You Must Change Your Life

by Rachel Corbett

  185 “ghastly old ladies”: RL, 232.

  185 “pitiful, pleasure-seeking”: To Valery David-Rhonfeld, December 4, 1894.

  185 “like a relapse”: LB, 83.

  186 “just as factually”: To Clara Westhoff, November 4, 1907.

  186 “très belle”: BT, 193.

  186 “We have need” . . . “so many”: To Clara Westhoff, November 11, 1907. [Translated from French in a note.]

  186 “I could hardly believe” . . . “The dear”: To Clara Westhoff, November 11, 1907.

  186 “I have an infinite” . . . “I am proud”: BT, 193.

  186 “full, resonant”: Quoted in RL, 234.

  187 “It seems to me”: PMB, 424.

  187 “fifty-six” . . . “If it were not” : PMB, 425.

  188 “A pity”: DF, 222.

  188 “and Paula was no”: DF, 223.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  189 “Scarcely three steps”: To Clara Westhoff, June 14, 1906.

  190 “rumor” . . . “temporarily”: To Alfred Schaer, February 26, 1924.

  190 “Come to Meudon”: Correspondance de Rodin, III. Editions du Musée Rodin, 1987, 39. [From the French: venez vous demain dans l’après midi à Meudon, si vous le pouvez]

  190 “locked in my house”: Correspondance de Rodin, III, Editions du Musée Rodin, 1987, 44. [From the French: je suis enfermé chez moi comme le noyau l’est dans son fruit.]

  190 “It would be a pleasure to see you”: Correspondance de Rodin, III. Editions du Musée Rodin, 1987, 44. [From the French: j’aurai du plaisir à vous voir, à causer, à vous montrer des antiques.]

  191 “very scared”: FG, 297.

  192 “great fertile plain”: Quoted in Christian Borngräber, Berliner Design-Handbuch. Berlin: Merve, 1987, 61. [From the German: “die große fruchtbare Ebene.”]

  192 “This is Rodin”: BT, 195.

  192 “an old country house”: JA, 554.

  192 “You ought to see”: FG, 551.

  192 “No friend have I” . . . “to need us now”: To Clara Westhoff, September 3, 1908.

  194 “no one will find”: To Clara Westhoff, September 3, 1908.

  194 “a pool of silence”: RSG, 459.

  194 “How long I wait”: FG, 554.

  195 “which nobody wants”: To Clara Westhoff, November 3, 1909.

  195 “modulate silence”: Quoted in Malcolm MacDonald, The Symphonies of Havergal Brian. London: Kahn & Averill, 1983, 249.

  195 “as before a great” . . . “he used to”: To Clara Westhoff, November 3, 1909.

  195 “Come live here” . . . “Yes, but”: Frederick Brown, An Impersonation of Angels: A Biography of Jean Cocteau. New York: Viking, 1968, 30–31.

  197 “I believed I knew” . . . “Success had put me”: Jean Cocteau, Paris Album: 1900–1914. London: W. H. Allen, 1956, 135.

  197 “but one wish”: William H. Gass, Reading Rilke: Reflections on the Problems of Translation. New York: Knopf, 1999, 132. [1.5 lines.]

  197 “I have my dead”: Rainer Maria Rilke, Selected Poems/Ausgewahlte Gedichte: A Dual-Language Book. Edited and translated by Stanley Appelbaum. New York: Dover, 2011, 141.

  198 “I accuse all men”: Rainer Maria Rilke, Selected Poems: With Parallel German Text. Translated by Susan Ranson and Marielle Sutherland. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011, 53.

  198 “Do not return”: Rainer Maria Rilke, Requiem and Other Poems. Translated by J. B. Leishman. London: Hogarth, 1949, 136.

  198 “where men were” . . . “tell us where it hurts”: Rainer Maria Rilke, Requiem: And Other Poems. Translated by J. B. Leishman. London: Hogarth, 1949, 139–140.

  199 “to let go”: Rainer Maria Rilke, The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke. Translated by Stephen Mitchell. New York: Vintage, 1989, 29.

  199 “Prose wants to be” . . . “I would have to”: To Auguste Rodin, December 29, 1908.

  200 “through a little sliding”: To Anton Kippenberg, January 2, 1909.

  200 “ ‘had not accomplished’ ” . . . “I feel more affection”: RAS, 164.

  201 “even now my best”: To Jakob Baron Uexküll, August 19, 1909.

  201 “air-baths”: To Lou Andreas-Salomé, October 23, 1909.

  201 “as if spider webs”: JA, 495.

  201 “which I answered clearly”: F. W. van Heerikhuizen, Rainer Maria Rilke: His Life and Work. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1951, 241.

  201 “infinitely stronger”: LP, 299.

  202 “Poor Malte”: To Anton Kippenberg, Good Friday 1910.

  202 “religion is the art”: Quoted in Rainer Maria Rilke, The Book of Hours: Prayers to a Lowly God. Translated by Annemarie S. Kidder. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2001, x.

  202 “the very great task”: To Georg Brandes, November 28, 1909.

  203 “I was not seeking”: Alan Sheridan, André Gide: A Life in the Present. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000, 221.

  203 “imperiously and urgently”: The Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke and Princess Marie Von Thurn und Taxis. New York: New Directions, 1958, 1.

  203 “Herr Rilke”: Quoted in Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus. Translation and introduction by Willis Barnstone. Boston and London: Shambhala, 2013.

  204 “delicate lordliness”: Angela Livingstone, Salomé, Her Life and Work. East Sussex, UK: M. Bell, 1984, 101.

  204 “Those Rilke-hags”: Quoted in Ulrich Baer, The Rilke Alphabet. New York: Fordham University Press, 2014, 53.

  204 “I believed that he was”: Nora Wydenbruck, Rilke, Man and Poet: A Biographical Study. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press: 1950, 181.

  204 “Castle by the Sea”: The Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke and Princess Marie Von Thurn und Taxis. New York: New Directions, 1958, 3.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  206 “He wants to give these” . . . “And how he said it”: JA, 495.

  208 “What are you doing?” LYR, 32.

  208 “all the others . . . I am glad”: The Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke and Princess Marie Von Thurn und Taxis. New York: New Directions, 1958, 23.

  208 “eastern god” . . . “It is the center”: To Clara Westhoff, September 15, 1905.

  208 “it is there alone in”: Lou Andreas-Salomé, You Alone Are Real to Me: Remembering Rainer Maria Rilke. Rochester: BOA Editions, 2003, 51.

  208 “a god of antiquity”: To Clara Westhoff, September 3, 1908.

  208 “Too-Great, the Transcendent”: Rainer Maria Rilke, Selected Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke. Translated by R. F. C. Hull. London: Macmillan, 1946, 359.

  209 “take it up to God”: To Clara Rilke, September 4, 1908.

  209 “One repays a teacher”: Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None. Translated by Thomas Wayne. New York: Algora, 2003, 59.

  210 “certainly still false” . . . “flowers, animals”: To Clara Westhoff, June 24, 1907.

  210 “Completeness is conveyed”: Rainer Maria Rilke, Auguste Rodin. Translated by Jessie Lemont and Hans Trausil. New York: Sunwise Turn, 1919, 39.

  212 “I am glad you have” . . . “rough reality”: LYP, 77–78.

  212 “life drove me off”: LYP, 13.

  212 “the empty hills” . . . “art too”: LYP, 76–78.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  213 “Imagine the shock”: Sylvia Beach, “A Musée Rodin in Paris.” The International Studio, volume 62, 1917, xlii–xliv.

  213 “enchanted abode”: RSG, 461.

  213 “plaster, marble,”: RSG, 462.

  214 “the result of theories”: Quoted in Henri Matisse, Matisse on Art. Edited by Jack Flam. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995, 261.

  214 “De Max was like”: Francis Steegmuller, Cocteau: A Biography. New York: Little, Brown, 1970, 21.

  214 “fairytale kingdom”: Jean Cocteau, Paris Album: 1900–1914. London: W. H. Allen, 1956, 133.

  215 “So this is where”: Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. Translation by Stephen M
itchell. New York: Vintage, paperback, 1985, 3.

  215 “I am learning to see” . . . “I don’t know”: Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. Translation by Stephen Mitchell. New York: Vintage, paperback, 1985, 6.

  216 “How could they know”: Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. Translation by Stephen Mitchell. New York: Vintage, paperback, 1985, 260.

  216 “the legend of a man”: BT, 51.

  216 “in the end”: Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. Translation by Stephen Mitchell. New York: Vintage, paperback, 1985, 189.

  216 “He was now terribly”: Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. Translation by Stephen Mitchell. New York: Vintage, paperback, 1985, 260.

  216 “This test” . . . “so much so”: To Clara Westhoff, October 19, 1907.

  216 “perishes in order”: Rainer Maria Rilke, Selected Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke. Translated by R. F. C. Hull, London: Macmillan, 1946, 184.

  216 “Malte is not a”: Quoted in George C. Schoolfield, “Malte Laurids Brigge.” In A Companion to the Works of Rainer Maria Rilke. Edited by Erika A. Metzger and Michael M. Metzger. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2001, 185.

  217 “Malte Laurid’s desk”: LP, 300.

  217 “It is finished, detached”: LP, 301.

  218 “[I] stretched my” . . . “incomparable”: To Clara Westhoff, July 6, 1906.

  219 “The Notebooks were not written” . . . “our yearning”: Henry F. Fullenwider, Rilke and His Reviewers: An Annotated Bibliography. Lawrence: University of Kansas Publications, 1978, 2–3.

  219 “inaccessible prose”: LP, 314.

  219 “to have a death of one’s” . . . “You had it”: Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. Translation by Stephen Mitchell. New York: Vintage, paperback, 1985, 9–10.

  220 “stranded like a survivor”: Rainer Maria Rilke, Selected Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke. Translated by R. F. C. Hull. London: Macmillan, 1946, 184–185.

  220 “The Prophet is like”: To Clara Westhoff, December 21, 1910.

  220 “Allah is great”: To Clara Westhoff, November 26, 1910.

  221 “simply expressed in”: Quoted in Lisa Gates, “Rilke and Orientalism: Another Kind of Zoo Story.” New German Critique, No. 68, Spring-Summer 1996, 61.

  221 “write only briefly”: To Clara Westhoff, November 3, 1909.

  221 “not with me” . . . “(apparently a pest”: RAS, 190.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  224 “Paris is itself” . . . “I have it to thank”: Rainer Maria Rilke, Selected Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke. Translated by R. F. C. Hull, London: Macmillan, 1946, 125.

  224 “the memorable, the tiresome”: To Viktor Emil von Gebsattel, January 14, 1912.

  224 “No one is more deserving”: FG, 605.

  225 “vile movements”: RSG, 471.

  225 “haunts me”: The Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke and Princess Marie Von Thurn und Taxis. New York: New Directions, 1958, 18.

  225 “When the curtain”: Sjeng Scheijen, Diaghilev: A Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010, 248–249.

  225 “swooning admirers”: Quoted in Derek Parker, Nijinsky: God of the Dance. Wellingborough: Equation, 1988, 125.

  225 “It is inconceivable”: FG, 606.

  225 “Next door in the”: RSG, 472.

  226 “war council” . . . “taking this”: JA, 601.

  226 “someone had wilfully”: Sjeng Scheijen, Diaghilev: A Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010, 249.

  227 “But I was luckily there!” . . . “And I had pistols”: FG, 600.

  228 “It is unendurable”: RSG, 458.

  228 Mon chat: LYR, 56.

  229 “nothing” . . . “exercised too great”: “Rodin and Duchess Quarrel,” New York Times. September 16, 1912.

  229 “delivered of its”: RSG, 474.

  229 “frightful”: To Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis, March 21, 1913.

  229 “I have ceased to live”: RSG, 474.

  229 “grotesque and ridiculous”: To Lou Andreas-Salomé, December 28, 1911.

  229 “If you could only see her.”: RSG, 474.

  229 “Show Madame out!”: FG, 608.

  229 “I am like a man”: Mary McAuliffe, Twilight of the Belle Epoque: The Paris of Picasso, Stravinsky, Proust. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014, 231.

  230 “moist red mouth” and “tranquil”: Denys Sutton, Triumphant Satyr: The World of Auguste Rodin. New York: Hawthorn, 1966, 80.

  PART THREE • CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  233 “a young but already” . . . “taciturn”: Sigmund Freud, “On Transience.” In Writings on Art and Literature. Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997, 176.

  234 “the extraordinary and rare”: Julia Vickers, Lou von Salomé: A Biography of the Woman Who Inspired Freud, Nietzsche and Rilke. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2008, 159.

  234 “since the only thing I”: LB, 104.

  235 “there was nowhere”: Lou Andreas-Salomé, The Freud Journal. New York: Basic Books, 1964, 169.

  235 “over his break with”: Lou Andreas-Salomé, The Erotic. New Brunswick and London: Transaction, 2012, 24.

  235 “Have you really met the poet”: Anna Freud, Gedichte, Prosa, Übersetzungen. Wien, Köln, Weimar: Böhlau Verlag, 2014, 48. [From the German: “Hast Du in München wirklich den Dichter Rilke kennengelernt? Wieso? Und wie ist er?”]

  235 “otherwise have loved”: Sigmund Freud, “On Transience.” Writings on Art and Literature. Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997, 176.

  236 “robbed the world” . . . “on firmer ground”: Sigmund Freud, “On Transience.” Writings on Art and Literature. Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997, 178–179.

  236 “. . . For beauty is nothing”: Rainer Maria Rilke, The Poetry of Rilke. Translated by Edward Snow. New York: Macmillan, 2009, 283.

  236 “featureless, outspread”: The Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke and Princess Marie Von Thurn und Taxis. New York: New Directions, 1958, 21.

  237 “The experience with Rodin”: To Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis, July 12, 1912.

  237 “uncongenial” . . . “in places hair-raising”: To Lou Andreas-Salomé, January 20, 1912.

  237 “at last met his” . . . “Rilke was not to”: Sigmund Freud and Lou Andreas-Salomé, Letters. Edited by Ernst Pfeiffer. Translated by William and Elaine Robson-Scott. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1966, 39.

  237 “Dear Lou”: To Lou Andreas-Salomé, December 28, 1911.

  238 “Who, if I cried out”: Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus. Translated by Stephen Mitchell. New York: Random House, 2009, 3.

  238 “The voice which”: The Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke and Princess Marie Von Thurn und Taxis. New York: New Directions, 1958, 30.

  239 “really nothing but a”: To Viktor Emil von Gebsattel, January 14, 1912.

  239 “noncreative”: To Viktor Emil von Gebsattel, January 24, 1912.

  239 “remembered” . . . “put on exhibit with”: Lou Andreas-Salomé, The Freud Journal. New York: Basic Books, 1964, 184.

  240 “I never dared hope”: LP, 364.

  240 “not want to hear”: The Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke and Princess Marie Von Thurn und Taxis. New York: New Directions, 1958, 95.

  241 “He can’t be counted”: LP, 364.

  241 “as unexpected” . . . “probably final”: LP, 365.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  243 “in terror and in rapture” . . .“Assyrian character”: CF, 184.

  244 “immense shadow”: CF, 186.

  244 “Who indeed would dare”: CF, 161.

  244 “The artists who built this”: CF, 160.

  244 “a sick France”: CF, 118.

  244 “a prophet conducting”: FG, 619.

  244 “Who can believe” . . . “We should long ago”: CF, 245.

  245 “goes out of his way”: FG, 620.

  245 “vibrant notes”: FG,
621.

  245 “so hopeless” . . . “I wish we had not”: Magda von Hattingberg, Rilke and Benvenuta. Translated by Cyrus Brooks. New York: W. W. Norton, 1949, 66.

  246 “Deep in himself”: To Lou Andreas-Salomé, August 8, 1903.

  246 “But to make” . . . “And once something”: To Clara Westhoff, September 5, 1902.

  246 “airless, loveless” . . . “in a withered”: LP, 378.

  246 “Why leave all this?”: FG, 596.

  247 “still feelable heart” . . . “painfully buried-alive”: RAS, 244.

  247 “Perhaps I shall now”: To Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis, August 30, 1910.

  247 “which surely must come”: RAS, 242.

  247 “Work of the eyes”: Rainer Maria Rilke, The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke. Translated by Stephen Mitchell. New York: Vintage, 1989, 313.

  248 “as the child he was”: Nora Wydenbruck, Rilke, Man and Poet: A Biographical Study. Westport, CT: Greenwood: 1950, 264.

  249 “He turned pale”: RSG, 496.

  250 “One will say”: RSG, 496.

  250 “This is more than a war”: Ruth Butler, Hidden in the Shadow of the Master. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008, 300.

  250 “How could I do”: FG, 613.

  250 “masterpiece”: Albert E. Elsen, Rodin’s Art: The Rodin Collection of Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Center of Visual Arts at Stanford University. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003, 490.

  251 “no less astounding:” Nora Wydenbruck, Rilke, Man and Poet: A Biographical Study. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press: 1950, 269.

  251 “whisked off to”: RAS, 273.

  251 “I’m scared, scared”: Quoted in LP, 406.

  251 “hero grooming”: LP, 407.

  252 “Industriously he drew”: Nora Wydenbruck, Rilke, Man and Poet: A Biographical Study. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press: 1950, 278.

  252 “tired; the war overawed”: LYR, 145.

  252 “I don’t the least mind”: LYR, 188.

  252 “like a statue” . . . “I’m all alone”: LYR, 192.

  253 “his Three Fates”: LYR, 216.

  253 “And people say that Puvis”: Judith Cladel, Rodin. Translated by James Whitall. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1937, 328.

  253 “wholly desolate without”: LP, 416.