"Ah, how pleasant it is to be among people who are reading."

Utöver det utropet från Bibliothèque Nationale uppskattade jag också den långa "For poems are not, as people think, simply emotions..."-monologen, liksom leitmotif:et "I am learning to see."

3.5

Rilkes Stil platziert alle dieses Distanzes zwischen den Erzähler und den Leser auf eine Weise, die eine unheimliche Atmosphäre der Apathie baut. Malte, obwohl er nicht einer sein möchte, ist wirklich einer der "Fortgeworfenen," die er sehr negativ und anmaßend bemerkt oftmals, und das ist für mich die größte Dilemma dieses Romans. Malte möchte Konnektion mit der Welt der Menschheit aber kann nicht zu viel für anderen Menschen fühlen. Er wird ein "Fortgeworfen." Er seht an die Welt durch eine spezifischen Linse: die Vergangenheit, wirklich mehr noch seine Erinnerungen, die gefüllt mit Geister sowohl metaphorisch als auch real sind.

Der ganze Roman ist ein grimmig Ausblick auf das fin-de-siecle und sein Ton apathisch finster. Die Königlichkeiten eines vergangenen Europas sind tot, und was übrig bleibt, ist Chaos, Misstrauen und ein Mangel an ausgeprägter menschlicher Verbindung, außer mit der Literatur, und selbst dann, welche Verbindung besteht wirklich, wenn Malte kämpft zu lesen.

*Note: I suggest not to read this book if you are lonely, depressed, unhappy or dissatisfied with your life.

To be loved means to be consumed by fire. To love is to glow bright with an inexhaustible oil. To be loved is to pass away; to love is to endure.

Rilke wrote this semi-autobiographical novel in 1902 after his move to Paris; "a city where there is no forgiveness".

The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge ('Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge') are random thoughts and daydreams of a man who is suffering depression and is consumed by paranoia; who sees only the poverty, filth, sickness, cruelty, despair, hopelessness and death.

There is no beginners' classes in life. What is required of you is always the hardest thing, right from the start.

These introspections are often accompanied by his reminiscences about his childhood, his mother who also was suffering from depression after the death of her daughter and the ghosts he used to see at their ancestral castle.

His mother used to tell him:
'Never forget to make a wish, Malte. One should never stop making wishes. I do not believe that they come true, but there are wishes that keep, a whole life long, and one couldn't live long enough for them to come true anyway.'

In a letter of 18 July 1903 he writes to his friend Lou Andreas-Salomé:

'Paris was an experience similar to that of the military school; just as in those days i was seized by an immense, fearful amazement, so now i was beset by horror of everything that is known, as if in some inexpressible confusion, as life.'

Malte suffers from rootlessness. He is afraid of death, but he is also afraid to be loved by others. Any kind of affection is unnerving. He seeks only one love and that is the love of God. But is he ready to accept that bliss?

The woman who loves always surpasses the man who is loved, because life is greater than fate. Her devotion aspires to be infinite: that is her happiness. But the nameless grief of her love has always been this: that she is required to limit that devotion.

I hope to goodness that I read the wrong translation because my word...I lost the thread at least three times on every page. I have no idea what the point of this was.

"when my dog died. The selfsame dog that laid the guilt upon me, for all time. It was very ill. I had been kneeling at its side all day long, when suddenly it barked, a brief, brusque bark such as it used to give when a stranger came into the room. That sort of bark was a signal we had agreed on, as it were, for this occasion, and I glanced up involuntarily at the door. But it was already in him. Unsettled, I tried to look into his eyes, and he tried to look into mine; but not to bid farewell. The look he gave me was hard and aggrieved. He was blaming me for letting it in. He was convinced I could have stopped it. It was apparent now that he had always thought too highly of me. And there was no time left to explain. He looked at me, aggrieved and lonely, till it was over."

A lot of people here are convinced that I am some sort of seasoned reader. It is hardly the case, lots of books I read do nothing for me. And sometimes I feel like giving up on reading altogether but then something like this comes along and tells me why I go to so much trouble. I just have a soft spot for writers like Rilke There is a very much discussed quote in 'The Idiot', where Myshkin says "Beauty will save the world". I am sure it is interpreted in lots of ways but I, personally think, that Myshkin was just such a soul. He was extremely troubled by all the cruelties, brutalaties, wrongs and suffering of the world and couldn't come to terms with it. And such sensitive people seem to find far more pleasure in things beautiful (which admittedly, in Myshkin's case, happened to be a hot women) - they must feel somehow redeemed from the bad of the world in that aesthetic experience - Dostovesky himself talked about a kind of ecstasy he felt when having epileptic attacks which made those attacks worthwhile. And this is what I believe Van Gogh must have felt in the asylum night after he had tried to kill himself when he looked out of his window and decided to draw the Starry Sky. Rilke made me feel the very same way as those artists did. He too longed for beautiful things to redeem himself and that is perhaps why he finds them more frequently than most writers. If one could kill oneself with beautiful sentences, I won't mind killing myself with this one:

"Might it not be possible, just for once, to see the sea?"

I'm not sure if I really know how to read this book -- I think much of it went over my head, and, perhaps, if I had read it much slower, I would have been able to pick apart all of the details of each entry and pieced together a much more coherent vision of the book. But I didn't. Instead, for better or for worse, I let it wash over me, and have more of a collection of effects from the book rather than a solid understanding. To me, it was a beautiful meditation on love, loneliness, death, our relationship to ourselves, and to other people. It seemed to take an especially lonely and futile look at love and connection, possibly suggesting that they are ideals that can never be reached. And yet, while the book seemed to suggest the human experience is brutal, I didn't really get the sense that life is devoid of meaning. Maybe the very recognition of life as futile, or maybe something inward, something holy provides meaning. The sheer density of skill and tenderness of language used in the text astounded me. I feel I could have sat with every sentence for several minutes -- maybe an hour -- but then I would have never finished it, so I did with it what I could. I think I could read this over and over again and probably should. A true pleasure, even if difficult sometimes to piece together.