Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge
by Rainer Maria Rilke
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More like The LiveJournal of Rainer Maria Rilke. I loved this.
The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge is an experimental, surrealistic novel in episodes, and reading it is like finding a lost artifact. Our narrator is a young Danish nobleman, estranged from his family, disillusioned with the romance of being a starving artist in Paris, and searching for a symbolic story that fits his experience. Malte's journeys are lush and visual and delightfully weird, and we get to follow him throug...more
The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge is an experimental, surrealistic novel in episodes, and reading it is like finding a lost artifact. Our narrator is a young Danish nobleman, estranged from his family, disillusioned with the romance of being a starving artist in Paris, and searching for a symbolic story that fits his experience. Malte's journeys are lush and visual and delightfully weird, and we get to follow him throug...more
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Read in April, 2008
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...more
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Many are familiar with his "Duino Elegies," and some colleges even require his "Letters to a Young Poet" in freshmen classes, but Rilke's only novel remains somewhat of a mystery. Much like other existential, man-about-town texts, in which not much happens but a character's obsession becomes fully lived (cf. Sartre and nausea, Lautréamont and evil, Miller and sex), Rilke's Malte is troubled by the question of death and transcendence, and that place where the veil of reality ...more
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Read in September, 2007
I've categorized this under fiction, but I'm not sure that's an entirely accurate designation. But whatevs.
Of Note:
The False Dmitry (also treated in Tsvetaeva's poem "Marina")
Gaspara Stampa (doesn't another poet refer to her, or is it just Rilke?)
I found that I was most interested in the telling of the familial ghost stories and least interested in the meditative, declamatory passages. The historical references were fun (at least the ones I had time to Google).
Also wor...more
Of Note:
The False Dmitry (also treated in Tsvetaeva's poem "Marina")
Gaspara Stampa (doesn't another poet refer to her, or is it just Rilke?)
I found that I was most interested in the telling of the familial ghost stories and least interested in the meditative, declamatory passages. The historical references were fun (at least the ones I had time to Google).
Also wor...more
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Read in February, 2008
I much prefer Rilke's letters and memoirs to his work of fiction, though Notebooks reads just like an autobiography. It isn't as coherent as his memoirs, nor as insightful and honest as his letters, however. I would recommend setting aside one evening to read this book in one sitting, because once you put it down I found it very difficult to go back to it. You never know where the story will take you: one minute you're examining an old blind man with a wheelbarrow, then you're contemplating real...more
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recommends it for:
Dog lovers
Brigge seems to be journaling through some rage here. But a good kind of rage, the kind that somehow weaves childhood memories together with weird historical anecdotes with existential subtexts. There's some hefty reference to traditional French and German poets, and a few of the more famous nuns out there, but I think I was happiest when he kept it personal and wrote about his walks around Paris. Some might disagree with me, but I really think this book is about dogs. Rilke's dogs don't tro...more
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Read in July, 2007
I was very hot and cold with this one - I absolutely loved parts of it, and other parts were ridiculously melodramatic and/or made little sense (which is why I gave it 3 stars instead of 4). I was suspicious that some of it might have been lost in translation. Some of the imagery is really great - I especially liked how he personifies death. The last few pages about the true meaning of the Prodigal Son story are very effective and moving.
It was definitely a worthwhile read, and I'd recomm...more
It was definitely a worthwhile read, and I'd recomm...more
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Read in March, 2006
"I am learning to see. I don't know why it is, but everything penetrates more deeply into me and does not stop at the place where until now it always used to finish. I have an inner self of which I was ignorant. Everything goes thither now. What happens there I do not know."
Truthfully there were some passages of this book that I found myself lost and the struggle tedious, but otherwise, some of the best pages I have ever read. One of few prose works from the poet Rainer Maria Rilke
Truthfully there were some passages of this book that I found myself lost and the struggle tedious, but otherwise, some of the best pages I have ever read. One of few prose works from the poet Rainer Maria Rilke
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The woman sat up, frightened, she pulled out of herself, too quickly, too violently, so that her face was left in her two hands. I could see it lying there: Its hollow form. It cost me an indescribable effort to stay with those two hands, not to look at what had been torn out of them.
Oh, Rilke. You're such a poet.
I can't get the image of the torn face out of my...head.
Oh, Rilke. You're such a poet.
I can't get the image of the torn face out of my...head.
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recommends it for:
Lindsey
A fictionalized Rilke as a young man, dealing with issues of psychosis, genius and creativity. The blurring of 1) subjective impressions, fears, and memories with 2) the objective, narrative reality is constant throughout, such that, no reality exists outside of the head of our eloquent, troubled and fascinating protagonist. Great read for artists, architects, and any creative types.
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Read in May, 2007
I'm still working on this one too, since I'm in school. But I'm near the end and have some time this weekend...
It's an attempt at giving figure to death and the German is very difficult, but it's a good way to connect to those I know through this existential novel; however, it's good Rilke continued writing poetry and this novel does not compare.
It's an attempt at giving figure to death and the German is very difficult, but it's a good way to connect to those I know through this existential novel; however, it's good Rilke continued writing poetry and this novel does not compare.
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Read in January, 2006
recommends it for:
Shomit, because he recommended it to me.
I learned that other people agree that lovers, married people, close friends (especially artists) need to get the hell away from each other for long periods of time to make the relationship work. Otherwise, this book was hard to read. Not even sure i finished it.
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"I marvel sometimes how readily I give up everything I expected for the reality, even when the reality is bad. My God, if any of it could be shared! But would it -be- then, would it -be-? No, it -is- only at the price of solitude."
-pg. 68
-pg. 68
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Read in January, 1984
Beautiful, elegant, visionary miserablism. The one section where the narrator is walking down the street and imagining the various illnesses and torments of the passersby will remain with me forever until it is no longer with me.
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by author of Letters to a Young Poet which was sort of a classic in the development of my view of writing specifically and art generally. Receives lots of 5 star ratings on goodreads though no one seems to say why.
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Rilke's poetry is amazing. This is a prose piece he wrote. I highly recommend his work as translated by Stephen Mitchell. His Collected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke with Mitchell's translations are superb.
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Some of the most beautiful prose I have ever read. No other author (or poet) uses synecdochy as successfully as Rilke does in this novel.
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2 comments
I loved the brilliant novel of this amazing poet. i read it in college when i was supposed to be reading other things.
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Read in June, 2008
I just can't get into it this time. I'll try it again in a few months.
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