Landscape of words

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.

…the generosity of a born landscape

December 3, 2017 by Elena Maslova-Levin

And all this lies out there with the generosity of a born landscape, and casts forth space.

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

October 17, 1907 (Part 1)

<….> But the morning was bright.

A broad east wind invading us with a developed front, because he finds the city so spacious.

On the opposite side, westerly, blown, pushed out, cloud archipelagos, island groups, gray like the neck and chest feathers of aquatic birds in an ocean of cold, too remotely blissful barely-blue.

Paul Cezanne. Ile de France Landscape. 1880.

And underneath all this, low, there’s still the Place de la Concorde and the trees of the Champs-Éysées, shady, a black simplified to green, beneath the western clouds. Toward the right there are houses, bright, windblown, and sunny, and far off in the background in a blue dove-gray, houses again, drawn together in planes, a serried row of straight-edged quarrylike surfaces.

And suddenly, as one approaches the obelisk (around whose granite there is always a glimmering of blond old warmth and in whose hieroglyphic hollows, especially in the repeatedly recurring owl, an ancient Egyptian shadow-blue is preserved, dried up as if in the wells of a paint box), the wonderful Avenue comes flowing toward you in a scarcely perceptible downward slope, fast and rich and like a river which with the force of its own violence, ages ago, drilled a passageway through the sheer cliff of the Arc de Triomphe back there by the Étoile.

Paul Cezanne. House with red roof. 1890.

And all this lies out there with the generosity of a born landscape, and casts forth space.

And from the roofs, there and there, the flags keep rising into the high air, stretching, flapping as if to take flight: there and there.

That’s what my walk to the Rodin drawings was like today.

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

STORYLINE: LANDSCAPE OF WORDS

As a painter, I know how to make landscapes out of paint. It is my craft.

But Rilke’s landscapes made of words are pure, breathtaking magic. I SEE how his words arise from a synergy with Cézanne’s color planes — and I did my best to share my vision with you with the paintings included in this letter.

I do see, but cannot even remotely understand.

SEEING PRACTICE: BORN LANDSCAPE (INDESCRIBABLE REALITY)

Between Cézanne’s colors and Rilke’s words, the landscape itself — any landscape — anything that arises, be it in your vision or mine, turns into a work of art.

I sometimes pause to remember this: these “born landscapes” pass in front of our eyes every single moment, and each is utterly unique. There never has been, nor will ever be, this exact constellation of light, point of view, and the spectator’s unique sense of vision. This work of art arises with the generosity of a born landscape, and disappears to give birth to another one; most of them unnoticed, unseen.

These landscapes are gifts from Nature, and from countless generations of artists that shaped and expanded our sense of vision. All one has to do is RECEIVE these abundant gifts.

Urge to comprehend everything

November 27, 2017 by Elena Maslova-Levin

…how deeply we are placed on the ground of all transformation, we most changeable ones who walk about with the urge to comprehend everything and (because we’re unable to grasp it) reduce immensity to the action of our heart, for fear that it might destroy us.

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

OCTOBER 13, 1907 (Part 1)

Early this morning I read about your autumn, and all the colors you brought into your letter were changed back in my feelings and filled my mind to the brim with strength and radiance.

Yesterday, while I was admiring the dissolving brightness of autumn here, you were walking through that other autumn back home, which is painted on red wood, as this one’s painted on silk.

And the one reaches us as much as the other; that’s how deeply we are placed on the ground of all transformation, we most changeable ones who walk about with the urge to comprehend everything and (because we’re unable to grasp it) reduce immensity to the action of our heart, for fear that it might destroy us.

Paul Cezanne. Large pine and read earth. 1895.

If I were to come and visit you two, I would surely also see the pageant of moor and heath, the hovering bright green of the meadows, the birches, with new and different eyes.

Though this transformation is something I’ve completely experienced and shared before, in part of the Book of Hours, nature was then still a general inducement for me, an evocation, an instrument in whose strings my hands found themselves again.

I was not yet sitting before her; I allowed myself to be swept away by the soul that emanated from her; she came over me with her vastness, her grand exaggerated presence, the way prophesy came over Saul; exactly like that.

I walked about and saw, saw not nature but the visions she gave me. How little I would have been able to learn from Cézanne, from van Gogh, then. I can tell how much I’ve changed by the way Cézanne challenges me now.

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

COLORS AND WORDS. REALITY

Rilke mentions his book of poems, The Book of Hours: Love poems to God, as a premonition of the transformation he is experiencing in 1907.

Here is a poem from this collection which, I think, gives us a glimpse of what he means (translation by Babette Deutsch, from 2009 edition):

Although, as from a prison walled with hate,
each from his own self labors to be free,
the world yet holds a wonder, and how great!
ALL LIFE IS LIVED: now this comes home to me.
But who, then, lives it? Things that patiently
stand there, like some unfingered melody
that sleeps within a harp as day is going?
Is it the winds, across the waters blowing,
is it the branches, beckoning each to each,
is it the flowers, weaving fragrances,
the aging alleys that reach out endlessly?
Is it the warm beasts, moving to and fro,
is it the birds, strange as they sail from view?
This life — who really lives it? God, do you?

SEEING: we most changeable ones

The rhythms of nature are so varied: some things exist on a time scale for grander than our own, others arise and disappear before our eyes, like waves, or in the course of a single day or season, like flowers.

So what does he mean when he says: “we most changeable ones”?

As we go through life, it is so easy to get caught in the illusion of our own sameness. Our environment changes, but the self seems to be constant.

But when one truly sees, sitting before Nature (like a dog), having let go of this urge to comprehend everything, then all that remains of the self is the fluid, constantly changing vantage point.

A few regular light planes, like the face in a portrait by Manet

November 24, 2017 by Elena Maslova-Levin

Everything is simplified, reduced to a few regular light planes, like the face in a portrait by Manet. And nothing is insignificant and superfluous.

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

OCTOBER 12, 1907 (Part 1)

These are the days where everything is all around you, luminous, light, barely intimated in the bright air and yet distinct; even what is nearest has the tones of distance about it, is taken away and only shown, instead of being put there, as usual;

Paul Cezanne. Houses at the l’Estaque. 1880.

and all the things that are related to distance—the river, the bridges, the long streets, and the extravagant squares—have been absorbed and hugged close by that distance, are painted upon it, as if on silk.

Paul Cezanne. Bend in Forest Road. 1906.

Edouard Manet. Berthe Morisot with a bouquet of violets. 1872.

You can feel what a light-green carriage can be on the Pont-Neuf or some red that can’t contain itself, or simply a poster on the fire wall of a pearl-gray group of houses. Everything is simplified, reduced to a few regular light planes, like the face in a portrait by Manet.

And nothing is insignificant and superfluous.

The bouquinistes along the quai are opening their boxes, and the fresh or withered yellow of the books, the violet brown of the volumes, the green of a portfolio: everything is right, is valid, takes part, adds its sound to the ensemble of bright correspondences.

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

LANDSCAPE OF WORDS. THE WORK

Another of Rilke’s landscapes, now with a direct comparison to a painting. And not to a landscape even, this would have been too straightforward. To a portrait!

This landscape, including this comparison, was later included, almost word-by-word, in Rilke’s novel, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge — “work” done not as “work”, just as a fruit of unfolding life.

SEEING PRACTICE: Nature like Paintings

The common sense is to compare paintings to nature: are they true to life? Are they realistic?

But the way we see nature is informed by paintings we see, and let sink deeply into our sense of vision. Do you, too, sometimes feel that the best way to describe what you see in nature is to remind the listener of a painting?

Unfinished, exaggerated designs of vastness

November 23, 2017 by Elena Maslova-Levin

A large fan-shaped poplar was leafing playfully in front of this completely supportless blue, in front of the unfinished, exaggerated designs of a vastness which the good Lord holds out before him without any knowledge of perspective.

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

OCTOBER 11, 1907

… it was wonderful to come to the quais today, spacious, wafting, cool. In the east behind Notre-Dame and Saint-Germain l‘Auxerrois all of the last, gray, half-discarded days had bunched together, and before me, over the Tuileries, toward the Arc de l’Étoile, lay something open, bright, weightless, as if this were a place leading all the way out of the world.

Paul Cezanne. View of L’estaque and Chateaux d’If. 1885.

A large fan-shaped poplar was leafing playfully in front of this completely supportless blue, in front of the unfinished, exaggerated designs of a vastness which the good Lord holds out before him without any knowledge of perspective.

Paul Cezanne. Bottom of the ravine. 1879. Click the image to zoom in on Google Cultural Institute.

LANDSCAPE OF WORDS

No paintings are mentioned in this letter, but do you notice how Rilke’s own landscapes are changing in response to his encounter with paintings? I have included some to share with you my own perception of this change…

SEEING PRACTICE: SKY

What is the sky? A blue horizontal plane above us? Or a backdrop, a vertical plane against which we see whatever it is we see, without any knowledge of perspective? How do you think about the sky? How do you see it?

Reality indescribable down to its smallest details

November 8, 2017 by Elena Maslova-Levin

… I believe that the only time I lived without loss were the ten days after Ruth’s birth, when I found reality as indescribable, down to its smallest details, as it surely always is…

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

In this letter, Rilke refers to the birth of his daughter, Ruth (1901), and its effect on his state of being.

I looked around for a painting which would embody this effect, and found this painting by Cézanne, which I had never seen before, nor even known of its existence.

Paul Cezanne. Hortense breat-feeding Paul. 1872.

It is so unusual for Cézanne, so utterly unlike any other portraits of his wife, so filled with humble tenderness, so in resonance with Rilke’s letter (although he never mentions it). Perhaps, Cézanne, too, experienced reality differently just after the birth of his child…

SEPTEMBER 13, 1907

One lives so badly, because one always comes into the present unfinished, unable, distracted. I cannot think back on any time of my life without such reproaches and worse.

I believe that the only time I lived without loss were the ten days after Ruth’s birth, when I found reality as indescribable, down to its smallest details, as it surely always is.

<…>

Now that winter’s already impending here. Those vaporous mornings and evenings are already starting, where the sun is merely the place where the sun used to be, and where in the yards all the summer flowers, the dahlias and the tall gladiolas and the long rows of geraniums shout the contradiction of their red into the mist.

This makes me sad. It brings up desolate memories, one doesn’t know why: as if the music of the urban summer were ending in dissonance, in a mutiny of all its notes; perhaps just because one has already once before taken all this so deeply into oneself and read its meanings and made it part of oneself, without ever actually making it.

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

STORYLINE: LANDSCAPES OF WORDS. PRESENCE

As though in contradiction to his own words about “indescribable reality”, Rilke concludes the letter with one of his striking LANDSCAPES-IN-WORDS, which recreate the visual reality in one’s mind’s eye.

As these landscapes appear in the letters, one after another, we see (or hear?) how Rilke’s vision changes and expands as he takes in and absorbs Cézanne’s way of seeing. This one is not yet quite informed by Cézanne, more “impressionist” in style and quality.

PRESENCE, which appeared in the very first letter as a quality of space, now re-emerges as a quality of life-altering moments in time.

SEEING PRACTICE: Renoir’s indescribable reality

As we go through our days, we don’t really see reality as indescribable. We seem to have names for everything we encounter, often more than one. But in the space of a painting, we glimpse the inadequacy of these words: just how little of what Renoir’s landscape contains and shows can we describe in things-naming words?

But reality is just as indescribable; the trick is to open one’s eyes to see it.