Rainer Maria Rilke 'Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge'

Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge #1-2

by Rainer Maria Rilke

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.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, German Literature, Poetry, Literature, Novels, Philosophy

Paperback

First published January 1, 1910

About the author

A mystic lyricism and precise imagery often marked verse of German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, whose collections profoundly influenced 20th-century German literature and include The Book of Hours (1905) and The Duino Elegies (1923).

People consider him of the greatest 20th century users of the language.

His haunting images tend to focus on the difficulty of communion with the ineffable in an age of disbelief, solitude, and profound anxiety — themes that tend to position him as a transitional figure between the traditional and the modernist poets.

His two most famous sequences include the Sonnets to Orpheus , and his most famous prose works include the Letters to a Young Poet and the semi-autobiographical The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge .

He also wrote more than four hundred poems in French, dedicated to the canton of Valais in Switzerland, his homeland of choice.

Reviews

[Vit Babenco]

The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge resembles a series of impressionistic paintings…

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.

[Kalliope]

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.

[Orsodimondo]

IO IMPARO A VEDERE


Luigi Russolo: Profumo, 1910

Era l’epoca in cui cercavo identificazione piena in ciò che leggevo, volevo specchiarmi e riflettermi nel personaggio principale. Errore madornale.
Ma in quella mia epoca succedeva così: vivevo via dalla famiglia già da un po’, mi stavo impadronendo della mia vita e stavo entrando nel mondo.
Malte è stato uno degli ‘eroi’ letterari che mi hanno accompagnato in quegli anni, insieme stavamo cercando il senso della vita.

Per completare il gioco di identificazione, Malte è un doppio dello stesso Rilke, questo romanzo ha forte sapore autobiografico.
E Rainer Maria, che probabilmente ha espresso il meglio di sé nella poesia più che nella prosa, era dannatamente moderno con quella sua inquietudine esistenziale con la quale vestiva anche Malte.


Carlo Carrà: Ricordi d’infanzia, 1910

Malte è un giovane danese di famiglia decaduta che arriva a Parigi e in queste sue pagine annota, senza ordine e senza data, fatti, ricordi e soprattutto pensieri, emozioni e sentimenti, angoscia e solitudine.
Io imparo a vedere, dice Malte, ed era proprio quello che stavo cercando di fare anch’io in quel periodo della mia vita, e quello che mi pare stesse facendo lo stesso Rilke che dopo la pubblicazione di questo (1910) entrò in una “siccità” artistica che durò diversi anni (dodici, credo).

Queste pagine raccontano un apprendistato per la vita. Il che non so se si traduce davvero in un romanzo di formazione. Anche perché, questo è un romanzo non-romanzo con quel suo procedere in prima persona con andamento che interseca realtà e fantasia, sogno e delirio, ricordo e immaginazione, impressioni e tormenti. Fino al pianto.


Paula Modersohn-Becker

[Adam Dalva]

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.

[Tamer]

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.

[Fergus, Weaver of Autistic Webs]

This is a book of arcane wisdom - the arcane musings of a young man who catches a glimpse of a vast Jungian mandala, in the centre of which each of his struggling aphorisms fits as in a hitherto unseen jigsaw - the hard-earned vision of a young adult "knowing the world for the First Time."

It is wonderful, like Conrad's first sighting of the Orient.

And yet all roads lead to Rome...

Dirty, smelly, noisy, ugly Rome - the city all grown-up children love to hate. To their neighbours. Little does young Brigge know this jigsaw puzzle, completed, will make him sick like them.

Though free, at first.

But sick as Rilke's gigantically human Angels in his Duino Elegies are sick for home, a distant land that Must, if the elders speak aright, exist. Not in this teeming Fury's snake-head of a world...

Which you must glimpse askance, from this point on. Exactly as Rilke did with the remainder of his life, his ingenue-typical joie de vivre held like a shield of "cristal par le monstre insulte.

He was to be cast aside by the mob as a wasted, dissipated relic of the spoiled past.

Yes, Hitler and Stalin were chomping at the bit in the wings as he dreamed on!

Yet Rilke had learned his lesson. He would no longer live in the world, of a piece with the world, or FOR such a world that abjectly "stained the white radiance of Eternity" -

Upon which he focused -

In each of the castoff treasures his enlightened soul cherished.

“Every Angel is TERRIBLE!”

Treasures sheltered from the world of febrile flux, in the words he published - or, without regret, left unpublished.

Friends, this book has no stories or pictures.

This is the devilishly difficult book of a "high-cloyed and sorrowful" young Soul in Embryo.

[[P]]

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.

“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.

[Jan-Maat]

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 or at least certainly not in a manner similar enough to the narrative voice and that the notebooks failed to instil such a fear in me, further what ever desire I may have had to read Rilke's poetry withered in me. At times the narrator mused on love and the difference between how men and women love leading me to think several times to myself 'what a load of old bollocks' a curious vernacular expression now that I come to think of it - this I hasten to assure the gentle reader is not my typical response to the books which pass through my hands. Perhaps we can take it as read that I was something less than delighted by Rilke's demi/semi - novel. However, at the same time, I am not entirely unappreciative of it.

Well so far I have talked around it, so let me beat the bush directly for a change. The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge are ostensibly written by the eponymous Malte Laurids Brigge, a Dane from a downwardly mobile Danish aristocratic family. The note books open on the 11th of September, presumably sometime around 1910 when Rilke published the work. Brigge is in Paris, he seems to be poor he is the kind of poor that can afford to store his old furniture in a barn and knock about in Paris with no apparent income but has a wish not to be identified as one of the Parisian urban poor, the opening pages are an intense rush of sensory impressions - mostly unpleasant, Brigge is particularly aware of hospitals, of one of which he describes as "a factory production line, of course, and with such an immense output the quality of individual deaths may vary" (p.5) generally people don't think of hospitals as death factories, so Brigge struck me as a person who had either recovered from a severe disease or was particularly obsessed by death (it emerges that the latter is the case). Brigge says some striking things - that he is learning to see, that as he changes he is not the same person as he was, therefore he cannot write to people that he knew because they have now become strangers to each other, and that people wear different faces. A doctor offers him the opportunity to undergo electric shock treatment but while waiting his turn Brigge runs off.

This is all mysterious and written densely creating an intense impression, several times I had to go back and read a paragraph again, which didn't particularly help. After a while the narration changes and he recounts events from his childhood, the death of his mother, later of his father, people on the verge of dying, a ghost, his sudden turn to reading, making visits. I didn't have much of a sense of how the young Brigge connected to the older one in Paris - apart from the stress on deaths, or why he went to Paris. Towards the end the narrative shifts back to Paris - how he can hear the neighbours through the walls, ruminations on love, God features throughout but I felt as a synonym for love rather than a set of specific beliefs.

Obviously at a loss, I was obliged to make recourse to a popular on-line encyclopeadia to see if anything there might throw some light on what I had read. There the Notebooks were described as semi-autobiographical so maybe we have a game - the author saying this is me and this is not me - indeed some elements in the novel apparently were drawn from his own life, but we also have a distancing the author is asserting that Brigge is a fiction, perhaps a person he could have been but one who he is not, Rilke was from Prague not Denmark and his parents middle class not aristocrats.

Rilke started work on the Notebooks when he was in Paris busy as a Rodin super-fan, I had read his essay on Rodin (and maybe I still have that book somewhere packaged away) it was as far as I can remember a completely different work, exuberant and passionate about Rodin's creativity. These notebooks just sit there - obviously enough, there is no plot, nor a sense as in a diary of entering into someone's life, nothing for me congealed into a creative unity or understanding of Brigge/Rilke - but then as I have to remind myself why would it? It says it is the notebooks of Brigge, not the manifesto of Brigge, I assume the reader has a sympathetic grasp of them or does not (as in my case).

The infamous encyclopeadia also mentioned that after a favourable reaction to the Bolshevik revolution and the (short lived) Bavarian Soviet he ended up writing private letters in which he praised Mussolini, shortly afterwards and coincidentally he died fortunately before he became a fully fledged Fascist - if I was to read these notebooks as an anti-bourgeosis, anti-capitalist, escape from the Weberian iron cage of modernity, full of longing for a mystification of the rational world then Fascism would have been a logical endpoint as it did offer a mystification of the rational world and transformed the fear of death into the idealisation of death (mostly of other people admittedly). There is in his musings on God a sense that he had been bitten deeply by religion in childhood and retained an emotional need for it while intellectually it no longer satisfied him, others particularly perhaps of Protestant inclinations would lean towards spiritualism, the occult, and palm reading (I am thinking of W.B. Yeats, possibly unjustly).

Anyway I am bemused and adrift having finished The Notebooks, there is some intense writing but for me it doesn't come together other than to imagine that Brigge might have been an artist but wasn't and that he was not in a good state of mind, being alone in Paris showed no signs of agreeing with him at all. On the plus side at least he did not start murdering prostitutes which at one stage did look as though it might be a possibility.

It may be that it suffers in translation and losses a certain lyricism, it is the kind of book in which I can imagine that the music of the language carries the reader, but not in this translation to this reader.

[Eric Byrd]

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”:

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.

[Flo]

I've found the book to take with me to an isolated island.

[Luís]

I'm sorry to dispel a myth, but this book is almost illegible: we look for meaning, we wait for it from cover to cover, but it doesn't 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 offers us nothing new.

[Meike]

English: The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge
Rilke is the most important poet in the German language - there, I said it, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, and, oh God, especially Friedrich Hölderlin could never. The GOATs of the literary arts rendered in German hail from Prague, RMR and Franz Kafka, fight me. "Der Malte", as the cool nerds refer to it, is the only novel Rilke has written, and it is one of the core texts of European literary modernity, dealing with its key themes: The big city and the flâneur (Charles Baudelaire!), fragmented identities, and the ever increasing acceleration of a fleeting, crumbling reality. Basically, this is a rendition of Baudelaire's "A une passante", but in novel form: "Un éclair... puis la nuit! — Fugitive beauté / Dont le regard m'a fait soudainement renaître, / Ne te verrai-je plus que dans l'éternité?" (A lightning flash... then night! Fleeting beauty / By whose glance I was suddenly reborn, / Will I see you no more before eternity?)

Rilke presents his work - which he referred to as a "book in prose", not a novel - as the diary of a 28-year old Danish nobleman who wants to live as a poet in Paris. Accordingly, the text consists of 72 entries which do not follow a traditional plot, but rather mirror Malte's psychological movements, his consciousness as he ponders his experiences in Paris, his childhood as well as historical events and circumstances. And I'm not gonna lie: This is not an easy book to decipher, because Rilke bombards his readers with complex metaphors, images, and references. But a little determination and effort pay off: The entries are multi-faceted gems full of beauty and ideas.

Rilke shows a world that has lost traditional beliefs and authorities, throwing a young man into an increasingly mechanized moloch without guarantees, hence highlighting his prism-like identity that reflects his experiences in refracted lights. This new freedom is also empowerment: Malte has to find connections and produce sense and purpose in a transitory world, but the process is scary - which makes him a typical representative of the modern person suffering from what György Lukács called "transcendental homelessness". He cannot hang on to tradition, but has to deal with what Walter Benjamin described as "chocks", the impact of sudden and fast actions and perceptions that kill the "aura" of the real (see The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction). The plurality of possible identities is mirrored in the (in 1910) innovative montage style aesthetics that feature different text forms.

With the way he conceptualized his text, Rilke also empowers the reader: We can interpret the entries, seek connections and ponder possible meanings, the author surrenders his work of art to the judgement of recipients instead of telling us what to think. So yes: The current trend of instructive, pedagogical fiction (what Moritz Baßler calls "midcult") is an anti-modernist movement, a kind of Biedermeier. But we don't have to read that crap, we can read Rilke instead.

[AiK]

Прекрасный текст, не похожий ни на какой другой. Он одновременно и светлый, лиричный, поэтичный, и в то же время безобразный, отвратительный и пугающий. Это экспрессионизм в литературе. Эту книгу нельзя читать «по диагонали», поскольку очень легко потеряться в множественных смыслах и идеях. Да и в самой книге сюжета почти нет, он легко теряется в воспоминаниях, зарисовках, отвлечениях на многочисленные исторические темы, и описаниях разных чувств, например, страха, и явлений, например, тишины. У Мальте страхи экзистенциальны и иррациональны – страх жесткой шерстинки, страх проглотить во сне уголек, страх, что будет кричать, страхи, страхи, страхи…. Ему не к чему было взрослеть. Очень точная мысль для ребенка о том, что мать разграничает от тишины. Она отгоняет все, верная своей любви.
В романе много интересных мыслей, например, о судьбе и жизни.

Судьба любит плесть рисунки и узоры. Трудность ее – в ее сложности. Жизнь, напротив, трудна своей простотой. Она состоит из считанных вещей, но громадных и не охватных разумом. Святой, отрешаясь судьбы, именно их избирает перед Богом. Но женщина, уступая природе, связывая себя с мужчиной и делая тот же выбор, будит злой рок, дремлющий в каждой любви. Решительная, без судьбы, перенесясь в вечность, стоит она рядом с мужчиной, который тем временем изменяется. Любящая всегда превосходит любимого, потому что жизнь больше судьбы. Она хочет сделать свой дар безмерным; в этом ее счастье. Невыразимая мука любви для нее в одном: ее просят ограничить свой дар.

И о любви.

Жизнь любимых тяжела и опасна. Ах, если б они себя пересилили и сделались любящими. У любящих – надежная жизнь. Они уже вне подозрений и сами не могут себе изменить. В них исцеляется тайна, они выпевают ее целиком, как соловей, не дробя. Они плачут по одному-единственному; но вся природа им вторит: это плач по Вечному. Они кидаются вслед за утраченным, но уже с первых шагов обгоняют его, и перед ними – лишь Бог.

Быть любимым – значит сгорать. Любить – светить негасимой лампадой. Любимость – проходит. Любовь – длится.

Эта книга о жизни и смерти, об одиноком сердце, ищущем любви, об отчаянной отчужденности. Наш герой всем сердцем мечтал, чтобы его полюбили. Это пассивное чувство, чтобы тебя полюбили, нужно самому любить. Он хотел писать стихи, он кидался в учение. Он с таким трудом учился любить, а ему доказывали раз за разом, как мелки и ничтожны были все его любови, которые он сочинял до сих пор. Любовь ни на что не годна, пока не сделаешь ее деятельной. Отчужденный, он возвращается домой, кидается к родным, но он понимает, как мало они о нем думают. Ощущая бесконечную дальность Бога, он чувствовал, что одарить его любовью под силу лишь Одному. Только Богу. Но он пока не хотел этой любви.

[Ruxandra (4fără15)]

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.

[Helga Martiros]

*Note: I suggest not to read this book if you are lonely, depressed, unhappy or dissatisfied with your life.

To be loved means to be consumed by fire. To love is to glow bright with an inexhaustible oil. To be loved is to pass away; to love is to endure.

Rilke wrote this semi-autobiographical novel in 1902 after his move to Paris; "a city where there is no forgiveness".

The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge ('Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge') are random thoughts and daydreams of a man who is suffering depression and is consumed by paranoia; who sees only the poverty, filth, sickness, cruelty, despair, hopelessness and death.

There is no beginners' classes in life. What is required of you is always the hardest thing, right from the start.

These introspections are often accompanied by his reminiscences about his childhood, his mother who also was suffering from depression after the death of her daughter and the ghosts he used to see at their ancestral castle.

His mother used to tell him:
'Never forget to make a wish, Malte. One should never stop making wishes. I do not believe that they come true, but there are wishes that keep, a whole life long, and one couldn't live long enough for them to come true anyway.'

In a letter of 18 July 1903 he writes to his friend Lou Andreas-Salomé:

'Paris was an experience similar to that of the military school; just as in those days i was seized by an immense, fearful amazement, so now i was beset by horror of everything that is known, as if in some inexpressible confusion, as life.'

Malte suffers from rootlessness. He is afraid of death, but he is also afraid to be loved by others. Any kind of affection is unnerving. He seeks only one love and that is the love of God. But is he ready to accept that bliss?

The woman who loves always surpasses the man who is loved, because life is greater than fate. Her devotion aspires to be infinite: that is her happiness. But the nameless grief of her love has always been this: that she is required to limit that devotion.

[Gabrielle (Reading Rampage)]

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.

[Andrew]

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.

[Salamon]

مدتیه اصلاً فرصت نمی‌کنم سری به گودریدز دوست‌داشتنی بزنم و به همین ترتیب زمان فکر کردن به ریویو و نوشتنش رو نداشتم.

اما در مورد این کتاب که خوندنش هم به درازا کشید کوتاه میگم که احساسات عجیبی رو در من برانگیخت. موج‌ها و لایه‌هایی داره که من رو جابه‌جا می‌کردن و درشون گم می‌شدم. جدا از بخش قابل توجهی از کتاب که تلمیح‌ها و ارجاعات کمی کسل‌کننده داره و شما دائماً نیاز دارید به یادداشت‌های انتهای کتاب مراجعه کنید، از خوندن این متن متفاوت راضیم.



بریده‌هایی از کتاب

_______________________________________________________
"...دیگر نامه هم نمی‌خواهم بنویسم. چه فایده دارد به کسی بگویم که دارم آدم دیگری می‌شوم؟ اگر آدم دیگری بشوم، پس دیگر کسی که بودم نیستم؛ و اگر چیزی جز آنچه بودم هستم، روشن است که دیگر آشنایی ندارم. پس برای غریبه‌ها، برای آنها که مرا نمی‌شناسند، چه‌بسا نمی‌توانم چیزی بنویسم."

"...این روزها چه کسی برای مرگ تمام‌عیار ارزش قایل است؟ هیچ‌کس. حتی پولدارها، که هرچه باشد از عهده‌ی مرگی آبرومند برمی‌آیند، انگار دیگر به فکر این چیزها نیستند؛ آرزوی داشتن مرگی از آن خود روز‌به‌روز کمیاب‌تر می‌شود. کمی دیگر که بگذرد، مثل زندگیِ خوش کمیاب می‌شود. خدایا، همه چیز دمِ دست است. از راه می‌رسی، زندگی را می‌یابی، حاضر و آماده، تنها باید آن را زیب تن کنی. می‌خواهی بروی یا ناچاری بروی. به هر رو زحمتی ندارد: بفرمایید قربان، این هم مرگ حضرت عالی. هرجور که مرگ برسد، می‌میری؛ به مرگی می‌میری که با بیماری‌ات هماهنگ است (چون از وقتی که بیماری‌ها را شناختی، این را هم دریافتی که پایان‌های گوناگون مرگبار، به بیماری‌ها وابسته است نه به اشخاص...)."

"...نخستین کسی که این افکار آرامش‌ستیز به ذهنش رسیده، باید دست به کارهایی بزند که دیگران از یاد برده‌اند؛ حتی اگر کاره‌ای نباشد و به هیچ‌وجه مناسب‌ترین کس نباشد، چرا که جز او کسی دمِ دست نیست."

"گه‌گاه از جلو مغازه‌های کوچک می‌گذرم، مثلاً در خیابان سِن. عتیقه‌فروش‌ها، فروشگاه‌های کوچک کتاب‌های کهنه، یا فروشندگانِ قلمزنی‌ها با ویترین‌هایی پر از خرت‌و‌پرت. هرگز کسی وارد مغازه‌شان نمی‌شود؛ پیداست که خرید و فروشی در کار نیست. اما اگر نگاهی توی مغازه‌ها بیندازی، می‌بینی که آنجا نشسته‌اند و با آرامش خیال کتاب می‌خوانند؛ فکر فردا را نمی‌کنند، نگران هیچ موفقیتی نیستند، سگی خوش‌خلق پیش پایشان نشسته است، یا گربه‌ای که با خزیدن کنار ردیف کتاب‌ها به سکوت عمق می‌بخشد، انگار که نام‌ها را از پشت کتاب‌ها پاک می‌کند.
     آه، کاش همین بس بود: گاه دلم می‌خواهد چنین ویترین پُر و پیمانی را برای خودم بخرم و با سگی بیست سال تمام پشتش بنشینم."

"چقدر همواره می‌هراسیدم هنگامی که درباره‌ی رو به‌مرگی می‌گفتند: دیگر هیچ‌کس را نتوانست بشناسد. آنگاه چهره‌ای تنها را مجسم می‌کردم که سر از بالش برمی‌دارد و می‌جوید، چیزی آشنا را می‌جوید، چیزی را که پیشتر دیده است می‌جوید، اما هیچ نمی‌یابد. اگر این‌همه نمی‌ترسیدم، با این واقعیت به خود دلداری می‌دادم که همه چیز را متفاوت دیدن و باز هم زنده ماندن محال نیست. اما می‌ترسم، ترسی ناگفتنی از این تغییر دارم. به راستی هنوز با این دنیا که به نظرم خوب می‌رسد، اُخت نشده‌ام. دنیای دیگر به چه کارم می‌آید؟ دلم می‌خواهد در میان معناهایی که برایم عزیز شده‌اند به سر ببرم؛..."

"ناخرسند از دیگران و ناخرسند از خود، آرزو دارم در سکوت و انزوای شب خود را برهانم و اندک مایه‌ای از غرور در خود بیابم. جان‌های آنان که دوستشان داشته‌ام و آنان که برایشان آواز خوانده‌ام دلداری‌ام می‌دهند و پشت‌گرمم می‌کنند، دروغ و بخارهای مسموم‌کننده‌ی دنیا را از من می‌رانند؛ و اما تو ای کردگار سرور عالمیان! عنایتت را از من دریغ مدار تا شعرِ تری بسرایم، به نشانه‌ی آنکه از پست‌ترین مردمان نیستم، نیز نه پست‌تر از کسانی که از ایشان بیزارم."

"...زندگی‌هایی که هرگز از وجودشان باخبر نبوده‌ای رو می‌آیند و با آنچه راستی بود درمی‌آویزند، و گذشته‌ای را که خیال کرده بودی می‌شناسی پس می‌زنند، زیرا در هر چیز که رو می‌آید نیرویی تازه‌نفس و نو نهفته است، اما آنچه همیشه بوده از یادآوری مدام فرسوده شده است."

"...همه‌ی اینها دوامی سرسخت دارند، همه‌ی اینها بر هستی خود اصرار می‌ورزند و با حسادت به هرچه هست، به واقعیت هول‌انگیز خود چنگ می‌اندازند. چه بسا مردم مایل باشند خیلی‌هاشان را فراموش کنند، خواب شیارهایی را در مغزشان به نرمی می‌ساید و آرام می‌خوابند، اما رؤیاها خواب را پس می‌زنند و از نو ردپای طرح‌ها را دنبال می‌کنند. و آنان نفس‌نفس‌زنان از خواب بیدار می‌شوند و آرامش کورسوی شمعی را که نور آن در تاریکی ذوب می‌شود، مثل شربت می‌نوشند. اما افسوس، این امنیت چه سست‌بنیاد است!"

"شاید بهتر بود در تاریکی می‌ماندی و قلب بیکرانت تلاش می‌کرد تا در برابر آنچه نمی‌توان تمیز داد، چونان سنگ باشد. اکنون که در خود آرام گرفته‌ای، ببین که چگونه پیشاروی خود در دست‌هایت تمام می‌شوی، دَم‌به‌دَم با حرکت‌هایی مبهم رد خط‌های چهره‌ات را می‌گیری. و در درونت به ندرت جای خالی پیدا می‌شود؛ و به راستی از این فکر آرام می‌گیری که هیچ‌چیز بزرگی در این تنگنا جا نمی‌گیرد؛ و حتی هیولا نیز باید درونی بشود و خود را به تناسب محیط دوروبرش محدود کند. اما بیرون، بیرون پیش‌بینی‌ناپذیر است."

"ای شب تهی از شیء. ای پنجره‌ی مات رو به بیرون، ای درهای بسته به احتیاط؛ هرگز کسی نهادهای برجا مانده و معتبر روزگاران کهن را فهم نکرد. ای سکوت پلکان، سکوت اتاق‌های مجاور، سکوت انباشته تا سقف. ای مادر: ای یگانه، ای که سال‌ها پیش در کودکی در به روی این سکوت بستی، ای کسی که همه چیز را به گردن می‌گیری و می‌گویی: نترس، منم. ای کسی که دلش را داری شب همه شب برای آنکه به وحشت می‌افتد و از ترس هلاک می‌شود، خودِ سکوت باشی. چراغی برمی‌افروزی و اکنون دیگر صدا تویی. و چراغ را پیشارویت نگاه می‌داری و می‌گویی: نترس، منم. و آهسته بر زمینش می‌گذاری و دیگر تردیدی نیست: تویی؛ تو، نور دوروبر این اشیای صمیمی و آشنا که بی‌هوا، خوب و ساده، و بی‌ابهام آنجا هستند."

"ای تنهاترین، ای خلوت‌نشین، این‌گونه با شهرت فریبت داده‌اند. اما آنان که تا چندی پیش از بیخ و بن مخالف تو بودند، اکنون با تو همچون همتراز خود رفتار می‌کنند. و سخنانت را در قفس تکبر و خودنمایی با خود به این‌سو و آن‌سو می‌برند و در میدان‌ها به نمایش می‌گذارند و از فاصله‌ی ایمن خود دستشان می‌اندازند؛ همه‌ی جانوران وحشی هراسناکت را."

"...آه، مالده، ما این‌طور می‌میریم و به نظرم مردم آن‌قدر سرشان به کار و گرفتاری‌هاشان گرم است که وقت ندارند به مرگ ما فکر کنند. انگار شهاب ثاقبی بیفتد و هیچ‌کس آن را ندیده باشد و آرزویی نکرده باشد. هرگز فراموش نکن که آرزویی بکنی، مالده. از آرزو کردن هرگز نباید دست کشید. به گمانم برآورده نشوند، اما آرزوهایی هستند که سال‌ها دوام دارند، سرتاسر عمر، چندان که نمی‌توان منتظر برآورده‌شدن آنها ماند.》"

"...خودم را می‌بینم که در تخت کودکانه‌ام دراز می‌کشم و خواب به چشمم نمی‌آید و به نحو مبهمی پیش‌بینی می‌کنم که زندگی چنین خواهد شد: سرشار از چیزهایی خاص که فقط برای یک تن معنی دارد و آن را نمی‌توان به دیگری بازگفت. اما این مسلم است که اندک‌اندک غروری تیره و سنگین در درونم سر برداشت. مجسم می‌کردم که چطور می‌توان با درونی لبریز و خاموش این‌سو و آن‌سو رفت. همدردی هیجان‌زده‌ای نسبت به بزرگسالان حس کردم؛ آنها را می‌ستودم و در صدد بودم به آنان بگویم که تحسینشان می‌کنم."

"دکتر یسبرسِن ناچار بود در خانه‌ی ما به آدمی معمولی بدل شود؛ اما این دقیقاً همان نقشی بود که هرگز نداشت. از زمانی که یادش می‌آمد، حرفه‌اش با روح آدمی پیوند خورده بود. به نظرش روح، مؤسسه‌ای عمومی بود که نمایندگی‌اش را او به عهده داشت و هیچ‌گاه خود را فارغ از کار نمی‌دید، حتی در مناسبات با همسرش، یا به گفته‌ی لاواتر که در موقعیتی دیگر گفته بود《ربکای فروتن و وفادارش، که با زاییدن فرزندان تقدس یافته بود.》"

"...اما در خانه‌‌ی ما هرگز سر وقت راه نمی‌افتادیم. مامان که دوست نداشت به او بگویند کالسکه حاضر است، معمولاً خیلی زودتر پایین می‌آمد، و وقتی کسی را پیدا نمی‌کرد، همیشه کاری به ذهنش می‌رسید که باید مدت‌ها پیش انجام می‌شد، و در طبقه‌ی بالا دنبال چیزی می‌گشت یا ترتیب کاری را می‌داد، چنانکه دیگر دست کسی به این زودی‌ها به او نمی‌رسید. سر آخر همه منتظر آمدنش می‌شدیم. و آخرش که آماده می‌شد و می‌نشست، معلوم می‌شد چیزی را جا گذاشته و باید زیورسِن را خبر می‌کردیم، چون تنها زیورسِن می‌دانست کجاست. اما بعد ناگهان، پیش از آنکه زیورسِن برگردد، راه می‌افتادیم."

"کنت با حرکتی رو به دیوار کرد و فریاد زد:《کتاب‌ها توخالی‌اند. خون مهم است، در خون باید بتوان خواند. این بلمار در خونش ماجراهای تحسین‌انگیز و حکایت‌های عجیب داشت؛ هرجا را که می‌خواست می‌توانست بازش کند، همیشه ماجرایی را آنجا شرح داده بودند؛ یک صفحه از خونش نیز خالی نبود. و وقتی گه‌گاه در به روی خود می‌بست و در تنهایی ورق می‌زد، به فصل‌هایی درباره‌ی کیمیاگری و سنگ‌های قیمتی و رنگ‌ها می‌رسید. چرا نباید همه‌ی اینها در آن نوشته شده باشد؟ حتماً جایی نوشته شده است."

"از میان تجربه‌های کمابیش درنیافتنی، روزهای تولد بهتر از همه بود. البته می‌دانستی که کیفِ زندگی در تمایز قایل‌نشدن است؛ اما در این روز با یک‌جور حق شادی بیدار می‌شدی که شکی تویش نبود. چه‌بسا این حق بسیار زود به وجود آمده بود، در مرحله‌ای که به هر چیز چنگ می‌اندازی با قدرت بی‌خطای تخیل به رنگ تند آرزویی که در آن دَم داری در می‌آوری."

"نه، نه، هیچ‌‌چیز را نمی‌شود در این جهان پیشاپیش تصور کرد، حتی کمترین چیز را. هر چیزی از خصوصیات بی‌همتای بسیاری ساخته شده است که پیش‌بینی‌پذیر نیست. در عالم خیال آن‌قدر عجله داری که نادیده‌شان می‌گیری و متوجه نمی‌شوی که حضور ندارند. اما واقعیت‌ها کُند و بی‌نهایت مفصل‌اند."

"پیش از این هم ترسیده بودم. مثلاً وقتی سگم مرد. گناهش تا ابد باری بر دوش من است. سخت مریض بود. تمام روز کنارش زانو زده بودم که ناگهان پارس لرزان و کوتاهی کرد، درست همان‌طور که با ورود هر غریبه‌ای می‌کرد. قرارمان این بود که در چنین مواردی این‌جور پارس کند؛ و من بی‌اختیار سر به سوی در چرخاندم. اما مرگ به درونش رسیده بود. نگران نگاهش را پاییدم، او هم همینکار را کرد؛ اما نه برای وداع. نگاهش سخت و غریب بود. ملامتم می‌کرد که به آن اجازه‌ی ورود داده‌ام. باورش شده بود که می‌توانم راهش را ببندم. پیدا بود که همیشه مرا خیلی دست بالا می‌گرفته. و فرصتی نبود که برایش توضیح دهم. همچنان غریبه و تنها به من زل زد، تا اینکه تمام کرد."

"...آنجا می‌نشستم و از قرار معلوم چنان قیافه‌ی هولناکی داشتم که هیچ‌چیز جرئت نداشت خود را به من نزدیک کند؛ حتی شمع هم که تازه کار روشن‌کردنش را انجام داده بودم، کاری به کارم نداشت. انگار به خودیِ خود در اتاقی خالی می‌سوخت. در این وقت‌ها همیشه آخرین امیدم پنجره بود. خیال می‌کردم هنوز بیرون از آنجا، چه‌بسا چیزی باشد که حتی حالا، حتی در این تنگدستیِ ناگهانی دمِ مرگ، مال من است. اما نگاهم به آنجا افتاده و نیفتاده آرزو می‌کردم که کاش جلو پنجره کور و همچون دیواری مسدود بود. چون حالا می‌دانستم که آن بیرون هم همه‌چیز بی‌اعتنا جریان دارد، و آنجا هم چیزی نیست جز تنهایی من. آن تنهایی که خودم به سرم آوردم، و قلبم دیگر تناسبی با عظمت آن نداشت. آدم‌هایی که روزی ترکشان کرده بودم به ذهنم می‌آمدند و نمی‌دانستم که چطور می‌توان کسی را ترک کرد."

"جز در هراسمان تصوری از این نیرو نداریم. زیرا چنان درنیافتنی و چنان یکپارچه علیه ما است که اگر بکوشیم به آن فکر کنیم، مغزمان از هم می‌پاشد. و با این همه مدتی است که معتقدم که نیروی خود ما، همه‌ی نیروی خودِ ماست که برای ما بیش از اندازه است. راست این است که آن را نمی‌شناسیم؛ اما آیا این هم درست نیست که هرچه را که بیش از همه مال ماست، کمتر از همه می‌شناسیم؟"

"راهبه‌ای بود نسبتاً کم‌سواد؛ کلمه‌ی《راهرو》را که لازم می‌شد به زبان بیاورد، هرگز نخوانده بود و می‌گفت《راهلو》، و فکر می‌کرد که درست است. آروِر به شنیدن آن، مرگ خود را عقب انداخت. به نظرش لازم می‌آمد که ابتدا این اشتباه را تصحیح کند. کاملاً به هوش آمد و شرح داد که کلمه‌ی صحیح《راهرو》است. بعد مرد. شاعر بود و بیزار از تقریب؛ یا شاید بندیِ حقیقت بود؛ یا شاید از اینکه آخرین احساسش از دنیا آن باشد که فکر کند دنیا چنین ولنگار ادامه خواهد یافت، آزرده می‌شد. نمی‌توان گفت کدام‌یک. فقط کافی‌ است باور کنیم که فضل‌فروشی نبوده."

"چنین پنداشت که مدتی مدید، گیریم پنجاه سال دیگر، زنده بماند. این گشاده‌دستی او نسبت به خودش سبب شد سرخوشی درخشانی به او دست دهد. اما حالا می‌خواست از خودش هم فراتر برود. با خود می‌گفت که می‌توان این سال‌ها را به ساعت، دقیقه، و اگر کسی حوصله‌اش را داشته باشد، به ثانیه، بدل کرد؛ و حساب کرد و کرد و نتیجه رقمی شد که پیشتر ندیده بود. پاک سردرگم شد. لازم بود کمی استراحت کند. همیشه شنیده بود وقت طلاست، و تعجب می‌کرد که از کسی که صاحب چنین گنجینه‌ای است مدام حفاظت نمی‌شود. چه آسان می‌شد گنجینه‌اش را ربود."

"و حالا (چطور شرح بدهم؟)، حالا همه‌جا ساکت بود. ساکت، مثل موقعی که دردی قطع می‌شود. سکوتی بسیار ملموس و سوزان، مثل زخمی که در حال خوب شدن است. می‌توانستم بی‌درنگ به خواب بروم؛ نفس عمیقی بکشم و بخوابم. اما حیرت بیدار نگاهم می‌داشت. کسی در اتاق بغلی حرف می‌زد، اما آن هم در قلمرو سکوت بود. باید طعم این سکوت را چشید تا فهمید چگونه است، نمی‌شود تعریفش کرد. بیرون هم همه چیز ساکت به نظر می‌رسید. نشستم و گوش دادم، مثل این بود که در روستا باشی. با خودم گفتم خدایا، مادرش آنجاست. کنارِ چراغ می‌نشست و با او حرف می‌زد، و شاید او سر را کمی خم می‌کرد و به شانه‌اش تکیه می‌داد. لحظه‌ای بعد او را توی رخت‌خواب می‌خواباند. حالا معنی قدم‌های آهسته در راهرو را می‌فهمیدم. آه، یعنی چنین چیزی ممکن است؟ چنان موجودی که درها به رویش طوری باز می‌شوند که با ما فرق دارد. بله، حالا دیگر می‌توانستیم بخوابیم."

"اما بعد که سر بلند نمی‌کرد، به فکر فرو می‌رفتند. می‌فهمیدند که مطابق خواست او عمل کرده‌اند؛ که بر گردِ انزوایش حصار کشیده‌اند و کمکش کرده‌اند تا برای همیشه از آنان جدا شود. و حالا تغییرِ سمت می‌دهند و به ترفندی نهایی و افراطی متوسل می‌شوند و مقاومتی دیگر را به کار می‌زنند: شهرت. و کم‌وبیش همه در برابر این جنجال سر از گریبان درآورده‌اند و خود را باخته‌اند."

"سرنوشت دوست دارد طرح‌ها و شکل‌هایی ابداع کند. دشواری آن در پیچیدگی‌اش نهفته است. اما زندگی به دلیل سادگی‌اش دشوار است. تنها چند چیز باشکوه دارد که با قواره‌ی ما جور نیست. قدیس با رو برتافتن از سرنوشت در برابر خدا اینها را برمی‌گزیند. اما این نکته که زن به حکم سرنوشت خود در رابطه با مرد ناگزیر از انتخابی مشابه است، سرنوشت محتوم هر رابطه‌ی عاشقانه را رقم می‌زند: با عزمی جزم و بری از سرنوشت، همچون موجودی ابدی کنار مردی که دگرگون می‌شود می‌ایستد. زن عاشق همواره از معشوقش والاتر است، زیرا زندگی عظیم‌تر از سرنوشت است."

"بلافاصله فهمیدم که تصورم بی‌ارزش است. تسلیم کاملش به بینوایی، که در قید هیچ ظاهرسازی و احتیاطی نبود، از توان تصور من بیرون بود. هرگز نه زاویه‌ی خمیدگی در طرز ایستادنش را دریافته بودم و نه هراسی را که ظاهراً قسمت داخلی پلکش مدام از آن لبریز می‌شد. هرگز به دهانش فکر نکرده بودم که مثل خروجی گنداب‌رویی فشرده بود. شاید خاطراتی داشت؛ اما حالا جز احساس بی‌شکل روزمره‌ی هرّه‌ی سنگی پشت سرش، که دست‌هایش را روی آن می‌فرسود، دیگر چیزی به روحش افزوده نمی‌شد."

"خدایا، شاید مقصودت این باشد که من از همه چیز دست بشویم و دوستشان بدارم. وگرنه، وقتی از کنارم رد می‌شوند، چرا برایم دشوار است که دنبالشان نروم؟ چرا ناگهان دل‌انگیزترین و شبانگاهی‌ترین کلمات را ابداع می‌کنم و صدایم آرام میان قلب و گلویم گیر می‌کند؟ چرا خیال می‌کنم چگونه من آنها را با احتیاطی بی حد در نَفَسم نگه می‌داشتم، این عروسک‌ها را که زندگی آغوش برگشاده برای هیچ‌و‌پوچ، بهاران از پی بهاران، چنان با آنها بازی کرده است که دیگر رمقی در شانه‌هاشان نمانده است؟ هرگز از اوج هیچ امیدی سقوط نکرده‌اند، و از این‌رو نشکسته‌اند؛ اما تَرَک برداشته‌اند و دیگر به درد زندگی نمی‌خورند. تنها گربه‌های ولگرد شب‌ها به اتاق‌هاشان می‌آیند و نهانی بر آنان پنجه می‌کشند و خواب‌آلوده رویشان می‌لمند. گاه یکی از آنان را در سراسر دو خیابان دنبال می‌کنم. از جلو خانه‌ها می‌گذرند، مدام رهگذرهایی می‌آیند که آنها را از چشم می‌پوشانند، و آنان چون هیچ پُشتشان ناپدید می‌شوند."

"...او پی برد که تسلی خاطر حقیقی تنها آنگاه آغاز می‌شود که سعادت بسی پیش‌تر از دست رفته و برای همیشه به سر رسیده باشد. هیچ‌چیز برای او ارجمندتر از این تسلی نبود..."

"...هرکس الهام‌ها و نگرانی‌های خود را دارد و به همپالکی‌اش تنها آن‌قدری را که برایش مفید و مناسب است، نشان می‌دهد. ما به جای آنکه برای دیوارِ مشترک فریاد سر دهیم که درک‌ناپذیرها در فراسوی آن مجال گرد آمدن و تجهیز نیرو دارند، مدام درک خود را کمرنگ می‌کنیم تا به جایی برسد."

"...در زندگی روزمره، مدام غیرعادی را با ممنوع اشتباه می‌گیرند، چنانکه توقع چیزی شگفت‌انگیز، که حالا به خود روا می‌دارند، به صورت بیان ولنگاری زمختی در صورتشان نمایان می‌شود. آنچه در وطن فقط به طور موقت در کنسرت‌ها رخ می‌دهد یا وقتی با رمانی خلوت می‌کنند، در این محیط تملق‌آمیز همچون موقعیتی کاملاً مشروع به نمایش گذاشته می‌شود. همان‌طور که بدون هیچ‌گونه آمادگی و بیخبر از خطر خود را رها می‌کنند تا اینکه اعلام کم‌وبیش مرگبار موسیقی آنها را در حد بی‌پروایی‌های جسمی تحریک کند، همان‌طور نیز بدون کمترین آشنایی با زندگیِ ونیز خود را به دست افسون کرجی‌های ونیزی رها می‌کنند. زن و شوهرهایی نه‌چندان جوان که در طول سفر تنها به درشتی پاسخ یکدیگر را می‌دادند، در سکوت آشتی فرو می‌روند؛ شوهر مغلوب خستگی دلپذیر آرمان‌هایش می‌شود، و زن بار دیگر احساس جوانی می‌کند و به روی بومیان کاهل چنان لبخندی می‌زند که انگار دندان‌هایش از قند است و مدام در حال آب شدن. و اگر کسی به حرفشان گوش بدهد، معلوم می‌شود که فردا یا پس‌فردا یا آخر هفته از آنجا می‌روند."

"آیا خواهد ماند و به دروغ ادای زندگی نصفه‌نیمه‌ای را که برایش در نظر گرفته‌اند در خواهد آورد، و همه‌ی خطوط صورتش شبیه آنان خواهد شد؟ آیا خود را بین صداقت اراده‌اش و فریب ناشیانه‌ای که ویرانش می‌کرد دوپاره خواهد کرد؟ آیا دیگر نخواهد کوشید به چیزی بدل شود که به برخی از افراد خانواده‌اش که چیزی جز قلبی ضعیف ندارند آسیب می‌رساند؟"

"...ساعت‌هایی پر از مکاشفه، که آن قدرت را در خود حس می‌کرد تا در زمین فرو رود و آن را با خیزاب طوفانی قلبش بدرد. به کسی می‌مانست که زبانی پرشکوه را می‌شنود و تب‌آلوده تصمیم می‌گیرد به آن زبان شعر بگوید. هنوز باید واهمه‌‌ی دشواری فراگیری این زبان را تجربه می‌کرد؛ ابتدا باور نداشت که باید عمری بگذرد تا بتوان نخستین عبارات کوتاه ساختگی و بی‌معنا را شکل داد. همچون دونده‌ای در حال مسابقه به آموختن پرداخت؛ اما عمق آنچه می‌خواست به آن مسلط شود حرکتش را کند کرد. نمی‌شد تصور کرد که چیزی تحقیرکننده‌تر از این نوآموزی است. کیمیا را یافته بود و اکنون مجبورش می‌کردند بی‌وقفه زرِ زودساخته‌ی سعادتش را به تلِّ سربِ شکیبایی بدل کند..."

[Adam Floridia]

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).

[Apostolis Kalogirou]

Το πρωτοείδα στα χέρια ενός καλού μου φίλου κατά τη διάρκεια σκοπιάς πέρυσι το καλοκαίρι. Αυτός διάβαζε Μάλτε, εγώ διάβαζα Μισκιν. Αυτός έπινε λάτε, εγώ έπινα ουίσκι. Εκανα και ρίμα. Του έριξα μια ματιά ένα βράδυ ενώ φύλαγα μόνος μου σκοπιά. Καθώς διάβαζα, έτρεχε ο νους μου παράλληλα σε σκέψεις. "Γιατί να γίνουν έτσι τα πράγματα;" "Γιατί να κάνω υπομονή;" "Γιατί κρατήθηκα και δεν μίλησα ποτέ και γιατί δεν ειχα την ανάγκη να πω αυτό το κάτι τελευταίο;". Διαβάζω ενα κομμάτι και ξαφνικά με πιάνει αυτόματα μια γλυκιά μελαγχολία, ένα μούδιασμα που ήταν σαν να παρέλυσε όλος μου ο εσωτερικός κόσμος. Αυτή η μελαγχολία ξέρετε, η τόσο επώδυνη που μπορεί να υπερκεράσει για όσο διαρκέσει ακόμα και τα χειρότερα συναισθήματα. Το διάβασα ακριβώς ένα χρόνο μετά και η μνήμη μου με βοήθησε να ξαναζήσω όλα εκείνα τα συναισθήματα σε όλο τους το βάρος που τελικά με έκαναν να γνωρίσω πραγματικά τον εαυτό μου και να γίνω αυτό που είμαι. Να εκτιμήσω που δεν προτίμησα την φτήνια, κάτι το οποίο μισώ να χαρακτηρίζει έμψυχα όντα. Μερικά βιβλία είναι σαν φάρμακο και λειτουργούν όπως η πιο γλυκιά κουβέντα απο δυό χείλη για φίλημα και ένα βλέμμα όλο υπόσχεση απο δυο μάτια που αναβλύζουν αθωότητα. Το βιβλίο είναι καλό, αρκετά λυρικό, όμως θα πρότεινα να το διαβάσετε παρέα με κάτι άλλο. Το 5 δεν είναι αντικειμενικό σε καμία περίπτωση, αλλά αξίζει και με το παραπάνω.

[Ed]

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.

[E. G.]

Chronology
Introduction
Notes to the Introduction
Further Reading
A Note on the Text

--The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

Notes

[Kingofmusic]

Im dritten Anlauf "endlich" geschafft! Rilke fordert den Leser:innen alles ab, was man an Geduld aufbringen kann ha ha ha. Dabei finde ich wirklich nicht alles schlecht, was ich seit Anfang Januar da zusammen mit der lieben Maren gelesen habe. Und irgendwann (mit ein bisschen Abstand) werde ich mir das Buch noch einmal vorknöpfen (müssen) und mir dann viele großartige Zitate notieren. Zu einer ausführlichen Rezension fühle ich mich - verzeiht mir - nicht befähigt.

[Anna]

'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:

'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.

[Mana Ravanbod]

1
این کتاب از مهمترین کتاب‌های ریلکه است، شاید برای من مهمتر از شعرهاش. شاید اگر کتاب «نامه‌هایی به شاعر جوان» نبود، با این کتاب آشنا نمی‌شدم. در مقدمه ناتل خانلری بر کتاب «نامه‌هایی...» یک تکه از این کتاب ترجمه شده، در باب اینکه شاعری اگر بخواهد شعری بنویسد که شعر باشد، و نه حسب‌الحال فردی، باید چه روزهایی را از سر گذرانده باشد. چه شبهای عشق و چه شبهای بیدار بر سر بالین مردگان و چه سفرها و چه تجربه‌ها. و تجربه تنها کافی نیست، باید تجربه از جنس خون شود در تو.‏

2
کتاب را نشر دشتستان با ترجمه غبرایی و ویراستاری پورجعفری منتشر کرد که فکر کنم ده دوازده سال پیش بود، یا بیشتر. بعد نشر هم جمع شد و کتا‌ب‌ها بی‌صاحب شد و رفت توی انبار و هنوز تک و توکی این‌طرف آن طرف پیدا می‌شود. بعدها نیلوفر خواست منتشر کند، پنج شش سال پیش که آن هم نشد و رفت در محاق.‏

3
ترجمه‌ی کتاب خوب نیست، نثر ریلکه به ترجمه‌ی معمولیِ غبرایی تن نمی‌دهد. هر کسی خواست می‌تواند آن دو صفحه ترجمه خانلری را با ترجمه غبرایی تطبیق بدهد، کار دستش می‌آید. خانلری بهترین کاری که در عمرش کرد، نه شاعری بود نه نقادی و نه تئوری شعر. بلکه اول از همه ترجمه‌هاش بود که بسیار آموزنده است، دوم بنیاد فرهنگ که نمونه یک کار پربار فرهنگی و مدیریت موسسه فرهنگی بود و سوم تصحیح‌هایی که کرد. کتاب را باید یکی از آلمانی ترجمه کند، کاش جاهد جهانشاهی زنده بود یا حسینی‌زاد همت کند.‏

4
کتاب ولی رمان عجیبی‌ست. رمان هست و نیست. فکر کنید خانه‌های برای شما ساخته باشد معماری که خانه هست، ولی در کف آن سوراخ‌هایی‌ست و پله‌ها به دیوار منتهی می‌شود و نور چراغ بیشتر سقف را روشن می‌کند تا خانه را. این کتاب هم با معیارهای ساده ما رمان نیست، ولی هست. گاهی خسته‌کننده و حوصله‌سر‌بر می‌شود ولی عالی‌ست. اینقدر که از پشت همین ترجمه بد هم می‌شود فهمید که ریلکه چه کار کرده است.‏

5
کتاب را نداشتم و دیده بودم فقط. دوستی (یادش بخیر) که از علاقه‌ی من خبر داشت، کتاب را در یک انبار کتاب اصفهانی‌ها کشف کرد و برایم آورد و تقدیم کرد. همیشه کتاب را با تصویر دختری قدبلند، ایستاده در ورودیِ متروی انقلاب به یاد می‌آورم. گرمای تابستان بود و ایستاده بود داخل مترو که کمی خنک شود. آخرین بار هم همانجا دیدمش.‏

6
یکبار کتاب را در روزهای کودتای تهران خواندم، یک بار هم در خلوتِ روزهای آرامِ سفری در شرجی شمال. کتاب را باید در خلوت اتاقی ساکت خواند. ‏

[MJ Nicholls]

If long meanderings on 13thC French Kings, Danish satirical poets, 12thC popes, or an even longer semi-autobiographical childhood narrative refracted through the histories of Danish aristocrats, or inscrutable abstract meanderings reffed up obscurum per obscurius, padded around frequent shards of poetic Rilkean prose and spellbinding imagery, is something that appeals, step up new reader of this novel. I was ambivalent.

[Hakan]

Rilke'yi ilk kez yıllar önce Duino Ağıtları'yla okumuştum. Almanca bilmediğimden Türkçe çevirisinden tabii. Fazla bir iz bırakmamıştı. Bu tabii benim eksikliğim, Rilke'nin değil. Zaten 30 yılı aşan mütevazi okuma tecrübelerimde şiirin, belki bazı şairler istisna, çevrilemeyeceği, çevrilince başka bir şeye dönüştüğü, okunacaksa orijinal dilinden okunması gerektiği sonucuna vardım. Geçen hafta da Rilke'nin tek düz yazı kitabı olduğunu sandığım Malte Laurids Brigge'nin Notları'na, hakkında yazılan birçok övücü değerlendirmenin verdiği şevkle el attım. Maalesef içine giremedim, sabrım bir yerde tükendi, 120. sayfada (kitap zaten 180'sayfa) bıraktım. Biraz Proust tarzı, ama bana daha boğucu geldi. Okuduğum bölümler boyunca, "tamam da bunun özü ne şimdi" diye kendime sorup durdum. Başta Duino Ağıtları bağlamında değindiğim gibi, Rilke'yi eleştirmek haddim değil. Sadece "mea culpa" diyor, Rilke'den keyif almayı meraklılarına bırakıyorum.

[Vanitha Narayan]

Rilke's writing is phenomenal!

[Maren]

Nachtrag/ ca. 2009 gelesen

[Kilburn Adam]

The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge stands as one of the most cryptic and self-conscious literary experiments of the early twentieth century, embodying an existential drift between the fading nineteenth-century traditions and the uncertain modernist impulse that demanded a radical reconceptualisation of art. Rilke's novel presents not only an artistic struggle but a meta-struggle: a dialectic between memory and observation, between personal and historical fragments, all of which disintegrate under the weight of Malte's obsessive inward gaze. This is not merely a novel, but a text that collapses the very notion of narrative, presenting itself as a "notebook"—a fractured sequence of impressions rather than a cohesive whole.

At the heart of The Notebooks is Malte Laurids Brigge’s peculiar incapacity to solidify these impressions into what we would traditionally recognise as art. This incapacity is not mere incompetence; it is a deliberate artistic strategy, reflecting the paralysis of the modern self—a self that has been hollowed out, stripped of its coherence, and relegated to an unrelenting act of perception without synthesis. Here, Rilke mirrors his literary contemporaries’ struggle with form and content. As with the fragmented thoughts of Musil’s The Man Without Qualities, Malte’s world is a palimpsest of historical and personal memories. Yet, where Musil’s protagonists might shore up the remnants of their identity against cultural ruin, Malte simply disintegrates under the weight of his observations. There is no restitution, no recovery—only a passive re-evocation of the past, as though Rilke were daring his protagonist to reconcile himself with an impossible task.

The protagonist’s paralysis is not merely personal but symptomatic of a broader artistic crisis in the wake of Nietzschean collapse. If we are to position this work within its philosophical framework, we see that Rilke, writing in the post-Nietzschean era, is deeply concerned with the idea of value creation in a world where all foundational truths have eroded. Nietzsche’s announcement of the death of God lingers heavily over Malte’s narrative—there is a pronounced absence of guiding metaphysical or moral frameworks within which art can stabilise itself. What we see in Malte is not just the struggle of a poet in Paris, but an epistemological collapse that precludes the very possibility of creating anything stable, much less a coherent work of art.

Malte’s vision of the world, as such, becomes an act of perpetual waiting. His eyes, so keen on registering every detail, every grim vestige of a decaying reality, are nonetheless incapable of transforming these perceptions into anything meaningful. He exists in a perpetual liminality between seeing and understanding, and this tension renders the very act of perception excruciating. “I am learning to see,” he states at the outset of the novel. Yet, what does it mean to "see" in this context? For Malte, seeing is both the means and the end of his artistic project—a ceaseless process of accumulation without the possibility of artistic or existential resolution. Like the flaneur of Baudelaire, Malte is consumed by the urban spectacle, overwhelmed by the sheer density of experience. The city—Paris—becomes both his external and internal landscape, a chaotic amalgam of stimuli that ultimately undoes any possibility of coherent self-formation.

In this sense, Rilke’s novel prefigures the modernist preoccupation with the dissolution of the subject. Malte is not a traditional character with an inner life that can be known or narrated. Rather, he is an energy field, a set of sensations and impressions through which fragments of reality pass but never settle. This radical decentring of the subject can be read as a reflection of broader modernist anxieties: the self has been displaced, shattered into innumerable pieces, just as art itself has been ruptured from its formal and thematic moorings. What is left, then, is not a coherent narrative but a notebook of impressions, fleeting sketches that fail to form any coherent whole.

Rilke’s incorporation of medieval figures, historical moments, and artistic references—none of which are identified explicitly—serves to heighten the novel’s sense of dislocation. These references are not meant to anchor the text in any recognisable historical context; rather, they function as floating signifiers, disconnected from any traditional lineage of meaning. Like the ghostly Unicorn tapestries that Malte evokes, these fragments from the past are re-inscribed into the present without the possibility of coherence. The past is not a stable source of identity or meaning for Malte; it is merely another series of images, observed but never fully grasped.

It is here that we must confront the deeply Nietzschean nature of Malte’s existential dilemma. In a world that no longer adheres to any fixed values or truths, Malte’s attempt to create art becomes a Sisyphean task. Art, once conceived as the highest expression of truth or beauty, is now merely a series of fragmented perceptions. Malte’s failure to transform these perceptions into a coherent work of art mirrors the broader cultural failure to retain any stable form of value in the post-Nietzschean world. He is left with nothing but a profound sense of loss—a mourning for a world that no longer exists, yet cannot be reclaimed.

What distinguishes Rilke’s project, however, is the intensity of this loss, and the remarkable beauty with which it is rendered. The language of The Notebooks—dense, metaphorical, and elliptically structured—forces the reader to confront the impossibility of easy meaning. The text itself resists interpretation, much as Malte resists the very process of transformation that might allow him to create art. The novel, then, is less about what it says and more about what it leaves unsaid. It is a novel of hesitation, of perpetual incompletion—a series of sketches that never quite resolve into a full picture. In this, it anticipates the radical formal experiments of later modernist writers, particularly those who, like Kafka and Beckett, saw the novel as a site of irresolvable contradictions.

Ultimately, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge is not simply a novel, but a critique of the very possibility of the novel in the modern age. Rilke’s relentless experimentation with form and language signals a profound crisis, not just in art, but in the human condition itself. What Malte faces is not just the failure of his artistic ambitions, but the failure of art as a means of ordering and understanding the world. We are left, as readers, with nothing more than the fragments of a shattered world—a world that refuses to be reconstructed into anything resembling a coherent narrative. In this way, Rilke’s novel remains one of the most challenging, enigmatic, and haunting works of modernist literature, a text that continues to defy resolution and elude interpretation.