Drawing upon a wealth of primary resources - including letters to and from Paula, Rilke, Clara Westhoff, and Otto Modersohn, as well as the artwork created by Paula, Otto, and Clara, and Rilke's poetry - Torgersen weaves a cohesive account of how these four artists met, interacted, and influenced each other. The book is organized largely chronologically, including biographical information about Rilke and Paula's lives before they met at the German artists' colony of Worpswede.

Though Rilke was initially attracted to Paula, she was already (secretly) engaged to Otto (whose first wife, Helene, had recently died) when they met. Rilke's attentions then turned to Paula's friend and fellow artist Clara Westhoff, a sculptor. Rilke and Clara married on April 28, 1901, and Paula and Otto's wedding followed on May 25, 1901. Their four lives continued to be intermingled - sometimes peacefully, more often with tension - for the next several years.

At the center of many of Rilke and Paula's disagreements and misunderstandings was his belief that one must choose art or life (preferably art over life), and her belief that she could be happy in life and also create art. Rilke's "Requiem for a Friend" indicated that he thought her life had been wrongfully cut short (she died shortly after giving birth to her daughter, Mathilde, in 1907) before she could fully realize her potential as an artist, but Torgersen argues that "her life, though cut short, was a triumph"

Quotes:

For the time that they knew each other, Paula...resisted him at many points, and so became immensely important to him: a precious and vital antagonist. And for Paula, Rilke played a similar role: he was not only a constant source of intellectual stimulation but also a vital irritant, the artistic counterpole to her husband, drawing her to Paris while Otto Modersohn called her home to Worpswede.
But Rilke's story cannot be told...without that of Clara Westhoff; and Paula's cannot be told without that of Otto Modersohn. (10)

Works of art, [Rilke] elaborated, are like images reflected in a well: beyond a certain point we cannot approach them without blocking from view, with ourselves, the very thing that we came to see. (71)

[Oct. 5: Rilke leaves Worpswede suddenly; last page of journal torn out. Petzet posits that he discovered Paula's secret engagement to Otto and fled (leaving one of his sketchbooks with Paula).]
Had he known that she had been in love, even before his arrival, with someone undeniably already a man, and within two weeks of this arrival had become engaged, none of their intense private interactions would have been possible... (79)

BW plates: Otto Modersohn with Pipe, 1906-07; Self-Portrait with Two Flowers in Her Raised Hand, 1907 (128) ( )