Rainer Maria Rilke Diskussionforum

Hello Forum!

In his Requiem for his friend the painter Paula Modersohn-Becker, Rilke seems to comment on her self-portrait, a half-nude wearing amber beads (I believe this is the Self-Portrait on her Fifth Anniversary, now at the Paula Modersohn-Becker Museum, Bremen).

Rilke says (forgive the translation):
'Why do you bid me consider your amber beads to be so heavy that they cannot exist in the serene heaven of paintings?
Why show me an evil omen in the way you stand?
Why do you present the outline of your body like lines engraved inside a palm, so I cannot see them now except as fate?'

Does anyone know why Rilke considers Paula's pose to be an ill omen?

And I'd be grateful for any other insights as well.

Thank-you!

Julian

Hello Julian!

Rilke wants to keep (behalten) Paula as she saw herself when she painted her self-portrait.
But now, as she is dead, she "comes to him" differently.
It seems to him that she revokes or cancels (widerruft) herself.

Rilke's lines (bold by me):

So will ich dich behalten, wie du dich
hinstelltest in den Spiegel, tief hinein
und fort von allem. Warum kommst du anders?
Was widerrufst du dich? Was willst du mir
einreden, daß in jenen Bernsteinkugeln
um deinen Hals noch etwas Schwere war
von jener Schwere, wie sie nie im Jenseits
beruhigter Bilder ist; was zeigst du mir
in deiner Haltung eine böse Ahnung;
was heißt dich die Konturen deines Leibes
auslegen wie die Linien einer Hand,
daß ich sie nicht mehr sehn kann ohne Schicksal?

The "böse Ahnung" he sees in her pose is not in the painting, but in the way she "visits" him when dead.

As to why he sees her "coming to him" so differently - well, the whole poem speaks of something "unfinished", something "lacking", and he somehow wants to help her "complete" her life and death...

But who can say if the "lacking" he felt was in her life and dying, or rather in his feeling about his relationship to her?

Herzlich,
stilz

Hello Stilz, I enjoyed reading your fine observations.

I recently read (somewhere) that Paula painted herself as pregnant before she became so. And that Rilke seeing her painting, and knowing a good amount about Paula's relationship with Otto Modersohn, realised that her self-portrait as pregnant was a prophecy of her death.

Thank-you for your response and consistent attention,

Julian