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msand3 's review for:
The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge
by Rainer Maria Rilke
A classic modernist text that encapsulates so many themes of early twentieth-century literature: the flâneur, the alienated outcast, stream-of-consciousness narration, the psychology of the divided self, fin de siècle degeneration, etc. We even get a scene of early electroshock therapy.
The narrative is not quite stream-of-consciousness but not quite a “notebook" -- more like a collage with pieces of prose poetry sprinkled throughout. The Introduction compares it to Huysmans or Hamsun, but I see more of a similarity to Musil and Pessoa. In any case, I don’t think Rilke’s novel rises to the level of any of those writers. His fiction is not trailblazing, nor is it the pinnacle of the modernist novel (despite ticking all the boxes mentioned above). His poetry is both, which is why I prefer it to this novel, which would have been more of a curiosity had it not been written by the premiere poet of the early 20th century.
The narrative is not quite stream-of-consciousness but not quite a “notebook" -- more like a collage with pieces of prose poetry sprinkled throughout. The Introduction compares it to Huysmans or Hamsun, but I see more of a similarity to Musil and Pessoa. In any case, I don’t think Rilke’s novel rises to the level of any of those writers. His fiction is not trailblazing, nor is it the pinnacle of the modernist novel (despite ticking all the boxes mentioned above). His poetry is both, which is why I prefer it to this novel, which would have been more of a curiosity had it not been written by the premiere poet of the early 20th century.