The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

This edition, as so many Oxford World’s Classis editions do, has just the perfect cover image. It’s a detail from a painting called ‘Mirror Image in Shop Window’ (1913) by August Macke. It’s perfect because Rilke in this ‘novel’ brings us a vivid portrait of a man in search of self, a faceless man in fragments who believes he is nothing.
In my last post I moaned about the inclusion of unreadable stodge in 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, but The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge is essential reading IMO. I wish I’d read it before reading The Beat of the Pendulum by Catherine Chidgey because that is a ‘found document’ too, and I shall read Gerald Murnane’s fiction with a different eye now too, because he too show more writes fiction that isn’t fiction, in quasi-autobiographical books that defy the label ‘novel’.
Mind you, in the excellent introduction by Robert Vilain, he says that

Rilke never called Malte a novel, preferring ‘book’ or ‘work’, but the term novel is nowadays capacious enough for modern readers to use it without the need for inverted commas. (p.xvi)

For its time, (1910), The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge was radical. It’s nothing like the 19th century novel with its coherent linear form and chronological simplicity. It purports to be a notebook of 71 fragmentary jottings, ranging from very short to quite expansive, and while it’s ‘finished’, it seems like a work that could easily continue further, (and not just because it ends unresolved). In the Introduction, Vilain describes the structure as being in three planes which are not neat sections. (Indeed, there are scholars who like to argue about where these ‘planes’ intersect, begin and end.)
The book begins with
* Malte’s experiences in Paris, apparently much like Rilke’s own, segueing into
* memories of Malte’s childhood in Denmark (he was much influenced by things Nordic, apparently), segueing into
* reflections on historical and artistic figures and places.
It’s not a book for people who like plots, or even proper characters, but once you progress a few pages into the pages about Paris, it becomes addictive.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2018/04/10/the-notebooks-of-malte-laurids-brigge-by-rai... show less

A wonderfully leisurely record of the progress of an artistic soul is here: the mix of contemporary observations and ruminations on figures from the past is blended so seamlessly that although the reader may sometimes wonder where one is and how one got there, one doesn't care, for the pleasure of the story, and all the stories it contains, is so great.

The M.D. Herter Norton translation is intimate yet delicate: I'm not sure about other translations, but some of the original spirit no doubt emerges in any conscientious translation. A book not to be hurried; many passages invite immediate re-reading, and made me regret living in an age of interruptions.

'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 show more 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. show less

Rilke was a poet and his only novel demonstrates that on every page. It is a dreamlike novel that is evocative of Paris and poetry. The focus on themes of death and darkness in contrast with the power of god and belief were powerful, joining with his beautiful writing to keep me enthralled. The importance of constructing an authentic life is emphasized as a prerequisite for the prospect of a unique personal death. Death becomes a character in the novel, a "terrible rival", which may seem stronger than the living in its tolling. While Paris is the city of poetry it is also described as a place "to die in"(p 3).

More importantly this is an early contribution to the literature of existentialism and bears reading and comparison with show more Kierkegaard, Gide and Camus. In some respects Rilke appears to be a harbinger of such thinkers as Heidegger and Benjamin with his portents of the looming growth of a modern industrial society. Just as Dostoevsky before him Rilke paints a picture of a world that is being threatened by science and technology. But, you do not have to fixate or even focus on these trends in order to enjoy this novel, you merely need to relax and enjoy the poetic way Rilke serves up the prose in this haunting story. show less

A strange class of books: those that I conclude with the thought that I haven't understood even the first thing about them, and I can't wait to re-read. Usually this happens with books that have astonished me in the first few pages, which was not the case with Brigge. But by the end I was reeling. I can remember virtually nothing of this book, except for a scene in which Brigge dresses up in carnivale costume and mask, then runs in to a room full of adults. They think he's trying to entertain them, when in fact he's panicking, having more or less lost his sense of identity; he faints and they tear the costume from his body.

That is how I felt reading this book, for better or worse. There's a lot here, but it's more akin to a poetry show more collection than a novel. I tried to read it as the latter. Next time, I'll approach it as the former, and I imagine it'll be twice as rewarding. show less

Los dos primero bloques del libro son lo que mas pude disfrutar (constatación del fracaso primer bloque y rememoración el segundo) y del tercer bloque seria solo la parte final.
"Pero ¿de qué va, a fin de cuentas, este libro?:…
¿cómo es posible vivir si los elementos de esta vida nos resultan por completo incomprensibles? Si somos siempre deficientes en el amor, inseguros a la hora de tomar decisiones e impotentes ante la muerte, ¿cómo es posible existir? En este libro, en el que he trabajado bajo la más profunda de las exigencias interiores, no he logrado expresar todo mi asombro ante el hecho de que los seres humanos, desde hace milenios, tratan con la vida y con la muerte (por no hablar de Dios), y al mismo tiempo se show more enfrentan a estas tareas primordiales, más inmediatas y únicas (pues ¿qué otra cosa tenemos que hacer?) aún hoy (¿por cuánto tiempo?), con esa perplejidad del novato, tan entre el miedo y la excusa, tan miserable. ¿No es de todo punto incomprensible? Mi extrañeza ante este fenómeno, cada vez que me entrego a él, me sume primero en la máxima consternación y me empuja luego a una especie de terror." - Carta del 8 de noviembre de 1915 dirigida a Lotte Hepner, Rilke. show less

Reading "The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge" is to have the feeling that you have never before read words used in exactly this way for exactly this purpose. Rilke, perhaps most known for being the greatest German-language poet of the twentieth century, has written what can only be called a prose poem - but even to use this phrase is to reduce a fullness that cannot be reduced. This novel is symphonic, lush, and poignant. In its evocation of memory, it is Proust avant la lettre. But there are also moments of pureness and clarity that are reminiscent of Wittgenstein, which creates quite a striking contrast. Rilke's experience with art and art criticism highly influenced his writing. His prose-poetry is pure imagism, but is also full of show more expressionism and impressionism. All of this sounds like an unlikely salmagundi, but I can assure you that there is something lasting and moving that inheres.

We are so used to novels being narratives of action that when we meet something like this, it gives us pause. There really is no plot here as most people would conceive it. The narrator calls to mind Dostoyevsky's Underground Man, brooding and destitute. Malte is haunted by the doppelgangers that he lived with during his well-to-do childhood, all now long dead; he is the only member of his ancient Danish aristocratic family. The book flits in and out of memories of the deaths of his father and other relatives and their relationships. In many novels, one can easily separate, if one wishes, content and form; here they seem to belong to one another, the poetry and the memory inextricably intertwined.

Unlike many other reviewers, I wouldn't say that the novel is difficult reading, but it might not be something that you want to read in one or two sittings. Like the "Duino Elegies" or the "Sonnets to Orpheus," they are meant to be dipped into. The text (at least in this edition) is subdivided into seventy-one parts which serve as breaks for the narrative line of thought. If you will excuse the length, this is from section twenty-nine, and it is representative of the style throughout:

"One thing is certain: that on that evening I was drawing a knight, a quite solitary and unmistakable knight, mounted on a strangely caparisoned steed. He turned out so brightly colored that I had to change crayons frequently; but it was the red one that I used most of all, and reached for time and again. Now I needed it once again; but it rolled (I still see it) right across the brightened page, to the edge, and fell down, past me, before I could stop it, and was gone. I really did need it urgently, and having to climb down after it was distinctly vexing. Awkward as I was, it was quite a business to get down; my legs were far too long, and I couldn't draw them out from under me: remaining too long in a kneeling position had numbed my limbs; I could not tell what was mine and what was the chair's. At length, rather at sixes and sevens, I did make it to the floor, and found myself on an animal fell that extended under the table to the wall. But at this point I was confronted with a fresh difficulty. My eyes, accustomed to the brightness above and still wholly entranced by the colors on the white paper, were unable to make out anything at all below the table, where the blackness seemed so dense that I was afraid of knocking against it; so I fell back on my sense of touch and, kneeling and supporting myself on my left hand, combed through the cool, long-haired, familiar-feeling fell with my other hand. But there was no sign of the crayon." show less