The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (Penguin Classics) [Paperback]

Rainer Maria Rilke (Author), Michael Hulse (Translator, Introduction)

Book Description

Release date: August 25, 2009

A masterly new translation of one of the first great modernist novels In the only novel by one of the German language's greatest poets, 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 with 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.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"One of the world's most beautiful books."
-"The Philadelphia Inquirer"

Language Notes

Text: English, German (translation) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Classics (August 25, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0141182210
• ISBN-13: 978-0141182216
• Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 0.5 x 7.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #169,054 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #25 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Poetry > German

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

51 of 54 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars An intellectual goldmine... April 25, 2003

By Zachary Hale

Format:Paperback

This proto-existentialist novel features a main character (Malte) that is frightened by the possibility of faceless-ness; that is, he is terrified by the collapse of a coherent subject/identity in modernity. This work is highly critical of the traditional narrative where everything occurs in a logical and temporal order that is coherent and teleological. Through the character of Malte, Rilke illustrates the decay of such an understanding of one's self and the chaos that results.

Rilke read a lot of Nietzsche prior to writing this book, and many of the same themes Nietzsche contemplated in The Gay Science and Thus Spake Zarathustra are reworked by Rilke in this novel. It is my interpretation that Rilke was trying to work out a theory of modern, fragmented, existential subjectivity and then offer some way to make such a life livable. Rilke explores such themes as memory's transience, unpredictability, and instability, the role of a God in a world after the "death of God", and a dissolving of the conceptual categories between the self and the other, or the inside and the outside, all play into this fascinating book.

The book is written in notebook form, which plays into the notion of fragmentary identity and problematic narrative. Entries jump from the past to the present to imagined futures in an often random and chaotic order. There is no "plot" to speak of, although there are bits and pieces of narratives, but nothing sufficient enough to create a comprehensible 'Malte'. All the while, you are in the mind of a character that is trying and failing to make sense of it all (to 'impose' a narrative).

The later Martin Heidegger always lauded Rilke (despite Rilke's being too metaphysical) for being able to express ways of interacting with the world that were non-humanist. He was especially interested, and wrote significantly about, a passage (p. 46 in the Vintage paperback edition) where Malte imagines a house and its inhabitants from a single mutilated wall that is left remaining. I'm not too sure what his relation to the text as a whole was, so I'll leave it at that.

This book is an intellectual paradise and is rich in treasures as long as you are willing to look for them.

33 of 35 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars it really is a novel March 10, 2002

By supastar

Format:Paperback

though it seems to be a collection of strange lyric essays moving from simple snapshots to fantastic recollections and musings. There are seeds planted early that expand and flower, painfully and beautifully and so truthfully. This is what books should do for people. Every sentence, as foreign as it can seem, you've known all your life, and you see it now in words. I don't know anything about german, but this translation is incredibly beautiful, I cannot imagine the original could work any better than this. There is no desire to move forward, you move through the pages and can't imagine having to look up. Blah blah and more blah, its really good.

27 of 28 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Failing Light of Inspiration August 30, 2001

By Doug Anderson VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

If you read this at the right time of life no other book will ever be more important to you. I read it when I was 19 and for me that was the right age. Rilke's Notebooks contain what amounts to the crisis of modern existence. For Rilke the solution was writing some of the best poetry ever written. If you want proof read it. For Malte it was not so clear yet and his struggles will be very familiar to any student of the arts. As a time piece this also has much value. It records the change over from the old Europe to the new. For Malte, as it was for many of Mann's, Musil's, Broch's... characters, this proves devastating. Identity threatening. The second half of this book is not as good as the first half but I'll take that first half and disregard the rest. Read this while reading Rilke's greatest contribution to our world, his poetry.