{"id":531984,"date":"2026-04-01T07:30:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T05:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leregardlibre.com\/?p=531984"},"modified":"2026-04-01T10:48:23","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T08:48:23","slug":"rilke-rodin-gianadda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/leregardlibre.com\/en\/visual-arts\/rilke-rodin-gianadda\/","title":{"rendered":"Rilke and Rodin, two geniuses"},"content":{"rendered":"

A look back at poet Rainer Maria Rilke's decisive encounter with sculptor Auguste Rodin, as the Fondation Gianadda presents an exhibition devoted to these two major artists this summer, to mark the 100th anniversary of Rilke's death.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Rilke was 27 when he met Rodin (aged 62) in Paris; he was there to fulfill a commission from a German publisher for a monograph on the great sculptor. Rodin was well known, and his success in Europe and Germany was resounding. Rilke, who had been intending to become a writer for several years, was penniless; he already knew Rodin through his wife, who was herself a pupil of the sculptor; he wrote to him, unveiling his essay project in still clumsy French, and went to his home in Meudon. It was thus in September 1902 that these two representatives of artistic modernity met again. That year, Rilke painted the figure of the sculptor with unequalled finesse, composing a hymn to his work. Rilke, the poet of Angels, opened the door to Hell, and the two artists had a profound influence on each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this essay, published in German in 1903, the poet writes: \u00abThe artist is the one whose task it is, from many things, to make a single thing and, from the smallest part of a single thing, to make a world.\u00bb If this statement applies to every artist, it applies particularly to Rodin. You can't wander around his statues for long without noticing how the bodies are treated: arms, heads and legs are missing, or hands are isolated and seem to stand alone. In fact, nothing necessary is missing, so much so that the energy and life of what we see call forth what we guess. For Rodin's power is such that the viewer's gaze and thought pierce the tumultuous face of stone or bronze to peer inside the bodies, so much so that he has no need of these non-existent limbs on the surface. Redemption comes from the inner gaze, from the amplification of these objects suddenly made great, and this breath, from a single thing, as Rilke wrote, remakes a world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Rodin's work, life emerges everywhere, in desire as in sorrow, with the impatience that awakens under the dowser's rod; life dances in bodies, between bodies too. The sculptor liberates it from matter, but it is thanks to this matter that liberation is possible, thanks to this substance and to the artist's genius. It is this body-to-body encounter that gives rise to beauty. Rilke speaks passionately of the work sessions he attended, and he understands Rodin's toil, but he also knows that the poet cannot write every day as the painter or sculptor does. There are long, arid, discouraging periods, and the writer must mount a constant assault against resistance. In Rodin's studio, however, he learned that ease is not enough for creation; it also requires hard work to bring out the essence of things and the meaning of life from the depths. Rilke had a great facility for writing: he wrote more poems in the first twenty-five years of his life than in the last twenty-five. And it was with Rodin that he understood how to combat this facility. In his work, then, there is a before and an after Rodin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n