10 Facts About Baladine Klossowska

Baladine Klossowska was mother to controversial modernist painter Balthus as well as the writer Pierre Klossowski, and the final muse and love of the poet Rainer Maria Rilke.

Baladine Klossowska's father, Abraham Baer Spiro, was a Lithuanian Jewish cantor, who moved his family from Korelichi in Novogrudok district of Minsk Governorate to Breslau in 1873.

The couple separated permanently in 1917, and Baladine Klossowska took her sons to Switzerland.

Baladine Klossowska met Bohemian-Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke in 1919.

Rilke, eleven years Baladine Klossowska's senior, had during those Paris years socialized with an older generation of artists and intellectuals, while Baladine Klossowska and Erich had been young upcomers.

Baladine Klossowska helped Rilke establish his residence in Muzot, Switzerland, finding and directing the renovations for him of the Chateau de Muzot.

Baladine Klossowska, who gave Rilke a Christmas gift of Ovid's Metamorphisis in 1920 and a postcard image of Orpheus, is generally understood to have crystallized the ideas that enabled him to see this cycle in a form appropriate to his poetic voice.

Rilke fans are divided in their opinions as to whether she was a positive or negative force on his life and writing, and Baladine Klossowska's reputation has been largely defined by whether or not Rilke's critics found her influence sympathetic.

Baladine Klossowska lived in Paris at 69 rue de la Glaciere in her final years.

Baladine Klossowska died at the home of her son Pierre, in Bagneux, Hauts-de-Seine.