LETTERS TO A YOUNG POET

pioneer of the “stream of consciousness” novel of today, and
his handling of the subconscious life is masterly. A strong
biological sense runs through Niels Lyhne, and as a study in
heredity alone it is first-rate. Brandes has compared Jacobsen
with Correggio, and credits him with a consummate artistry
that just falls short of affectation and morbidity.

[The two novels have appeared in America, Maria Grubbe in
1914 and Niels Lyhne in 1919, both translated by H. A. Larsen
and published by the American-Scandinavian Foundation. In
England there are published a single short story, The Plague in
Bergamo, tr. E. Ellefsen (Porpoise Press, 1923), and Poems, tr.
P. Selver (Oxford, 1920).]

NoOTE 6, PAGE 16

Rilke had already written the first part of his Rodin book,
and was probably glad to have a holiday from the influence of
the older man (when he went to Paris Rilke was twenty-seven
and Rodin sixty-two years old), who inspired and exhausted
him at the same time. His influence was mainly maieutic, and
he helped the poet to learn two valuable lessons : how to work
and how to see. Before Clara joined him in Paris in the autumn
of 1902, Rilke had described to her how the sculptor had agreed
with him about solitude. He quotes Rodin as saying : “Il n’est
pas bien de faire des groupes, les amis s’empéchent. Il est mieux
d’étre seul. Peut-étre avoir une femme—parce qu'il faut avoir
une femme.” Solitude made possible real work, and “il faut
travailler, rien que travailler. Et il faut avoir patience” (Letters
1902-1906, p. 36). ““Tolstoy’s uncomfortable houschold,” he goes
on in the same letter—for he had paid a short and slightly
embarrassing visit to the grim old man at Yasnaya Polyana—
“the lack of ease in Rodin’s rooms : it all points to the same
thing : that one must decide, either this or that. Either happiness
or art. On doit trouver le bonheur dans son art. . . . Rodin said
something of that kind too. And indeed it is all so clear, so clear.
All great men have let their life become overgrown like an old
path and have carried everything into their art. Their life is
atrophied like an organ that they no more use. .. .” Rilke had
always known the meaning of the work “that gives everything

D 49