Being like Cézanne... : remarks on modernist aesthetics of presence

The article discusses problems connected with anthropological aesthetics, involving relations between the identity of a modernist artist, his aesthetic ideas and creative praxis. A "meeting" of Rainer Maria Rilke and Cezanne’s art and biography, described in letters exchanged between the poet and his wife, is analysed. The true influence that Cezanne had on Rilke, his understanding of art and his creative process, seems to stem from mutual pressure between literature and painting. Thus, the mythology of creation forms thanks to a unique co-dependency network reconciling antagonisms between reality and fiction, words and images, aesthetics and morality.