The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge is the title of a 1910 published novel in diary form, of Rainer Maria Rilke. The novel was begun in 1904 in Rome and reflects, among other things, the first impressions of a stay in Paris, the author of 1902/ 03. The 1908-1910 completed in Paris 's work appeared in 1910 and remained Rilke's only novel.

Content, approaches to interpretation and appreciation

Construction

The work, which differs radically as the first in the German literature of the realist novel of the 19th century, knows no narrator in the conventional sense, has no continuous plot and consists of 71 records, which often resemble prose poems and follow mostly unconnected to each other. Rilke himself always called the work " prose book" and never novel. This fact points to the special position of the plant in the German literature. Its external form is the fictitious diary of a fictitious character named Malte. You meet him in the form of 28 -year-old diarist of a dying with him noble family, who became homeless and without possessions after the early death of his parents, tried to live in Paris as a poet.

The fragmentary records consist of an associative sequence usually eigenwertiger, some signs Direction, sometimes narrative sections that do not have a continuous storyline, but are connected but through the inner conflicts Malte and are woven by the poet to a recognizable existence design which roughly divided into three parts can: 1 Malte Paris experiences, 2nd and 3rd Malte Malte's childhood memories processing of historical events and stories. The transitions between these parts are fluid and not exactly definable. Rilke is furthermore extremely discreet a fictitious editor that makes it as only now and then by inconspicuous marginal notes noticeable.

Many entries on record their form are prose poems, but not arbitrarily follow each other, as their arrangement and the motives overarching principles obeying, are chained together: So it comes about in the first part to a confrontation of the Paris impressions with those from childhood, the motivic bonds of the subjective representation of death, fear and disease partly antimonisch are linked partly analog. The contrast, even the hard and precise prose, and the intensity of the intertwined themes and motifs appear to be the most important principles of composition, this new type of novel.

Topics

The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge leave - detect some topics - the uncovering of basic experiences of modern life: death and disease, fear and despair, poverty and misery, language and reality, fate and life, identity and roles, the artist and society, love and solitude, the individual man and God. Malte makes a mental note of all these complexes (which he does not so clearly designate ) to rethink and to make it understandable for themselves.

The city as a center of progress

The novel begins in Paris in the fin de siècle with the records of the young Malte, who finds the third largest city in the world at that time, as he would also London and New York can find - in the midst of a process of industrialization. This brings both gloss and misery, both of which are close together. The progress is due to the mechanization, which was at that time often associated with anonymity and a growing disparity between rich and poor.

Already Malte's first entries testify how he is overwhelmed by the big city reality that seems almost everywhere to present him their ugly and horrible page:

Rilke describes synaesthetically how to penetrate the ' smell ' of poverty and the images of disgust, sickness, misery and death in the vulnerable exposed Malte. These are the smells of the city - and they seem to surround the viewer (" The street began to smell from all sides " ), to rise to a paranoid delusion (" All cities smell in summer "). They are the core of socialization and thus inevitable ( "The child was asleep, his mouth was open, breathing iodoform, french fries, fear ") can be as " asleep inhaled " not even being mindful to, over to individuals of utter powerlessness - and the fight against all others, because " the main thing was that they lived " - with the change to the impersonal " you deserve " special attention. As early as the third part of the hour book - " From poverty and death " ( 1903) - adds Rilke these findings together:

The processing unworthy living conditions crowded, stuffed odors and noise cities. At Jacob Riis ' How the Other Half Lives Studies Along the Tenements of New York ( 1890) reminds so focused a process of increasing de-individualization. If individuals still recognized as "[... ] waste shells of people who vomited out the fate " ( Malte, 37), we find the observing 'I', without protection and delivered increasingly no longer those other > self < to which then could create a solidarity in the knowledge of the fate of relatives, but is offset by an anonymous mass. Where then but individual beings come out of this indifference, because they appear as the assembly lines near machines (such as doctors ( 48f. ) ) or conspicuous only for their autistic addition worlds and tics (such as the > hop < ( 56ff. ) ).

Malte as accurate observer and persecuted

For the narrator is only observing, looking. But this shows, poetic demand and poetological program alike, as it interweaves the records in their entirety, there is just no longer unbroken, no more than a championship in the perception that wants to replicate the art of nature, but - it overlooked the Rilke interpretations often - even as a symptom of a disease - which originated turn in a reflex of self-defense: If Malte in the Bibliothèque Nationale at his poet sits ( 35f. ), so it is the salvation from a fantasized tracking, face a double paranoia even when exactly one looks: namely, of the fear of being persecuted by the poor of the city and that fear behind it, even to already be consigned to misery, to wear an invisible stigma to smell of poverty.

Nevertheless, this position is the only one to take is still possible - both for Malte as for Rilke. If the young Brigge asks himself, he "[... ] would have to begin to work, now that I see learning " ( 21), as it is always in the background of the doubt: "[... ] and others, it will not be able to read. And they will see it at all, what am I saying? " (121). One question, it does not perceive in a setting in which the next misery seems to be far enough yet, is entirely justified. The answer that asks this question, Rilke is now in the records in a manner as simple as it unique: the abstract, which is metaphorical as well as concrete inanimate. In contrast, the Living, the concrete will be raptured and abstracts:

And while the man is still described in erratic then scattered enumeration of features, the description of a building follows directly after:

And within the ramshackle architecture, as fragments of memory into embossed into the stone work so caused the images of the former occupants, the misery created in his dazzling concretion on:

The consideration now ends in an almost organic nachfühlbaren description of > stuffy < ambiance "always in the same street," permanent " house winds ," as had already read in the Book of Hours:

Yet already will find the transition to the new poems, poem to that thing that should be inherent in Rilke's name then (also). A fine liner which provides the description of the box lid ( 144-146 ) having a reflection density step can be read at the same time as. Preceded ( 134-140 ) - as another example of the look Rilke on his fellow man - a description of a neighbor who determines to save his time in the material sense of the word, by restricting all sorts of activities on the least effort, but then the end of the week but have to say that to have depleted his disposal seasoned time completely - so that he finally demoralized the one runs from the ease that time by the hands, stays in bed and Pushkin and Nekrasov recited out loud. Because only poems are timeless - and this is a poetic statement.

Malte's childhood as a counterpoint to the big city life

The corrupt and anonymous metropolis life is now in the records against the childhood of Malte who is visited in two large passages ( 71-106 and 110-130 ) and several small chapters. Here the records are still many cases in the sphere of thought of the Book of Hours. In the country - because here grew up Malte - you will still die a 'proper' death:

And yet, with all the contrast sharpness with which the Moloch city is lifted thereof, these childhood remains vague: it is not the lush paradise that once was lost, but rather a last stronghold, which had to be studied in greatest need.

Autobiographical trains

To what extent the poet's own childhood in the work may be recovered, must remain open. Rilke himself has frequently protested against a flippant parallelization - even if this seems to be often close. Even the description of the mother Malte, but even more so that of the grandmother ( 98ff. ) allow insights here. Obviously, however, the processing of many long stays Rilke's Paris in the records (since 1902). Some passages can be found almost word for word pre-formulated in letters to his wife Clara Rilke - Westhoff.

Literary classification

Rilke's work formed the beginning of a contemplation of reality, reminiscent in trains at the same time write Franz Kafka and James Joyce later, although still quite different in technique and presentation. Influences of the poems of Baudelaire and the decadence literature are identifiable, as Rilke used assembly techniques by allowing report the narrator in memories or reflections. Externally, the plant in diary form is created, but the narrative is not linear, the entries follow a thematic- motivic arrangement and are linked analog or antinomies. Ulrich Fülleborn they referred to as " prose poems ". Thus, the novel can be viewed as a pioneer of the modern novel, comparable to Proust's In Search of Lost Time. A term Ziolkowsky for Joyce ', but for the first time in Schnitzler fileformat stream of consciousness ( stream of consciousness ) coined, may also be applied to Rilke: The world is to the " epiphany " for disclosure and for always-already - Offenbartsein in all its misery - just looking to learn is:

Reception

The book was included in the TIME library of 100 books and also in the 100 books of the century by Le Monde.

Expenditure

• The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. Edited and annotated by Manfred Engel. Reclam, Stuttgart, 1997. ISBN 3-15-009626- X
• The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. Annotated edition, basic library 17, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main, 2000. ISBN 978-3-518-18817-0