The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge Read online

  PENGUIN CLASSICS

  THE NOTEBOOKS OF MALTE LAURIDS BRIGGE

  RAINER MARIA RILKE, born in Prague in 1875, was one of the twentieth century's greatest poets. After a precocious start with decorative Art Nouveau verse, he found a hallmark voice of his own in The Book of Images (1902) and The Book of Hours (1905), and in the two volumes of New Poems (1907/8) produced a first undisputed masterpiece. Always closely involved with the visual arts, he wrote illuminatingly on Cézanne, Rodin and the artists of the Worpswede colony, one of whom, the sculptor Clara Westhoff, he married. In 1910 he published his one novel, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. Rarely in any one place for long, Rilke travelled constantly throughout Europe, and was fortunate in attracting patronage. Before the First World War he began his greatest work, the Duino Elegies, which he completed, together with the entire cycle of Sonnets to Orpheus, in early 1922. He died in Switzerland in 1926.

  MICHAEL HULSE has won numerous awards for his poetry, edited a literature classics series and literary quarterlies, and scripted documentaries for television. Among the many books he has translated are titles by W. G. Sebald and Elfriede Jelinek and, for Penguin, Goethe's Sorrows of Young Werther (1989) and Jakob Wassermann's Caspar Hauser (1992).

  RAINER MARIA RILKE

  The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

  Translated and edited by

  MICHAEL HULSE

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  PENGUIN CLASSICS

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  First published in Germany as Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge 1910

  This translation first published in Penguin Classics 2009

  1

  Translation and editorial material copyright © Michael Hulse, 2009

  All rights reserved

  The moral right of the translator and editor has been asserted

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  ISBN: 978-0-14-192846-3

  Contents

  Chronology

  Introduction

  Further Reading

  A Note on the Text

  The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

  Notes

  Chronology

  1875 Rainer Maria Rilke is born on 4 December in Prague, an only child, and is christened René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria on 19 December.

  1882 Rilke starts attending a Roman Catholic primary school.

  1885 Following years of tension due to his father's frustrated career prospects, his parents, Sophie and Josef, separate.

  1886 He starts at a military school in the Austrian town of St Pölten. In retrospect, Rilke always describes this period in his life as traumatic.

  1891 He transfers to the Linz Academy. Rilke remains there for less than a year, and returns to Prague to prepare privately for his school-leaving examinations.

  1894 Leben und Lieder (Life and Songs), his first collection of poems, is published in November.

  1895 He matriculates at the University of Prague, to study art history, philosophy and literature.

  1896 Larenopfer (Offerings to the Lares) is published. Rilke spends two semesters studying art history in Germany, at the University of Munich.

  1897 He publishes Traumgekrönt (Crowned with Dreams). In October, he moves to Berlin.

  1898 Rilke divides his year between Germany, Bohemia and Italy, and publishes his fourth collection of poems, Advent.

  1899 From April to June, Rilke makes his first journey to Russia. The rest of the year is spent mainly in Berlin and Prague. He publishes Zwei Prager Geschichten (Two Prague Stories) and another book of poems, Mir zur Feier (In Celebration of Myself).

  1900 From May to August, he is in Russia for the second time. Accepting an invitation to Worpswede, Germany, from artist Heinrich Vogeler, he meets the sculptor Clara Westhoff.

  1901 Rilke marries Clara on 28 April. Their daughter, Ruth, is born on 12 December.

  1902 In August, Rilke moves to Paris, to begin work on a study of the French sculptor Auguste Rodin. Das Buch der Bilder (The Book of Images) is published.

  1903 Rilke spends the first half of the year mainly in Paris, and the months from September in Rome, paying additional visits to Worpswede in the summer and to Venice and Florence. His monographs Worpswede and Auguste Rodin are published.

  1904 Until June he is in Rome; from June to December in Denmark and Sweden. He publishes Geschichten vom lieben Gott (Tales of God) and Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke (The Lay of the Love and Death of Cornet Christoph Rilke), which in Rilke's lifetime was the best-selling of all his works, sales exceeding 300,000 by the time of his death.

  1905 Most of the year is spent in various parts of Germany, except for six weeks with Rodin at Meudon during the autumn. Das Stunden-Buch (The Book of Hours) is published.

  1906 In March, Rilke's father dies. Rilke lives variously in France (Paris and Meudon), Belgium and Germany.

  1907 He spends the first half of the year in Italy (on Capri and in Naples and Rome), and the second half in Paris, Prague, Vienna and Venice. The Neue Gedichte (New Poems) are published.

  1908 Again Rilke is mainly on Capri and in Rome and Paris. He publishes Der neuen Gedichte anderer Teil (New Poems, Part Two).

  1909 For most of the year, Rilke is in France. In the autumn, he visits Orange, Avignon and Les Baux in Provence.

  1910 In January, Rilke delivers the completed Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge (Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge) to his publisher; the book is published in the summer. Rilke visits the Castle of Duino in Italy, and travels to Algeria and Tunisia.

  1911 Rilke spends this year in Egypt, Italy, Germany and France, ending with two months at Duino.

  1912 He remains at Duino till May, beginning the cycle of poems which will one day become the Duineser Elegien (Duino Elegies), then lives in Venice till September, before moving to Spain for the winter months.

  1913 Rilke divides his time between various parts of Germany and France. He publishes Das Marienleben (The Life of Mary) and a translation of Mariana Alcoforado's letters.

  1914 He publishes a translation of André Gide's Le Retour de l'enfant prodigue (The Return of the Prodigal Son). The outbreak of war in August finds him in Germany, where he is obliged to remain.

  1915 On 26 November, Rilke is called up by the Austro-Hungarian army.

  1916 After three weeks of basic t
raining, he is re-assigned to the Imperial War Archives in Vienna. In June, he is discharged, and returns to Munich.

  1917 Rilke spends the year mainly in Munich and Berlin.

  1918 His translation of Louise Labé's sonnets is published.

  1919 Rilke spends the first half of the year in Germany and the second in Switzerland.

  1920 He is mainly in Switzerland and Italy.

  1921 Werner Reinhart, a businessman from a wealthy Winter-thur family, instals Rilke in the Swiss château of Muzot, in the Valais.

  1922 In a few weeks in February, Rilke completes the Duineser Elegien (Duino Elegies) and writes the entire cycle of Sonette an Orpheus (Sonnets to Orpheus). He writes to Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis: ‘Every fibre in me, every tissue, cracked.’

  1923 The Duineser Elegien and Sonette an Orpheus are published. He spends December in a sanatorium at Valmont.

  1924 Rilke stays twice in the sanatorium.

  1925 He lives in Paris from January to August, returning to Switzerland in September.

  1926 Much of the year is spent in the sanatorium once again. Rilke dies of leukaemia on 29 December.

  1927 He is buried on Sunday 2 January in Raron in the Valais, above the valley of the Rhône.

  1931 Death of Rilke's mother, Sophie.

  1954 Death of his wife, Clara.

  Introduction

  In the final quarter of the nineteenth century, two German-speaking writers who would both cast long shadows over the world's literature in the twentieth century were born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in the Bohemian capital of Prague. One was the great master of disquiet Franz Kafka (born in 1883), whose novels and stories taught us all to rethink how we know our own selves. The other, Kafka's senior by eight years, was the poet of whom Paul Valéry wrote that ‘of all the people in the world, he possessed the greatest tenderness and spirit’, the poet who has taught us to see afresh the things we live among and to discover through them as much as it is possible to know of an absolute value in life: Rainer Maria Rilke.

  It was Rilke who gave to the twentieth century its clearest understanding of the pure poet, the poet whose raison d'être is simply to express the nature of the world in words of lambent, tranquil beauty. Everyone who takes an interest in modern poetry is familiar with the story of the Duineser Elegien (Duino Elegies), begun before the First World War at the Castle of Duino on the northern Adriatic and completed a full decade later in early 1922, at Muzot in Switzerland, in an extraordinary outpouring that saw Rilke writing the remaining elegies and all fifty-five of the Sonette an Orpheus (Sonnets to Orpheus) within a very few weeks, as if ‘taking dictation within’ (as he put it). The story is the stuff of myth, and has fuelled an image of the poet as an inspired, Orphic singer, even a medium for utterance from some imagined ‘beyond’; and it was of course Rilke himself, notwithstanding the level-headed remarks on writing that we find him making elsewhere (for example, in his letters of advice to a younger poet), who created the myth in the letters and telegrams that he fired off in February 1922, writing of the ‘storm of spirit and heart’ that had broken over him. However we may choose to respond to the myth, though, Rilke's unique poetic tone and style, and his breathtaking fertility and facility, have long commanded awed respect, and fellow-poets from Marina Tsvetaeva to W. H. Auden have recognized and responded to his genius; even those others, from Bertolt Brecht to Ian Hamilton, who have seen him as a toadying freeloader whose narcissism failed to respond to the socio-political agendas at the heart of modern times, have found it necessary to engage with the example and presence of Rilke. There is no ignoring him.

  Born in 1875, Rilke spent his first twenty years in Prague or in Austria, undergoing an education (first in a Roman Catholic school, then at military schools) that reflected the concerns of his parents. Beginning in 1896, he began to travel, and from that time returned only rarely to Austria-Hungary. First he ventured into Germany (where he was nominally a student) and Italy; in 1899 and 1900 he made two extended visits to Russia with his then lover, the remarkable writer and psychoanalyst Lou Andreas-Salomé; and after his marriage to the sculptor Clara Westhoff and a period of quiet in northern Germany, he led a life of continual movement from one temporary home to another, chiefly in Italy, France, Germany and Scandinavia (he also visited North Africa and Spain in the years immediately before the First World War). In fact he might plausibly be described as the first truly ‘European’ poet, in the sense that so many different national heritages, histories and literatures, so many places, customs and languages, occupied those parts of his nature that in other writers are occupied by a single nation. Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge (The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge) exemplifies this on almost every page: Rilke's understanding of art, of history, of life, does not inhabit a national pigeonhole.

  Rilke never had much money of his own, and frequently lived as the guest of aristocratic admirers and well-to-do patrons – to the end of his life, he was fortunate in attracting the generosity of those who understood and valued his gift and took pleasure in being associated with it. His mother Sophie, known to the family as Phia, was from an upper-middle-class background, high enough on the social scale to have hopes of access to aristocratic circles, and quite likely it is to her that we can trace not only his devotion to poetry (she read it to him from infancy) but also his apparent sense that the more refined sensibility of the nobility was his natural element. What we like to call the real world, however, refused to leave him undisturbed in that cosy belief. In late November 1915, shortly before his fortieth birthday, he was called up for military service, and in January 1916 began three weeks of basic training in the army of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, an agonizing period for Rilke, which ended with his transfer to the Imperial War Archives in Vienna, where he worked until his discharge from the armed forces that June. With the exception of this distant brush with the terrible reality of his age, Rilke could fairly be said to have led a charmed life, and in the post-war world he presently found himself in a position to return permanently to that life, in the modest and secluded Swiss château of Muzot, where he was installed by Werner Reinhart, a wealthy businessman and patron. There, remote from the horrors of the world, Rilke spent his final years, until his death from leukaemia in December 1926.

  Throughout his adult years, Rilke was supremely conscious of his calling as a poet. His decisions concerning the conduct of his life were always made with a thought to what circumstances would be most conducive to his writing. He was not yet nineteen when he published his first collection, Leben und Lieder (Life and Songs). His earliest work shared in the excessive sweetness that could mar any of the arts in the fin-de-siècle period, but with Das Buch der Bilder (The Book of Images, 1902) and Das Stunden-Buch (The Book of Hours, 1905) he had already found an individual voice, one in which intuitions of a divine immanence in the things of this world could be expressed with intoxicating rhythmic poignancy. By the time those two books had been published, however, Rilke's poetry had already taken the new direction that led to the first great achievement of his writing life, the two volumes of the Neue Gedichte (New Poems, 1907 and 1908). From the autumn of 1902, partly under the influence of Auguste Rodin, Rilke had developed a closer scrutiny of things, hoping to penetrate to an inner quiddity, to express or reveal their inmost being, and the poems he wrote out of this endeavour, close to two hundred in all, remain one of the great milestones of twentieth-century poetry in any language. In the Duino Elegies and the Sonnets to Orpheus, already touched on, Rilke in due course created another.

  Poetry was the stuff of life to him, and it is astonishing to think of him writing a novel at all, even an anti-novel such as The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge – so astonishing, in fact, that it may be aptest to think of the work as a long prose poem. But let us now turn to the roots of the Notebooks, which lie in his move to Paris in 1902, his experience of the city, and his adoption of a new approach to his work.

  When Rilke arrived in Paris in
late August 1902, he was a man of twenty-six with a wife and an eight-month-old daughter, both of whom remained behind in northern Germany. Two years before, he had accepted the invitation of the painter Heinrich Vogeler to repeat an earlier visit to Worpswede, a village near Bremen where the elder man was at the centre of an artists' colony of substantial and growing repute. Rilke delighted in the peaceful countryside, with its meadows and birches and old farmsteads, and at Vogeler's residence, the Barkenhoff, he warmed to a community of like-minded spirits that included the painters Fritz Mackensen, Fritz Overbeck, Hans am Ende and Otto Modersohn; Paula Becker, shortly to become Modersohn's second wife, whose name as an artist would in due course stand higher than that of all the others; and Paula's friend and ‘sister spirit’, the sculptor Clara Westhoff. In the autumn of 1900, Rilke seemed equally attracted to Paula and Clara, but after he learned in November of Paula's understanding with Modersohn he settled his interest on her fellow-artist. The following year, on 28 April, he and Clara married in Bremen; they spent much of 1901 together at a cottage they rented in nearby Westerwede, where Clara had her studio; and on 12 December their daughter, Ruth, was born. But January 1902 brought a harsh reminder of the weak economic foundation of their life. Rilke's family discontinued the allowance they had paid him when he was still a student, a sum on which he still depended. What he earned from newspaper reviewing would not keep him, and certainly not a family, nor would royalties or the anticipated income from his next collection of poems, The Book of Images (which was to be published in July); so he was glad to accept a commission to write a monograph on the Worpswede artists, and wrote it quickly that spring, before in June accepting another commission, this time to write on the great French sculptor Auguste Rodin. Clara and Rilke had talked of relocating to Paris, and she for her part already knew Rodin, but in the event Clara did not find it feasible to move, and when Rilke set off on 26 August their thoughts of establishing working lives together in Paris had been shelved. He went alone.