Poetry for Students

Volume 19 49

of his childhood in Denmark—a childhood of dra-

matic and terrifying scenes: the death of his pater-

nal grandfather at Ulsgaard; ghost stories connected

with Urnekloster, the maternal seat; hallucinations,

such as a hand emerging from the wall, that he had

while recovering from fever; his tender “Maman,”

his reserved father, and his maternal aunt Abelone,

whom he loves in some never clearly defined way.

He wishes he could show her the tapestries in the

Parisian museum: “Ich bilde mir ein, du bist da” (I

imagine that you are here). The kernel of the

Parisian sections is Rilke’s own observations,

which he often put down in letters; save for quota-

tions from Baudelaire’s Spleen de Parisand the

Book of Job, the Parisian material draws little on

literary sources. The Danish components are more

mixed, with strong echoes of the description of

Danish estate life in the novels of Bang and Ja-

cobsen and of Rilke’s own childhood. Upon its ap-

pearanceDie Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids

Briggewas often treated by critics as another novel

about the “decadent hero”—the scion of the old

family, disheartened, quiveringly sensitive, and suf-

fering from an inability to act, yet admiring those

beings—such as a man with Saint Vitus’ dance try-

ing to sustain his dignity by a tremendous act of

will—who are undefeated. The book is also one of

the several works of German fiction from the time

that display a strong “Nordic” side.

The second and more difficult part of the novel

again employs the main figures from the Danish

past: Maman reappears, appreciating the careful

work of anonymous lace-makers; young Malte vis-

its the neighboring estate of the Schulins (based on

the Key farm); birthdays are celebrated. A mature

Malte returns to Copenhagen (“Ulsgaard war nicht

mehr in unserm Besitz” [Ulsgaard was no longer

in our possession]); witnesses the perforation of his

dead father’s heart lest he be buried alive; and pon-

ders the death of Denmark’s great baroque king,

Christian IV, an account of which his father kept

in his wallet. Among the Scandinavian figures,

Abelone is the most important: taking dictation

from her aged father, Count Brahe, for whom the

past is part of the present, and introducing young

Malte to one of the great “loving women,” Bettina

Brentano, who outdid Goethe, Malte claims, in the

sheer strength of her emotion. Memories of Abe-

lone come to Malte when he hears a Danish woman

sing about “besitzlose Liebe” (possessionless love)

and its splendors in a Venetian salon: “ ‘weil ich

dich niemals anhielt, halt ich dich fest’ ” (“since I

never detained you, I hold you fast”); other salutes

to splendid women—the Portuguese nun Heloise,

Louise Labé, Sappho, and others—who know that

“mit der Vereinigung nichts gemeint sein kann als

ein Zuwachs an Einsamkeit” (with union nothing

can be meant save an increase in loneliness) pre-

pare for this last quasi-appearance by Abelone.

Thus far it is relatively easy to follow Rilke’s ar-

guments on love; save in the artistry of the pre-

sentation, not much difference exists between the

selfless Klara Söllner of the last story of

Geschichten vom lieben Gottand the singer of the

song in Venice. It is harder to grasp, however, what

Rilke means when he speaks of Abelone’s yearn-

ing to take everything that was transitive out of her

love, to make it objectless loving, “absolutely, in

complete loneliness,” in Eudo C. Mason’s words.

The horrors of Paris are still with the diarist:

Malte—“Ich lerne sehen” (I am learning to see) is

the way he describes his most imperative task—

cannot shut his eyes to a girl who stands “mit ihrem

dürren, verkümmerten Stück” (with her stunted,

withered stump) of an arm or to a blind newspaper

vendor. The fear of death is still overriding, not

only in the story of the post-mortem operation on

Childhood

What

Do I Read

Next?

• Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet(1929) remains
  one of his most popular works. In it, Rilke dis-
  penses advice on art, love, life, and how to be a
  poet in ten intensely emotional letters to a for-
  mer student of one of his own teachers.


• Ahead of All Parting: The Selected Poetry and
  Prose of Rainer Maria Rilke(1995), translated
  by Stephen Mitchell and released by Modern
  Library, provides a good introduction to Rilke’s
  work.


• The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge(1910)
  is Rilke’s only novel. Malte Laurids Brigge is a
  Danish nobleman and poet living in Paris, who
  is obsessed with death, his family, and the city.


• Rilke has been a major influence on contempo-
  rary poets, such as Mark Strand. Strand’s Se-
  lected Poemswas released in 1990.

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