No More Learning

The spirit of the Middle Ages with its religious fervour and
superstitious fanaticism is symbolized in several poems, the most
important among which are _The Cathedral_, _God in the Middle Ages_,
_Saint Sebastian_ personifying martyrdom, and _The Rose Window_, whose
glowing magic is compared to the hypnotic power of the tiger's eye.
Modern Paris is often the background of the _New Poems_, and the crass
play of light and shadow upon the waxen masks of Life's disillusioned in
the Morgue is caught with the same intense realistic vision as the
flamingos and parrots spreading their vari-coloured soft plumage in the
warmth of the sun in the Avenue of the Jardin des Plantes.

Almost all of the poems in these two volumes are short and precise. The
images are portrayed with the sensitive intensity of impressionistic
technique. The majestic quietude of the long lines of _The Book of
Pictures_ is broken, the colours are more vibrant, more scintillating
and the pictures are painted in nervous, darting strokes as though to
convey the manner in which they were perceived: in one single,
all-absorbing glance. For this reason many of these _New Poems_ are not
quite free from a certain element of virtuosity. On the other hand,
Rilke achieves at times a perfect surety of rapid stroke as in the poem
_The Spanish Dancer_, who rises luminously on the horizon of our inner
vision like a circling element of fire, flaming and blinding in the
momentum of her movements. Degas and Zuloaga seem to have combined their
art on one canvas to give to this dancer the abundant elasticity of
grace and the splendid fantasy of colour.

* * * * *

Many of the themes in the _New Poems_ bear testimony to the fact that
Rilke travelled extensively, prior to the writing of these volumes, in
Italy, Germany, France, and Scandinavia. His book on the five painters
at the artists' colony at Worpswede, where he remained for a time,
entirely given over to the observation of the atmosphere, the movement
of the sky and the play of light upon the far heath of this northern
landscape, is an introduction to every interpretation of the work of
landscape painters and a tender poem to a land whose solitary and
melancholy beauty entered into his own work.

More vital than the influence of the personalities and the art treasures
of the countries which Rilke visited and more potent in its effect upon
his creations, like a great sun over the most fruitful years of his
life, stands the towering personality of Auguste Rodin. The _New Poems_
bear the dedication: "A mon grand ami, Auguste Rodin," indicating the
twofold influence which the French sculptor wielded over the poet, that
of a friend and that of an artist.

One recalls the broad, solidly-built figure of Rodin with his rugged
features and high, finely chiselled forehead, moving slowly among the
white glistening marble busts and statues as a giant in an old legend
moves among the rocks and mountains of his realm, patient, all-enduring,
the man who has mastered life, strong and tempered by the storms of
time. And one thinks of Rainer Maria Rilke, young, blond, with his
slender aristocratic figure, the slightly bent-forward figure of one who
on solitary walks meditates much and intensely, with his sensitive full
mouth and the "firm structure of the eyebrow gladly sunk in the shadow
of contemplation," the face full of dreams and with an expression of
listening to some distant music.

From no other book of his, not excepting _The Book of Hours_, can we
deduce so accurate a conception of Rilke's philosophy of Life and Art as
we can draw from his comparatively short monograph on Auguste Rodin.
Rilke sees in Rodin the dominant personification in our age of the
"power of servitude in all nature. " For this reason the book on Rodin is
far more than a purely aesthetic valuation of the sculptor's work; Rilke
traces throughout the book the strongly ethical principle which works
itself out in every creative act in the realm of art. This grasp of the
deeper significance of all art gives to the book on Rodin its well-nigh
religious aspect of thought and its hymnlike rhythm of expression. He
begins: "Rodin was solitary before fame came to him, and afterward he
became perhaps still more solitary. For fame is ultimately but the
summary of all misunderstandings that crystallize about a new name. " And
he sums up this one man's greatness: "Sometime it will be realized what
has made this great artist so supreme. He was a worker whose only desire
was to penetrate with all his forces into the humble and the difficult
significance of his tool. Therein lay a certain renunciation of life but
in just this renunciation lay his triumph--for Life entered into his
work. "

Rodin became to Rilke the manifestation of the divine principle of the
creative impulse in man. Thus Rilke's monograph on Auguste Rodin will
remain the poet's testament on Life and Art.

* * * * *

Rilke has lived deeply; he has absorbed into his artistic and spiritual
consciousness many of the supreme values of our time. His art holds the
mystic depth of the Slav, the musical strength of the German, and the
visual clarity of the Latin. As artist, he has felt life to be sacred,
and as a priest, he has brought to its altar many offerings.

H. T.

NEW YORK CITY,
AUTUMN, 1918.