Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge - a Novel

Name: Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge - a Novel
Rating: 4 (1 reviews)
Author: Rainer Maria Rilke
ISBN: 9780393882087

by Rainer Maria Rilke

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(1 ratings)

1910Norton & Company Limited, W. W.ISBN 9780393882087

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About this book

A stunning, revelatory new translation of the only novel by one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century, from one of “the most trustworthy and exhilarating of Rilke’s contemporary translators” (Michael Dirda, Washington Post). A groundbreaking masterpiece of early European modernism originally published in 1910, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge unspools the vivid reflections of the titular young Danish nobleman and poet. From his Paris garret, Brigge records his encounters with the city and its outcasts, muses on his family history, and lays bare his earliest experiences of fear, tenderness, and desolation. With a poet’s feel for language and a keen instinct for storytelling, Rainer Maria Rilke forges a dazzlingly fractured coming-of-age narrative, kaleidoscopic in its alternation of vivid present encounters and equally alive memories of childhood. Strikingly contemporary, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge reveals a writer metabolizing his own experiences to yield still-essential questions about fiction and reality, empathy and psychosis, and—above all—life, love, and death. In a fascinating introduction, award-winning translator Edward Snow explores the overlaps between Rilke’s experiences and those of his protagonist, and shows with granular attention the novel’s capacity for nuance and sympathy. Snow’s exquisite translation captures as never before the astonishing cadences and musical clarity of the poet’s prose. It reveals The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge as an urgent contemporary achievement, more than one hundred years after it was written.

Publication Details

Publisher: Norton & Company Limited, W. W.
Published: 1910
ISBN: 9780393882087

About Rainer Maria Rilke

Rainer Maria Rilke (* 4. Dezember 1875 in Prag, Österreich-Ungarn; † 29. Dezember 1926 im Sanatorium Valmont bei Montreux, Schweiz; eigentlich René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke) war ein österreichischer Lyriker deutscher und französischer Sprache. 1905 erschien sein Stundenbuch mit nachdenklichen, nicht selten religiösen Gedichten, wodurch er bald eine große Popularität erreichte. Die zumeist eingängigen, teils ekstatischen, teils melancholischen Verse prägten das Bild vom prophetischen Dichter Rilke nachhaltig. In seinem Buch der Bilder führte er seine Lyrik, die Reflexionen über Transzendenz und Existenz miteinschloss, fort und vollendete gerade in den Abschiedsgedichten den Ausdruck impressionistischer Lyrik. Mit seiner in den Neuen Gedichten vollendeten, von der bildenden Kunst beeinflussten Dinglyrik gilt er als einer der bedeutendsten Dichter der literarischen Moderne. In seinem Spätwerk führte er die Gattung Elegie in seinen Duineser Elegien nach der Weimarer Klassik und Friedrich Hölderlin auf ihren letzten Höhepunkt in der deutschsprachigen Literatur. ---------- René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke (4 December 1875 – 29 December 1926), known as Rainer Maria Rilke, was an Austrian poet and novelist. Acclaimed as an idiosyncratic and expressive poet, he is widely recognized as a significant writer in the German language.[1] His work is viewed by critics and scholars as possessing undertones of mysticism, exploring themes of subjective experience and disbelief. His writings include one novel, several collections of poetry and several volumes of correspondence.