Requiem for a Friend - Rainer Maria Rilke and Paula Modersohn-Becker

1906 by Modersohn-Becker

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876-1907)

 Tragically, Modersohn-Becker died at the age of 31 shortly after childbirth. In her seven years as an artist, she produced over 700 paintings and 1,000 drawings - remarkable, considering she had no recognition from the art world or fellow artists. Now, Modersohn-Becker is recognized in art history for helping shape the transition from the Symbolism of Gauguin to German Expressionism, and -- belatedly-- as one of the most famous female artists of the 20th century.

In 1907, Paula Modersohn-Becker returned to her husband in Worpswede, despite period correspondence that indicate her desire for independence. She wrote in detail about her love for her husband but her need to delay motherhood in pursuit of freedom. Paula continued to express ambivalence regarding motherhood; she was concerned about the ability to paint while raising a child. Her daughter Mathilde (Tillie) Modersohn was born on November 2, 1907. Paula and Otto were joyous. Sadly, the joy became soon overshadowed by tragedy, as Paula Modersohn-Becker died suddenly in Worpswede on November 20 from an embolism, caused by a misguided medical instruction, 18 days of bed rest after labor. She was buried on the Worpswede Cemetery, her grave is preserved.

In 1908, Rainer Maria Rilke wrote the renowned poem "Requiem for a Friend" in memory of Paula. The poem was born from the impressions which Paula's life, death and friendship had left upon Rilke.

             Rilke by Paula Modersohn-Becker 1906                       Rilke in 1900, aged 24

Excerpt:

Requiem for a Friend


 Rainer Maria Rilke

Are you still there? Are you in some corner? –
You understood all of this so well
and used it so well, as you passed through
open to everything, like the dawn of a day.
Women do suffer: love means being alone,
and artists sometimes suspect in their work
that they must transform where they love.
You began both: both are in that
which now fame disfigures, and takes from you.
Oh you were far beyond any fame. You were
barely apparent: you’d withdrawn your beauty
as a man takes down a flag
on the grey morning of a working day,
and wished for nothing, except the long work –
which is unfinished: and yet is not finished.

If you are still here, if in this darkness
there is still a place where your sensitive spirit
resonates on the shallow waves
of a voice, isolated in the night,
vibrating in the high room’s current:
then hear me: help me. See, we can slip back so
unknowingly, out of our forward stride,
into something we didn’t intend: find
that we’re trapped there as if in dream
and we die there, without waking.
No one is far from it. Anyone who has fired
their blood through work that endures,
may find that they can no longer sustain it
and that it falls according to its weight, worthless.
For somewhere there is an ancient enmity
between life and the great work.
Help me, so that I might see it and know it.