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Preface: A Failed Blessing
Tolstoy and Russia
Rainer and Leo: Dialogues on Art. Beauty or morality?
The book offered to the reader is in two parts, united by the common theme of «Rilke and Tolstoy».
What is interesting about the first part? It presents for the first time in English translation the chapter ‘Tolstoy and Russia’, taken from Rilke Alive, written by the gifted French writer and translator Maurice Betz, under the impression of unforgettable meetings with the poet in the spring and summer of 1925. Although Betz’s book was published almost a century ago and has since been scrupulously ‘deconstructed’ into quotations by more than one generation of scholars of Rilke’s work, it has lost none of its artistic brilliance. In his book, Betz describes many places, events and people that Rilke told him about. However, the poet’s meeting with Tolstoy at Yasnaya Polyana occupies a special place in his memoirs.
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Unlike Tolstoy, Rilke believed that the artist is not merely a channel of God’s will, embodying His supreme plan, but that he ’himself participates in the building of this God’, moving towards Him as ’the last, most cherished goal’:
And although the place of this meeting will be prepared by all generations of artists, ’ only one will reach it», because ’ all who create are the ancestors of this Solitary One», the Artist of the last times, who will become God:
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