As a homage to
Rilke, the painter
Cy Twombly did a triptych titled
Analysis of the Rose as Sentimental Despair. Described by the revered critic David Sylvester as '
a marvellous investigation into the possibilities of thick pink paint', it is a truly a visual equivalent of Rilke's elusive
epitaph,
'ROSE, OH THE PURE CONTRADICTION, DELIGHT
OF BEING NO ONE'S SLEEP UNDER SO MANY LIDS'
It was painted in 1985, when Twombly was beginning a line of enquiry into weeping matter on canvas - to be brought to a fireworks-like climax in his gesamtkunstwerke, 'Say Goodbye, Catullus, to the Shores of Asia Minor'. Unusually for Cy, there is little evidence of the hand in these markings. It is bruised, clotted, like some kind of natural stain or secretion. There is a curious, poignant tension between this dissolving melancholy and the casual scrawl on the plaques above, which can barely be deciphered as Rilke's epitaph in its original German.