COMMENTARY

NoTE 1, PAGE 8

The issue of the Inselschiff devoted to Rilke’s memory con-
tains replicas of his handwriting at six different stages in his
career, from Cornet to the tenth Duinese Elegy. His early hand is
most beautiful : the letters are small but perfectly formed, and
the paragraphs and spacing are judged with a painter’s eye.

NOTE 2, PAGE 11

Rilke is not politely evading the necessity for saying some-
thing unkind: he often expressed his distaste for aesthetic
criticism, and avowed that he took no notice of printed opinions
about his own works (though there is some evidence that he was
sensitive when he saw them, as he did more often than pure
accident can be held accountable for). Once when his friend the
philosopher Kassner reproached him with his indulgence towards
a piece of writing, he said “very excitedly”’ that he never wanted
to criticize, that it signified nothing to him. Kassner continues :
“In truth he had not this masculine separation between judgment
and feeling that belongs so peculiarly to man. Oh, he took
absolutely no cognizance of man. Man remained an intruder in
Rilke’s world ; only children, women and old people were at
home in it (Inselschiff, April 1927, p. 120). Earlier on he had
written : “‘I must be alone with my work, and have as little need
of hearing others talk of it as a man might wish to see in print,
and to collect, others’ opinions about the woman he loves”
(Letters 1906-1907, p. 318).

NOTE 3, PAGE 12

If Goethe’s dictum be true, that “he is the most fortunate of
men who can trace an unbroken connection between the end

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