ABOUT ADDENDUM
We are born into a world filled with stories, those that tell us how to feel about ourselves, each other, and everything on this big ball spinning out here in the dark. When we want to change them, we create alternatives — remixing, inserting new imagery, having a dialogue. The question is: why not go one step further? Why not go inside the foundation and fuck things up directly?
For ADDENDUM, Revolver — a literary arts organization based in St. Paul — asked six Twin Cities artists to write the chapters they felt were missing, from the books of their choice. What story wasn’t told? What plot line was left unfinished? What character didn’t get their due? Below you will read Paul Foster’s ADDENDUM to Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet.
INTRODUCTION
These letters between Rainer Maria Rilke and Franz Xaver Kappus, the aspiring poet of the title, were written when Rilke was just 27 years old. How would he have felt about them later in his life? Would he have agreed with the passions of his younger self? And what of Kappus’s letters, which were not included in the book and are presumed lost? Rilke was a dedicated archivist of the letters he received — what could have happened to them? This 11th letter, written by Rilke many years later, provides a possible explanation and explores what he may have been feeling when he discovered the loss, just one year prior to his death.
Hotel Foyot, 33 rue de Tournon, Paris
8 January 1925
My dear Mr. Kappus,
It is Rilke. The handwriting must seem like a stranger’s, but I assure you that the same hand is responsible for this letter as those few I sent so many years ago. There is more than an accumulation of years in these varicose lines — I have been tormented by ill health for some time now and have come to Paris in an effort to escape it. The city resonates from the goodwill of the holidays and there is an invigorating clarity in the air, which I have invited into my room through an open window. Perhaps by the time I scratch my name at this letter’s end, it will be the symbol of a man who has regained some measure of his strength.
I hope that you can forgive me, dear Sir, if I have left a letter from you unanswered for almost twenty years. (I am ashamed to even write the number!) I cannot remember which of us wrote last, nor precisely why our correspondence came to an end, but your letters always filled me with such great pleasure and I often read them again. They were of particular significance to me, as, I am sure you remember, I had faced a similar agony in looking out at the world from within the walls of a military academy.
Sir, I must also beg your forgiveness this evening for something far more grave: I have lost your letters. For years, I have held out hope that they would be returned to me and, indeed, tonight I appeared to have confirmation of that hope. But I know now that they are gone and the realization has filled me with such anguish and regret that this is my third attempt to begin a letter to you. You entrusted pieces of your self to me and I am not entirely blameless in the series of morose events that led to their loss. Please be patient with me as I try to explain.
Since November, I have been staying at the sanatorium in Val-Mont. My own body has become my enemy in recent years (how can that be? how can it not want me to live, to thrive?) and my ammunition against it was finally depleted. I spent the final birthday of my forties there and received the gift of cures that seemed to return a vitality to my bloodstream. I began to look ahead to fifty, not with dread but with an unexpected balm of hope. There was life left to be lived.
To that end, Dr. Haemmerli, who has become unfortunately dear to me, placed his palm between my shoulder blades and pushed me out the doors and toward Paris, toward the swirl of the living. With other doctors I lament having known, he shares the view that my many afflictions spring from my mind. But the sores that appeared in my mouth last September could not have been imagined by my mind’s darkest corners. More absurd still, he believes that my need of solitude is responsible for my body’s rebellion. You and I know better. Still, how could it not be beneficial to walk the streets of this city and encounter the ghosts of my younger, stronger selves?
This came to pass in a near literal manner this afternoon. I arrived in Paris yesterday and immediately sent word to Maurice Betz, who is completing the translation of Malte Laurids Brigge into French. He met with me in the hotel this morning and we set out into the city. It appeared to me as exhilarating as when I first beheld it in August of 1902, when I had seen it with the wide eyes of a tourist rather than the realist citizen I would become. There was a wondrous haze that seemed to cover all with a warm shroud and I felt, at once, how important this city had been to The Book of Hours, New Poems and, of course, Malte. Paris had given birth to my first real work and I walked through its heart this morning with a deep thankfulness.
Mr. Betz stopped at the Gallimard building and said he had a surprise for me. He disappeared inside and I leaned against the doorway listening to the flickering of the few poplar leaves that had managed to hold on in the winter winds. The Paris streets were as noisy as they have ever been (indeed, more than I recall), but I heard the leaves above all. I shut my eyes and sensed their strange language returning to me.
You can imagine my bewilderment when Mr. Betz emerged empty-handed. He simply said that the items would be delivered to my room here before night’s end. He remembered my favorite vegetarian restaurant and, after a meal there and a moonlit walk around Notre Dame, I returned to the Foyot.
Two unfamiliar suitcases had been placed beside my desk. I opened one, then, in disbelief, the other, and found myself in a dream Freud himself would be unable to interpret. I was surrounded by a collection of my own belongings… from 1914! Here were objects that the Rilke of eleven years ago had valued, a prior version of myself conjured by his possessions. To my delight, there were, indeed, hundreds of letters — tied in bundles with colored ribbon just as I left them. But yours were not among them, Sir. They were, perhaps, represented by a stray green ribbon I found tangled in the rest.
In the summer of 1914, I had been living in a small flat on the rue Campagne-Premiere and was traveling in Leipzig when war broke out. As I am sure you understand, to return to Paris as an Austrian national would have meant internment. So, I went, instead, to Munich where I was soon reminded that no city in the world can act upon the soul as Paris can. I missed it deeply.
I assumed that I would one day be reunited with my things, but I received word the next year that my Paris landlord had sold all my belongings at auction! The man could not be blamed for obtaining a few francs for the clothes and furniture of a man he presumed lost or dead, but it troubled me to imagine what he might have done with the unsaleable items, particularly the very private letters from you and so many others. I felt shame at their loss, for they truly did not belong to me. A letter is nothing but a diary that one permits another to read. In the end, it is written to oneself.
I have not yet spoken of this to anyone, dear Mr. Kappus, but I have been at work on my will. I am many miles from Val-Mont and Haemmerli now, and I intend to remain so. But I am aware of things within me that no doctor can comprehend without inhabiting my skin, without having my blood course through his own veins. I do not intend to ever again let others decide what will become of my possessions (to say nothing of what will become of myself!). Among other things, I have written a provision that all the letters I have in my possession be returned to their senders. Yours would have been returned as well — if only they were in the piles of letters and family photographs and unpublished manuscripts that surround me on the floor of this room now. What could have happened to them?
When I realized they were not here, I contacted Mr. Betz on the hall telephone to be sure there was not a third box back at Gallimard. He explained the mountain of coincidence that had led to even these few things being saved, the efforts of individuals whose friendship I do not deserve. And I feel sure now, Mr. Kappus, that neither of us will ever see your letters again. The version of me that you knew in — was it 1905? 1906? — could have re-assembled most of your letters from memory. Had I that ability now, I would be writing them to you tonight, rather than this poor substitute.
I have often wondered whether you resolved the conflict between the military profession that you found your outer self engaged in and the art that was welling up inside you. I fear I may not have been respectful enough of the realities of your situation, choosing instead to adopt a face of false-confidence and speak from the clouds, as it were, rather than from the ground. I recall expressing disdain (gently, I hope) for your efforts in sending verses to magazines and editors. But I did the very same thing myself. Of course I did! Where would I be if I had not? Even now, I am hoping to see some of my efforts in the French language published in the journals here.
In the years since our correspondence, I have sometimes heard your name mentioned — and always in regard to some new work. That fills me with delight, dear Sir. More than I can say. Newspaper pieces in Vienna and Berlin, a novel — and did I hear of some film work? Have there been verses as well? And have you relinquished your post as an officer? Are you working in journalism?
I know that I was critical of that profession in my letters and it remains difficult for me to avoid feeling disgust, and even anger, toward the practitioners of that trade. You see that it pains me to even call them writers, but of course they are writers. And it would have been wrong for me to push you toward a choice between absolute devotion to writing and no relationship to it at all. I have come to accept that there is a need for many different kinds of writers. Presently, the German press is trying to decide if I am German enough and who I might betray by publishing in French. And this demoralizing, public dissection of me proves nothing if not that the need is, indeed, great for writers who can straddle the line between art and the daily demands of the occupation.
For my part, absolute devotion has cost me dearly. I recall that, in one of your letters, you asked me to send you one of my books and I confessed that I could not afford to buy them. You may be surprised to know that this is still true. Despite the stance I may have taken in those letters, I have, more than once, attempted to back away from that strict devotion somewhat in search of income.
Did you know that I tried my hand at freelance writing? And that I sometimes considered taking a bank job in Prague? And that, in addition to writing the monograph on him, I also worked as Rodin’s secretary? I believe I spoke to you about securing your solitude, which, of course, requires financial independence as a foundation. Even as I wrote those words to you, I was accepting living expenses from my family. Of course, telling you that at the time would have diluted my advice.
Speaking honestly with you now, I have never been able to reconcile the relationship between the drive to write and the need for income. As soon as money is attached to something I am writing, my desire — and, critically, my ability — to write it evaporates. And, so, I have failed to ever secure a stable living arrangement. I have failed in my marriage. Failed to provide for my daughter. I have a granddaughter now, Mr. Kappus! Born a year ago and I have never seen her.
Have you found your great love, Sir? I suspect you have. I suspect you have had success in this as well, and that your children exist under your soft, protective wings, in awe of you. If I am positive of one thing in regard to our correspondence, it is that I spoke to you fervently of love. Then, as now, I was attempting to clarify my own relation to it. And I feel that I knew more about it then. Much more. Or, at least, thought I did. And that certainty would be welcome now.
I continue to travel around women in orbits that bring me closer to their astonishing beauty and mystery, then further away. In a sense, this is what I wanted — for two solitary bodies to remain solitary yet, at times, greet each other. But this has seldom eased the transition from the intensifying of gravity to its release. Rodin seemed to accept the state of things with much more grace, accept his role and responsibility. (I am sure you share this with him.) As with my work, I have had as many failures as successes in my relationships. And, as with my work, I have not gained any kind of control over the speed or trajectory.
I sometimes wonder if it was harmful of me to write to you as I did. Nearly helping someone, bringing them close to an answer without delivering them, can make matters infinitely worse. Hope can be as crushing as uplifting. I could not have been much older than you were at that time — how could I have advised you? How could I have been for you what Rodin had been for me? I had produced little and knew less (though I wrote to you as would a master, who knew all). You could better have advised me.
As you could now, so many years later, when my anxiety has only grown. Perhaps, in this way, the doctors are right. Perhaps my foundering, my fruitless search for a way to live, has made its way into my very blood, black now with doubt. I am its vessel. I carry it everywhere. I infect others. As if my relationship to life and art is, itself, an illness.
I wince at the possibility that I might have infected you, but I know that you were stronger than I was at that age. Under Prof. Horacek’s watchful eye (Horacek — wise as the chestnut trees and with a shadow as long!), I knew that, while the crossroads you faced might be similar, you would make different choices than I had made. I knew that you would have more success at, if you will forgive me, the “ordinary” life. I knew that you would find stability and make peace with yourself in a way that I never would.
How I envy those who take an easy relationship with life for granted. Is it better to accept, profoundly accept, one’s solitude (as, I am sure, I advised you to do) or to ignore it in an attempt to achieve happiness? I am here in Paris to surround myself with those who cannot see that they are hopelessly alone. I intend to fill my calendar with them — the princesses and artists in the salons, the intellectuals warming themselves around cafe braziers, even those who have threatened me in the past: the poor spilling out of the slums and the sick leaning from the hospital windows. I will surrender to them all. Can they cure me of myself?
What melancholy has overcome me since receiving these cases tonight? What have I unleashed here? I have visited clairvoyants and have made an attempt with a planchette, but I feel the contents of these cases is more capable of predicting my future with my own past. I have released the spirit of my former self into this room. He sits on the edge of the bed now, looking out at the Seine, wearing a suit I have long outgrown, thinking thoughts I have forgotten, feeling things that have atrophied in me. Snow has begun to fall now and it is drifting in through the open window, floating through him.
Will he show me where to find salvation? In youth, I knelt in the church. Later, in libraries. What do I kneel before now? I used to carry the Bible with me, and at least one work by Jacobsen. But the whispering poplars are the great stories for me now. The fragrance of the conifers is my psalm. My own footfalls are my prayers.
My hand is aching, Mr. Kappus, and I feel I have gone considerably off track. But we have spent the evening together, making this a truly blessed day. Perhaps there is a way for you to visit me in Paris? I feel a simple walk with you through the crisp January night would provide more healing than everything else I may do here.
At the very least, please write. I have come to accept that my books in future libraries will take on the same intoxicating aroma as all the other volumes, an aroma of decay, as though the pages were nothing but the leaves of an autumn made irrelevant by time, the words reduced to indecipherable veins. But the letters I have written will retain their power in the custody of those I have loved. That is where I will continue to live.
Let us create a new bundle of letters. I have a ribbon here, waiting.
In profound gratitude,
R.M. Rilke
