Constance Presents Paula Modersohn-Becker

Jacquieʼs Email: Hello Literary Ladies! For those of you who followed Laura's step-by-step instructions for inserting her carefully penned addendum into your program book, you know that this coming Wednesday, February 26th, the Lit Club of Hastings-on-Hudson will be meeting to hear Constanceʼs presentation on the “Letters and Journals of Paula Modersohn-Becker.” Carla will be hosting in her gorgeous rooms with a view. (For your convenience, think carpool when possible as parking is tricky along Warburton.) We will begin to convene at noon for a light repast and conversation, and, if I remember to return the “Presidential Bell of the Literature Club of Hastings-on-Hudson” to Joanna after holding it in her absence for the past few weeks, our dear leader will ring it at 1 PM to begin our meeting.

Being completely unfamiliar with Paula Modersohn-Beckerʼs work, I read ahead a bit, and I am very much looking forward to learning more about her. And since I get to do that with all of you, with Constance's guidance, and that VIEW, what could be better?

I hope to see many of you there. Enjoy the thaw! x Jacquie

Christineʼs Minutes Fourteen members of the Literature Club gained some altitude and convened in Carla’s lovely apartment overlooking the river. We lunched on delicious and healthy vegetarian chili and arepas and then were bowled over by olive oil orange cake and yummy pudding.

In a brief recount of recommended books and theatre, we heard about Studying with Miss Bishop, by Dana Gioa, All the Beauty in the World, by Patrick Bringley, a guard at the Met Museum, and Metropolitan Stories, by Christine Coulson, who also worked at the Met.

At the uncommonly early hour of 12:57, President Joanna rang the bell. Carla read her excellent minutes of February 5th, taken in the absence of Christine.

The treasury remains the same.

Then we were off to the fascinating world of art and artists in the early years of the twentieth century.

But first: Constance informed us that her primary source was the PhD thesis of Diane Radycki,  “Paula Modersohn-Becker – The First Modern Woman Artist.” This thesis, submitted in 1993, was the very first ever written about a female artist for the Harvard Department of Fine Arts. Additionally, the thesis was not about one of the usual artists to be mentioned along with the word female, such as O’Keefe, Cassatt or Kahlo, it was PAULA MODERSOHN-BECKER. Modersohn-Becker was born in 1876, and died in 1907, at the tragically early age of 30. She was little known during her lifetime, and it wasn’t until the 1970s that her art began to garner the international acclaim and recognition it deserves.

Constance also drew material from Paula Modersohn-Becker – The Letters and Journals, Edited by Gunther Büsch and Liselotte von Reinken. Constance passed around Paula Modersohn-Becker, Ich Bin Ich/ I Am Me, the catalogue that accompanied her recent show at the Neue Galerie in NYC, so that we could appreciate some of her paintings.

The first letter we read was from Paula’s mother, on the occasion of her thirtieth birthday; her mother recalled the dreary day in Dresden when, at the age of 23, she was giving birth to her second child. In Paula’s response to her mother, it was significant what she left out: her plan to divorce her husband, Otto Modersohn, and go to Paris to pursue her art.

How was Modersohn-Becker the first modern woman painter? She was the first to paint women’s bodies without the hitherto omnipresent ‘male gaze.’ She painted female nudes, and nude self-portraits, she painted mothers and infant, in the nude. Her models were ordinary women, set in ordinary situations, with the simplest of surroundings. Yet during her brief lifetime, there were so few exhibits of her work, that she was not considered an emerging artist, or considered much at all. The first exhibit was in 1899, when she was 23, and then in 1906, she had four paintings in a group show in Bremen. That was it.

A year after her death in 1907, her friend Rainer Maria Rilke published a poem “Requiem to a Friend,” memorializing PMB. Then in 1917, ten years after her death, her family arranged for an exhibit of her work, to be accompanied by a book of her letters and journals. Rilke, however, refused to edit the work because he thought the letters would distract from her art. The book went on to be published and was reprinted many times. Thankfully, otherwise she might have been lost to us when her work was purged by the Nazis as degenerate.

Paula Becker was born in Dresden, often referred to as the Florence on the Elbe, in 1876. Her father was an engineer, and her mother came from an aristocratic family, but the Beckers lived in constrained circumstances, likely due to the fact her Paula’s Uncle Paul Becker had tried to assassinate Kaiser Willhelm of Prussia. Meanwhile, Bismark had succeeded in unifying the German states, for the first time in history.

After her confirmation, PB went to London to stay with her aunt, with the plan that she would learn household management. She was 16. Her letters have much to say about the churning of butter, and not much about Paula’s conflicts with her aunt and her desire to study art. Her uncle came up with solution to the household conflict: at his expense, Paula would attend art school for 6 hours a day. Paula’s letters turned from butter to painting from Greek casts. She explains that the young women at their easels sat on high stools, while the men had lower stools.

Still, Paula had headaches and was painfully homesick and so returned to Bremen after 8 months abroad. As her sister Millie had done, she attended a two-year program of study to become a governess. She was allowed to take art lessons from a Bremen artist, and then to go study art in Berlin, at the Berlin Ladies Academy. There she could paint from models, but not nude models, and PB felt strongly that she wanted to paint nudes.

Whenever she was home from school, Paula visited Worpswede, an artists’ colony outside Bremen, founded by Fritz Mackensen and Otto Modersohn, part of the romanticized back-to nature movement that was springing up all over Europe. She met Clara Westoff, and they remained close friends for the rest of Paula’s life. Clara later married Rainer Maria Rilke.

In a letter to her sister Millie – which Paula asked not be shown to her parents – Paula discussed how her art deviated from the norm.

In 1899, the work of 18-year-old Paula Becker, and another woman artist, was part of a show in the Kunsthalle in Bremen. Her work was panned and called coarse, repulsive, repugnant and more. Not a happy beginning.

On January 1, 1900, PB took a train to Paris to join her friend Clara and immerse herself in the art world there. She became enamored of Cezanne. She enrolled at the Academi Colarossi and attended daily classes. In her letters home she described the marvelous art she was seeing: Manet, Degas, Renoir and of course, Cezanne. At Worpswede, Paula, Clara, Rilke, Otto Modersohn and his first wife, Felice, formed a close group of friends. Paula wrote often to the Modersohns and encouraged them to come to Paris. In June, Otto visited Paris, but without his very frail wife, Felice, who died soon thereafter. Paula and Otto become engaged on September 3 of that year. Paula’s parents were so distressed by the rapidity of the affair that they sent Paula to Berlin for cooking classes. An interesting and appealing response, I thought. In Berlin, she spent time with Rilke and frequented art museums. Paula and Otto married in May 1901. He was 36 and had a 2-year-old daughter; she was 25, determined to be an artist, but under pressure from her father to become a governess in order to earn a living. In a journal entry from Easter Sunday 1902, PMB wrote “marriage does not make one happier.” Meanwhile, she returned Paris and stayed with Rilke and her friend Clara Westoff; they were now married and had a daughter. They encouraged PBM to meet Rodin. She also saw the work of Gauguin and wrote sheaves of letters. She painted like mad. It was in a letter to Rilke that she wrote “Ich bin Ich” that is, I am Me.

But her husband, Otto, was not pleased with her art. He said that it didn’t ‘progress’. Which seems odd, given the remarkable paintings she was making. It is unclear what transpired in their relationship, but when she was 30 years old, in 1906, Paula became pregnant. She stated while she did not want to be ‘married’, she did want a child.

Matilda, named for Paula’s mother, was born on November 6, 1907. A week later, she began to have pains in her legs. She died on November 20. She was 31.

In the years following her death, PBM’s work began to be shown. A museum was built in Bremen dedicated to her work. Hitler deplored its architecture, so we can assume it was good. Then the Third Reich condemned her work as degenerate, and they seized and destroyed about 70 paintings.

Thanks to Connie, and the Neue Galerie in Manhattan, many of us are now getting to know the story of PMB, and her astonishing paintings. It was a revelatory afternoon.

Respectfully submitted,
Christine Lehner, Recording Secretary

A Friendship and a Feud: Vladimir Nabokov and Edmund Wilson Presented by Frances

Jacquie's Email Hello Literary Ladies! I made the mistake of reading the headlines this morning before writing this, so my mood is a bit gloomy. How did we get here?
      Luckily, we have our upcoming meeting of the Literature Club of Hastings-on-Hudson to look forward to—a much-needed balm in anxious times. We will be meeting at Carol's beautifully perched home on Villard Avenue at noon for what I imagine will be a full-out lunch. (Itʼs time to just call it, right?) Our intrepid president, Joanna, will not be able to join us this week since she will either be hosting some important event at the Federal Bar Councilʼs annual retreat somewhere in Mexico, or lying on the beach, so Laura will be ringing the bell at 1PM to begin our meeting, after which Frances will present on A Feud and a Friendship: The Letters of Vladimir Nabokov & Edmund Wilson. Now THESE are some feuding white men I can get behind!
    That's all I have in me to report. Iʼm looking forward to seeing you on Wednesday. x Jacquie

Carlaʼs Minutes On a chilly and sunny day, 10 members and two associates gathered in Carol Barkin’s warm and welcoming home to enjoy her delicious carrot soup, charcuterie plus, and not one, not two, but three wonderful loaf cakes and cookies—an un-lunch? A presentation followed to be sure.

Laura Rice, vice-president, presided in the absence of the president and secretary. After non-minutes and treasurer’s report—a familiar $248—we shared book/culture likes which included: Elizabeth Strout’s Tell Me Everything, the film A Real Pain, the book Orbited, the Japanese Netflix series Asuna, Ina Garten’s memoir, the book Couplets by Maggie Millan, The Rest is Memory by Lily Tuck, as well as Tana French’s The Searcher (the author’s father is NOT The NY Times op-ed writer). Then we were ready for Frances Greenberg’s presentation on the feud & friendship of Vladimir Nabokov and Edmund Wilson.

If the Hatfields and McCoys had possessed brains and not bullets, intellect not ire, writing rather than fighting words, respect not rancor, there might have been a feud like that of Nabokov and Wilson. Both were born in the late 1800’s, grew up in wealthy homes: Wilson in Red Bank, New Jersey; Nabokov in St. Petersburg, Russia. Both had fathers who were jurists, though Nabokov’s father had other government roles as well.  Both Wilson and Nabokov were towering intellects, egotists, men of the pen. As Frances said, both had a “high level of self-esteem,” i.e., arrogance. Their testiness, their need to dominate, their ultimate conflict, reminded her of the horsemen's saying that two stallions should never be kept in the same barn. 

 Nabokov had grown up speaking French and English as well as Russian. He attended Cambridge after his family fled the Bolshevik October Revolution in Russia. Wilson was educated at Princeton. Nabokov’s university years were lonely; although he had no sympathy for White Russian Monarchists, he was perceived as a reactionary by fellow Cantabrigians fascinated by the Russian experiment. He first studied zoology, then switched French and English Literature. (Ultimately, he became an outstanding lepidopterist as well as a renowned writer.) Physically, the men were opposites—Nabokov was tall, slim and handsome. Wilson was short and rotund. His mother had given him the unfortunate nickname Bunny, which stuck with him over the years.

Their relationship began cordially in 1940, when Nabokov emigrated to the U.S. He left England after Cambridge, joining his family in Berlin, where he struggled financially, supporting himself by tutoring and teaching tennis. During his time in Germany, he published 9 novels, in Russian. The Russian diaspora was a lively literate society, there were more than a handful of publishers in western Europe, keeping Russian literature alive. The Bolsheviks exercised iron control over culture; only novels following the Communist party line could be published in Russia. Nabokov’s work never appeared in the country of his birth.

Living in Berlin during Hitler’s rise to power, Nabokov understood his family’s vulnerability. His wife, Vera, was Jewish. They moved first to Paris but were aware of the possibility of a German invasion. In 1940, he was able to get a visa for a teaching position in the U.S. a position which never materialized. He was without financial resources. Nabokov’s cousin, Nikolai Nabokov, had already established himself as a composer and a music critic in the U.S. He was a friend of Edmund Wilson’s, then at the height of his power in the New York literary world. Nikolai Nabokov introduced the two. Wilson helped Vladimir find work writing book reviews for publications like The New Yorker and The New Republic. Both men were important members of their respective literary circles in the 1920’s and 1930’s, but Nabokov’s was a small and limited group of Russian émigrés, scattered from New York to Peking, living precariously, both economically and politically. 

Wilson came to New York after graduating from Princeton and serving as a hospital orderly in the army during World War I. He had quick success as an editor, a writer and critic.  He wrote for Vanity Fair and The New Republic. He had met, and became friends, with F. Scott Fitzgerald while they were both at Princeton.  We read Wilson’s comments, many critical, on Fitzgearld’s first published novel, The Far Side of Paradise. Even so, Wilson’s final words were “I really liked the book.” Wilson could drink all night and be up the next morning ready to work He held his liquor remarkably well, unlike many of his contemporaries. As for his love life, Edna St. Vincent Millay was his first affair. He was madly in love with her but she feared the entanglement of marriage, and no doubt Wilson's domineering character. The two remained friends. Wilson married Mary Blair, an actress, soon after Millay's refusal, Blair was the first of his four marriages. His work—plays and fiction—had progressive sympathies and he believed communism held the answer to many social ills.

Nabokov got a position teaching English literature at Cornell University in the late 40’s. He believed that novels should be “pure invention.” Their only purpose was to enchant. This contrasted strongly with Wilson’s progressive philosophy. In Wilson’s 1940 book, To the Finland Station, he ignored the excesses of Bolshevism. But Wilson’s and Nabokov’s mutual admiration society continued until ...Pushkin changed everything. Their feud began. It had to do with a translation of Eugene Onegin and their differing interpretation of Russian poetic meter. Russians venerate Pushkin in the same way English speakers venerate Shakespeare.

Wilson had learned Russian but was hardly a match for Nabokov’s fluency and the subtleties of translating. An explosive and harshly critical exchange appeared in letters published in The New York Review of Books, in 1965, following Wilson's harsh review of Nabokov's 1200 page translation of Eugene Onegin. Their vitriol was extreme. An example of Wilson’s words of war in this exchange refers to Nabokov’s translation. “Mr. Nabokov is in the habit of introducing any job of this kind which he undertakes by an announcement that he is unique and incomparable and that everyone else who has attempted it is an oaf and ignoramus, incompetent as a linguist and scholar, usually with the implication that he is a low-class person and a ridiculous personality. Nabokov ought not complain if the reviewer, though trying not to imitate his bad literary manners, does not hesitate of underline his weaknesses.” In his reply letter, Nabokov says “... we are indeed old friends. I fully share the warm affection sometimes chilled by exasperation that he says he feels for me. We have had many exhilarating talks, have exchanged many frank letters. A patient confidant of his long and hopeless infatuation with the Russian language, I have always done my best to explain to him his mistakes of pronunciation, grammar and interpretation. ... In the present case, however, things have gone a little too far. I greatly regret Mr. Wilson did not consult me about his perplexities (as he used to do in the past) instead of lurching into print in such a state of glossological disarray.”

The swords were unsheathed—actually even before then with Nabokov’s publication of Lolita, in 1955 in France, and in 1957 in the U.S. One suspects that Nabokov’s financial and literary success was envied by Wilson. Wilson's reputation was in decline by the 1950's. He was no longer the power in the literary circle he had been in his earlier years, in the 1920’s through the 1940’s. 

During Wilson’s final illness, Nabokov wrote to him, recalling the pleasures of their former affectionate friendship. Wilson died in 1972 at 77; Nabokov in 1978 at 78.

Respectfully submitted,
Carla Potash
Secretary for the day