The topic that never runs out: Rilke's Art Essays

Author: Rainer Maria Rilke (Austrian), translated by Shi Xingguo
Translator: Shi Xingguo / Country:
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-01-01
Features: Among this large group of explorers, there are sincere ones and pretentious ones. The former humbly and silently apply the fruits of their discoveries in practice, while the latter, in every discovery, are convinced that they—have not found an expression suitable for their own nature, but have found art. They elaborate on long speeches with a conquering tone, and towards different opinions, they often show a mocking pity. These seekers of crowns often harm themselves, unknowingly becoming victims of their own artificial style, becoming cynical, and ultimately destroying themselves. A good example is Holz and Schraff. They discover art every five years, and their passionate hearts fail to notice that each time the art is quite different from the last. They once joined Adler, Arant, Karl H?nkel, R. M. von Schd, and others, carrying out the great battle under the banner of realism, and the brave volunteer army of "modern poets" also contributed to creating a new era in 1885. The veteran poets of that time are still very clever today, and they do not diminish their merits by repeatedly mentioning their past courage (it is typical that some of them, such as H?nkel and Schd, have now become publishers whom they once despised, and they are well provided for, but they still squint at each other due to competition. However, Arant, Holz, and Schraff have not forgotten their past glory. Mr. Arant has been tirelessly striving to prove his importance in his 42 poetry collections and some impatient magazines and selected essays, feeling that he is a prophet in the wilderness, sending page-long challenges to this person and that person, because if one is patient, one can select a small art booklet from Arant's 42 books as evidence of his importance. Holz is different. His talent is much less, but he occupies a higher position in form. The good thing about Holz that needs to be recognized is what God has given him through Schd (I mean Johannes Schd). Schd has a deeper and more artistic nature. I feel that the relationship between these two is similar to the relationship between Bub's swan, Martin Opitz, and his more contemporaries Paul Freimann. The only difference is that Schd has broken free from external pressures earlier than Holz and now begins to speak for himself, but of course, it is already too late. Holz absolutely needs a comrade, a finely tuned instrument, on which he can feel a slight vibration, which is probably something he has never noticed in the symphony of life. If this instrument were not the poor Johannes Schd, there would also be a softer person—Gerhard Hauptmann, who would surely take over this role. It was almost like that. Because the young Hauptmann knew nothing about his own path and intentions, he sometimes made sculptures and wrote passionate long poems, and he must have once regarded this stern and cunning theorist as his savior. He agreed to write a play with Holz and they jointly discussed the general outline of Before Dawn. In the end, the sensitive Hauptmann wrote the play alone and dedicated it to Holz as an expression of his gratitude. The young man of that time today may also explain why Holz, in the play The Social Elite (in which this former realist celebrates his victory), tries his best to prove that he is at the forefront, even ahead of them, by experimenting with the new poetry "Fantasy." His poems make people feel like a wonderful prose, sometimes 20 words crammed into a sentence, and sometimes only one or two words hiding on the side, making it difficult to explain such a separation. If you listen to these lines being read, you can't even imagine it, what you hear is a colorful, unclear prose, occasionally bursting with alliteration or onomatopoeia, or becoming tedious due to repetition. Among these experiments, I don't find the new rhythm that often appears in Mumbert's writing, different from the narrow rise and fall degrees of the broad alternation of diphthongs, both coexisting, creating a charming feeling. But Holz cannot forget this old-fashioned realism, which gives these words an astonishing expressiveness, making them quite interesting and concise prose pieces, not seeking to be a new creation, but freely wandering in wise and obedient sentences. Maximilian D?dai brought a new element to lyric poetry through his calm color symbolism, and Holz has used this element many times. However, if you look closer, you can see that for emotional purposes, using color as a means to evoke mostly dark emotional effects is something that was already known before D?dai, for example, in E. T. A. Hoffmann, and the musical correspondence, unconsciously matching tones with corresponding colors, is an old tune for those who are truly educated. Science is determining that all these phenomena are producing circular oscillations starting from a common center, and it is only because our limited senses can only perceive individual fragments of this vast circular movement that we feel they are different. Then why can't art also take the lead here, using these means to discover new paths in individual artistic behavior? These fine means can only achieve their goal in places that do not attract attention, and as long as they do not attract attention, they can achieve their goal. However, they are precisely regarded as a poor and one-sided principle of poetic art, which is also one of the reasons why people, even if they do not openly show indifference to new artistic attempts, are still so distant and distrustful of them. This avoidance of the public contains a legitimate sense of being hurt, because in fact, artists use such fine perceptions so crudely, which is very cruel. Outsiders are surprised to find that poetry is repeatedly revealing their almost unconscious, extremely private feelings to one person after another in an annoyingly flowery way, and they feel that they have been hurt by this reckless behavior, and they feel ashamed, so they radically refuse to admit that they have ever had these feelings. "I have never seen sound, heard color," he shouts angrily, as if he were to be judged a madman. But if art uses its new perceptions gracefully and gently, it can awaken the unconscious spiritual wealth in unbiased people, letting them wake up joyfully with the gentlest bells, and revealing the light of dreams and memories. I know there is a group of artists who are familiar with all these subtle new techniques and use them appropriately with the necessary gentleness, neither overemphasizing them rashly nor emphasizing them in technique. It is an art close to us, and it is really good, like a neighbor, and it can be proud of it: it is Viennese art. The Viennese have one thing that surpasses the German Holy Roman Empire citizens and many other places: they have taste. Even if they are still self-conscious and arrogant when working, this taste always accompanies them unconsciously, like a loyal guardian spirit. Vienna has had such a long period of stagnation, and its second attempt has achieved such a rich, mature prosperity, which is a proof of the good Austrian temperament. Even if the art of Loris and Alterberg only lasted a century and became rigid in a good style, and even if there were no such slightly irritable and verbose beauty detectives as Hermann Bahr following them with their lazy aesthetics, the Viennese would never fall asleep again. There is still no book on the history of landscape painting, and it is one of the books that readers have longed for for many years. The future author of this book will undertake a great and extraordinary mission. It is new, strange, profound, and boundless, and he will explore in it, feeling bewildered and confused. If someone decides to write the history of portrait painting or religious subject painting, then he has embarked on a long road. He must have sufficient knowledge, meticulous as a well-organized reference room, so that he can use it at will when the time comes; he must have an unforgettable memory, and his gaze must have the same sharpness and judgment as his memory; he must be able to understand color and be able to describe it, and in the face of the vast subject matter, he must have the poetic language and the calmness of an argumentative person to avoid embarrassment; and his way of writing must be like a scale, even the smallest differences need to be indicated by the pointer. He cannot be just a historian, but should also be a psychologist and sage of life, he must be able to describe in words the smile of Mona Lisa, the old age of Titian's Charles V, and the bewildered gaze of Jan Sixx, exhibited in the Amsterdam Museum. However, what he studies is after all people, and what he explains is also people, and because of his understanding of people, he must praise people. There are the most exquisite faces surrounding him, the most beautiful, the most serious, and the most unforgettable eyes looking at him, the lips famous in the world are smiling at him, and the hands of the stylish people are tightly holding him. He must endlessly seek the truth among people, seek that essence, towards which things and beasts silently and consistently turn, just as they turn towards their goal, towards the perfection of their silent, ignorant lives. But if someone wants to write the history of landscape painting, he is first thrown into the unknown, the strange, and the indescribable, helpless. We are accustomed to imagining shapes, but—landscapes do not have shapes, we are accustomed to exploring intentions from actions, but when landscapes present movement, they do not intend to do anything. Water flows, the patterns of things float and tremble in the water. The wind whistles through the old branches, the young forest grows in the wind, and it grows in a future that we cannot experience. We are accustomed to extracting many things from the hands of people, and we can understand everything from their faces, their faces are like the surface of clocks, the time is clearly visible on them, they carry the souls of people and measure their souls. However, landscapes do not have hands, nor do they have "faces"—or rather, they are a huge face, because of its size, and because its lines cannot be ignored, it makes people feel fearful and oppressed, a bit like the "ghost" in the famous works of the Japanese painter Hokusai. Therefore, we admit: landscapes are strange to us. Being in fragrant trees or by the murmuring stream, people feel extremely lonely. Even if they are guarding a corpse alone, their hearts are not as full of the feeling of being abandoned by the world as when they are alone facing a forest. Although death is very mysterious, it is even more mysterious to be a life different from ours. It pays no attention to us, ignores us, and only celebrates its own festival, and we are like a group of uninvited guests speaking a foreign language, resentfully watching its celebration. Of course, some people may argue that we have a connection with nature, that we come from it, that we are the last fruits to grow on this tall and sturdy tree trunk. However, we cannot deny that if we start from the branch from which we originated, branch by branch, twig by twig, we will quickly lose ourselves in darkness. In this darkness, there are extinct giants and hostile and hateful monsters, the farther back we go, the more strange and cruel the creatures we encounter, so we must realize that the nature hidden behind all things is the most cruel and strange. Even the thousands of years of interaction between humans and nature cannot change this fact. Because this interaction is quite one-sided. We transform nature, we cautiously use only a small part of nature's power, and nature seems to be completely unaware of this. In some aspects, we promote its vitality, and in other aspects, we kill the vigorous spring energy that is about to leap out of the soil with city roads. We lead water into factories, but the water does not understand what kind of machine it is pushing. We are like children playing with fire, playing with nameless dark forces, and in an instant, we feel that all the energy that has been wasted in all things before has been wasted in our short lives, satisfying our various desires. However, for thousands of years, these forces have repeatedly rebelled against the names we gave them, like the oppressed rising up against their small masters. In fact, this is not really a rebellion—it is just that they have stood up. Then, civilization fell from the shoulders of the earth, and the earth became vast again, and it once again stayed alone with its ocean, forests, and stars.