Paula Becker to Clara Westhoff

Paula Becker 1876-1907
Clara Westhoff 1878-1954

became friends at Worpswede, an artists' colony near Bremen, Germany, summer 1899. In January 1900, spent a half-year together in Paris, where Paula painted and Clara studied sculpture with Rodin. In August they returned to Worpswede, and spent the next winter together in Berlin. In 1901, Clara married the poet Rainer Maria Rilke; soon after, Paula married the painter Otto Modersohn.

She died in a hemorrhage after childbirth, murmuring, what a shame!

The autumn feels slowed down,

summer still holds on here, even the light

seems to last longer than it should

or maybe I'm using it to the thin edge.

The moon rolls in the air. I didn't want this child.

You're the only one I've told.

I want a child maybe, someday, but not now.

Otto has a calm, complacent way

of following me with his eyes, as if to say

Soon you'll have your hands full!

And yes, I will; this child will be mine

not his, the failures, if I fail

will be all mine. We're not good, Clara,

at learning to prevent these things,

and once we have a child, it is ours.

But lately, I feel beyond Otto or anyone.

I know now the kind of work I have to do.

It takes such energy! I have the feeling I'm

moving somewhere, patiently, impatiently,

in my loneliness. I'm looking everywhere in nature

for new forms, old forms in new places,

the planes of an antique mouth, let's say, among the leaves.

I know and do not know

what I am searching for.

Remember those months in the studio together,

you up to you strong forearms in wet clay,

I trying to make something of the strange impressions

assailing me-the Japanese

flowers and birds on silk, the drunks

sheltering in the Louvre, that river-light,

those faces. . . . Did we know exactly

why we were there? Paris unnerved you,

you found it too much, yet you went on

with your work . . . and later we met there again,

both married then, and I though you and Rilke

both seemed unnerved. I felt a kind of joylessness

between you. Of course he and I

have had our difficulties. Maybe I was jealous

of him, to begin with, taking you from me,

maybe I married Otto to fill up

my loneliness for you.

Rainer, of course, knows more that Otto knows,

he believes in women. But he feeds on us,

like all of them. His whole life, his art

is protected by women. Which of us could say that?

Which of us, Clara, hasn't had to take that leap

out beyond our being women

to save our work? or is it to save ourselves?

Marriage is lonelier than solitude.

Do you know: I was dreaming I had died

giving birth to the child.

I couldn't paint or speak or even move.

My child-I think-survived me. But what was funny

in the dream was, Rainer had written my requiem-

a long beautiful poem, and calling me his friend.

I was your friend

but in the dream you didn't say a word.

In the dream his poem was like a letter

to someone who has no right

to be there but must be treated gently, like a guest

who comes on the wrong day. Clara, why don't I dream of you?

That photo of the two of us-I have it still,

you and I looking hard into each other

and my painting behind us. How we used to work

side by side? And how I've worked since then

trying to create according to our plan

that we'd bring, against all odds, our full power

to every subject. Hold back nothing

because we were women. Clara, our strength still lies

in the things we used to talk about:

how life and death take one another's hands,

the struggle for truth, our old pledge against guilt.

And now I feel dawn and the coming day.

I love waking in my studio, seeing my pictures

come alive in the light. Sometimes I feel

it is myself that kicks inside me,

myself I must give suck to, love . . .

I wish we could have done this for each other

all our lives, but we can't . . .

They say a pregnant woman

dreams of her own death. But life and death

take one another's hands. Clara, I feel so full

of work, the life I see ahead, and love

for you, who of all people

however badly I say this

will hear all I say and cannot say.

. . . I know I shall not live very long. But why should this be sad? Is a feast more beautiful for lasting longer? For my life is a feast, a short intensive feast. My sensual perception grows sharper, as though I were supposed to take in everything within the few years that will be offered me. . . .

And if now love also will blossom for me, before I leave, and if I shall have painted three good pictures, I shall leave willingly, with flowers in my hands and in my hair.

-from Paula Becker's diary

I feel as if I sat within eternity

And my soul hardly dared to breathe,

With tightly closed wings it sits

And listens, wide-eyed, into the universe,

And over me comes a soft mildness,

And over me comes a great strength,

As if I wanted to kiss white flower petals,

And, beside great warriors, fight great battles,

And I awaken, trembling with wonder . . .

So small, you child of man! And yet so enormous

The waves that kiss your soul.

I listen in the dark corner of my room,

Like large, quiet eyes things look back at me

Like large, soft hands that stroke my head.

And blessing flows through every fiber of my being.

That is the peace, dwelling here with me . . .

At my side my lamp burns reliably,

Purrs on its song of life as if in a dream.

Out of the twilight white flowers glisten,

they tremble, shudder, for they sense the future.

With light wingbeat the bat circles my couch

And by soul looks at life's riddle,

Trembles and is silent and looks.

And beside my couch the lamp hums

Its life's song.

-from Paula Becker's diary