In 1902, in Paris, after one of his early encounters with Rodin, Rilke wrote to Clara about a stroll he had taken with the master and his small daughter in the garden of the sculptor’s villa. “Once,” he wrote, “she brought a violet. She laid it with her little hand shyly on Rodin’s and wanted to insinuate it into his hand somehow, to fasten it there. But the hand was like stone. Rodin gave it only a perfunctory glance, looked out beyond it, beyond the small shy hand, beyond the violet, beyond the child, beyond this little complete instant of love, with eyes that clung to the things which seemed to be continually taking form in him.” Days before, during his first visit to the house, he had witnessed an unnerving lunchtime scene between Rodin and his wife. Rodin had complained of the lateness of the meal. “Thereupon Madame Rodin got very agitated,” he reported to Clara. “A restlessness possessed her whole body—she began to push all the things about on the table, so that it looked as though the meal were already over. Everything that had been put properly in its place was left lying anywhere as after a meal.”

From the Fall 2006 Issue

“Rilke's Blue Flower” is part of the Fall 2006 issue of Virginia Quarterly Review, which also features essays, fiction, poetry, book reviews, and humor. Subscribe today for just $32.

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