16. From Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet, translated by Stephen Mitchell, Random House, 1984.
17. When Rilke, in 1917, refuses to participate in the publication of Paula’s posthumous papers, he queries whether her writings during the final years had been withdrawn (perhaps by Paula herself) ‘or if, quite simply, her last years were too short, in the breathless charge of her artistic practice, to allow her any time to articulate it.’
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18. Adrien Bovy, Ramuz vu par ses amis, souvenir de 1906. Éditions L’ge d’homme, 1988.
19. A year later, Michel Vincent told me that the painting had been taken upstairs.
20. Quoted by Tine Colstrup in the catalogue from the Museum of Louisiana, 2015. The Reclining Mother and Child is also designated as degenerate in a long article in the Bremen newspaper on 28 August 1935.
21. Eva Gonzalès (1849–83), a student of Manet, died at thirty-three from a pulmonary embolism a few days after giving birth.
22. On 5 December 1812, in the Mercure de France, an art critic, Le Franc, wrote a demolition piece about her painting The Young Naiade: ‘I wish that less time and trouble were spent teaching young women about what constitutes the ideal proportions of the human body, about the form and function of every muscle, well, about even both the femur and the sacrum, and so many other wonderful things, the study of which seems to me nothing short of enlightening…A woman should restrict her painterly ambitions to a few bouquets of flowers or to recording on canvas the features of her dear parents. To go any further, would that not amount to revealing oneself as rebelling against nature? Is it not a violation of all the laws of modesty?’ Constance Mayer committed suicide in 1821, aged forty-five.
23. Artemisia Gentileschi (1593–1653) is probably the first woman to have painted a naked woman, but there is still argument over whether this is a self-portrait. And Suzanne Valadon painted her Woman with Bare Breasts (Self-portrait) in 1917.
24. From Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet, translated by Stephen Mitchell, Random House, 1984.
25. Diane Radycki, Paula Modersohn-Becker: The First Woman Artist, Yale University Press, 2013, p.153.
26. Rilke to Clara: ‘How can the circumstanced refute that we must keep postponing our life together…only with you two did my world grow into the nameless, begin to grow outward, from that little, snow-covered house in which Ruth was born, and since then has been growing and growing, out from that centre upon which I cannot narrow my attention as long as the periphery is pushing ahead on all sides into the infinite?’ 17 December, 1906, Capri.
27. In his ‘Requiem’, Rilke uses the same word ‘poor’ in relation to Cézanne’s eye. (Letter to Clara, 7 October, 1907.)
28. ‘Wie war dein Leben kurz…’ Rilke, ‘Requiem’.
29. Translation from the German by Lilly Engler and Adrienne Rich, 1980.
30. Writing to Clara on the subject of longevity in artists, Rilke cites Cézanne, aged seventy: ‘I make progress every day, even if it’s slow. So I am continuing my studies. I promised myself I would die painting.’ And writing to Lou Andreas-Salomé, he cites the ageing Hokusai: ‘It was at the age of seventy-three that I finally felt I had a vague understanding of the true shape and nature of birds, fish and plants.’
31. Translated from Marie Darrieussecq’s prose version of Lorand Gaspar’s 1972 French translation of Rilke’s ‘Requiem’.
32. One hundred thousand since 1949.
33. In 1924, this is how he dismisses her in an interview with an academic: ‘The last time I saw Paula Modersohn was in Paris in 1906. I didn’t know her work very well at the time, or afterwards, and I still don’t know it.’
34. Translator’s note: In part because of this biography, the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris held a full-scale retrospective of Paula Modersohn-Becker’s work, from 8 April until 21 August 2016, for which Marie Darrieusssecq wrote the catalogue text.
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Être ici est une splendeur copyright © Marie Darrieussecq 2016
English-language translation copyright © Penny Hueston 2017
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First published as Être ici est une splendeur by P.O.L éditeur 2016
This edition published by The Text Publishing Company 2017
Book design by Imogen Stubbs
Cover artwork: Self-Portrait on the 6th Wedding Day (1906) by Paula Modersohn-Becker, reproduced with permission from Paula Modersohn-Becker Museum, Museen Böttcherstraße, Bremen
Typeset by J&M Typesetting
Every reasonable effort has been made to contact copyright holders to seek permission for the use of their material. The publisher would be grateful to be notified by copyright holders about any errors or omissions.
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry
Creator: Darrieussecq, Marie, author.
Title: Being here: the life of Paula Modersohn-Becker / by Marie Darrieussecq; translated from the French by Penny Hueston.
ISBN: 9781925498608 (paperback)
ISBN: 9781925410846 (ebook)
Subjects: Modersohn-Becker, Paula, 1876–1907—Correspondence.
Modersohn-Becker, Paula, 1876–1907—Diaries.
Painters—Germany—Biography.
Painters—Germany—Correspondence.
Painters—Germany—Diaries.
Other Creators/Contributors: Hueston, Penny, translator.
Being Here Page 10
