Blick auf den Tiergarten mit weißen Kugeln (Parkbild), by Max Beckmann © akg-images

When we try to get at a work of art, words of criticism fail worse than anything—they give rise only to more or less happy misunderstandings.” So wrote Rainer Maria Rilke in 1903, in his first reply to the nineteen-year-old soldier-in-training Franz Xaver Kappus, who had sent a plea for guidance along with some (presumably woeful) efforts at poetry. The dismissal of criticism was an elegant way to avoid giving the neophyte too specific an evaluation—Rilke would later decline to help Kappus get published.…