Subject: Re: The Real Daumier
From: Paul Miller (phm@midsouth.rr.com)
Date: Tue Mar 28 2000 - 18:25:18 EST
Smmrs:
Interesting post, thanks! Any thoughts on the Yoshoto moanings?
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Yes, now that you ask.
Diego awhile back had an idea that there was a connection ala
Rilke/Rodin/DDSBP. I have reproduced the gist of the discussion from the
archives. Bruce was part of this investigation, but alas he has flown the
coop, or uh... should i say flopped out of the bowl.
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Well, this is not related to feet, really. I wanted to ask Matt,
Bruce or Paul if they thought there is a connection between
Rilke's letters to Rodin and de Daumier-Smith. There is the
student-teacher relationship, the feeling of isolation when
abroad, and most striking of all, the insistent worries about
Rodin's wife who seems to be under an undescribable pain,
like Mrs. Yoshoto.
diego d.
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----I know Rilke was a secretary to Rodin in Paris around 1905 for a little under a year, so there is the student-teacher relationship, but this time it's reversed with the writer being the student. So we have Paris, isolation, student-teacher thing although reversed, and the pain of rodin's wife. Sounds like you are on to something. Unfortunately I haven't read the letters so it is difficult to comment further. Paul ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------
I looked briefly at a biography of Rilke in a bookstore. It's obvious that Rilke is almost obsessed with Rodin for a certain time. He refers to the language problem he had with Rodin that hindered communication. One of Rilke's favorite sculptures of Rodin's is "The Man with a Broken Nose" which in DDSBP is a real man with no nose, although JDS is also using this to make a statement about joy and suffering being never far apart. Later when I can find them I will look at Rilke's letters to Rodin to see the pain of Rodin's wife. I think the relationship between Rilke and Rodin may be a theme or thread running throug DDSBP. Diego has come up with a very useful insight. Paul ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------
You are definitely onto something! Yes, I _would_ say Rainer Maria Rilke's relationship with Rodin figures in _de D-S_. (I myself would never have thought of it.) And as we know from _The Inverted Forest_, JDS was quite aware of Rodin in RMR's life. There, JDS says Corinne has a Rodin which once belonged to Clara Rilke. (Interestingly, JDS connects the Rodin with RMR's wife. In historical fact, Clara, before she met Rainer, was a student of Rodin's.) As for the Rilke-Rodin letters, they exist in French. Five of them are translated into English in the must-have volume: _ Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke 1892-1910_, translated by Jane Greene and our old friend M.D. Herter Norton, published by Norton & Co., 1945. Actually, what is more revealing about the RMR-Rodin relationship are the series of letters Rainer wrote Clara about Rodin. These start in September of 1902. The 9/02/02 letter, for example, describes the strange atmospherics of having lunch with Rodin and his wife at their home, Meudon. Rodin continues to have first-place influence in RMR's life from fall of '02 up to fall '07 (and appears frequently in his letters). And yes, Paul is correct that RMR worked for a time as Rodin's secretary. Rilke's two essays on Rodin are available in English in _Where Silence Reigns: Selected Prose of RMR_. --Bruce ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------
I know this is obsessive, but feel I should report that, while leafing through DDSBP last night, I saw another Rilke connection. The narrator, in one of his fibs, talks about Picasso walking across his [Picasso's] studio to look at a small reproduction of his painting "Les Saltimbanques." In 1915, Rilke, who had been forced to leave Paris for Germany because of the war, was staying in Munich in the apartment of a friend who owned the painting "Les Saltimbanques." ("... sitting here in the apartment of friends (who have gone to the country) with the finest Picasso ("Les Saltimbanques"), in which there is so much Paris that, for moments, I forget.") The Fifth Duino Elegy (which deals with saltimbanques) is dedicated to the owner who allowed Rilke to live with the painting for four months. AND the first American edition of The Duino Elegies, published by Norton & Co. in 1939, has a small reproduction of "Les Saltimbanques" as a frontispiece. --Bruce ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------
Come back Bruce!!
Paul
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