Lutz Näfelt

These poems instantiate a significant cross-cultural and intermedial dialogue between West and East, Europe and Asia, sculpture and poetry, the founder of Buddhism and a Modernist poet. Rilke’s interest in the Buddha was stirred by an Indonesian statue in Auguste Rodin’s garden in Meudon which the French sculptor had procured (along with other Buddha statues) from the 1900 World Expo in Paris.