Today in an essay about Käthe Kollwitz and Ernst Barlach’s use of hands, I found a wonderful passage from a letter by Barlach. And I found a photo of this sculpture. There is a dignity in the way Barlach portrays this woman — somehow the abjectness of her posture doesn’t feel like a slur on her, or a condescension. And the beauty of the lines doesn’t feel like he’s taking poverty lightly and making it pretty to look at. Instead, this sculpture feels to me like a reflection on how helpless we all are as human beings, how powerless we are almost all of the time to shift the world and keep it from hurting us, or hurting who and what we love. And yet we are here; and somehow the beauty of the lines and of the bronze say that it matters that we’re here, even though we are so fragile. And that it is right to show up asking for mercy.
[Russische Bettlerin (Russian Beggarwoman), Ernst Barlach]
„Ob man in seiner Kunst, immer auf das unermeßliche Elend hinweisen muß? Gewiß, wenn man das Müssen fühlt. Vorerst will man gestalten, wohl dem, der den Ort findet, in dem seine Fähigkeit zur Gestaltung sich heimisch fühlt. Vielleicht könnte man sagen, wer nicht andern helfen kann, tut wenigstens sein Teil, wenn er aufrüttelt und erschüttert. Der eine so, der eine anders. Vorübergehen an dem Grausen, das um Hilfe ruft, und dann irgend was Belanglos-Niedliches machen, ist schäbig.“
(Must one, in one’s art, always point to immeasurable misery? Certainly, if one feels the compulsion. First one wants to give shape, and it is well for the one who finds the place where his capacity for giving shape feels at home. Maybe one could say that those who can’t help others at least do their part if they shake up and unsettle. One this way, the one differently. Walking by the thing that is awful, and that is calling for help, and then making some irrelevant-cute thing, that’s shabby.”)
[Ernst Barlach, letter to Adolf Scheer, Güstrowm Feb. 26 1930, in: Ernst Barlach, Die Briefe II. 1925-1938, Friedrich Droß, München, 1968, quoted by Gudrun Fritsch.]