRACTICE: HANDS

The sculptures in this post embody the idea of the grand seen and enacted in something small and ever-present, unnoticed, taken for granted: our own hands, and the hands of our fellow human beings.

This beauty we see in Rodin is there for us everywhere we go, literally in our own hands.

All it takes is to pay attention to one’s hands, and to the hands of others: their planes and shapes, and the cathedral-like spaces created when they meet with one another .