Painted portrait of the young Rainer Maria Rilke with a high wave of brown hair and a pointed beard, in a dark jacket and tie, against a lavender grey ground

Portraits · Poets · III of XIV

Rainer Maria Rilke

1875–1926 · Poet

His art was not built upon a great idea, but upon a minute, conscientious realization, upon the attainable, upon a craft.

Seine Kunst baute sich nicht auf eine große Idee auf, sondern auf eine kleine gewissenhafte Verwirklichung, auf das Erreichbare, auf ein Können.

Rainer Maria Rilke · on Auguste Rodin, 1903
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Rainer Maria Rilke wrote this in his short book on the sculptor Auguste Rodin, published in 1903, when he was twenty-seven. Rodin's greatness, he argued, came not from grand ideas but from small, conscientious work on what was within reach.

Rilke had gone to Paris in 1902 to write it, and later worked as Rodin's secretary.

Auguste Rodin, Part I (written 1902, published 1903). Rainer Maria Rilke, Auguste Rodin, tr. Jessie Lemont and Hans Trausil (New York: Sunwise Turn, 1919), p. 24. German: Auguste Rodin (Leipzig: Insel-Verlag, 1920; Gutenberg #45579).

The originals

Photograph of the young Rainer Maria Rilke with a high wave of hair, a thin moustache and a pointed beard
The likenessPHOTOGRAPHER UNKNOWN · 1900Our portrait is painted after it.Public domain (anonymous photograph of 1900; Commons tags it PD). Derived on Commons from File:Rainer_Maria_Rilke,_1900.jpg.
The title page of Neue Gedichte von Rainer Maria Rilke, Leipzig, Insel-Verlag, 1907
Neue Gedichte, 1907The first edition of his New Poems, Leipzig, 1907. He wrote many of them in Paris, where he had worked as Rodin's secretary in 1905–06.Neue Gedichte, first edition (Leipzig: Insel-Verlag, 1907), title page. Public domain, Google Books scan via Wikimedia Commons.