Chekhov’s Mistess

July 30, 2009

Not the dots but the distance between them that creates the line; not the lines which turn into…

 

My kids love bookmarks for some reason and they can’t help but to pull them out of books and leave them laying wherever they lost interest. I picked up one recently and found the following note (I don’t write in margins!): “Gass, Reading Rilke, p.40 amazing passage on the influence of art on.” I’m glad I ran across it for the excuse to re-read some of one of my favorite books. Here’s the passage:

“…He needed to be reformed and focused, and he was: by Paris, by the example of Rodin, by the poetry of Baudelaire, which so suited its site and Rilke’s moods, by the fictions of Flaubert, and maybe most of all by the paintings of Cézanne.

Not the dots but the distance between them that creates the line; not the lines which turn into contours, but the planes between them that creates the line; not the lines which turn into contours, but the planes between them; not simply the planes but the surfaces they define; not the surfaces alone but the light with which they combine to bring every point upon them vibrantly to life: these were some of the things he learned. He learned that in one’s art an elbow may flow into a thigh, a chin disappear into a palm, a walker walk more purely without the distraction of arms; he learned how a figure might emerge from a chunk of marble like a plant from the ground; he learned that ‘there are tears which pour from all pores’ because everything has an expression, a face where a smile alone lives; that there is stone that can be set in motion, or a motion held like a pose; that every accident should be made necessary, and every necessity look like a towel thrown over the back of a chair—these were a few of the lessons he took to heart: that the poet’s eye needs to be so candid that even a decaying vulva, full of flies, must be fearlessly reported, following Baudelaire’s example; that exactitude is prerequisite to achievement, so that whatever is full should be fully shown, but rendered spare when sparse, and empty when empty; above all, that art is actually the opposite of nature, and that the creation of being—the breathing of statues—is what counts; not the imitation of nature but its transformation is the artist’s aim: these were some of the things he learned, they began his Wendung, his moment of ‘turning.’ Finally, Rilke learned what seeing is, and then he learned to see.”

One passage worth the whole book, although Reading Rilke, a memoir, a meditation and analysis on a poet and his work and on translation is itself, is itself a fabulous work of art. You can read more below:

• posted by Bud Parr
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