Rainer Maria Rilke at Toledo

Microstory of Art VI –
Rainer Maria Rilke


(Picture: zeno.org)

In November 1912 poet Rainer Maria Rilke (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainer_Maria_Rilke) did write the following, »just sort of a postcard«, from Toledo to Mathilde Vollmoeller-Purrmann (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathilde_Vollmoeller-Purrmann), a paintress, married to painter Hans Purrmann (http://www.purrmann.com/de/leben_paris.php) and living in Paris at the time, who had, in 1907, much influenced Rilke’s looking at Cézanne and Van Gogh:

(Picture: Yair Haklai)

»(…) and, since one does yet just fabulate of a mysterious journey that brought him [Leonardo da Vinci] for example to Arabia, thus I do enjoy to imagine him having been here, having explored the Arabic script and the entwined vegetation of her old mysteries, having memorized the profile of these bridges and the pure notion of these walls; since I can imagine no other place having been adequate to his heart, because of the merely corresponding was corresponding here so completely, for it, being present, signifying not only itself, but becoming valid beyond itself, – about as the earth, whereever just being earth, but purely and urgently being so, is closest to take effect as rocks and to have, within space, a face like that of a star. – […]« (p. 108f. of the book indicated below; translation’s mine)

(Picture: David Iliff)

Mysterious journey: All about the idea of Leonardo da Vinci having made a journey to the East you find in my Leonardo da Vinci im Orient. Geschichte eines europäischen Mythos (http://www.amazon.de/Leonardo-Vinci-Orient-Geschichte-europäischen/dp/3412205265/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1405958179&sr=1-1) wherein you also find all references discussed that are to be found in Leonardo’s work to Oriental things, places and ideas. – Rilke was obviously aware that the idea of an actual trip to the East, much discussed by Leonardo researchers of the time, was just a fancy, but all the same he was instinctively grasping the imaginary potential of the idea. – Only in 1952, however, one got aware of Leonardo’s actual project of a bridge over the Golden Horn, the entry to the inner harbor of a city today called Istanbul.

(Picture: viajeatoledo2eso2009.blogspot.com)

See: http://www.amazon.de/Paris-tut-not-Vollmoeller-Briefwechsel/dp/3892444420

(Picture: amazon.de)

And see: http://islamic-arts.org

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