Exploring Rodin’s Place in Literary History

The subject of creator and muse plays a central role in Rodin’s oeuvre. Mr. Gleis pointed out that even “The Thinker,” of which the museum owns a 30-inch-tall bronze that was cast in the early 1880s, captures the artist’s endless search for intellectual fodder. The marble sculpture “Man and His Thought,” another item from the Alte Nationalgalerie’s permanent collection, shows a man breathing life into an androgynous figure.

Photo

Catherine Chevillot, director of the Musée Rodin, explained that the moment of inspiration is inextricably linked to the act of creation in the sculptor’s figures. “Rodin is permanently haunted by the question of what constitutes art,” she said by phone from Paris. “The idea that the artist has to decide at the moment that a creation arises — also that life arises — is key to understanding his work.”

Ms. Chevillot noted the particularly spontaneous nature of “The Hero,” in which the female muse emerges like “smoke or waves from the male figure, a continuity of form which mocks his realism.”

“Whether or not she has a head is of no importance to him,” she said of Rodin. “What is important is the deep expression of the composition as a whole.”

In the poem “Nike” — the exhibit will display the original manuscript, on loan from the Swiss National Library in Bern — Rilke tried not to respond directly to the sculpture but to create a work of art in its own right. In a 1920 letter to his patroness Nanny Wunderly-Volkart, he even tried to obscure the connection.

Photo

“It is never about translating a painting or a sculpture” into words, the Rilke scholar Torsten Hoffmann said by phone from Frankfurt. “He finds that boring. He is interested in what a painting or sculpture can do for him as a poet and human being.”

“Nike” emerged after a period from 1916 to 1919 that Rilke described as “the most hopeless years” of his life. By 1922, Rilke had finished his most famous works, the “Duineser Elegien” and “Sonnets to Orpheus,” both of which were published in 1923. Mr. Hoffmann said, however, that it would be inaccurate to credit Rodin’s “Hero” with a phase of renewed creativity.

“Rilke senses his own condition in the sculpture, with this angel, genius or muse,” Mr. Hoffmann said, citing “the decisive turning point” for the poet as the end of World War I and his return to Paris. But Rilke’s first encounter with Rodin in the early 20th century had a direct effect on his aesthetic. The “New Poems” of 1907 and 1908 stand as a case in point.

“Rilke tries to create a very clear form — with 14 lines, 14 verses — something similar to a sculpture,” Mr. Hoffmann said. “Just as Rodin creates things with his hands, Rilke takes up external subjects at this time. In previous work, he is more introspective.”

Photo

Rilke not only handled the sale of Rodin’s work in the German-speaking world as his personal secretary from 1905 to 1906, but also defended him against conservative criticism in a 1907 lecture delivered in cities including Dresden and Bremen. A series of watercolors in particular had caused a scandal in Germany for their graphic nudity.

As early as 1896, the Alte Nationalgalerie acquired its first Rodin works. Its director at the time, Hugo von Tschudi, also became the first to purchase a Manet painting (“In the Winter Garden”) for a museum. “Rodin-Rilke-Hofmannsthal” will be set up among French Impressionist works as a kind of “exhibit within an exhibit,” said Mr. Gleis, paying homage to the farsighted vision of Mr. Tschudi and previous directors.

He acknowledged the challenge of contributing to the dialogue about Rodin after a glut of centenary events but said he hoped that the exhibit’s interdisciplinary approach would raise questions not just about art, but also about literary history.

“Such a mix exists already in the art world, but it is more comprehensive for this house,” Mr. Gleis said. “I hope it will lead to a new point of view.”

Continue reading the main story