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Baladine Klossowska

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Baladine Klossowska
Klossowska (with Rilke) c. 1923
Born
Elisabeth Dorothea Spiro

(1886-10-21)21 October 1886
Breslau, German Empire
Died21 October 1969(1969-10-21) (aged 83)
Bagneux, Hauts-de-Seine near Paris, France
Spouse
​
​
(m. 1902; sep. 1917)​
Partner(s)Rainer Maria Rilke
(1919–1926, his death)
Children

Baladine Klossowska or Kłossowska (21 October 1886 – 11 September 1969) was a German painter. Originating from an artistic Jewish family with roots in Lithuania, she moved from Breslau, Germany, to Paris, France, at the turn of the 20th century, where she was a vivid and active participant in the explosion of artistic experiment then active in the city.

She was mother to controversial modernist painter Balthus[1][2] as well as the writer Pierre Klossowski,[3] and the final muse and love of the poet Rainer Maria Rilke.[4]

Biography

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Early life

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Born Elisabeth Dorothea Spiro in Breslau, Germany (now Polish Wrocław), to a Jewish family. Her father, Abraham Baer Spiro (Shapiro), was a Lithuanian Jewish cantor, who moved his family from Korelichi in Novogrudok district of Minsk Governorate to Breslau in 1873.[5][6][7] In Breslau, he was appointed a Chief cantor of the White Stork Synagogue – one of the two main synagogues of the city.[8][9][10] The Spiros were an artistically inclined family. Balandine's older brother Eugene Spiro became an artist-painter.

Move to Paris

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Spiro married the painter and art historian Erich Klossowski in 1902. The couple left Breslau the same year, and were settled in Paris by 1903.[11] Their sons, Pierre (1905) and Balthasar (1908) were born in this new city.

Spiro embraced Paris with a new identity, becoming Baladine Klossowska (out of Balladyna, the heroine of Juliusz Słowacki's romantic drama).[12] Like many women in intellectual and artistic circles in Paris in the first decade of the new century, although preoccupied with tasks of household and home, Klossowska continued painting, if episodically.

Displacement of WWI

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The Klossowskis were forced to leave France in 1914, at the start of World War I, due to their German citizenship. The couple separated permanently in 1917, and Klossowska took her sons to Switzerland. They moved to Berlin in 1921 due to financial pressures.[13] Mother and sons returned to Paris in 1924, where the three for a time lived a materially marginal existence, often dependent upon help from friends and relations, until Pierre and Balthus became established professionally. Balthus, who became rich off of his paintings, later said of these times, "I was poor. The only option was to make a scandal. It worked well. Too well."[14]

With Rilke in Switzerland

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Klossowska met Bohemian-Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) in 1919. They had previously known of each other in Paris, but had not been more than acquaintances. Rilke, eleven years Klossowska's senior, had during those Paris years socialized with an older generation of artists and intellectuals, while Klossowska and Erich had been young (if well-connected) upcomers.

In 1919, Rilke was emerging from a severe depression that had limited his writing to uncollected poems and a large number of letters, both during and after World War I. Klossowska has been described as both "inspiring" Rilke in his late poetry, and "suffering emotionally in his hands."[15] The two had an intense, episodic romantic relationship that lasted until Rilke's death from leukemia in 1926.

Klossowska helped Rilke establish his residence in Muzot, Switzerland, finding and directing the renovations for him of the Château de Muzot. Her sons developed close relationships with Rilke, and Balthasar—the future Balthus—published his first book of watercolors about a lost cat, Mitsou, with text by Rilke, during this period.

In 1922, Rilke wrote, in what he called "a savage creative storm," his two most important collections of poetry, the Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus, both published in 1923. Klossowska, who gave Rilke a Christmas gift of Ovid's Metamorphisis in 1920 (a French translation which included the episodes of the Orpheus cycle) and a postcard image of Orpheus, is generally understood to have crystallized the ideas that enabled him to see this cycle in a form appropriate to his poetic voice.[15]

During their romance, Rilke called Klossowska by the pet name "Merline" (a female "Merlin," or "sorceress") in their correspondence—first published in 1954.[16][17] Rilke fans are divided in their opinions as to whether she was a positive or negative force on his life and writing, and Klossowska's reputation has been largely defined by whether or not Rilke's critics found her influence sympathetic.

Final years in France

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Klossowska lived in Paris at 69 rue de la Glacière in her final years. She died at the home of her son Pierre, in Bagneux, Hauts-de-Seine.[18]

References

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  1. ^ Russell, John (19 February 2001). "Balthus, Painter Whose Suggestive Figures Caused a Stir, Is Dead at 92". The New York Times. pp. B.8. Archived from the original on 3 August 2023. Retrieved 3 November 2024.
  2. ^ Clair, Jean (2001). Balthus. London: Thames & Hudson. ISBN 9780500093030. OCLC 966133400.
  3. ^ Spira, Anthony; Wilson, Sarah (2006). Pierre Klossowski (Exhibition catalog). Ostfildern, Germany: Hatje Cantz. ISBN 9783775717915. OCLC 122930869.
  4. ^ Freedman, Ralph (1998). Life of a Poet: Rainer Maria Rilke. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. ISBN 9780810115439. OCLC 38304334.
  5. ^ "Balthus | French painter". Encyclopedia Britannica. Archived from the original on 19 June 2024. Retrieved 3 November 2024.
  6. ^ Riley, Charles A. (2001). Aristocracy and the Modern Imagination. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England. p. 207. ISBN 9781584651512. OCLC 47922732. Retrieved 3 November 2024 – via Google Books.
  7. ^ Rewald, Sabine (1984). Balthus (Exhibit catalog). H.N. Abrams. p. 11. ISBN 9780810907386. OCLC 10299729. Retrieved 3 November 2024 – via Google Books.
  8. ^ Kaderas, Laelia (26 July 2006). "Marmor, Prunk und große Namen" [Marble, splendor and big names]. Jüdische Allgemeine (in German). Archived from the original on 4 August 2024. Retrieved 3 November 2024.
  9. ^ Spiro, Peter (2010). Nur uns gibt es nicht wieder: Erinnerungen an meinen Vater Eugen Spiro, meine Vettern Balthus und Pierre Klossowski, die Zwanziger Jahre und das Exil [Only We Will Not Exist Again: Memories of My Father Eugen Spiro, My Cousins Balthus and Pierre Klossowski, the Twenties and Exile] (PDF) (Book cover) (in German). Hürth bei Köln: Edition Memoria. ISBN 9783930353293. OCLC 647901069. Archived (PDF) from the original on 26 August 2024. Retrieved 3 November 2024.
  10. ^ Sielicki, Tomasz. "Stary Cmentarz Żydowski we Wrocławiu" [The Old Jewish Cemetery in Wrocław]. Slask Wroclaw (in Polish). Archived from the original on 15 July 2014.
  11. ^ Rewald, Sabine (2013). Balthus: Cats and Girls (Exhibit catalog). Metropolitan Museum of Art. p. 19. ISBN 978-0-300-19701-3. OCLC 858548847 – via Google Books.
  12. ^ "Baladine Klossowska", Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia (in Polish), 1 February 2022, retrieved 5 May 2022
  13. ^ Lucie-Smith, Edward (1986). Lives of the Great Twentieth Century Artists. New York: Rizzoli. p. 299. ISBN 9780847807222. OCLC 13185172. OL 2710501M. Retrieved 3 November 2024 – via Google Books.
  14. ^ Glass, Nicholas (25 April 2000). "'I was poor. The only option was to make a scandal. It worked well. Too well'". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 30 May 2022. Retrieved 30 May 2022.
  15. ^ a b Komar, Kathleen L. (2019). "The Feminine in Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus: A Philosophy of Productive Deprivation". In Eldridge, Hannah Vandegrift; Fischer, Luke (eds.). Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus: Philosophical and Critical Perspectives. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 203. ISBN 978-0-19-068544-7. OCLC 1073033183 – via Google Books.
  16. ^ Rilke, Rainer Maria; Klossowska, Baladine (1954). Correspondence 1920–1926 (in German). Zürich: Éditions M. Niehans. OCLC 24094277.
  17. ^ Rilke, Rainer Maria (1989). Letters to Merline, 1919–1922. Translated by Jesse Browner. St. Paul, MN: Paragon House. ISBN 9781557781154. OCLC 17547069.
  18. ^ "Baladine Klossowska", Wikipédia (in French), 12 February 2021, retrieved 5 May 2022
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