Letters on Cezanne [Paperback]

Rainer Maria Rilke (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1985

This collection "says more about art than any other book I know . . . These letters distill the essence of what a painting truly is . . . The greatness of Cezanne could be conveyed only by an artist equally great."--The New Yorker.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

When Rilke first discovered Cezanne's paintings in an art salon in Paris, he was moved to remark, ``all reality is on his side.'' These letters, written to his wife, Clara, are the record of Rilke's efforts to impart something of Cezanne's la realisation to his own life and work, for the painter came to represent for Rilke, the poet, that perfect unity between the creator and his art which he must strive to emulate. A few impressions of van Gogh and other artists are interwoven, but the letters are primarily concerned with Cezanne. With luminous insight, clarity, and sympathy, they reflect how experiencing Cezanne's art became a sort of artistic watershed for Rilke, af ter which he could see with the ``right eyes.'' Highly recommended for liter ary and art collections. Carol J. Lich tenberg, Washington State Univ. Lib., Pullman
Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

Rilke's attraction to the fine arts is evident in much of his poetry and prose and especially in these letters to the sculptress Clara Rilke-Westhoff, his wife. They follow in time upon the monographs he published first on the landscape painters of Worpswede and then on August Rodin. Tlirough his talks with these and other artists, Rilke learned to see art from an artistic perspective, while his contact with Rodin even prompted him to reexamine his own work and to develop the concise structure, "objective telling," and multivalent evocativeness of his New Poems. The first volume of this poetry was in print when, in the fall of 1907, Rilke saw an exhibition of paintings by CA-zanne. Virtually every day he went to look at them and wrote about the things just seen. He also recalled paintings by other modems such as van Gogh, and as a counterpoint to the "new" observed in C6zanne, he described an imaginary walk through an old palace. Then he explained why at this juncture he saw in C6zanne what he had not noticed in his works exhibited a few years earlier. "It was the turning point in these paintings which I recognized, because I had just reached it in my own work or at least come close to it somehow." This recognition of kinship forms the vibrating subtext of these letters. In an unparalleled way they highlight the distinctiveness of certain colors, their interdependence within a painting, and the "definitive picture-existence" of C6zanne's motifs. This smoothly translated edition of 1986 now available in paperback will give great pleasure to all those who love European art and literature. -- From Independent Publisher --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Fromm Intl (June 1985)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 088064107X
• ISBN-13: 978-0880641074
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,028,507 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Letters about the spirituality of art, January 15, 2001

By 

Boris Bangemann "boyse" (Singapore) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Letters on Cezanne (Paperback)

The encounter with the work of Cezanne was one of the milestones in the life of the poet Rilke. The letters which are collected here show why. Rilke, like Cezanne, was a man who was religious in an unconventional way. He was not interested in any particular concept of God, but in the process of discerning the divine in the sheer existence of things as they are: "All talk is misunderstanding. Insight is just in work." What he admired most in Cezanne's work was his "devout objectivity", the ability to let objects speak for themselves without the intellectual interference by the artist and without preconceived notions. Rilke felt that when Cezanne painted the mountain Sainte Victoire, for example, he wanted to show the essence of the mountain, the mountain pure and simple, nothing more, nothing less.

The German edition of the Letters on Cezanne contains an excellent afterword which quotes the philosopher Martin Heidegger who wrote, "we come too late for the Gods, and too early for being," meaning we do not live in the safety of believing in the Gods any more, and we do not trust in simply being yet. Rilke was acutely aware of this state of suspension, and the collection of his letters on Cezanne gives us an idea of how Rilke as an artist intended to make sense of this life in suspension.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How to create in seeing as poet and artist, February 27, 2005

By 

Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Letters on Cezanne (Hardcover)

Rilke understands Cezanne as one ' who lived in the innermost center of his work for forty years'. The old man who he describes being thrown stones at by children on his way to his studio where he worked and worked, and only worked from the time he found his vocation at the age of thirty, is the example to Rilke of the totally dedicated artist. This artist has that kind of patience which slowly lets his work enfold, layer upon layer. In this as always with Rilke remarkably beautiful and haunting collection of letters he tells of his encounter with the work of Cezanne and how the true artist brings into fuller being the object he sees and creates. Rilke is quoted in the introduction as he talks of " the scales of an infinitely responsive conscience.. which so incorruptibly reduced a reality to its color content that that reality resumed a new existence in a beyond of color, without any previous memories".
This statement so suggestive is typical of the Rilkean text which seems like poetry itself to offer more meanings than any single reading can grasp.
My brief remarks comment upon a few of those suggestions. I believe readers of this work will be inspired to seeing , reading, and in their own minds through the reading, creating of their own on a higher level.

3 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Painting thru the eyes of a poet, October 13, 1999

By 

George Schaefer - See all my reviews

This review is from: Letters on Cezanne (Paperback)

This book gives one a glimpse of a painters genius as seen through the eyes of a poet. Rilke possesses the poetic sensitivity to shed some light on Cezannes paintings. This along with Delacroixs Journal and Van Goghs Letters to Theo really afford one a literary appreciation of the great European artists.