The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge
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This article may be expanded with text translated from the corresponding article in German. (June 2019) Click [show] for important translation instructions.
The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge
The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge.jpg
Author Rainer Maria Rilke
Original title Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge
Translator M. D. Herter Norton
Country Austria-Hungary
Language German
Genre Autobiographical novel
Publisher Insel Verlag
Publication date 1910
Pages Two volumes; 191 and 186 p. respectively (first edition hardcover)
The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge was Rainer Maria Rilke's only novel. It was written whilst Rilke lived in Paris, and was published in 1910. The novel is semi-autobiographical, and is written in an expressionistic style. The work was inspired by Sigbjørn Obstfelder's work A Priest's Diary and Jens Peter Jacobsen's second novel Niels Lyhne of 1880, which traces the fate of an atheist in a merciless world.
The book was first issued in English under the title Journal of My Other Self.[1]
See also
Le Monde's 100 Books of the Century
icon Novels portal
References
M. D. Herter Norton (tr.). New York: W. W. Norton, 1949, 1992. Translator's Foreword, p. 8.
External links
Wikiquote has quotations related to: Rainer_Maria_Rilke#The_Notebooks_of_Malte_Laurids_Brigge_(1910)
English translation of Notebooks
Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge at Project Gutenberg (in German)
Original text at zeno.org (in German)
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말테의 수기 소득공제
라이너 마리아 릴케 (지은이),
문현미 (옮긴이) 민음사 2005-01-15
==
책소개
라이너 마리아 릴케의 장편소설이자 대표작 <말테의 수기>가 재출간되었다. 책은 사건이 아닌 상상과 기억의 단편만으로 삶의 본질과 인간 실존 문제를 탁월하게 형상화해 낸 일기체 소설. 릴케가 파리 생활의 절망과 고독을 통해 29살부터 쓰기 시작해 6년 뒤인 1910년에 출간한 것이다.
원제를 그대로 번역하면 '말테 라우리츠 브리게의 수기'로 체념 의식과 개개인의 고유한 삶과 죽음은 아랑곳없이 절망적인 대도시의 양상을 체험에서 담아낸 기록이다. 거리에 앉아 구걸하는 여자, 죽기 위해 자선병원을 찾아가는 인간, 죽음조차 대량생산되는 대도시의 비정함 등이 섬세하게 그려졌다.접기
목차
제1부
제2부
작품 해설
작가 연보
===
책속에서
아버지의 유해는 뜰을 마주한 방에 안치되었고 양쪽으로 촛불이 높게 켜져 있었다. 꽃 향기가 한꺼번에 울리는 여러 가지 소리처럼 섞여서 무슨 냄새인지 알 수가 없었다. 눈을 감은 아버지의 말끔한 얼굴은 무언가 조용하게 회상하려는 듯한 표정이었다. 아버지에겐 수렵관의 제복이 입혀졌으나, 어떤 이유에서인지는 모르겠지만 푸른 띠가 아니고 하얀 띠가 매여 있었다. 두 손은 마주 잡혀 있지 않고 비스듬하게 포개어져 있어, 부자연스럽고 무의미하게 보였다. 몹시 고통받았다는 이야기를 간단히 들었지만 그의 얼굴에서는 아무런 흔적도 찾아볼 수 없었다. 아버지의 모습은 손님이 묵다가 떠나가 버린 방의 가구처럼 정리되어 있었다. 나는 아버지의 그런 죽은 모습을 그전에 이미 자주 본 듯이 느껴졌다.
밑줄긋기
P.42Cinema Paradiso
아, 그러나 사람이 젊어서 시를 쓰게 되면, 훌륭한 시를 쓸 수 없다.
시를 쓰기 위해서는 때가 오기까지 기다려야 하고 한평생, 되도록이면 오랫동안, 의미와 감미를 모아야 한다.
그러려면 *아주 *마지막에 *열 줄의 *성공한 *시행을 쓸 수 있을 것다. 시란 사람들이 주장하는 것처럼 가정이 아니고, (사실 감정은 일찍부터 가질 수 있는 거다) 경험이기 때문이다.
P.42Cinema Paradiso
엄청나게 많은 인간들이 살고 있지만, 얼굴은 그것보다 훨씬 더 많다. 누구나가 여러 가지의 얼굴을 가지고 있기 때문이다.
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추천글
장석주 (시인, 소설가, 문학평론가): <지금 어디선가 누군가 울고있다> (문학의 문학 刊)
함정임 (소설가, 교수): 수기手記, 기억의 현상학적 환원 더보기
저자 소개
지은이: 라이너 마리아 릴케 저자파일 신간알리미 신청
최근작 : <릴케>,<[큰글씨책] 아내에게 보내는 편지>,<아내에게 보내는 편지> … 총 216종 (모두보기)
20세기를 대표하는 시인 릴케는 보헤미아 출신답게 평생을 떠돌며 실존의 고뇌에 번민하는 삶을 살았다. 오스트리아-헝가리 제국의 지배를 받던 체코 프라하의 독일계 가정에서 1875년에 태어난 그의 어린 시절은 스스로의 정체성을 찾지 못한 불우한 삶이었다. 첫딸을 잃은 어머니는 릴케를 여자처럼 키웠으며, 군인 출신 아버지의 못다 이룬 꿈을 위해 5년간 군사학교를 다녀야 했다. 몸이 허약했던 릴케는 사관학교를 중도에 그만두지 않을 수 없었으며, 프라하 대학에 들어가 문학을 공부하기 시작했다. 문학청년이었던 릴케는 뮌헨 대학교로 적을 옮긴 후 운명의 여인 루 살로메를 만나 정신적 문학적으로 성숙하게 된다. 루 살로메와의 두 차례 러시아 여행에서 돌아온 릴케는 독일 화가마을 보르프스베데에 정착하였다. 그곳 화가들과의 교류를 통해 화가의 눈으로 사물을 바라보는 안목을 키우게 되고, 로댕의 제자였던 조각가 클라라 베스토프와 결혼하였다. 그 후 릴케는 파리로 가 로댕의 조수가 되었으며, 세잔의 작품에 탐닉해 그 구도적 작가정신을 닮으려 하였다. 파리 생활의 체험은 자전소설 《말테의 수기》에 담겼다. 러시아 여행의 성과는 《기도시집》, 보르프스베데 시대에 주로 쓴 시는 《형상시집》과 《신시집》으로 묶였다. 방랑의 삶을 계속한 릴케는 1922년 장편 연작시 《두이노의 비가》와 《오르페우스에게 바치는 소네트》를 완성하고, 51세가 되던 1926년에 스위스의 요양원에서 백혈병으로 세상을 떠났다.접기
옮긴이: 문현미 저자파일 신간알리미 신청
최근작 : <시를 사랑하는 동안 별은 빛나고>,<사랑이 돌아오는 시간>,<바람의 뼈로 현을 켜다> … 총 14종 (모두보기)
부산에서 태어나 부산대학교 국어교육학과와 독일 아헨대학교(문학박사)를 졸업하고, 독일 본대학교 교수를 역임했습니다. 1998년 『시와시학』으로 등단하여 작품 활동을 시작하면서, 시집으로 『기다림은 얼굴이 없다』 『가산리 희망발전소로 오세요』 『아버지의 만물상 트럭』 『그날이 멀지 않다』 『깊고 푸른 섬』 『바람의 뼈로 현을 켜다』 『사랑이 돌아오는 시간』 등과 번역서 『라이너 마리아 릴케 문학선집』(1권∼4권) 안톤 슈낙 『우리를 행복하게 하는 것들』 등을 펴냈으며, 박인환문학상, 풀꽃문학상 등을 수상했다.
현재 백석대학교에서 백석문화예술관장으로 문학과 그림이 함께하는 예술의 현장을 일구며 국문학을 강의하고 있습니다.접기
4
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100자평
구매자 (1)전체 (4)
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공감순
hsislee 2013-01-17
2~3번 정독한다 하더라도 완전 이해가 어려운 책. 명사들이 권장하는 책이고 널리 알려져 읽어봤으나 너무 난해하고 형상화가 어렵다. 번역의 한계도 있어보이고, 세월을 흘려 두고 볼 일이
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마이리뷰쓰기
구매자 (6)전체 (16)
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평범 속의 비범 2005-07-12
1980년대, 5공화국의 서슬이 시퍼렇던 시절, 우리는 한때 릴케의 <말테의 수기> 속으로 도피한 적이 있다. 도피라기 보다는 말테의 수기 초반부에 나오는, 파리에서 방황하는 말테와 우리를 동일시한 적이 있다. 뒷부분의 머릿속에서 벌어지는 일에는 관심이 없었지만, 말테의 그 한서린 듯한 가난과 죽음에 대한 독백에 모두들 가슴을 쳤던 기억이 난다. 마지막 에피소드 <돌아온 탕아>에서의 릴케의 독특한 사랑 해석에 전율을 느끼며 그 어려웠던, 아팠던 80년대 고비에 우리는 이 말테의 수기를 칙처럼 캐먹으며 살아남았다. 40여 개의 에피소드로 되어 있으므로 자신에게 맞는 부분을 자기 나름대로 해석해서 마음속에 가져도 무방하리라 여겨진다. 이 책은 그러므로 현대소설의 효시로까지 인정받고 있는 것이다. 책: 어려우니까 읽는다. 쉬운 길은 피해 가리라.
공감 (34) 댓글 (0)
진교왕 2021-08-20
니체와 만나고 14살 연상의 살로메를 연모하고, 톨스토이, 도스토예프스키, 앙드레 지드를 만나고, 로댕의 비서로 1년간 일한 적이 있는 릴케. 라이너 마리아 릴케,윤동주가 별을 헤이며 노래한 이도 릴케였지요.
˝비둘기, 강아지, 토끼, 노새, 노루, 프랑시스 잠, 라이너 마리아 릴케 이런 시인들의 이름을 불러봅니다.˝
그가 28세부터 6년간 쓴 일기체 소설 <말테의 수기>를 읽어봤습니다.
˝사람들은 살기 위해서 여기로 몰려드는데, 나는 오히려 사람들이 여기서 죽을 것 같다는 생각이 든다˝란 첫문장으로 시작하는데,<지하로부터의 수기>처럼 내면 세계를 다룬 문장들이 아름다우나, 난해하고 몹시 지루합니다.
소설이지만 줄거리가 없고, 사건이 아닌 상상과 기억만으로,71개의 소주제가 릴케의 시선으로 그려집니다. 공포, 얼굴, 생명, 죽음, 아침, 달, 시(poet), 도서관, 질병, 불안 등등으로 삶의 본질을 논합니다.
줄거리가 없는데, 설마(?) 하면서 믿지 못하는 사람도 더 있을 겁니다. 릴케가 파리에서 보낸 암담한 생활의 여러 단편적 수기가 모아진 형태인데 어느 글에선 ˝여러 주제가 상호보완하면서 균형을 이루고, 새로운 모티브로 끊임없이 변주된다˝라고 멋있게 말하던데, 많은 사람들이 말하는 처음 맛 본 평양냉면처럼 슴슴한 맛.
나중에 그 의미를 찾게 될지도 모르는 숨은 보물찾기 같은 책으로 명하고 읽자마자, 책꽂이 맨 윗칸에 꽂아두었습니다.
공감 (12) 댓글 (0)
kinye91 2017-04-06
너무도 유명한 이름이다. 라이너 마리아 릴케.
그러나 이름만큼 그의 작품을 읽지는 않았다. 그냥 릴케라는 이름으로 존재했다. 다른 시인들의 시에 등장하는 릴케, 또는 다른 작품에 등장하는 릴케.
읽지 않아도 너무 유명한 작가, 릴케. 그의 시집을 한 권 읽었고, 소설집을 한 권 읽은 것이 전부. 이 말테의 수기는 읽어야지 하면서도 늘 미루기만 했던 책.
드디어 읽었다. 읽으면서 릴케의 이 작품이 왜 유명한지 잘 모르겠다는 생각을 했다. 말테라는 주인공이 자신의 삶과 생각을 자유롭게 쓰는 형식으로 이루어진 책인데, 서양의 문화, 역사에 대해서 잘 알고 있지 못하기 때문에 커다른 감흥을 느낄 수가 없었다. 오히려 릴케라는 이름때문에 인내심을 갖고 읽었다고나 할까.
릴케와 관련된 여인들의 이야기가 많이 나오고, 그를 중심으로 사랑에 대해서 생각해 보게도 하겠지만, 말테의 수기에서 재미와 흥미를 느낄 수 있는 부분은 이야기 속의 이야기다.
조금은 환상적인 부분이 있는 이야기들도 등장하고 있으니, 사실적인 내용만이 실렸다고는 할 수 없다.
그럼에도 릴케의 삶을 잘 알고 있다면 이 말테의 수기를 흥미있게 읽어갈 수 있으리란 생각을 한다. 이러나 저러나 내게 이 말테의 수기는 이런 문장들로 기억될 것이다.
시에 대하여, 시인에 대하여 한 구절들.
... 사람이 젊어서 시를 쓰게 되면, 훌륭한 시를 쓸 수 없다. 시를 쓰기 위해서는 때가 오기까지 기다려야 하고 한평생, 되도록이면 오랫동안, 의미(意味)와 감미(甘味)를 모아야 한다. 그러면 아주 마지막에 열 줄의 성공한 시행을 쓸 수 있을 거다. 시란 사람들이 주장하는 것처럼 감정이 아니고 (사실 감정은 일찍부터 가질 수 있는 거다), 경험이기 때문이다. 한 줄의 시를 쓰기 위해서는 수많은 도시들, 사람들, 그리고 사물들을 보아야 한다. 동물에 대해서 알아야 하고, 새들이 어떻게 나는지 느껴야 하며, 작은 꽃들이 아침에 피어날 때의 몸짓을 알아야 한다. 시인은 돌이켜 생각할 수 있어야 한다. ... (26-27쪽)
릴케는 시인이 되었다. 소설가가 되었다. 그는 작가가 되었다. 작가가 되기까지 그가 경험한 일들, 그런 일들이 이 말테의 수기에 나와 있다고 보면 된다.
이렇게 글을 쓰기 위해 말테는 많은 경험을 하고, 많은 사람들을 만나고, 관찰하고, 책을 읽고 글을 쓰게 된다. 그 과정이 나타나 있다.
그래서 이 책은 한 사람의 작가가 탄생하기까지의 과정이라고 보면서 읽으면 된다. 그렇게 읽으면 책에 나오는 유럽의 역사, 문화 상황을 자세히 알지 못해도 다양한 경험을 한 사람이 어떻게 해서 작가로 탄생하게 되는지를 생각할 수 있다.
이렇게 라이너 마리아 릴케의 한 작품을 읽었다. 다음에는 그의 예술론이 담겨 있는 아직 읽지 못하고 있는 '로댕론'과 '젊은 예술가에게 보내는 편지'를 읽어야겠다. 그에게 한 발 더 다가가도록.
공감 (11) 댓글 (0)
corcovado 2016-03-16
말테의 수기는 짬짬이 시간을 쪼개서 읽었다.사실 그렇게 읽을 책은 아니다.가볍게 산책가듯이 이부분에서 책을 덮고 다음날 이어서 읽을때 머리속에서 ˝옛다,지난이야기˝하고 기억을 되살릴수 없기 때문이다.(실제로 이어읽으려고 앞부분을 복습하다가 ｀어?처음보는 대목인것같은데?｀라는 생각을 종종 했다.)그러니까 지난˝이야기˝가 없다는 얘기다.도대체가 줄거리가 없다.이것을 ˝소설˝이 아니라 ˝수기˝라고 부르고 싶은데 책속 주인공은 릴케가 아니라 ˝말테˝라는 작자다.고로 어쩔수 없이 소설이라고 받아들인다.기어이 ˝줄거리˝라고 우겨야 한다면 아마 ˝말테가 파리라는 큰도시로 가서 느낀 환멸감을 수기로 쓴 이야기˝라고 해야겠다.
릴케는 책속에 ˝말테˝라는 인물을 만드는데 ˝말테˝는 종종 과거를 회상한다.근데 그 과거회상의 대목에서 자꾸 릴케와 겹친다는것이다.(9살까지 여자아이로 키워진 릴케와 ｀소피｀라는 여자애로 분장하고 엄마와 장난치는 말테)무튼 이 ˝말테˝는 필력이 어마어마한데 예컨대 ˝빈 종이같은 기분으로 들어갔다˝던지 ˝벽이 아직 거기에 있는지 확인 하듯이˝라던지 ˝환자가 녹색 가래를 피 어린 눈꺼풀 속에 뱉은 듯 보이는 그 지짐거리는 눈˝이라던지 등등.셀수도 없이 ˝으아니!이런 기똥찬 묘사를!˝하고 감탄하게 만드는 구절들을 사용했다.
말테는 파리에서 굉장한 실망감을 느낀것같다.보통 현재에 만족하지 않는자들이 과거에 더 매달리기때문이다.근데 말테는 과거에 대해서도 썩 우호적이진 않다.그냥 단지 적어도 과거의 사람들은 인생자체에 ˝죽음˝이 자연스레 따라오는것을 안다는 부분을 언급할뿐이다.(지금의 사람들은 죽음이 질병에 붙어오는것이라 생각한다고 썼다.)그럼 과거도 그다지 별로고 현재도 그다지 별로고.대체 뭘 쓰려는 것인가?글쎄다,나는 릴케가 아니니 알 길이 없지만,모든게 다 변해버린것에 대한 씁쓸함(예나 지금이나 더 좋을게 없지만)을 기록해둔것같다.책중에 귀족이었던 여인의 아버지의 이야기에서,˝아버지는 어느 아파트에서 돌아가셨다.˝라는 한구절에 적잖이 충격을 받았다.귀족으로서 땅과 집을 소지했던 사람들이 모든것을 빼앗기고 도시의 아파트로 내몰려 살았다는 이야기에 겨우내 가까워져 맘속으로 그 변화를 느끼게된 대목이었다.또한 현재의 우리를 떠올리기도 했다.옛날엔 다들 자기의 집 한채씩은 갖고있었다.근데 지금은 다들 서울이나 서울인근에서 남의 집을 빌려쓴다.책속의 문장을 인용하자면˝아버지는 어느 월세방에서 돌아가셨다.˝가 되는것이다.말테는 이런 변화에 ˝공포˝라는 단어를 많이 썼다.읽는 나도 별반 다르진 않았다.거기에 ˝슬픔˝을 더하면 될것같다.
책은 내내 피폐한 얼굴로 담담히 이야기를 담아주는데 받아들이는 사람이 되려 오열을 하게된다.실제로 읽는 동안 주체할수없이 크게 울고싶은 심정이었다.
덤:보편적으로 ˝어렵다˝라고 평가한 책임을 알고 샀다.어렵사리 책에 질질 끌려가면서 ｀알것같기도 한데...｀하면서 괜히 아는척을 하다가 책속 구절에 뒷통수를 시원하게 얻어맞았다.그러니까 말테가 한때 독서에 빠져 모든 책을 읽을 준비가 되어 허겁지겁 읽기 시작했는데 그때 그는 책을 제대로 읽을수가 없었다는것이다.그럼에도 한권씩 필사적으로 매달려 뭔가 비상한 일을 하는 사람처럼 굴었다고한다.이 구절들을 읽으면서 온몸의 ˝양심의 가책˝이라는것들이 모공 하나하나에서 쉼없이 뿜어져나오는 기분이었다.
공감 (7) 댓글 (0)
월천예진 2018-11-13
말테의 수기
책을 구입하고 기록을 남기는 습관이 있다. 구입한 날짜와 구입경로 그리고 마지막으로 이름을 적어두고 있다. 대학시절 혹은 더 오래전부터 지금까지 변하지 않는 습관이다. 말테의 수기의 겉 날개를 열면 2005년이라는 숫자가 적혀있다. 4월 28일. 오래된 책에서는 매캐한 냄새가 났다. 책을 끼고 있노라면 이따금 눈과 목이 따가워진다. 2005년 그해 봄 4월. 나는 왜 이 책을 구입했을까.
말테의 수기는 이번이 두 번째 도전이다. 두 번째 읽기가 아닌, 도전이라는 표현을 쓴 것은 이 책을 아는 사람들은 아마도 백번 이해해주리라 생각한다. 책은 정말이지 읽다, 라는 표현보다는 도전, 이라는 말이 더 적절한 듯하다. 첫 번째 도전은 실패로 끝났다. 그리고 두 번째 도전은 지금 이렇게 이어지고 있다.
말테의 수기는 어떤 책일까. 어려운 책이었다. 난해한 책이었다. 그런데 자꾸만 여러 가지가 생각이 나는 책이었다고 고백한다. 작가 라이너 마리아 릴케는 신입생 시절, 들고다니던 문고판 서적에서 알게 되었던 것 같다. 지금은 잘 기억나지 않지만 나는 그 책을 아니 그 책의 제목을 좋아했던 기억이 있다. 책을 읽다보면 작가가 꼭 내게 충언과 조언을 아끼지 않는 것처럼 느끼며 혼자 착각 속에서 즐거워하던 때도 있었다. 그러나 즐거웠던 기억은 거기까지.
말테의 수기는 내가 간직하고 있었던 작가 라이너 마리아 릴케의 첫인상을 살짝 뒤틀며 바꿔놓았다. 물론 완벽하게 바꿔놓지는 않았다. 그 까닭을 생각해보면 이 책을 통해서도 역시 릴케가 지니는 시인으로서의 작가적인 심오한 세계를 들여다볼 수 있었기 때문이라고 기록하려 한다.
소설이라고 하기에는 스토리의 연개가 부족하다. 기승전결을 따지기 어렵고, 절정이나 중심사건과 배경을 논하기에도 정돈되지 않는 서사가 이어진다. 오히려 이미지를 따라가며 서술하는 형식으로 읽혔던 것 같다. 그런 까닭에 이 작품은 소설 보다는 시 창작의 기법에 더 가까이 접근했다고 볼 수도 있을 것 같다. 시를 창작할 때 그 시작은 이미지를 찾는 것이고 그것을 구체화하는 것이다. 대학시절 시 창작 시간에 친구가 자신이 쓴 소설에서 문장 몇 개를 가지고 와 산문시를 써냈던 기억이 난다. 소설이 시가 될 수도 있다는 것을 그때 처음 알았다. 그렇다면 반대로 시도 소설이 될 수가 있는 것이었을까. 교수는 이미지를 강조했었다. 책 말테의 수기는 그런 차원에서 들여다보면 모든 것들이 이미지화로 되어 있다는 생각이 강하게 든다.
책은 1부와 2부로 나누어져 있다. 1부에서는 나름의 자잘한 스토리가 이어지고 있다면, 2부에서는 작가의 서선이 옮겨가는 대로 이야기가 직접 독자를 끌어들이고 있다는 생각을 하게 된다. 이를테면 작가가 사과를 보고 있다고 가정해보자. 사과는 빨갛고 꼭지는 갈색으로 아직 싱싱하다고 상상하자. 작가의 시선은 곧 누군가 이 사과를 먹게 될 것인데, 그 누군가의 삶을, 그의 하루를, 바로 옆에서 살펴보기 시작한다는 식이다. 그는 아침이 되었음에도 불구하고 아직 침대에서 일어나지도 않고, 그의 옷차림을 남루하고 주름투성이며 밑단이 너덜너덜하게 풀려나간 낡은 잠옷을 입었다는 식이다. 이야기는 한없이 이어지고 다시 또 시선이 옮겨가면 새로운 곳에서 이어지기를 반복한다는 형식으로 이해했던 것 같다. 때문에 순간 한눈을 팔다보면 무슨 이야기를 하고 있는 것인가, 라며 이맛살을 찡그리게 되는 것 같다.
그러나 릴케의 강렬한 장점 중에 하나인 그만의 섬세한 시선은, 끝까지 지루할지언정 독자들을 쉽게 놓아주지는 않았다. 그의 시선에서 나오는 문장은 무척 사실적인 동시에 감각적이고 현실적이다, 라고 생각한다.
소설에서 작가는 <보는 법을 배우고 있다 >는 표현을 쓰고 있는데, 이 이야기는 소설이나 시나 작품으로 형상화하기 위해 공통으로 요구되는 ‘관찰의 중요성’을 논하고 있는 것과 같다고 볼 수 있다.
인물을 관찰하고, 주변을 관찰하고, 시대를 관찰하며, 인물을 둘러싼 사건을 관찰하는 일이 그 과정이다. 이 과정이 바로 릴케가 말하는 <보는 법을 배우다>와 같다는 생각을 하게 된다.
파리에서 보았던 암울한 현실은 책의 시작을 더욱 무겁게 끌어내고 있다. 병원이 등장하고, 병원으로 가서 죽음을 맞이하려는 사람들의 이야기가 이어진다. 인간의 삶에서 어두운 면들을 들추어내어 카메라 렌즈의 시선으로 들여다보는 듯 세밀하고 상세해서 그래서 더욱 질척이는 듯하다. 분위기는 어둡고 무거워보였다. 죽음이란 그리고 삶이란, 혹은 실존이란 것들을 생각하게 하는 책이었던 것 같다. 말테라는 주인공의 어린시절의 회상과, 직접 경험하고 혹은 전해들어왔던 기괴한 경험과, 기억들의 이야기가 내 기억에 남는다.
죽은 자를 본다는 것은 행운일까. 충격일까. 신비일까. 공포일까. 책은 종종 죽은 이들의 모습을 가족들에게 보여주곤 한다. 그것이 환영인지, 사실인지. 현실 같은 비현실을 보여주는작가의 이야기에 그저 끌려가는 것을 느꼈다. 영혼 그리고 환영과 같은 것들을 인지하는 것은 어쩌면 두려움의 심리를 반영하는 인간의 내적표현이라고 할 수 있을까. 어린아이가 지니는 보통의 평범한 두려움을 포함해서, 모든 인간이 숨겨놓은 채 드러내지 않는 내적 두려움 같은 것일지도 모르겠다. 소설에서 어른들은 영혼 앞에서 다양한 반응들을 보이기도 한다.
글이 너무 무겁다. 책이 워낙 분위기를 압도하다보니 내가 쓰는 글도 질척이는가 싶다. 조금 가볍게 가보자. 말테의 수기에는 인간의 많은 이야기가 담겨져 있다. 삶. 그보다 앞선 죽음. 많은 수의 두려움과 공포 그리고 이 모든 암울한 것을 뛰어넘는 사랑을 포함해서 아름다움에 대한 것들을 이야기하고 있다.
이제 끝으로 조금의 여유를 가지고 여담 한가지를 말해보자.
우리는 별 헤는 밤으로 잘 알려진 윤동주 시인을 알고 있다. 갑자기 동주 이야기는 왜 끄집어내는가, 한다면 내가 기억하는 동주의 시중에 바로 말테의 수기를 쓴 라이너 마리아 릴케라는 이름이 들어간 시를 기억하기 때문이다. 시인 윤동주가 릴케의 영향을 받았다는 것은 잘 알려진 사실이다. 책을 읽으면서 직접 확인하게 된 부분을 인용으로 남겨본다. 어떤 면에서는 분위기가 비슷하다고 할 수도 있지만, 시인 윤동주는 ‘자아’ 라는 주제에 더 침잠하고 집중했다는 생각을 했던 것 같다.
「그는 소녀들의 이름을 불러본다. 꼬리가 달린 길쭉한 구식 문자로 나직하고도 날씬하게 씌어진 이름들을, 그리고 그들보다는 나이든 여자 친구들의 어른이 된 이름들을, 그 이름을 불러보면 약간 운명의 음향이 따른다. 약간은 실망과 죽음의 음향도
-말테의 수기p50」
-윤동주의 시 ‘별 헤는 밤’ 일부....-
「어머님, 나는 별 하나에 아름다운 말 한마디씩 불러봅니다. 소학교 때 책상을 같이했던 아이들의 이름과, 패 경 옥 이런 이국 소녀들의 이름과, 벌써 애기 어머니가 된 계집애들의 이름과, 가난한 이웃 사람들의 이름과, 비둘기, 강아지, 토끼, 노새, 노루, 프랑시스 잠, 라이너 마리아 릴케 이런 시인의 이름을 불러봅니다.」
「의사는 나를 이해하지 못했다. 아무것도 이해하지 못했다. 그건 정말 설명하기도 힘들었다. 전기 요법을 시도해 보기도 했다.-말테의 수기 p64」
-윤동주 시 ‘병원’ 일부-
「나도 모를 아픔을 오래 참다 처음으로 이곳에 찾아왔다. 그러나 나의 늙은 의사는 젊은이의 병을 모른다. 나한테는 병이 없다고 한다. 이 지나친 시련, 이 지나친 피로, 나는 성내서는 안 된다.」
자세하고 깊이 있는 이야기는 전문가들에게 가서 들어봐야 할 일이고, 감상과 느낌 그리고 책에 대한 이야기를 적는 나로서는 여기까지만 잡담을 정리하는 게 맞는 것 같다. 차후에 릴케와 윤동주에 관한 책을 찾아봐야 할 듯싶다.
책 말테의 수기를 읽다가 정확하게 가운데 부분이 쩌억 갈라지는 사고 아닌 사고가 있었다. 오래된 책이라 어쩔 수 없는 일이기는 하지만, 누렇게 빛바랜 종이하며 갈라져 찢겨져버린 책이 안쓰러운 것까지 어쩌랴.... 이건 분명 여담이다.
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kelly110 2015-09-18
원문: http://blog.naver.com/kelly110/220484432356
이 책을 두 번 읽다 포기한 적이 있었다. 특별한 사건도, 줄거리도 없이 이어지는 내용에 도무지 흥미가 느껴지지 않았기 때문이다. 얼마 전 이어령님이 쓴 책을 읽으면서 이 책을 영성을 느낄 수 있는 책으로 소개되는 것을 보고 다시 도전해야겠다는 생각을 하고 오랜 시간을 들여 읽었다. 하지만 이 책은 아직도 나에게 어렵다.
일기 같은 형식을 띠고 주인공이 가는 장소에 대한 묘사와 주인공이 생각한 것들이 묘하게 접목되어 있는 이 책을 읽고 있노라면 릴케가 당시에 경험하고 생각했던 것들을 생생하게 접할 수 있다. 죽음과 생명이 늘 스며 있는 파리의 거리가 우리가 생각하는 것만큼 낭만적이지만은 않다. 작가가 투영된 주인공은 지저분하고도 죽음이 어디에나 있는 파리의 거리를 거닐며 삶과 죽음에 대해 생각한다. 누군가 살기 위해 들어온 파리에서 그는 죽어간다. 그는 살러 온 것인가? 죽으러 온 것인가?
이 물음은 누구에게나 해 볼 수 있는 것이기도 하다. 언젠가는 모두 죽게 되지만 사는 동안 우리는 기쁨도 슬픔도 누리며 살아있음을 감격하기도 한다. 얼마 전 서울 시내 도로를 운전하고 가다가 문득 ‘100년쯤 전에 이곳을 지나다니던 사람들이 다들 죽고 땅에 묻혔겠구나’ 하는 생각을 했다. 수많은 시간 속에서 한 지점을 왔다가 가는 인생이라는 생각이 들었다. 릴케가 말하고자 했던 것이 어쩌면 그런 것이 아니었을까?
삶과 죽음을 생각하며 끊임없이 신의 존재에 대해 감격하고, 사유했던 주인공의 생각을 빌어 자신을 투영한 릴케를 느낄 수 있는 작품이지만 마지막 책장을 덮으며 이런 생각을 했다. “다시 읽어 봐야겠다.”
- 엄청나게 많은 인간들이 살고 있지만, 얼굴은 그것보다 훨씬 더 많다. 누구나가 여러 가지의 얼굴을 가지고 있기 때문이다. (12쪽)
- 나는 불안을 이겨내기 위해 무언가를 했다. 밤새도록 앉아서 글을 썼던 것이다. (23-24쪽)
- 아, 책 읽는 사람들 속에 있는 게 너무도 좋다. 왜 사람들은 늘 책 읽을 때와 같지 않을까? (46쪽)
- 마음이 텅 비어 있는데, 어딘가로 간다는 게 무슨 의미가 있겠는가. 나는 한 장의 빈 종이 같은 기분으로 건물들을 죽 따라 다시 대로를 걸어 올라갔다. (82쪽)
- 명성이라는 것은 발전해 나가는 인간에 대한 공식적인 파괴이며, 군중이 그 사람의 공사장에 몰려들어 쌓아올린 돌들을 밀어내 버리는 그런 것입니다. (92쪽)
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동탄남자 2008-09-07
윤동주의 별헤는 밤을 먼저 떠오르게 하는 시인 릴케...
재미 있는 사실은 본래 민음사 세계문학전집 42번째 책은 이 책이 아니라 '안토니오 그람시'의 '감옥에서 보낸 편지'였던 것이 2005년1월15일자로 바뀌어 등록된 것이 신기하다.
여러가지 사연이 있겠으나 어쨌든 그람시의 '감옥에서 보낸 편지'의 아쉬움을 뒤로 하고 선택한 이 책..
<hr>
일기와 같은 이 소설은 절망과 고독의 파리 생활에 찌들어 있던 스물 아홉의 라이너 마리아 릴케가 서른 다섯에 완성한 그의 유일한 장편 소설이자 대표작이다. 덴마크의 젊은 시인 말테 라우리치 브리게가 암흑같은 파리에서의 생활을 일기쓰듯이 써내려간 작품으로 다소 몽환적이고 우울하며 줄거리 또한 딱히 정해진 것이 없이 오락가락 한다.
굳이 이 작품의 주제를 찾는다면 인간이란 무엇인가. 인생이란 무엇인가에 대한 철학적인 의문에서 출발한다.
주인공 말테는 무명시인으로 덴마크 귀족 출신 28세 청년이다. 그것은 노르웨이의 오프스토펠더의 고독한 삶을 소재로 하면서도 라이너 마리아 릴케 자신의 암울한 파리 생활을 소설 속에 고스란히 녹여냈다.
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요셉아저씨 2011-04-06
<<말테의 수기>>는 남성이면서도 여성적 감수성을 가지고 살아온 '라이너 마리아 릴케'의 풍부한 감수성과 마음을 보여주는 대표적인 작품이다. 프랑스 파리에서 경험한 대도시의 빈곤과 침체 가운데서 큰 충격을 받은 작가는 자신의 정신적 충격과 위기감 가운데서 화자이자 주인공인 '말테'를 탄생시킨다.
<<말테의 수기>> 가운데서 독자는 한 문학 소년이 경험하는 빈곤과 죽음의 공포를 수기를 통해서 읽게 된다. 문화의 중심지이자 번영의 상징이였던 프랑스 파리의 어두운 면은 대도시라는 팽창하는 물질의 이질적인 모습과 그 가운데서도 고독을 맛보며 절망을 경험하며 문학적인 자아를 찾으려는 문학 소년이 머무는 공간이다. 그렇기에 이 작품은 문명 사회 가운데서 방황하는 인간상을 뛰어난 작가의 이해와 통찰력을 보여준다. '로뎅'을 통한 새로운 관점과 시선을 배운것과 문호로서의 뛰어난 문체가 하나로 만난 그 순간을 보여주는 <<말테의 수기>>가운데서 독자는 삶의 본질과 인식을 함께 살펴볼 수 있을 것이다.
9월 11일 툴리에 가에서 접한 삶을 위하여 모여든 사람들에 대하여 죽을 것 같다는 생각과 함께 시작하는 <<말테의 수기>>를 통해서 세밀한 환경과 인물 묘사기법은 작품을 통해서 리얼리티를 더해주며 '화자'가 바라본 '파리'의 한복판으로 독자들은 초대한다. '수기'라는 독특한 형태로 전개되어 나가는 독특한 소설의 진행 방식가운데 매력적인 문체와 문학가로서의 통찰력은 고독과 방랑의 시인으로 불리우는 '라이너 마리아 릴케'의 삶의 경험과 생각을 담고 있기에 독자는 풍부한 상상력이 없음에도 불구하고 자연스럽게 '말테'와 함께 그곳에 머무르는 체험을 하게 된다.
<<말테의 수기>>는 1부와 2부로 나뉘어져 있다. 제목 처럼 화자 '말테'의 일기 형태로 글이 전개되며 특정한 사건에 대해서 이야기 되기 보다는 '말테'의 기억의 단편들이 하나하나 연결되어 소개된다. '말테'의 풍부한 감수성과 통찰력은 문학가로서 그리고 작가인 '라이너 마리아 릴케'와 관계되어진다. 작가는 자신이 경험했던 바를 '말테'라는 인물을 통해서 이야기 한다. 제 1부에서 화자는 내면의 탐구 가운데 죽음과 관계하여 사람들을 생각하며 신의 존재와 인간에 대하여 고민한다. 이러한 화자의 다양한 생각과 상념들은 기실 일반인과는 전혀 다른 관점과 생각이 반영되어져 있다. 생과 사에 대하여 받아들임에 대하여 독자는 '릴케'의 독특하고 아름다운 극적인 면들을 발견하며 <<말테의 수기>>를 읽게 된다. 반면에 제 2부에서는 운명과 사랑 그리고 내면적 부분들에 대한 체험에 관련한 농밀한 접근을 볼 수 있다. 로댕과의 만남을 통해 더욱 발전한 '릴케'의 풍부한 문학적 소양과 소질은 2부를 통해서 더욱 잘 느낄 수 있다.
남성이면서도 여성보다 더 뛰어난 감수성과 시적 감각을 타고 났다는 작가 '릴케' '로댕'을 비롯하여 당대의 거장들과의 교류를 통해서 나날이 발전해나가는 가운데서 맞이한 문학의 개화는 독일문학사에 뚜렷한 흔적으로서 자리하고 있으며 <<말테의 수기>>는 그러한 '릴케'의 수준높은 작품성을 접할 수 있는 뛰어난 작품이다.
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물결처럼 2013-09-09
아, 그러나 사람이 젊어서 시를 쓰게 되면, 훌륭한 시를 쓸 수 없다. 시를 쓰기 위해서는 때가 오기까지 기다려야 하고 한평생, 되도록이면 오랫동안, 의미와 감미를 모아야 한다. 그러면 아주 마지막에 열 줄의 성공한 시행을 쓸 수 있을 거다. 시란 사람들이 주장하는 것처럼 감정이 아니고(사실 감정은 일찍부터 가질 수 있는 거다), 경험이기 때문이다.-26~27쪽
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예신 2010-08-07
몇번씩 이 책의 제목을 들어보기만 했는데도, 이제서야 첫 장을 펼치고, 읽게 된. 우리에게는 익히 시인으로 유명한 라이너 마리아 릴케 작가의 책이다. 릴케는 이 책을 통해 자신의 가슴 속에 있는 말들을 모두 토해 낸 듯해 보인다. 고독함. 온몸으로 느끼고 싶다면, 이 책을 읽어보라고 권해보고 싶다. 일기체 소설이긴 하지만, 날짜가 지정되어 있게 연결되어 있지는 않다. 다만 주인공 자신의 파리에서의 생활을 일기 형식을 빌어 쓴 글로 보면 되겠다.
주인공 브리게는 28살인 남성으로 파리의 6층에 자리잡고 있는 방에서 혼자 살고 있다. 이 브리게라는 인물이 남자인지 여자인지는 100페이지에 가서야 알게 된다. 특별한 직업을 가지고 있는것도 아니고, 그의 소일거리란 책을 읽고, 국립도서관을 방문하고나, 산책을 하고, 가끔씩 병원에 가는 일뿐 그것이 전부이다. 특이한 점은 그가 다른 사람들은 보지 못하는 존재들을 가끔씩 본다는 것이다. 죽은 사람의 존재를.. 아니면 개와 대화를 한다거나.. 이런 현상은 그에게서만 나타나는 것이 아니라, 그의 가족들 전부에게 나타난 현상이었다.
브리게는 자신의 유년시절과 일찍 돌아가신 엄마와 함께한 이야기들을 언급할때면 유독히 더 고독스러워지는듯해 보인다. 그가 타인과는 다르게 목격한 특별한 현상을 그는 병이 있는 것으로 생각하게 되는데, 여기서 그가 들르는 병원은 정신병원일 꺼라고 짐작된다. 그가 거주하고 있는 파리의 고독한 풍경들. 을씨년스럽기 그지없게 묘사된다.
릴케는 자신의 인생을 이 책에 상당히 많이 반영하였다. 그가 어렸을때 엄마에 의해 여자아이처럼 보이도록 키워져 왔다는 것과, 릴케가 <로댕 연구>를 써달라는 위촉을 받고 파리 로댕의 집으로 거처를 옮기면서, 이 '말테의 수기'를 썼음을 보면 더욱 그렇다. 비록 로댕의 집에서 오래 지내지 못하고, 1년후 하숙집으로 거처를 옮겼지만 말이다. 시인 릴케의 고독.. 이 고스란히 느껴지는 글이었다.
다만 아쉬웠던 점은.. 역시 마지막이었지만 말이다. 끝이 아무런 결말도 없이. 그렇게 끝나버린다. 말테의 수기. 고독스러움이 한층 돋보이는 책이 아닐까 한다. 아무런 할일이 없는 가운데, 책만 읽고 싶다.. 라고 주인공 브리게가 읊었을때, 얼마나 동의했던가.. 후후..
나는 아무도 아는 사람 없이, 아무것도 가진 것 없이, 트렁크 하나와 책 상자 하나를 가진 채, 사실 어떤 것에도 호기심 없이 세상을 돌아다니고 있다. 집도 없고 상속받은 물건도 없고 개도 없이 살아가는 생활은 도대체 어떤 생활일까. 최소한 추억이라도 있다면 좋으련만, 그러나 누가 그것을 갖고 있나? 만일 어린 시절의 추억이 있다 해도 그건 땅속에 묻혀버린 것과 같다. 어쩌면 사람은 그 모든 추억에 다다르기 위해서 나이를 먹지 않으면 안 될지도 모른다. 나는 늙는 게 좋다고 생각한다. (p.24)
인생에는 초보자를 위한 학급은 없고, 언제나 마찬가지로 처리해야 할 지극히 힘든 일이 있을 뿐이란다. (p.100)
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The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge
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The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge is Rilke’s major prose work and was one of the earliest publications to introduce him to American readers. The very wide audience which Rilke’s work commands today will welcome the reissue in paperback of this extremely perceptive translation of the Notebooks by M. D. Herter Norton. A masterly translation of one of the first great modernist novels by one of the German language's greatest poets, in which a young man named Malte Laurids Brigge lives in a cheap room in Paris while his belongings rot in storage. Every person he sees seems to carry their death within them and with little but a library card to distinguish him from the city's untouchables, he thinks of the deaths, and ghosts, of his aristocratic family, of which he is the sole living descendant. Suffused with passages of lyrical brilliance, Rilke's semi-autobiographical novel is a moving and powerful coming-of-age story. (less)
Paperback, 237 pages
Published April 17th 1992 by W. W. Norton Company (first published 1910)
Original Title
Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge
Edition Language
English
Characters
Setting
Paris (France)
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Dec 10, 2014Vit Babenco rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge resembles a series of impressionistic paintings…
Malte Laurids Brigge recalls everything that can be recalled and writes his impressions down…
He recalls his childhood, parents, grandparents, a mysterious woman’s ghost, books, moments of love, dark pages of history…
All the suffering is water to poet’s mill. (less)
I am learning to see. Why, I cannot say, but all things enter more deeply into me; nor do the impressions remain at the level where they used to cease. There is a place within me of which I knew nothing. Now all things tend that way. I do not know what happens there.
Malte Laurids Brigge recalls everything that can be recalled and writes his impressions down…
And it is not yet enough to have memories. One has to be able to forget them, if there are a great many, and one must have great patience, to wait for their return. For it is not the memories in themselves that are of consequence. Only when they are become the very blood within us, our every look and gesture, nameless and no longer distinguishable from our inmost self, only then, in the rarest of hours, can the first word of a poem arise in their midst and go out from among them.
He recalls his childhood, parents, grandparents, a mysterious woman’s ghost, books, moments of love, dark pages of history…
The existence of the terrible in every particle of the air. You breathe it in as part of something transparent; but within you it precipitates, hardens, acquires angular, geometrical forms in among your organs; for all the torments and horrors suffered at places of execution, in torture chambers, in madhouses, in operating theatres, under the arches of bridges in late autumn – all this is possessed of a tenacious permanence, all of it persists and, jealous of all that is, clings to its own frightful reality.
All the suffering is water to poet’s mill. (less)
May 10, 2014Kalliope rated it really liked it · review of another edition
Shelves: austro-hungary, fiction-german, biography, 2014
We humans, with our mighty brain, like to use its powers to dwell on our own condition, which is precisely, but only partly, determined by the nature of this brain with which we have been equipped.
Themes like love, or an emphatic vulnerability to another being; our sense of time, with memories of our own lives and experiences from times when this brain was still young and absorbing the world and absorbing itself, or with anxiety about the life not yet lived; the material surroundings, with objects that become familiar extensions of our selves, or with some artifacts that awaken in us a feeling of elation and that we identify as “art”; dwellings that become our private spaces offering us comfort or a sense of constriction, or public ones where we cross others like us, or large rooms stacked with magic objects that are like little windows into the mind of another and which we call “books”; all these themes fascinate us and we relish meditating upon them.
But apart from all the above, there could be another recurring thought in this busily thinking brain. An obsession with its own incontrovertible and eventual void. Death.
Rilke spent some time during 1902 -03 in Paris, when he was in his late twenties, during which he dedicated himself to writing about art. He wrote on Rodin with whom he became quite close. May be his interest in the materiality of matter originates there. He also studied Cézanne who was at the end of his days, and left a series of letters on his paintings, still revered by contemporary art historians and which I plan to be my next Rilke read Briefe über Cezanne.
He also started this fictional diary, supposedly written by a character called Malte Laurids Brigge, whose name we don’t get to know until about a full third into the book, although even then his identity remains elusive, and who, perhaps not coincidentally, has the same age as Rilke was when writing it. This work he did not finish until about 1908 while he was in Rome and was published in Paris when he returned, in 1910.
This is the only novel Rilke wrote. But it is not a novel really; he called it Prosabuch. As a series of poetic vignettes it has to be read slowly. With an interrupted reading one can deal better with the fragmentation in the inner narrative. It helps not to try and impose a linear development, for the vignettes (around seventy of them), are loosely connected by what at best could be understood as a personal recollections. A diary of observations, not of happenings.
So, this flâneur of the mind offers us visits to the streets of Paris, its libraries, and horrid hospitals, and we become lookers like him with a full range: myopia and hyperopia. Or he invites us to the opposite of urban existence: the mansion and gardens of his childhood in which we no longer know who is a ghost or who is a specter in his mind. And these the views of recollection are visually compressed.
Oppositions help in delineating meaning. And so as well as city-countryside, we see more of these that function like poles from which this tenuous non-narrative hangs. Seeing and blindness, love and loneliness, poverty and wealth, health and diseases, and most clearly of all, life and death.
But for me the most captivating parts were those in which the flâneur of aesthetics stays well alive, and tunes his senses for the discovery of art, whether this is his own writing--his quest in the search of poetry, or the magic contained in, for example, a cycle of tapestries--where he finds this sought poetry.
The way he beholds the Dame à la Licorne series is unsurpassed.
(less)
This novel is amazing.
I am sitting here, reading the responses left by others, and what the hell? Most of you are downgrading this book due to the lack of Rilke's message in this book. For those of you who do not know Rilke, Rilke is considered one of the worlds greatest poets, as this was his first and only novel. If you do not like, nor prefer poetry, this novel is not for you.
The book is a compilation of narrative, philosophical asides, sketches for future poems, and detailed descriptions of artwork. It is clear that the writer is a poet, for much of the content does not make sense except in an irrational way.
As every selection in the book shows, he prefers to sit in the corner with his notebook making observations about those around him or delving into his reminiscences from home, never getting up and actually entering into the reality of life. Those who need a clear plot and a reliable narrator beware. This book is non-linear and reads more like poetry than a traditional novel. Or even as a diary. The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge is a challenging novel, as there is no storyline, nor plot structure. Instead, this the notes in this novel deliver an cryptic poetic message.
I can see ones point when claiming they do not understand why there is German words in this novel, despite it being translated. When reading, just like everyone else, I’m garbling the pronunciation, but it doesn't matter. I like the sounds. And not only the sounds, I enjoy the anticipation, the holding-my-breath quality of knowing that the English words sit right there, across the gutter of the page. The fact that the translator did not take all of Rilke's words and water them down, but instead leaves them there for the readers to witness Rilke's real words and beauty, makes the novel that much better.
I just started reading this novel, and I can say with merriment that I'm extremely drawn in by the compelled beauty in which Rilke delivers. This novel is truly amazing, as I see it as nothing less. I hate seeing RM's work get bashed, all because some people can't endure beautiful literature. This is a novel I shall posses for the rest of my life. (less)
Feb 08, 2010Adam Dalva rated it it was amazing
I adore this odd novel (I read the new Vilain translation) - as weird and wild as I've read, brilliantly anticipatory of later developments in modernism, teeming with ghosts and the unwell, intensely neurotic, (of course) poetic. It is not an EASY read - particularly when it comes to the last third of the novel. The first third (I'm simplifying), Malte in Paris, is incredible, particularly a sequence where Malte encounters a tertiary syphilis sufferer and finds himself following aghast; the second, young Malte in Denmark, has extraordinary uncanny beats - Malte sees his own hand under a desk; Malte and his parents visit a house that no longer exists; the last third, aphorisms and histories, is difficult, but has rewarding echoes of the parts I love best. It all filters through the Rilke you might know from the Duomo elegies, a peculiar, intense system of noticing told through a memorable character. Don't miss it. (less)
Jun 12, 2019Jan-Maat added it · review of another edition
Shelves: 20th-century, read-in-translation, fiction
I felt repeatedly while reading The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge that I might have had a strong positive response to it if I had (have?) a fear of death or if I was well acquainted with the poetry of Rilke. I also noticed while reading that I do not have a fear of death (view spoiler) and that the notebooks failed to instil such a fear in me, further what ever desire I may have had to read Rilke's ...more
Jun 11, 2009Eric rated it it was amazing
Shelves: ficciones, shouldreread, favorites, hearts-laid-bare, men-of-letters
Rilke’s semiautobiographical surrogate Malte Laurids Brigge is a young Dane, a noble scion adrift in early twentieth century Paris, trying to become a poet. He corresponds rather well to Anthony Burgess’s description, in his charming study ReJoyce (1965), “of the type of student Stephen Daedelus represents, poor, treasuring old books with foxed leaves, independent, unwhining, deaf to political and social shibboleths, fanatically devoted to art and art only.” Malte and Stephen hang out at the Bibliotheque Nationale, worry about how incidents of shabbiness in their wardrobes may effect their dignity, and are nuts about Ibsen (or was that just Joyce himself? Did he lend that admiration of his to Stephen? I’m not near my bookshelves.) Malte doesn’t have anything like Stephen’s confidence in ultimate triumph—like the Camus and Sartre heroes for whom he is said to have provided a model, Malte is pushed pretty hard up against the wall by metaphysical doubts and a general terror before existence. But even so, they both have high-caliber minds that relish the lyrical-gnomic fragment and eschew exposition or transition (in the very best badass tradition of high modernist narration) in the telling of eerie tales from their unhappy childhoods (Malte’s mom is dead, too) and in excursions through their daunting hoards of philosophical and historical arcana (Stephen likes scholastic philosophy; Malte has a thing for famous female anchorites and fanatical mystic nuns, plus, and this is a big one for him, the deathbed agonies of medieval French kings as encountered in Froissart’s Chronicles); and Rilke is -- like Joyce, and like Baudelaire their mutual master in this respect -- profoundly attentive to the crushing squalor and pathos to be glimpsed in the “sinuous creases of old capital cities”:
Rilke’s tableaux parisiens are as uncanny and disturbing as Baudelaire’s. He's as fascinated by the old, the worn-out, the thrown-away, the "girls, still unused in their innermost depths, who had never been loved" as the poet of “Les Sept Vieillards” and “Les Petites Vieilles.” On a blind newspaper peddler’s Sunday cravat and new straw hat: “He himself got no pleasure from them, and who among all these people (I looked about me) could imagine that all this finery was for them?” The wannabe Bohemian girls from good families Malte encounters copying in museums wear dresses that, without servants to button then all the way up, appear half open in the back. Beside him in one of the waiting rooms of the Hospice de la Salpêtrière, a last refuge of prostitutes and beggars, aged women and the insane, Malte becomes conscious of
The portions of Malte's family memories and introspection are no less absorbing. Rilke's imagery is often so striking that even the deepest burrowing in Malte's malaise and artistic self-doubt can rival the lurid street scenes. "I put my little strength together like money." "...but inside you it preciptates, hardens, takes on pointed, geometrical forms between your organs." "...it was a literal, unambiguous tale that destroyed the teeming maggots of my conjectures." Certainly the weightiest book I've read this year. (less)
Or that time in Naples: that young creature sat there opposite me in the street car and died. At first it looked like a fainting spell; we even drove on for a while. But then there was no doubt that we had to stop. And behind us vehicles halted and piled up, as though there would never be any more moving in that direction. The pale, stout girl might have quietly died like that, leaning against the woman beside her. But her mother would not allow this. She contrived all possible difficulties for her. She disordered her clothes and poured something into her mouth which could no longer retain anything. She rubbed her forehead with a liquid someone had brought, and when the eyes, at that, rolled back a little, she began to shake her to make her gaze come forward again. She shouted into those eyes that heard nothing, she pushed and pulled the whole thing to and fro like a doll, and finally she raised her arm and struck the puffy face with all her might, so that it should not die. That time I was afraid.
Rilke’s tableaux parisiens are as uncanny and disturbing as Baudelaire’s. He's as fascinated by the old, the worn-out, the thrown-away, the "girls, still unused in their innermost depths, who had never been loved" as the poet of “Les Sept Vieillards” and “Les Petites Vieilles.” On a blind newspaper peddler’s Sunday cravat and new straw hat: “He himself got no pleasure from them, and who among all these people (I looked about me) could imagine that all this finery was for them?” The wannabe Bohemian girls from good families Malte encounters copying in museums wear dresses that, without servants to button then all the way up, appear half open in the back. Beside him in one of the waiting rooms of the Hospice de la Salpêtrière, a last refuge of prostitutes and beggars, aged women and the insane, Malte becomes conscious of
a huge, immovable mass, having a face that I saw was empty, quite without features and without memories; and it was gruesome that the clothes were like that of a corpse dressed for a coffin. The narrow, black cravat had been buckled in the same loose, impersonal way around the collar, and the coat showed that it had been put on the will-less body by other hands. The hand had been placed on the trousers exactly where it lay, and even the hair looked as if it had been combed by those women who lay out the dead, and was stiffly arranged, like the hair of stuffed animals.
The portions of Malte's family memories and introspection are no less absorbing. Rilke's imagery is often so striking that even the deepest burrowing in Malte's malaise and artistic self-doubt can rival the lurid street scenes. "I put my little strength together like money." "...but inside you it preciptates, hardens, takes on pointed, geometrical forms between your organs." "...it was a literal, unambiguous tale that destroyed the teeming maggots of my conjectures." Certainly the weightiest book I've read this year. (less)
![[P]](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1486240560p2/40516522.jpg)
I don’t imagine that I will always read. I hope not, anyway. For someone who is so scared of death it is rather perverse, or certainly absurd, that I spend so much of my time amongst the dead, instead of engaging with the world around me. Indeed, that is why I started reading heavily, it was, I’m sure, a way of turning away from a world that I so often felt, and still feel, at odds with, towards another that I could control and which did not challenge me. With books, I can pick and choose a sensibility, an outlook, that chimes with my own and I can guarantee company and conversation that I don’t find alienating or dispiriting. To this end, I have read The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge three times. As a novel it is something of a failure, but large parts of it resonate with me as much as, if not more than, any writing ever set down on paper.
The Notebooks is essentially the thoughts, memories and impressions of Malte, a twenty-eight year old Dane who has recently moved to Paris. There are a number of well-known but now dated novels that deal with the ex-pat experience, such as Cortazar’s Hopscotch and Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, novels that are invariably marred by machismo and pretension. The Notebooks, however, contains none of that. Rilke’s Paris isn’t a playboy’s playground, littered with booze and whores; it is a ‘great’ city, full of ‘curious temptations,’ but there is nothing glamorous about it and no sense that Malte is living some kind of mock-heroic existence. Indeed, in the opening line of the novel he states that Paris is a place where, it strikes him, one does not go to live, but where one goes to die; it is a place that smells of pommes frites and fear.
That Malte is the last, or one of the last, in his family line is trebly significant, for he is preoccupied with death, with solitude, and with nostalgia. One notices that, again in contrast with many other similar novels, there is not one living character with whom he regularly engages or communicates. In Paris he is an observer, making notes about ordinary citizens, but never interacting with them. For example, he sees a pregnant woman ‘inching ponderously along by a high, sun-warmed wall’ as though ‘seeking assurance that it was still there,’ he watches a man collapse, and then another who has some kind of physical ailment that causes him to hop and jerk suddenly. He appears to be drawn to the eccentric and lost, the suffering and down-trodden, no doubt because he identifies with them, but he remains alone and isolated himself. Towards the end of the novel he states that he once felt a loneliness of such enormity that his heart was not equal to it.
However, when he is surrounded by people, such as when there is a carnival, he describes it as a ‘vicious tide of humanity’ and notes how laughter oozes from their mouths like pus from a wound. Malte is the kind of man who lives mostly in his head who, although he encourages his solitude, is scared of losing his connection with the world, of withdrawing and parting from it. At one point he goes to the library, and praises it as a place where people are so engrossed in their reading that they barely acknowledge each other. He spends his time strolling to little shops, book dealers and antique places, that, he says, no one ever visits. Once more, we see an interest in obscure things, in things that have been forgotten or neglected. One of my favourite passages is when he comes upon a torn down building, and he states that it is the bit that is left that interests him, the last remaining wall with little bits of floor still visible. It is the suggestion of something once whole, once fully functioning that grabs his attention.
[Rainer Maria Rilke – left – and Auguste Rodin in Paris]
As noted, much of the book is concerned with Malte’s memories regarding his family, specifically in relation to his childhood. One understands how this – his upbringing and family situation – may have gone some way to making him the man he is. He is taciturn, he says, and then notes how his father was too. His father was not fond of physical affection either. Later, in one of the more autobiographical anecdotes, Malte talks about his mother’s mourning for a dead child, a little girl, and how he would pretend to be Sophie [the name of Rilke’s own mother] in an effort to please her. It is therefore not a surprise that he is highly sensitive, inward-looking and ill at ease with himself. Indeed, there is much in The Notebooks about identity and individuality. There are, Malte says, no plurals, there is no women, only singularities; he baulks at the term family, saying that the four people under this umbrella did not belong together. Furthermore, at one stage he fools around, dressing up in different costumes, in which he feels more himself, not less; but then he tries on a mask and has some kind of emotional breakdown.
All of these things – ruins, obscurity, deformity, ailments, nostalgia, the self, loneliness – come together in what is the book’s dominant theme, which is that of death. Only Tolstoy’s Ivan Ilych and Lampedusa’s The Leopard contain as much heartrending insight into the subject. There are numerous passages and quotes I could discuss or lift from the text, but, not wanting to ruin your own reading, I will focus on only one. When writing about individuality, Malte bemoans the fact, as he sees it, that people do not die their own deaths anymore, they die the death of their illness, they become their illness and their passing, therefore, has nothing to do with them. In sanatoriums, he continues, people die ‘so readily and with much gratitude’; the upper classes die a genteel death at home, and the lower-classes are simply happy to find a death that ‘more or less fits.’
Malte contrasts these predictable, unheroic deaths with that of his uncle, Chamberlain Christoph Detlev Brigge. The old Chamberlain died extravagantly; his death was so huge that new wings of the house ought to have been built to accommodate it. He shouted and made demands, demands to see people – both living and dead – and demands to die. This voice plagued the locals, keeping them in a state of agitation; it was a voice louder than the church bells…it was the voice of death, not of Christoph, and it became the master, a more terrible master than the Chamberlain had ever been himself. The point that Malte is making seems to be that one should not go gentle into that good night, that one should not accept the death that most pleases others, that causes the least amount of fuss. You will die, there is no escape, it is within you, your death, from the very first moment, you carry it with you at all times, but you do not have to go out with a whimper.
I wrote at the beginning of this review that The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge is a failure as a novel and this probably warrants further explanation. Rather like Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet, which it resembles in many ways actually, I imagine that some readers will find it difficult to read the book cover-to-cover. There is absolutely no plot, and many of the entries do not follow on from the previous one. Moreover, after a few pages about Paris, which I would guess serve to draw in a number of people, the focus abruptly shifts, and the book then becomes increasingly strange and elusive, with a relentless interiority. None of this bothers me, however. While I do hope to give up reading one day, I will, without question, carry this book around inside me for the rest of my life, rather like my death. (less)
“My last hope was always the window. I imagined that outside there, there still might be something that belonged to me, even now, even in this sudden poverty of dying. But scarcely had I looked thither when I wished the window had been barricaded, blocked up, like the wall. For now I knew that things were going on out there in the same indifferent way, that out there, too, there was nothing but my loneliness.”
The Notebooks is essentially the thoughts, memories and impressions of Malte, a twenty-eight year old Dane who has recently moved to Paris. There are a number of well-known but now dated novels that deal with the ex-pat experience, such as Cortazar’s Hopscotch and Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, novels that are invariably marred by machismo and pretension. The Notebooks, however, contains none of that. Rilke’s Paris isn’t a playboy’s playground, littered with booze and whores; it is a ‘great’ city, full of ‘curious temptations,’ but there is nothing glamorous about it and no sense that Malte is living some kind of mock-heroic existence. Indeed, in the opening line of the novel he states that Paris is a place where, it strikes him, one does not go to live, but where one goes to die; it is a place that smells of pommes frites and fear.
That Malte is the last, or one of the last, in his family line is trebly significant, for he is preoccupied with death, with solitude, and with nostalgia. One notices that, again in contrast with many other similar novels, there is not one living character with whom he regularly engages or communicates. In Paris he is an observer, making notes about ordinary citizens, but never interacting with them. For example, he sees a pregnant woman ‘inching ponderously along by a high, sun-warmed wall’ as though ‘seeking assurance that it was still there,’ he watches a man collapse, and then another who has some kind of physical ailment that causes him to hop and jerk suddenly. He appears to be drawn to the eccentric and lost, the suffering and down-trodden, no doubt because he identifies with them, but he remains alone and isolated himself. Towards the end of the novel he states that he once felt a loneliness of such enormity that his heart was not equal to it.
However, when he is surrounded by people, such as when there is a carnival, he describes it as a ‘vicious tide of humanity’ and notes how laughter oozes from their mouths like pus from a wound. Malte is the kind of man who lives mostly in his head who, although he encourages his solitude, is scared of losing his connection with the world, of withdrawing and parting from it. At one point he goes to the library, and praises it as a place where people are so engrossed in their reading that they barely acknowledge each other. He spends his time strolling to little shops, book dealers and antique places, that, he says, no one ever visits. Once more, we see an interest in obscure things, in things that have been forgotten or neglected. One of my favourite passages is when he comes upon a torn down building, and he states that it is the bit that is left that interests him, the last remaining wall with little bits of floor still visible. It is the suggestion of something once whole, once fully functioning that grabs his attention.
[Rainer Maria Rilke – left – and Auguste Rodin in Paris]
As noted, much of the book is concerned with Malte’s memories regarding his family, specifically in relation to his childhood. One understands how this – his upbringing and family situation – may have gone some way to making him the man he is. He is taciturn, he says, and then notes how his father was too. His father was not fond of physical affection either. Later, in one of the more autobiographical anecdotes, Malte talks about his mother’s mourning for a dead child, a little girl, and how he would pretend to be Sophie [the name of Rilke’s own mother] in an effort to please her. It is therefore not a surprise that he is highly sensitive, inward-looking and ill at ease with himself. Indeed, there is much in The Notebooks about identity and individuality. There are, Malte says, no plurals, there is no women, only singularities; he baulks at the term family, saying that the four people under this umbrella did not belong together. Furthermore, at one stage he fools around, dressing up in different costumes, in which he feels more himself, not less; but then he tries on a mask and has some kind of emotional breakdown.
All of these things – ruins, obscurity, deformity, ailments, nostalgia, the self, loneliness – come together in what is the book’s dominant theme, which is that of death. Only Tolstoy’s Ivan Ilych and Lampedusa’s The Leopard contain as much heartrending insight into the subject. There are numerous passages and quotes I could discuss or lift from the text, but, not wanting to ruin your own reading, I will focus on only one. When writing about individuality, Malte bemoans the fact, as he sees it, that people do not die their own deaths anymore, they die the death of their illness, they become their illness and their passing, therefore, has nothing to do with them. In sanatoriums, he continues, people die ‘so readily and with much gratitude’; the upper classes die a genteel death at home, and the lower-classes are simply happy to find a death that ‘more or less fits.’
“Who is there today who still cares about a well-finished death? No one. Even the rich, who could after all afford this luxury, are beginning to grow lazy and indifferent; the desire to have a death of one’s own is becoming more and more rare. In a short time it will be as rare as a life of one’s own.”
Malte contrasts these predictable, unheroic deaths with that of his uncle, Chamberlain Christoph Detlev Brigge. The old Chamberlain died extravagantly; his death was so huge that new wings of the house ought to have been built to accommodate it. He shouted and made demands, demands to see people – both living and dead – and demands to die. This voice plagued the locals, keeping them in a state of agitation; it was a voice louder than the church bells…it was the voice of death, not of Christoph, and it became the master, a more terrible master than the Chamberlain had ever been himself. The point that Malte is making seems to be that one should not go gentle into that good night, that one should not accept the death that most pleases others, that causes the least amount of fuss. You will die, there is no escape, it is within you, your death, from the very first moment, you carry it with you at all times, but you do not have to go out with a whimper.
I wrote at the beginning of this review that The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge is a failure as a novel and this probably warrants further explanation. Rather like Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet, which it resembles in many ways actually, I imagine that some readers will find it difficult to read the book cover-to-cover. There is absolutely no plot, and many of the entries do not follow on from the previous one. Moreover, after a few pages about Paris, which I would guess serve to draw in a number of people, the focus abruptly shifts, and the book then becomes increasingly strange and elusive, with a relentless interiority. None of this bothers me, however. While I do hope to give up reading one day, I will, without question, carry this book around inside me for the rest of my life, rather like my death. (less)
Dense, peculiar, at times impenetrable, at times utterly bursting with stunning imagery, this is an immensely difficult book to pin down. And it got under my skin. Proust crashing headlong into Dostoyevsky. This is what happens when a writer who is, at heart, a lyrical romantic faces the dawning industrial era with a combination of absolute trepidation and awe.
And if you live alone, in a foreign city, sure of not very much, your mind periodically drawn back to a childhood in a frigid Northern clime, you'll be as devastated by it as I was, and you will climb up to the top of your building, look at the sun set in a language you barely speak, and you'll realize exactly where Rilke was coming from. (less)
And if you live alone, in a foreign city, sure of not very much, your mind periodically drawn back to a childhood in a frigid Northern clime, you'll be as devastated by it as I was, and you will climb up to the top of your building, look at the sun set in a language you barely speak, and you'll realize exactly where Rilke was coming from. (less)
Jan 26, 2021Gabrielle rated it liked it · review of another edition
Shelves: read-in-2021, classics, own-a-copy, reviewed, poetry
Let’s make one thing clear here: this is described everywhere as Rilke’s only novel, but I would never have called this book a novel. The loosely connected vignettes that make up this little tome are presented as the reflections that Malte Laurids Brigge put down on paper while living in Paris. They sound and feel like a journal, like the dream-like stream of thoughts people write down when they don’t think anyone will read their words. As such, it is a simple collections of ideas, remembrances, observations, wistful longings and fantasies – but it is not a novel. It has no real structure, no plot to properly speak of. But it captures not only Rilke’s amazing gift with words, but also the feelings of alienation, loneliness and isolation of a depressed man, living alone, in a beautiful but strange city far from his home.
I made the mistake of reading it like a novel. After “Letters to a Young Poet” (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), I really should have known better and just left it on my nightstand, to read in little sips at the end of each day for a week or two – and not in great gulps, like the glutton I am.
Rilke also lived in Paris, and just like his alter ego, he was a lonely man with a fragile health, prone to melancholy, so it’s easy to assume he poured a lot of himself into these “notebooks”. The writing has a fever-dream quality to it sometimes, which makes it beautiful but also opaque: it is hard to know what is going on behind the words.
As a novel, therefore, “The Notebooks” fails, but as an exercise of style and introspection, it is a tantalizing glimpse into the mind of a remarkable poet. (less)
I made the mistake of reading it like a novel. After “Letters to a Young Poet” (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), I really should have known better and just left it on my nightstand, to read in little sips at the end of each day for a week or two – and not in great gulps, like the glutton I am.
Rilke also lived in Paris, and just like his alter ego, he was a lonely man with a fragile health, prone to melancholy, so it’s easy to assume he poured a lot of himself into these “notebooks”. The writing has a fever-dream quality to it sometimes, which makes it beautiful but also opaque: it is hard to know what is going on behind the words.
As a novel, therefore, “The Notebooks” fails, but as an exercise of style and introspection, it is a tantalizing glimpse into the mind of a remarkable poet. (less)
Feb 24, 2013Kilburn Adam rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
I've read a few German books already this year. So I thought I'd give Rilke a go. I first found out about this writer in Walter Kaufmann's book Existentialism From Dostoevsky to Sartre. And looking at Kaufmann's book right now, I see that Kaufmann has essentially just published a few short extracts from The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. And a brief biography.
This is Rilke's only novel. It's semi-autobiographical. And he addresses existential themes - such as individuality and death. You can definitely see the Nietzschean influence in this book.
It's a good book and I'll certainly read some of his books of poems, and letters. At an unspecified time in the future.
A few people on here complained that it didn't have a plot. Well there's quite an obvious clue in the title. It's a notebook, what did you expect? (less)
This is Rilke's only novel. It's semi-autobiographical. And he addresses existential themes - such as individuality and death. You can definitely see the Nietzschean influence in this book.
It's a good book and I'll certainly read some of his books of poems, and letters. At an unspecified time in the future.
A few people on here complained that it didn't have a plot. Well there's quite an obvious clue in the title. It's a notebook, what did you expect? (less)
'The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge' isn't a very novelistic novel, as it is told as a sort of diary in the first person and is semi-autobiographical. Brigge is a twenty-eight year old Danish man, alone and adrift in Paris. He wishes to transmute his fear of death into some profound literary work and fills his notebooks with memories, historical anecdote, and sketches of the Parisian streets. I was very moved by Rilke's evocation of urban alienation, of listening to your neighbours through the walls of a cheap rented room because you have no-one to talk to, and of death-obsession. I identified with Brigge's preoccupations, having on occasion been in just the same state of mind myself. On the other hand, towards the end of the book Brigge writes more of love than death, and this made him harder for me to relate to. (This probably doesn't reflect too well on me.)
Brigge, a solitary and melancholic figure with no direction in life but periodically overwhelmed by fear of death, seems to be a shadow or echo of Rilke. Perhaps he represents someone Rilke thought he could have been? Brigge is unhappy and there is no indication that he will ever transcend his poverty and perpetual introspection. I can very well understand being afraid of such a lonely trap of a life. In fact, one might subtitle this book, 'The Dangers of Being an Unhappy Introvert in Paris'. During the first third or so I was rather reminded of Plath's 'The Bell Jar'.
Rilke's writing is absolutely beautiful, which isn't surprising as he was famous as a poet. In fact, this was his only novel. By way of example, I was struck by this bit about reading:
I tend to find poetry intimidating and impossible to understand, but I ought to give Rilke's a chance. 'The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge' suggests I have an affinity with him. No other writer I've come across has articulated the fear of death as effectively. (less)
Brigge, a solitary and melancholic figure with no direction in life but periodically overwhelmed by fear of death, seems to be a shadow or echo of Rilke. Perhaps he represents someone Rilke thought he could have been? Brigge is unhappy and there is no indication that he will ever transcend his poverty and perpetual introspection. I can very well understand being afraid of such a lonely trap of a life. In fact, one might subtitle this book, 'The Dangers of Being an Unhappy Introvert in Paris'. During the first third or so I was rather reminded of Plath's 'The Bell Jar'.
Rilke's writing is absolutely beautiful, which isn't surprising as he was famous as a poet. In fact, this was his only novel. By way of example, I was struck by this bit about reading:
'Somehow I had a premonition of what I so often felt at later times: that you did not have the right to open a single book unless you engaged to read them all. With every line you read, you were breaking off a portion of the world. Before books, the world was intact, and afterwards it might be restored to wholeness once again.'
I tend to find poetry intimidating and impossible to understand, but I ought to give Rilke's a chance. 'The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge' suggests I have an affinity with him. No other writer I've come across has articulated the fear of death as effectively. (less)
Aug 26, 2009Adam Floridia rated it it was ok · review of another edition
Shelves: discovered-thanks-to-goodreads, being-a-human
Sometimes choosing a star rating can be difficult. To avoid falling trap to such uncertainty, I try to stick as formally to the description as possible (ie: 1= “didn’t like,” 2= “it was ok,” 3=”liked it,” etc.). What gets really hairy, though, is when I have to reconcile “liked” with “appreciated,” which can be at odds and which happens occasionally with “literature.” This is made all the tougher when I already have it in my head that I should “like,” or at the very least “appreciate,” a book because people whose opinions I respect think highly of it. That should really does get me and make me second guess my own opinion. I feel like “I don’t know how much of it I understood, but it was as if I were being solemnly promised that at some time I would understand it all” (150).
Thank goodness goodreads allows so much space for someone to move beyond a simplistic star rating and to give lengthy descriptions of the different aspects of the books that reached him (as well as provide rambling prefatory notes).
*
I didn’t like reading this. I never found myself anxiously awaiting the next time I could find time to pick it up and read more about Malte’s childhood reminiscences. I waded through his obscure historical asides, couldn’t keep any of the names straight, and just didn’t care. I actually cringed at certain passages which I thought were striving so hard to achieve profundity and reached odd at best. For example, when Malte “hit upon the idea of offering [the neighbor on the other side of the wall] my will. For one day I understood that his was at an end. And after that, whenever I felt it coming on, I stood on my side of the wall and begged him to make use of it. And as far as my expenditure of will was concerned, I began to feel it” (132). To me this reeks of a would-be poet attempting to emphasize how he feels things more deeply than the common man, when, in reality, he’s nuts and it makes no sense. Plus, that page is followed by a page of meditation on a box lid, “a lid [that] could have no other longing than to find itself on its box…the fulfillment of its desires” (134). He even decides “this box lid has it in for me.”
*
Then there are his ruminations on love, death, and God. All fodder for some very profound revelations. However, again I just couldn’t get into them—it’s the same problem I’ve always had with the Transcendentalists, and some of this sounded pretty transcendentalist-ish: “In the garden, there is one chief thing; everything is everywhere, and one would have to be in everything in order not to miss anything” (149). Malte is definitely trying to live deep and suck out the marrow of life, to separate himself from the mass of men who lead lives of quiet desperation.
*
HOWEVER, there were many passages that I did find profound, especially towards the beginning. (Maybe this just isn’t the type of book one can read a few pages at a time in ten minute bursts). In the beginning, I understand that Malte does represent the true Modern man: he is “learning to see” (3), discovering that “the main thing was that one was alive” (2), wondering “Is it possible that the whole history of the world has been misunderstood? Is it possible that the past is false because one has always spoken of its masses…” (16), understanding that “something is going on in me as well, something that is beginning to distance and separate me from everything” (37). Talk about embodying the disillusionment, isolation, and true severing of ties with the past of the modernist movement (just read page 38 in its entirety and you’ve got a summary of said movement). There is sooo much talk about “masks” in the book, and I see that as a metaphor for Malte’s goal. He seeks to reveal the Truth to all of those around him, to rip away the false masks under which they live. Unfortunately, he is too awkward (especially around girls) and self-conscious and insecure. There were countless time throughout the text that I wrote in the margins “Prufrock!” In fact, as I read I had planned for this review to be a comparison between this book and the poem. Now I realize that I would have had to copy nearly the entire poem because comparisons/connections can be drawn to nearly every line of it (“Now one accidentally emerges among accidental things and almost takes fright at not being invited” (97)…I mean, come on!). Malte’s “overwhelming question” is “My God, if it were possible to impart something of it. But would it exist then, would it exist?” (54)…”And will they, in any event see what I am saying here” (111).
A Favorite Quotation:“Flowers and fruits are ripe when they fall; animals feel themselves and find one another and are satisfied. But we, who have made God for ourselves, we can not find satisfaction” (174).
A Favorite Scene: When his dog reproaches him for letting death in. Touching. (121).
A Quotation That, Perhaps, Sums Up My Reading Experience: “Many things came into my hands that, so to speak, ought to have been read already, for other things it was much too soon; nothing at that time was just right for the present. But nevertheless I read” (148).
(less)
Thank goodness goodreads allows so much space for someone to move beyond a simplistic star rating and to give lengthy descriptions of the different aspects of the books that reached him (as well as provide rambling prefatory notes).
*
I didn’t like reading this. I never found myself anxiously awaiting the next time I could find time to pick it up and read more about Malte’s childhood reminiscences. I waded through his obscure historical asides, couldn’t keep any of the names straight, and just didn’t care. I actually cringed at certain passages which I thought were striving so hard to achieve profundity and reached odd at best. For example, when Malte “hit upon the idea of offering [the neighbor on the other side of the wall] my will. For one day I understood that his was at an end. And after that, whenever I felt it coming on, I stood on my side of the wall and begged him to make use of it. And as far as my expenditure of will was concerned, I began to feel it” (132). To me this reeks of a would-be poet attempting to emphasize how he feels things more deeply than the common man, when, in reality, he’s nuts and it makes no sense. Plus, that page is followed by a page of meditation on a box lid, “a lid [that] could have no other longing than to find itself on its box…the fulfillment of its desires” (134). He even decides “this box lid has it in for me.”
*
Then there are his ruminations on love, death, and God. All fodder for some very profound revelations. However, again I just couldn’t get into them—it’s the same problem I’ve always had with the Transcendentalists, and some of this sounded pretty transcendentalist-ish: “In the garden, there is one chief thing; everything is everywhere, and one would have to be in everything in order not to miss anything” (149). Malte is definitely trying to live deep and suck out the marrow of life, to separate himself from the mass of men who lead lives of quiet desperation.
*
HOWEVER, there were many passages that I did find profound, especially towards the beginning. (Maybe this just isn’t the type of book one can read a few pages at a time in ten minute bursts). In the beginning, I understand that Malte does represent the true Modern man: he is “learning to see” (3), discovering that “the main thing was that one was alive” (2), wondering “Is it possible that the whole history of the world has been misunderstood? Is it possible that the past is false because one has always spoken of its masses…” (16), understanding that “something is going on in me as well, something that is beginning to distance and separate me from everything” (37). Talk about embodying the disillusionment, isolation, and true severing of ties with the past of the modernist movement (just read page 38 in its entirety and you’ve got a summary of said movement). There is sooo much talk about “masks” in the book, and I see that as a metaphor for Malte’s goal. He seeks to reveal the Truth to all of those around him, to rip away the false masks under which they live. Unfortunately, he is too awkward (especially around girls) and self-conscious and insecure. There were countless time throughout the text that I wrote in the margins “Prufrock!” In fact, as I read I had planned for this review to be a comparison between this book and the poem. Now I realize that I would have had to copy nearly the entire poem because comparisons/connections can be drawn to nearly every line of it (“Now one accidentally emerges among accidental things and almost takes fright at not being invited” (97)…I mean, come on!). Malte’s “overwhelming question” is “My God, if it were possible to impart something of it. But would it exist then, would it exist?” (54)…”And will they, in any event see what I am saying here” (111).
A Favorite Quotation:“Flowers and fruits are ripe when they fall; animals feel themselves and find one another and are satisfied. But we, who have made God for ourselves, we can not find satisfaction” (174).
A Favorite Scene: When his dog reproaches him for letting death in. Touching. (121).
A Quotation That, Perhaps, Sums Up My Reading Experience: “Many things came into my hands that, so to speak, ought to have been read already, for other things it was much too soon; nothing at that time was just right for the present. But nevertheless I read” (148).
(less)
Rilke's extraordinary semi-autobiographical novel deals with masking our true selves and others in order to fit into the bewildering chaos of the world around us. The writer (Rilke or Brigge, take your pick) takes us through visions, memories, and impressions, and starkly contrasts these with the world as he now experiences it. The work is beautifully amorphous, and surprisingly funny:
"There is a being that is completely harmless if it passes before your eyes, you hardly notice it and immediately forget it again. But as soon as it gets into your hearing in some invisible fashion it develops there, it creeps out, as it were, and one has seen cases where it penetrated the brain and thrived devastatingly in that organ, like canine pneumococcus that enters through the nose.
This being is the neighbor."
It's also surprisingly coherent, although it doesn't seem that way when you are knee deep in the writer's take on, for example, the story behind certain Danish or English historical figures, or the true driving forces behind the prodigal son's departure and eventual return. Loosely speaking, the novel passes from an intense scrutiny of self, including preoccupations with ghosts, costumes, death, fear, and isolation, to a discussion of the unrevealed psyches of men and women who are the stuff of legends, and ends on an exploration of the joys of unrequited love: To be loved is to perish; to love is to endure. I felt like I was reading the evolving journal of an anxious, perceptive soul - starting with self (as journalists are apt to do), and developing into a more abstract exploration of human nature and ideals.
It was a pleasure to read. (less)
"There is a being that is completely harmless if it passes before your eyes, you hardly notice it and immediately forget it again. But as soon as it gets into your hearing in some invisible fashion it develops there, it creeps out, as it were, and one has seen cases where it penetrated the brain and thrived devastatingly in that organ, like canine pneumococcus that enters through the nose.
This being is the neighbor."
It's also surprisingly coherent, although it doesn't seem that way when you are knee deep in the writer's take on, for example, the story behind certain Danish or English historical figures, or the true driving forces behind the prodigal son's departure and eventual return. Loosely speaking, the novel passes from an intense scrutiny of self, including preoccupations with ghosts, costumes, death, fear, and isolation, to a discussion of the unrevealed psyches of men and women who are the stuff of legends, and ends on an exploration of the joys of unrequited love: To be loved is to perish; to love is to endure. I felt like I was reading the evolving journal of an anxious, perceptive soul - starting with self (as journalists are apt to do), and developing into a more abstract exploration of human nature and ideals.
It was a pleasure to read. (less)
Oct 15, 2009Jimmy rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Shelves: male, austria, all-in-a-day, austria-hungary, novel, walking, year-1910s, truly-madly-deeply-original, my-canon, notebooks
"What's the use of telling someone that I am changing? If I'm changing, I am no longer who I was; and if I am something else, it's obvious that I have no acquaintances. And I can't possibly write to strangers."
It is precisely because the form of this book is so hard to pin down that it is so effective. It challenges the reader to forget about the novel, and its easy explications and narrative arcs. (Though it feels much too organically arisen for me to use the term 'experimental'). Here we have a scattered mess, constantly morphing: Proustian memories of childhood, historical tangents on some King/Duke (this is where he lost me; I'll need to learn more and re-read), ruminations on poverty and death, ghosts, philosophy, observations, and Biblical stories re-told Rilkean style. But no hand is there to guide us through, we have to piece these fragments together to form the life (or at least one day in the life) of Malte Laurids Brigge. We can only imply, and only by seeing things Malte's way can we be. The story ends abruptly. No conclusions, no real story (if that is what you are looking for), only sketches, a glimpse here and there, but it feels so full! And enlarging! (less)
It is precisely because the form of this book is so hard to pin down that it is so effective. It challenges the reader to forget about the novel, and its easy explications and narrative arcs. (Though it feels much too organically arisen for me to use the term 'experimental'). Here we have a scattered mess, constantly morphing: Proustian memories of childhood, historical tangents on some King/Duke (this is where he lost me; I'll need to learn more and re-read), ruminations on poverty and death, ghosts, philosophy, observations, and Biblical stories re-told Rilkean style. But no hand is there to guide us through, we have to piece these fragments together to form the life (or at least one day in the life) of Malte Laurids Brigge. We can only imply, and only by seeing things Malte's way can we be. The story ends abruptly. No conclusions, no real story (if that is what you are looking for), only sketches, a glimpse here and there, but it feels so full! And enlarging! (less)
Oct 03, 2016Edward rated it really liked it · review of another edition
Shelves: 2016, literary-fiction
Upon reading The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge one is left haunted by the wonderfully poetic prose, but in possession of only a vague notion of what the book was about. Through a series of disjointed vignettes, Rilke opens a window into the soul of his protagonist, but the view is as from a moving vehicle: the scenery is constantly changing, and one can only glimpse at the detail.
The Notebooks blend the mythic with the mundane, combining obscure ancient tales and anecdotes about everyday life, in a manner that appears haphazard, but which taken together produce a complex portrait of Rilke himself: expressing the accumulated aspirations and anxieties of the young poet in a foreign land. He is concerned with history (both his own and that of the world) as a power to influence and to motivate, but also as baggage; a force to be fought and overcome. Above all he is concerned with death, not as an end, but as a thing intertwined with life itself - a surrealism that emphasizes a powerful truth.
What a strange and beautiful novel. (less)
The Notebooks blend the mythic with the mundane, combining obscure ancient tales and anecdotes about everyday life, in a manner that appears haphazard, but which taken together produce a complex portrait of Rilke himself: expressing the accumulated aspirations and anxieties of the young poet in a foreign land. He is concerned with history (both his own and that of the world) as a power to influence and to motivate, but also as baggage; a force to be fought and overcome. Above all he is concerned with death, not as an end, but as a thing intertwined with life itself - a surrealism that emphasizes a powerful truth.
What a strange and beautiful novel. (less)
Feb 21, 2021Luís rated it it was ok · review of another edition
Shelves: e-2, g-philosophy, g-classics, g-poetry, n-alemanha, n-republica-checa
I'm sorry to scratch a myth, but this book is almost illegible: we look for the meaning, we wait for it from cover to cover, but it does not come. Good times are rare; there is no action: this poet (great, they say) - and I like his poetry - wrote only one "novel"? But this is not a novel! In the 21st century, this book no longer tells us anything. (less)
Feb 12, 2009James Henderson rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Shelves: read-and-reread, u-of-chicago, favorites, lplib-classics, mitteleuropa, paris-with-love, death
Rilke was a poet and his only novel demonstrates that on every page. It is a dreamlike novel that is evocative of Paris and poetry. The focus on themes of death and darkness in contrast with the power of god and belief were powerful, joining with his beautiful writing to keep me enthralled. Through Rilke's fascination with faces and appearances the importance of constructing an authentic life is emphasized. This becomes a prerequisite for the prospect of a unique personal death. Death itself is a character in the novel, a "terrible rival", which may seem stronger than the living in its tolling. While Paris is the city of poetry it is also described as a place "to die in".(p 3)
More importantly this is an early contribution to the literature of existentialism and bears reading and comparison with Kierkegaard, Gide and Camus. In some respects Rilke appears to be a harbinger of such thinkers as Heidegger and Benjamin with his portents of the looming growth of a modern industrial society. Just as Dostoevsky before him Rilke paints a picture of a world that is being threatened by science and technology. But, you do not have to fixate or even focus on these trends in order to enjoy this novel, you merely need to relax and enjoy the poetically beautiful way Rilke serves up the prose in this haunting story. (less)
More importantly this is an early contribution to the literature of existentialism and bears reading and comparison with Kierkegaard, Gide and Camus. In some respects Rilke appears to be a harbinger of such thinkers as Heidegger and Benjamin with his portents of the looming growth of a modern industrial society. Just as Dostoevsky before him Rilke paints a picture of a world that is being threatened by science and technology. But, you do not have to fixate or even focus on these trends in order to enjoy this novel, you merely need to relax and enjoy the poetically beautiful way Rilke serves up the prose in this haunting story. (less)
Nov 11, 2013E. G. rated it really liked it · review of another edition
Shelves: translated, austria-hungary-slovakia-czech, fiction, rilke, 4-star, own
Chronology
Introduction
Notes to the Introduction
Further Reading
A Note on the Text
--The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge
Notes
Introduction
Notes to the Introduction
Further Reading
A Note on the Text
--The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge
Notes
May 24, 2021Ruxandra (4fără15) rated it it was ok · review of another edition
Shelves: read-in-2021, received, 20th-century
LORD KNOWS I TRIED, but I simply could not get into this book. While I did find the writing beautiful and came across many thought-provoking, lyrically suffused passages (especially in the first half of the book), Malte's endless rambling about his childhood or about his convoluted family history bored me to death – problem is, these bits make up SO MUCH of The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, making it nearly impossible to follow.
Still, here's a fragment on female representation in art and literature I definitely wasn't expecting to find in Rilke's writings, and which really stuck with me:
We know of these women from letters that have been preserved, as if by a miracle, or books containing poems of accusation or lament, or portraits in a gallery that look at us through a sort of weeping that the painter caught because he did not know what it was. But there were countless others: those who burned their letters, and others who no longer had the strength to write them. Ancient women who had hardened, with a kernel of exquisiteness which they kept concealed. Formless women who had grown strong, strong from sheer exhaustion, who let themselves grow to resemble their husbands but remained entirely different within, where their love had been working away in the dark. Child-bearing women who never wanted to give birth and, when at last they died in bringing the eighth child into the world, had all the manner and lightness of girls looking forward to love. And those who stayed with bullies and drunks because they had discovered a way of being further away from them, inside themselves, than they could be anywhere else; and whenever they were among people, they could not disguise the fact, but were radiant, as if they spent their lives with the blessed. Who knows how many there were, or who they were? It is as if they had destroyed beforehand the words into which they might be put. (less)
Still, here's a fragment on female representation in art and literature I definitely wasn't expecting to find in Rilke's writings, and which really stuck with me:
We know of these women from letters that have been preserved, as if by a miracle, or books containing poems of accusation or lament, or portraits in a gallery that look at us through a sort of weeping that the painter caught because he did not know what it was. But there were countless others: those who burned their letters, and others who no longer had the strength to write them. Ancient women who had hardened, with a kernel of exquisiteness which they kept concealed. Formless women who had grown strong, strong from sheer exhaustion, who let themselves grow to resemble their husbands but remained entirely different within, where their love had been working away in the dark. Child-bearing women who never wanted to give birth and, when at last they died in bringing the eighth child into the world, had all the manner and lightness of girls looking forward to love. And those who stayed with bullies and drunks because they had discovered a way of being further away from them, inside themselves, than they could be anywhere else; and whenever they were among people, they could not disguise the fact, but were radiant, as if they spent their lives with the blessed. Who knows how many there were, or who they were? It is as if they had destroyed beforehand the words into which they might be put. (less)
Aug 09, 2014Ben rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Sublimely written part-autobiography, part diary, part ghost story. I've read some of Rilke's poetry, but I'm saving myself for the rest. In fact, writing this I realise I need to buy it now. "A series of disconnected random scenes". I also enjoyed the foreward (in my edition) by Burton Pike, which I found useful. I think I might read the book again. I enjoyed it immensely. He was 28 when he wrote it, desperate to be the poet he was to become. Among the first of the Modernist novels . . . good stuff. (less)
Nov 27, 2012Lucy Barnhouse rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Shelves: twentieth-century, german
This is Rilke at his most bleak and his most beautiful. Elliptical, near-mystical evocations of childhood memories, interior landscapes, and imagined histories alternate with breathtakingly brutal descriptions of a city on the threshold of twentieth-century modernity. Rilke manages to blur the lines between individual and collective anguish even as he portrays his protagonist's terrifying, half-willful isolation. The language is to be savored; I loved it. (less)
Feb 14, 2013Ana rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
For many years the most important literary figure in my life was J.M.Coetzee. I never thought that would or could ever shift. Until now. Not only did I discover my innermost literary love, but I also uncovered the literary paternity between Rilke and my other unparalleled love - J.M.Coetzee. Coetzee - a limb of Rilke.
There are things to live for.
There are things to live for.
Dec 07, 2012Rose Gowen rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
I actually finished this days ago, but I didn't want to put it away, and I wasn't sure what else I could say about it but, Oh, oh, oh, how beautiful! how good!
So: oh, oh, oh, how beautiful! how good! (less)
So: oh, oh, oh, how beautiful! how good! (less)
Aug 31, 2013Rachel Kowal rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Easily one of the best books I've read all year and probably one that will stay at the top of my list for years to come.
There is something I want to carry around with me from every page, whether it's just a short string of words or a body of paragraphs. A meditation on life and death that is devastating, insightful, striking, and beautiful.
The imagery sings, or sometimes howls, off the page: a building on fire, the people looking on in silence until the walls come crashing down. We’re going somewhere here. We’re captive passengers on a journey through a man’s mind as he strives to experience life: to “feel how birds fly, and know the gesture which small flowers make when they open in the morning,” all the while surrounded by the death that grows inside him and waits to have a life of its own.
There are big themes in here: truth, love, memory, fate, self-deception, religion, time. There's enough on these pages to keep you engaged over the course of a lifetime.
Another reviewer writes: "If you read this book at the right time of life, no other book will ever be as important to you." I tend to agree. But I already know it's meant to be read more than once, and at various stages of life. (less)
There is something I want to carry around with me from every page, whether it's just a short string of words or a body of paragraphs. A meditation on life and death that is devastating, insightful, striking, and beautiful.
The imagery sings, or sometimes howls, off the page: a building on fire, the people looking on in silence until the walls come crashing down. We’re going somewhere here. We’re captive passengers on a journey through a man’s mind as he strives to experience life: to “feel how birds fly, and know the gesture which small flowers make when they open in the morning,” all the while surrounded by the death that grows inside him and waits to have a life of its own.
There are big themes in here: truth, love, memory, fate, self-deception, religion, time. There's enough on these pages to keep you engaged over the course of a lifetime.
Another reviewer writes: "If you read this book at the right time of life, no other book will ever be as important to you." I tend to agree. But I already know it's meant to be read more than once, and at various stages of life. (less)
This is one of those books I’ve beaten my head against many times, started and stopped, bought then resold then re-bought in a rainbow of different editions. Now that Burton Pike’s taken it on—the same Burton Pike who brought Robert Musil to life in English—the gauzy bard of angels and towers gets helpfully pulled down to his home planet, a Paris where homelessness and loneliness turn the City of Lights into the crèche of Europe's disenchanted modernity. Wobbling epistemes never sounded so good. (less)
Nov 04, 2015Meem rated it it was amazing
The kind of book you could reread 10 times and still find something new in every time.
Dec 20, 2013Lina rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Shelves: own-a-copy, german-edition, ebooks
I won't say that I fully understood everything, which I haven't(Though it's possibly impossible). All that I know is that this little piece of work carries everything I define as "Rilke's spirit", through the language, the themes, the actions described. Did I wonder before how Rilke's poetry would be in prose form? Well, I sure as hell know now.
The main theme seems to be death: How people die, how we die ourselves and that most people don't even care anymore to pick a death suitable to them or even unique. (I do think that's a bit funny...) Death is hanging everywhere, it's in the characters when they're alive, when they're dead and, to my feeling, when they're not even there. I haven't read everything by Rilke(Though I'll be happy to try), but this reminds me of some lines out of his poetry:
"Ich verrinne, ich verrinne
wie Sand, der durch Finger rinnt.
Ich habe auf einmal so viele Sinne,
die alle anders durstig sind.
Ich fühle mich an hundert Stellen
schwellen und schmerzen.
Aber am meisten mitten im Herzen.
Ich möchte sterben, lass mich allein.
Ich glaube, es wird mir gelingen,
so bange zu sein,
dass mir die Pulse zerspringen."
(To find in: "Das Stundenbuch")
Again: Death. I should read a biography, his seeming obsession with death, at least in literary form, could be the result of some interesting event... that, or he was just a genius with words. I don't think one needs to understand exactly "what" was said, rather "how" it was said, again showing that Rilke was a poet and undeniably one of the greatest in the history of German literature. (Just to be a little snobby: We just have so many great poets! More than you, English!) (less)
The main theme seems to be death: How people die, how we die ourselves and that most people don't even care anymore to pick a death suitable to them or even unique. (I do think that's a bit funny...) Death is hanging everywhere, it's in the characters when they're alive, when they're dead and, to my feeling, when they're not even there. I haven't read everything by Rilke(Though I'll be happy to try), but this reminds me of some lines out of his poetry:
"Ich verrinne, ich verrinne
wie Sand, der durch Finger rinnt.
Ich habe auf einmal so viele Sinne,
die alle anders durstig sind.
Ich fühle mich an hundert Stellen
schwellen und schmerzen.
Aber am meisten mitten im Herzen.
Ich möchte sterben, lass mich allein.
Ich glaube, es wird mir gelingen,
so bange zu sein,
dass mir die Pulse zerspringen."
(To find in: "Das Stundenbuch")
Again: Death. I should read a biography, his seeming obsession with death, at least in literary form, could be the result of some interesting event... that, or he was just a genius with words. I don't think one needs to understand exactly "what" was said, rather "how" it was said, again showing that Rilke was a poet and undeniably one of the greatest in the history of German literature. (Just to be a little snobby: We just have so many great poets! More than you, English!) (less)
Oct 04, 2010John David rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Shelves: literary-fiction, favorites
Reading “The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge” is to have the feeling that you have never before read words used in exactly this way for exactly this purpose. Rilke, perhaps most known for being the greatest German-language poet of the twentieth century, has written what can only be called a prose poem – but even to use this phrase is to reduce a fullness that cannot be reduced. This novel is symphonic, lush, and poignant. In its evocation of memory, it is Proust avant la lettre. But there are also moments of pureness and clarity that are reminiscent of Wittgenstein, which creates quite a striking contrast. Rilke’s experience with art and art criticism highly influenced his writing. His prose-poetry is pure imagism, but is also full of expressionism and impressionism. All of this sounds like an unlikely salmagundi, but I can assure you that there is something lasting and moving that inheres.
We are so used to novels being narratives of action that when we meet something like this, it gives us pause. There really is no plot here as most people would conceive it. The narrator calls to mind Dostoyevsky’s Underground Man, brooding and destitute. Malte is haunted by the doppelgangers that he lived with during his well-to-do childhood, all now long dead; he is the only member of his ancient Danish aristocratic family. The book flits in and out of memories of the deaths of his father and other relatives and their relationships. In many novels, one can easily separate, if one wishes, content and form; here they seem to belong to one another, the poetry and the memory inextricably intertwined.
Unlike many other reviewers, I wouldn’t say that the novel is difficult reading, but it might not be something that you want to read in one or two sittings. Like the “Duino Elegies” or the “Sonnets to Orpheus,” they are meant to be dipped into. The text (at least in this edition) is subdivided into seventy-one parts which serve as breaks for the narrative line of thought. If you will excuse the length, this is from section twenty-nine, and it is representative of the style throughout:
“One thing is certain: that on that evening I was drawing a knight, a quite solitary and unmistakable knight, mounted on a strangely caparisoned steed. He turned out so brightly colored that I had to change crayons frequently; but it was the red one that I used most of all, and reached for time and again. Now I needed it once again; but it rolled (I still see it) right across the brightened page, to the edge, and fell down, past me, before I could stop it, and was gone. I really did need it urgently, and having to climb down after it was distinctly vexing. Awkward as I was, it was quite a business to get down; my legs were far too long, and I couldn’t draw them out from under me: remaining too long in a kneeling position had numbed my limbs; I could not tell what was mine and what was the chair’s. At length, rather at sixes and sevens, I did make it to the floor, and found myself on an animal fell that extended under the table to the wall. But at this point I was confronted with a fresh difficulty. My eyes, accustomed to the brightness above and still wholly entranced by the colors on the white paper, were unable to make out anything at all below the table, where the blackness seemed so dense that I was afraid of knocking against it; so I fell back on my sense of touch and, kneeling and supporting myself on my left hand, combed through the cool, long-haired, familiar-feeling fell with my other hand. But there was no sign of the crayon.”
(less)
We are so used to novels being narratives of action that when we meet something like this, it gives us pause. There really is no plot here as most people would conceive it. The narrator calls to mind Dostoyevsky’s Underground Man, brooding and destitute. Malte is haunted by the doppelgangers that he lived with during his well-to-do childhood, all now long dead; he is the only member of his ancient Danish aristocratic family. The book flits in and out of memories of the deaths of his father and other relatives and their relationships. In many novels, one can easily separate, if one wishes, content and form; here they seem to belong to one another, the poetry and the memory inextricably intertwined.
Unlike many other reviewers, I wouldn’t say that the novel is difficult reading, but it might not be something that you want to read in one or two sittings. Like the “Duino Elegies” or the “Sonnets to Orpheus,” they are meant to be dipped into. The text (at least in this edition) is subdivided into seventy-one parts which serve as breaks for the narrative line of thought. If you will excuse the length, this is from section twenty-nine, and it is representative of the style throughout:
“One thing is certain: that on that evening I was drawing a knight, a quite solitary and unmistakable knight, mounted on a strangely caparisoned steed. He turned out so brightly colored that I had to change crayons frequently; but it was the red one that I used most of all, and reached for time and again. Now I needed it once again; but it rolled (I still see it) right across the brightened page, to the edge, and fell down, past me, before I could stop it, and was gone. I really did need it urgently, and having to climb down after it was distinctly vexing. Awkward as I was, it was quite a business to get down; my legs were far too long, and I couldn’t draw them out from under me: remaining too long in a kneeling position had numbed my limbs; I could not tell what was mine and what was the chair’s. At length, rather at sixes and sevens, I did make it to the floor, and found myself on an animal fell that extended under the table to the wall. But at this point I was confronted with a fresh difficulty. My eyes, accustomed to the brightness above and still wholly entranced by the colors on the white paper, were unable to make out anything at all below the table, where the blackness seemed so dense that I was afraid of knocking against it; so I fell back on my sense of touch and, kneeling and supporting myself on my left hand, combed through the cool, long-haired, familiar-feeling fell with my other hand. But there was no sign of the crayon.”
(less)
May 08, 2008D.S. Mattison rated it it was amazing
I read the version with an introduction written by William Gass and translation by Stephen Mitchell. Gass writes, "Rilke is not Malte, but Malte is Rilke." It is important to keep this in mind when wandering around the Paris streets with Malte, a young Danish nobleman who has left his family home in favor of the life of a romantic poet and who suffers from fits of remembrance. He also suffers from an acute anxiety caused in the search for the love that gives of itself. Although written without chapters, this book could be divided into two halves. The first is existential/mystical prose of the highest degree and the second is brilliant storytelling (as a result of meticulous historical research on the part of Rilke). Be sure to read the notes in the back, as they enhance the tale and illuminate the genius behind the work. (less)
Sep 02, 2012Immanuel Amojong Lokwei rated it it was amazing
One of the best quotes from the novel:
We discover that we do not know our role; we look for a mirror; we want to remove our make-up and take off what is false and be real. But somewhere a piece of disguise that we forgot still sticks to us. A trace of exaggeration remains in our eyebrows; we do not notice that the corners of our mouths are bent. And so we walk around, a mockery and a mere half; neither having achieved being nor actors.
We discover that we do not know our role; we look for a mirror; we want to remove our make-up and take off what is false and be real. But somewhere a piece of disguise that we forgot still sticks to us. A trace of exaggeration remains in our eyebrows; we do not notice that the corners of our mouths are bent. And so we walk around, a mockery and a mere half; neither having achieved being nor actors.
