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From Paris to Duino
There are as many facets of Rainer Maria Rilke’s personality as there are of Mount Sainte-Victoire in Paul Cézanne’s sketches and paintings. Some of them have been collected or inferred from various sources, while others have come to us through the numerous letters he wrote up until the very last moments of his life. Were we to count them, their number might equal that of the kilometres Rilke covered in his travels throughout Europe and North Africa. But many of them have been lost. So was the trunk with manuscripts and a few family photographs he left in Paris when he had to take off at the outbreak of the Great War (later to be sold by his landlord to compensate for the unpaid rent). Among the letters that did survive, some have been published and others have only just resurfaced. In anticipation of further revelations, we make do with the gaps, fill them in with tentative images hoping not to betray the spirit of Doctor Serafico, as the poet was called in certain circles.
The publication of The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, in 1910, left Rilke disconcerted, worrying whether he would be able to write ever again.
In the autumn of 1911, he accepted the invitation of his friend and devotee, Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis, to spend time at her Duino Castle on the cliffs of the Adriatic Sea shore, near Trieste, now in Italy. Part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in those days, Castello di Duino had been built on the ruins of a Roman military outpost later to become a cultural haven, only a phantom of which outlived the Great War. The Princess asked her faithful chauffeur to drive the poet from Paris — his temporary base at the time — to Duino. Rilke chose the route that passed through Lyons, and farther south through Avignon, then along the Mediterranean coast: a drive which now takes about two days. Back then, it took nine.
Piero, the chauffeur, remembers:
October 1911
DAY ONE — PARIS
I was instructed to meet him at the main entrance to the Jardin des Plantes, down a narrow cobbled street.
Herr Rilke sat in front of the gate, a suitcase at his feet. A small well-travelled suitcase. I had picked up the rest of his luggage from his room at the Biron mansion, where he worked for some famous sculptor: boxes of paper and books, judging by their weight and his insistence on handling them with care, as if I didn’t know.
He told me he’d come to say goodbye to his panther.
‘What’s its name?’ I asked.
‘Today: Ankora.’
The Gardens with their old Zoo were being kept closed because of a storm that had hit the city the night before.
Rilke’s eyes turned a wet dark blue.
Through the railing of the gate I could see wild cyclamens spread among the roots of a sycamore that had grown above the ground. A bunch of them seemed to line up straight on his shoulder, as if they’d sprung from it. I missed the chance to ask by what name his cherished feline went the other days, and if its name changed with the whims of the weather, or with his own. Time was pressing.
He took the back seat and didn’t seem willing to engage in a conversation.
A timid scent of lavender reached me from behind.
After a while, he changed his mind and asked me what part of Prague I grew up in. He was keen to know how I felt about the air in Trieste and what I liked about automobiles.
‘The sound of tyres on wet asphalt. Do you drive?’
‘No. But I can walk.’
DAY TWO — LYONS
We took the road farther south at an early hour. Steam rose from the earth as it does on a fantastic washday. As the air had cleared, colours changed. We were still in France but houses, gardens, and landscapes had the feel of another country.
Rilke told me about something he’d seen in Prague when he was ten, a year before he entered the Saint Pölten military academy, three hundred kilometres away from home, he added, as if each one of them still weighed on his back. A panther had escaped from the circus cage and roamed through the narrow streets of the city before it got cornered in the middle of a square.
The circus owner shot his circus pet right there, in front of the frantic crowd.
The child broke free of his mother’s grip to close in on the panther.
A pool of blood grew at his feet.
He could see his face in it.
DAY THREE — AVIGNON
Before we took lodgings at the hotel, we lingered in the streets for a while. The air stuck to your skin, the old stones so white they hurt your eyes.
We stopped to rest on a bench. A black tomcat crossed the square.
‘Nijinsky!’ Rilke called out. The cat made no response. He then stood up and asked me to please close my eyes.
I did as I was told.
But my ears were alert.
I heard his steps on the gravel, the leap. Then, the sigh when he left the ground as if he was made of air.
DAY FOUR — MONTAIGNE SAINTE-VICTOIRE
Mist all around, over pines and hills, over rocks and ridges.
The Mount Sainte-Victoire Rilke had so longed to see was no more than a blur.
Instead, he urged me to look at a sudden shadow.
It was but a cloud that swept across the field, yet he insisted I had just missed a giant bird. None of my fault. I had to focus on the road. To each his own.
DAY FIVE — CANNES
Mimosa trees bloom in February in this part of the country, as they do all along the seashore in Italy. Their bright clusters set the hills ablaze. One wouldn’t hope to see them in October.
‘A seasonal disturbance,’ Rilke pointed to the eruption of yellow around us. But I shouldn’t turn my head, he advised, lest my eyes stay glued to it.
He asked me if I ever tried mimosa jelly. Before I had a chance to answer, he reported that it tasted like gold.
DAY SIX — NICE
The Bay of Angels loomed in the distance. The sea turned shell pink, then mauve, then silver.
In the gardens of Palais Massena, we took refuge from the sun under the umbrella of a datura tree, its late blooms as intoxicating as they were superb. We ate sweet chard pie and watched a line of sailing boats that moved so slow they seemed to stand still. Of a sudden, I felt tired and asked Doctor Serafico if he had anything for a headache. He took an orange from his pocket.
How did that orange get into that pocket?
We walked along the seafront for a while.
Soon my headache passed.
DAY SEVEN — BORDIGHERA
Located between the small border town of Ventimiglia and the summer resort of San Remo, Bordighera comes into view as if it was a picture out of a British travel book.
Entering that amiable town feels like switching seasons once again. The air is even warmer, more humid than elsewhere on the coast, the mountains in the distance clouds floating on the water.
Rilke walked alone by the Lungomare.
When he returned, he dropped in my palm a small white stone with blue streaks.
Dark blue, darker than the sea or the night sky, but lighter than ink.
From the heart of that small stone, an eye stared at me.
DAY EIGHT — SAN REMO
La Cartomante: a plaster lady dressed in red and white. I put a coin in her palm and pressed the button underneath. A printed card came out:
Fortunato! Buona stella viene con pazienza.
My good fortune message didn’t stir Rilke’s curiosity in any way. He turned his head from the ghastly statue and reminded me we had to reach Baiardo before sunset. He insisted on that detour as if important business was waiting for him there, and muttered something about it being a good place. No point in asking more. He gave me the look of one who knows what he’s talking about.
The village was perched on a mountain. We walked all the way up to the edge of Baiardo, and there stood the old church he wanted to see, with only the sky for a volt.
An earthquake had swept the rest away, but for the statue of San Antonio.
He left the stranded sea stone at its feet.
DAY NINE —
We passed Piacenza and entered Bologna in early afternoon. I dropped Herr Rilke at the train station. He made it to Duino by himself.
It must have been 23 October 1911 when he reached his destination.
… I have long wanted to be here, strictly alone, to go into my cocoon … Now, since the day before yesterday I have really been all alone inside the old walls — outside, the sea, outside, the Karst, outside, the rain, perhaps tomorrow the storm (Letter, 14 December 1911)
… an incessant shifting between the extremes of sirocco and bora … The castle is an immense body without much soul. (Letter, 14 January 1912)
… every step was an arrival (Letter, 27 October 1920)
Nice-Paris, August-October 2022
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