ABSTRACT
The history of influences in a poet of Rainer Maria Rilke's sensitivity does not lend itself to clear demarcations and border-lines. Rilke had become familiar with Auguste Rodin's work as early as 1897, and met Heinrich Vogeler in April 1898, his first stay in Worpswede being at the end of that year. The common denominator is a discernible concern with the process of Dingwerdung, where the emphasis is not merely, as critical tradition dictates, on the marmoreal, lapidary implications of the first syllable 'Ding', but rather on the process of perception that enacts the 'Ding' into life, the '-Werdung'. It is in this spirit that we must approach Rilke's involvement with Worpswede, a seminal period which is often strangely neglected by critics, since it is perhaps overshadowed by the Russian trips and the subsequent adulation of Rodin. Rilke's marriage on April 29, 1901 to Clara Westhoff made formal a relationship with the plastic arts that had simmered for some years.
