Letters on God and Letters to a Young Woman

Notes

✦ 67 ✦ Notes In the introduction to each volume, English translations of direct quotations from the German are mine. Letters on God During the years of World War I (1914–18), Rilke lived in Munich, where he had attended the university years earlier, studying art, literature , and religion. 1. The addressee of this letter is Lotte Hepner. No letters of hers to Rilke are known to be extant. 2. Rilke’s novel The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge was published in 1910. It describes the reflections of a young Danish nobleman and poet living in Paris. In the bustling and noisy surroundings of city life, Brigge muses about his family and their history, death, love, and the meaning of life. For a time, Rilke had visited Denmark, studying Danish and reading Kierkegaard. Many of the themes and visual images that occur in Rilke’s poetry are found and explored here. 3. Wilhelm Fliess (1858–1928) was a German otolaryngologist who practiced in Berlin. In 1887, Fliess attended several of Sigmund Freud’s conferences in Vienna, and the two soon formed a friendship. Through their correspondence, Fliess came to play a leading role in the later development of psychoanalysis. He also developed a theory about a connection between the nose and the genitals and that of innate bisexuality , which Freud adopted. Fliess may have been among the first to formulate the concept of the biorhythm. For two years, Lou AndreasSalom é had studied with Freud in Vienna. A student of the psychologist , she had introduced Rilke to Freud (in Munich) and to his theories and, by implication, to those of Fliess. 4. Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) was a Russian writer and novelist. His War and Peace and Anna Karenina describe the breadth of nineteenthcentury Russian life in concrete, realistic fashion. He was also known as an essayist, dramatist, and educational reformer. Following a conversion experience, he began interpreting the sayings of Jesus in more literal ways, especially the Sermon on the Mount, and became a fervent pacifist. He opposed private property and the institution of marriage, and he practiced celibacy. His Christian interpretations and essays on celibacy, poverty, and nonviolent resistance influenced such pivotal figures of the twentieth century as Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. Rilke had met Tolstoy in 1899 and 1900 when traveling in Russia. 5. Rilke initially had titled the letter “Remembering Verhaeren” (“Erinnerungen an Verhaeren”). Emile Verhaeren (1855–1916) was a Belgian poet, art critic, and author of short stories who wrote in French. Originally educated by the Jesuits, he later earned a law degree but then devoted his time to literature. By the turn of the century, he had won international acclaim for his poetry and writing. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911. His first collection of poems, Les Flamandes, was published in 1883 and had been inspired by Flemish paintings. Verhaeren described in a direct, naturalistic, and often provocative way his country and the Flemish people, which made a deep impression on the avant-garde but caused controversy and outrage in Roman Catholic circles. Rilke had met Verhaeren, who lived near Paris, in 1905 and admired his work greatly for its realism, clarity, and honesty . Verhaeren was killed when he accidentally fell under a train. 6. Assisi, Italy, was the birthplace and place of death of Saint Francis (1182–1226); it is situated on the southern hillside of Monte Subasio and offers a view onto the valley. In the third book of The Book of Hours, Saint Francis is featured prominently. 7. The fortresslike papal palace in Avignon had been erected in the fourteenth century. At the time, France reigned over the papacy, and all the popes between 1305 and 1378 were French. With that, the seat of the papacy had been moved from Rome to Avignon between 1309 and 1377. When the papacy moved its seat back to Rome, a French pope was elected regardless, residing at Avignon and opposing the one in Rome between 1378 and 1408. 8. The papal palace and the Gothic cathedral church, whose portal is presumed to be the remains of a temple to the Greek god Heracles (more familiarly known as Hercules, the name used by the Romans), sit atop a rocky plateau about 200 feet (60 meters) above the city. 9. A medicinal herb. 10. In the Mediterranean it was not uncommon for Christian churches to be built on top of pagan temples. 11. St. Eustache is at the south end of...