The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

by Rainer Maria Rilke Narrated by Jamie Parker

Overview

This remarkable book is the only novel by Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), the greatest German-language poet of his time. It is, in a sense, a true curiosity - dark and intense - and possesses, not surprisingly, strong elements of autobiography.

The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge) has even been described as an anti-novel. It is set in Paris in the period just before the First World War, but it presents a bleaker milieu than that described by Proust. The language is terse, the atmosphere painful, the images uncompromising. Rilke drew on the short period he spent in Paris in 1903 where, in contrast to the rural circumstances in which he had lived before, he found the underbelly of urban life distressing. He saw the sick, the vagrants, the beggars and those descending into mental and emotional confusion and despair. And he worried that he, too, might become like them.

This is the theme he explores in The Notebooks in a first-person torrent of observation and reflection. Malte, a young Dane with little money but with the aspiration to be a poet, expresses a continuing uncertainty and unease, in the form of a diary, without obvious timeline or direction, except for its increasing intensity. Published in 1910, The Notebooks is a striking contrast to the crafted, polished poetry for which Rilke was better known. It has affected and been admired by many writers since, including Jean-Paul Sartre. Jamie Parker's reading underpins the fear and the tension of the work.

Translation William Needham.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

"Translator Burton Pike captures the edgy, haunting beauty of this little-known masterpiece." —O Magazine

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

 "There have been books that have struck me like lightning and left me riven, permanently scarred, perhaps burned-out but picturesque; and there have been those that created complete countries with their citizens, their cows, their climate, where I could choose to live for long periods while enduring, defying, enjoying their scenery and seasons; but there have been one or two I came to love with a profounder and more enduring passion, not just because, somehow, they seemed to speak to the most intimate 'me' I knew but also because they embodied what I held to be humanly highest, and were therefore made of words which revealed a powerful desire moving with the rhythmic grace of Blake's Tyger; an awareness that was pitilessly unsentimental, yet receptive as a sponge; feelings that were free and undeformed and unashamed; thought that looked at all its conclusions and didn't blink; as well as an imagination that could dance on the heads of all those angels dancing on that pin. I thought that [Rilke's] Notebooks were full of writing that met that tall order." —William H. Gass

Product Details

BN ID:	2940159183958
Publisher:	Ukemi Audiobooks from W. F. Howes Ltd
Publication date:	12/05/2020
Edition description:	Unabridged

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