Presence

Black and white behave perfectly colorlike next to the other colors

December 21, 2017 by Elena Maslova-Levin

black and white <…> behave perfectly colorlike next to the other colors, their equal in every way, as if long acclimatized.

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

OCTOBER 24, 1907 (Part 4)

The use of white as a color was natural to him from the start: together with black, it defined the two limits of his wide-open palette,

Paul Cezanne. The black marble clock. C. 1870.

and in the very beautiful ensemble of a black stone mantelpiece with a pendulum clock, black and white (the latter in a cloth that covers part of the mantel and hangs over its edge) behave perfectly colorlike next to the other colors, their equal in every way, as if long acclimatized.

(Differently than in Manet, whose black has the effect of a light being switched off and yet still stands opposed to the other colors as if coming from some other place.)

Brightly confronting each other on the white cloth are a coffee cup with a heavy dark-blue stripe on the edge, a fresh, ripe lemon, a cut crystal chalice with a sharply scalloped edge, and, way over on the left, a large, baroque triton shell—eccentric and singular in appearance, with its smooth, red orifice facing the front.

Its inward carmine bulging out into brightness provokes the wall behind it to a kind of thunderstorm blue, which is then repeated, more deeply and spaciously, by the adjoining gold-framed mantelpiece mirror;

here, in the mirror image, it again meets with a contradiction: the milky rose of a glass vase which, standing on the black pendulum clock, asserts its contrast twice (first in reality, then, a little more yieldingly, in reflection).

Space and mirror-space are definitively indicated and distinguished—musically, as it were—by this double stroke; the picture contains them the way a basket contains fruit and leaves: as if all this were just as easy to grasp and to give.

But there’s still some other object on the bare mantelpiece, pushed up against the white cloth: I’d like to go back to the picture to see what it was.

But the Salon no longer exists; in a few days it will be replaced by an exhibition of automobiles which will stand there, long and dumb, each one with its own idée fixe of velocity.

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

Presence. Intercourse of colors

As you read this portrait-in-words of a still life, don’t you find it hard to believe that it is written completely from memory?

Earlier, Rilke wrote about the greatness of Cézanne’s watching. In these descriptions from memory, we see his own great watching: the sheer quality of presence and attention he brought to this encounter with Cézanne.

I had to re-read the letter, following the flow of words around the picture with more focused attention, to even find that single object he forgot… Did you?

All we basically have to do is to be there, but simply, ardently

December 11, 2017 by Elena Maslova-Levin

… all we basically have to do is to be there, but simply, ardently, the way the earth simply is, consenting to the seasons, light and dark and altogether in space, not asking to rest upon anything other than the net of influences and forces in which the stars feel secure.

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

OCTOBER 19, 1907 (Part 2)

<…> After this devotion, in small ways at first, lies the beginning of sainthood: the simple life of a love that endured; that, without ever boasting of it, approaches everything, unaccompanied, inconspicuous, wordless.

The real work, the abundance of tasks, begins, all of it, after this enduring, and whoever has not been able to come this far may well get to see the Virgin Mary in Heaven, and certain saints and minor prophets as well, and King Saul and Charles le Téméraire—:

but as for Hokusai and Leonardo, Li Tai Pe and Villion, Verhaeren, Rodin, Cézanne—of these, not to mention the good Lord, all he will ever learn, even there, is hearsay.

Ah, we compute the years and divide them here and there and stop and begin and hesitate between the two.

But how very much of one piece is everything we encounter, how related one thing is to the next, how it gave birth to itself and grows up and is educated in its own nature,

and all we basically have to do is to be there, but simply, ardently, the way the earth simply is, consenting to the seasons, light and dark and altogether in space, not asking to rest upon anything other than the net of influences and forces in which the stars feel secure.

Some day the time and composure and patience must also be there to let me continue writing the Notebooks of Malte Laurids; I now know much more about him, or rather: the knowledge will be there when it is needed …

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

THE WORK

I read this letter, and see a miracle.

Here and now, in this moment, we are witnessing Rilke becoming what he is, and has always been, and will always be.

The real work begins after enduring…

SEEING PRACTICE: how related one thing is to the next

Rilke writes:

But how very much of one piece is everything we encounter, how related one thing is to the next…

Our brains are trained to see separate objects, not how inseparable they are from what surrounds them. But find a moment or two in your day, and pay attention to how things are related, to the spaces in between, to how very much of one piece is everything. Just rest your awareness in the space BETWEEN objects, not on the objects themselves.

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.

Whatever is present is utterly and urgently present

November 5, 2017 by Elena Maslova-Levin

…and whatever is present is utterly and urgently present, as if prostrate on its knees and praying for you …

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

This book wasn’t written as a book. It is a sequence of letters to the poet’s wife, written in 1907 from Paris. Its intertwining themes and motives emerged organically — as though designed by the unfolding of life itself, both within Rilke’s inner space, and outside.

The Rilke we hear in “Letters on Cézanne” is not yet the Rilke we know from his mature work. He is right in the midst of becoming the artist he is destined to become. And these letters are not only on Cézanne, not only on painting — they record and embody this act of becoming, forged in a synergetic fire between poetry and painting, between words and colors.

JUNE 3, 1907

… seeing and working—how different they are here. Everywhere else you see, and think: later—. Here they’re almost one and the same.

You’re back again: that’s not strange, not remarkable, not striking; it’s not even a celebration; for a celebration would already be an interruption. But this here takes you and goes further with you and goes with you to everything and right through everything, through small things and great.

Paul Cezanne. Still life, bowl and Milk Jug. C. 1877. Click to zoom in on Google Cultural Institute website.

Everything that was rearranges itself, lines up in formation, as if someone were standing there giving orders; and whatever is present is utterly and urgently present, as if prostrate on its knees and praying for you …

Rainer Maria Rilke to Clara Rilke

Storyline: Presence

PRESENCE (a concept much less in vogue back in 1907 than it is now) is one the core themes of the book. Here, Rilke links it to a place, to being in Paris (he had returned there several days before).

But does this experience come from the place one is in, or from one’s inner space, or from some kind of emerging resonance between the two? (How many people in Paris felt it on June 3, 1907, I wonder…)

SEEING PRACTICE: Things lined up in formation

Although Cézanne is not present in the letter (at least not explicitly), this small still life jumped at me as a perfect companion to it, so full it is of the same urgent presence.

In later work, Cézanne would arrange complex still life set-ups, but this one is so utterly simple. It is a kind of “composition” every one of us passes by multiple times every single day without noticing. Two things lined up in formation on the kitchen table.

Just two things on the kitchen table — what is there to notice, to pay attention to? Even most painting textbooks would advise that two things never make a good composition.

In Cézanne’s eyes, they are “utterly and urgently present, as if prostrate on its knees and praying for you …”. This is the visual experience shared in this painting, and now it is up to us to expand it from the space of painting and into the space of our daily lives.