Writers in Paris: Rainer Maria Rilke

By: David Burke

"Paris is a difficult place… the beautiful things here and there do not quite compensate for the cruelty of its streets and the monstrosity of its people."

— Rilke

On his first stay in Paris during 1902 and 1903, Rainer Maria Rilke lived in a shabby student room at No.11 rue Toullier, between Rue Soufflot and Rue Cujas. The house is still there, neat, cream-colored, with weathered shutters.

The Prague-born poet was twenty-six years old when he arrived, unquestionably gifted, but emotionally and artistically immature. To him, Paris was a sinister place. He jotted down observations and elaborated on them in letters to his former mistress, Lou Andreas-Salomé, in Vienna.

Those letters became the basis for his novel The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. It begins:

“So this is where people come to live; I would have thought it is a city to die in.”

Notebooks tells the story of a young Danish poet who comes to Paris to study and write poetry. But as he prowls the city, he finds decay, fear, and death lurking everywhere, even in that oasis of verdant tranquility—the Luxembourg Gardens.

Rilke’s purpose in coming was to write an article about his wife Clara Westhoff’s teacher, Auguste Rodin, whose sculpture he admired intensely. Rodin, thirty-five years Rilke’s senior, befriended the young man, and a father-son relationship developed.

Rilke and Rodin

In 1905 Rodin hired Rilke as his secretary, but fired him abruptly six months later. It was a devastating blow, but it triggered in Rilke an explosion of new poetry, including the famous “thing-poems” of 1907, which were influenced by Rodin’s approach to art.

Despite Rilke’s early vilification of the city, Paris was the birthplace of the three major works that turned the apprentice into an acknowledged master: the third part of The Book of Hours, New Poems, published in 1907 and 1908, and The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, completed in 1910 after almost eight years of creative anguish.

The Panther

By: Rainer Maria Rilke

His vision, from the constantly passing bars,
has grown so weary that it cannot hold
anything else. It seems to him there are
a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world.

As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
the movement of his powerful soft strides
is like a ritual dance around a center
in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.

Only at times, the curtain of the pupils
lifts, quietly--. An image enters in,
rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles,
plunges into the heart and is gone.

---

You can find this passage in David Burke’s — Writers In Paris: Literary Lives in the City of Light.

If something in the words I publish here stirs the blood, consider becoming a paid subscriber. This space runs on conviction, not algorithms. Paid support helps keep this newsletter alive. If you're drawn to what's beneath the surface, I'd love to have you along for the deeper dive. This week, I’m offering 20% off for an annual subscription. Thanks again for your support.