As an introduction- I just left all of my impressions while reading this book- so
please excuse my freaking out when I thought Malte died (some creepy ghost walking
around- like a horror movie- sorry I am affected by today's media). Also I still
don't understand many things- like what does the vanishing house mean. Why are dead
people walking around- why is he TALKING to dead people? Or maybe I just misunderstood
everything which is quite possible. In the end, though, it doesn't really matter
what I understood because I don't read books for "plots"- I read them for their
concepts, and trust me- I got some very delicious ones from this book. Very
satisfying I must say! If you want to be super confused and not understand lit
anymore- read this! Anyway I must read this again and again- throughout the years.
Rilke though- there's a very special place in my heart for him. Not as high as
Dostoevsky- because Rilke is too delicate to concern himself with the insanity
of consciousness- but all the same, very special.
"God! it's all there. God! It's all there waiting for us. We come along, we find
a life, ready-made, off the peg, and all we have to do is put it on.
You want to go, or you are forced to: 'No trouble at all, sir. Voila
votre mort, monsieur'*."
"And had anyone thought to ask what might be the cause of it all, what
might have called down this glut of destruction upon this closely
guarded room, there would have been only one answer to give: death."
It's very funny how the living react to the material possessions of a deceased one,
how odd and ridiculous it becomes. For it is irrelevant to the death itself.
"To write a single line of verse one must see many cities, people, things, one
must know animals, one must feel birds flying and know the movements flowers make
as they open up in the morning. One must be able to think back to roads in
unfamiliar regions, unexpected encounters, and partings which one saw coming long
before;"
"And having memories is still not enough. If there are a great many, one must be
able to forget them, and one must have the patience to wait until they return.
For the memories are not what's essential. It's only when they become blood within
us, become our nameless looks and signs that are no longer distinguishable
from ourselves—not until then does it happen that, in a very rare moment, the
first word of a verse rises in their midst and goes forth from among them."
"At the same time they're living among other people, not the 'third' persons but
the two, about whom such an incredible number of things might be said and of whom
not a word is ever spoken, though they suffer and do things and don't know how to
help each other."
How weak and helpless the "unimportant" characters are.
"Ah then: is it possible to believe that one could have a God and not use
him?"
"Similarly it's all scattered about within me, -- the
rooms, the staircases which opened onto the ground
floor with such great elaborateness and other narrow
circular stairways in whose darkness one travelled like
blood through veins; the tower rooms, the high
balconies, the unexpected galleries one was urged along
from the little entrance door: --all that is still
within me and will never cease being within me. It's
as if the image of this house had plunged into me from
an infinite height and smashed to pieces on the
foundation of my being. "
What memories can become within you- they materialize within your blood within
your veins. They ARE you. This is an extremely poetic passage- someone should
make a drawing based on this. Imagine how beautiful it can be- all of these
fragments. I am absolutely fascinated with the combination of the material and the
abstract.
"I saw an old man who was blind and shouted. That's what I saw. Saw."
I'm absolutely in love with his style. He is so direct and simple and yet extremely
witty.
"Also there was the sweet lingering smell of neglected breast-feeding
babies, and the smell of anxious children setting off to school, and
of the muggy beds of older lads. And a lot of the smells were those
that had come up from below out of the chasm of the street; they'd
evaporated; and others had dripped down in the rain which over cities
is not pure."
SMELLS!!! The smells of our FEELINGS- what we emit from inside of us- without even
knowing! And there's one wall which traps in all the smells brought in by the wind.
I'm sorry at this rate I'll be copying/pasting the whole book:
"Yes, he knew he was withdrawing himself from everything, not only from
human beings. One moment more and everything would be gone from his
mind and this table and this cup and the chair he was clinging to,
everything in his daily life, everything close to him would have
become unintelligible, foreign, difficult. So he sat there and waited
for it to have happened. And he offered no more resistance."
We cling to the material objects in order not to retreat within ourselves.
"Though the world does look good to me. What
would I do in another one? I would so like to remain among the
meanings which have become dear to me, and if there were something
that really has to change I would want, at the very least, to be
allowed to live among dogs who have a world that is related to ours
and has the same things."
What do you think it means to remain with your meanings? To remain in a world of
memories?
"And with whatever it
is that comes along there also appears a whole tangle of confused
memories that hang from it like wet seaweed from some sunken thing.
Lives that you could never have heard of emerge from the depths and
blend in with what had really happened, and they oust the past that
you thought you knew; for in what rises is a new rested strength that
had always been there and is weary from too frequent remembering."
How frightening- it was there all along. And you thought you knew!
"Your heart drives you out of yourself, your heart pursues you and you are
already almost outside yourself and can no longer get back in."
He has an almost crude appreciation of the music genius- comparing the music after
Beethoven's death to semen spewing out while the musicians play with it but aren't
satisfied. "But, Master, if, somewhere, a virginal young man were to lay his
wakeful ear beside your music, he would die of bliss, or he would
carry infinity inside him and his fertilised brain would burst from
sheer birth." The birth happens in the mind due to the music fertilizing
the idea.
Fame- "And now they go around with you as if as if you were like them.
And they take your words around with them in the cages of their
darkness and reveal them in public places and tease them a little out
of their safety."
And:
"They suspected that in all of this they had acted as he had willed them to
act; they had strengthened him in his solitude and had helped him
separate himself from them for ever. And now they'd changed their
method and and were bringing to bear the ultimate form of opposition:
fame. And at this clamour practically everyone looked up and let
themselves be entertained."
An extremely curious thing about Erik- I didn't realize it until they were talking
together in the dark that he had died. That this little boy in fact, was speaking
about dead people as if they were alive. It even begs the question- is Malte also
dead? Because he keeps describing his fevers.
Beautiful description about him and his lover- both on an island with a lion and a
unicorn. I wonder whether that's connected to the drawings of islands when he
was a child?
"Now, when so much is changing, they too want to change.
They're very close to giving up on themselves and to thinking about
themselves in the way that how men might speak of them in their
absence. This seems progress to them. Already they're almost persuaded
that you search for one pleasure and then another and then an even
greater one: that life consists in this, if you don't want to lose it
through some kind of silliness. They've already begun to look around,
to search; they whose strength has always resided in being found."
Sometimes we want to force change. We are always on the brink of something.
I don't understand the part about the house vanishing. Furthermore my suspicion is
growing that they're all dead. "'We're rising up around here like ghosts, 'and
helped us back down the steps." and
"It became clear to me that all these recognisably grown up people who just a
short time ago had been talking and laughing were going round back
bent busying themselves with something invisible, and that they were
admitting they couldn't see the something that was there. And what was
terrifying was the fact that it was stronger than all of them."
Why does the house vanish again?? What does it symbolize? Is it their death- their
past existence?
"No, no, there's nothing in the world that we can imagine, not the
least thing. It's because everything is composed of so many single
details that are unforeseeable. We ignore them in the hurry of using
our imagination, so we don't know they're missing. But realities are
slow and indescribably detailed."
Our imagination is hurried and to a point even desperate.
"For now I knew that out there things were going along with the same complete
indifference, and that also out there was nothing except my
loneliness. The loneliness that I had brought upon myself and to whose
size my heart no longer bore any comparison. I thought of people I'd
walked away from and I didn't understand how one could abandon people."
TIME = MONEY funny character this Nikolaj Kusmitsch! Rilke managed to bring a
classic russian literature feel in this astounding work.
"And as he sat there in the dark room with
his eyes wide open he began to understand that what he was feeling now
was real time passing. He actually recognised all these seconds, all
tepid, uniform, but fast, fast."
Ok I think this is my new favorite book- it even surpasses Notes from the Under-
ground. How could one even ever think of this?
"You see, humans --if we're
allowed, simply in passing, to compare them with tin lids-- humans
sit on their occupations with the greatest reluctance and ill-humour."
Why yes let's compare lids and human beings. "Let's
be perfectly honest and say: basically they're thinking of only one
thing which is jumping down as soon as they can and roll about and
make tinny sounds."
But I get it- it refers to our significance and our purpose in life. We each have
our own use- we each are a lid which corresponds to our fulfillment in life.
"From that time onwards his blood knew
it was inside a lost man and it wanted to leave."
Personifying blood as if it was another organism within us. It signifies the
demon within us- the thing we cannot help. An animal, our passions.
"No, Bettina is the one who has become more real in me;
Abelone, who I knew, was like a preparation for her and for me now she
had disappeared into Bettina as if into her own instictive self."
A human being prepared him for being able to understand a concept, a character.
"The woman who is in love
always surpasses the man she loves because life is greater than fate.
Her devotion wants to be immense: this is her bliss. But the nameless
sorrow of her love has always been this: that what is asked of her is
that her devotion be kept within limits."
It is our misfortune and curse. Life is greater than fate- for life is always
changing and is flexible. It can breathe, it is an organism, a creature.
"They walk past the houses,
people are continually coming along who blot them out, they go on
fading until they are nothing."
There's something terrible about having the power to make people fade away.
"But somewhere there's still a piece of
our disguise clinging to us that we've forgotten about. There's a
trace of exaggeration on our eyebrows; we don't notice that the
corners of our mouths are twisted. And this is how we go around, an
absolute laughing-stock: neither a real being nor an actor."
"To be loved means to be consumed by fire. To love is: giving light
with inexhaustible oil. To be loved is to pass away; to love is to
endure."
Using the parable about the Prodigal Son and how he did not want to be loved makes
me wonder whether it is in fact about Malte himself. How interesting, that for some
unconditional love can actually hurt and drive one away. "For in his loneliness, he
had loved and loved again, each time wasting his whole nature and
entertaining inexpressible fears for the freedom of the other person.
Slowly he had learnt to shine the rays of his emotion into his beloved
instead of consuming the emotion in her." He learned to give love, instead of
taking love away. And yet he craved for love to be given to back to him. I think
he found love in the sacred, in something spiritual- something beyond him.
"I see more than just him. I see his whole existence, which
was then taking up the long love to God, the silent goalless toil of
it."
-----------------------------------------------------------
I have to be honest- I didn't really understand this book, but it has made a
tremendous impression on me. I love parts of it- descriptions of places, of ideas
and concepts, of people... So sweet and delicate. He has extremely weird
observations about life- and about his consciousness. I admire this book- and it
has a special place in my heart. But yes the problem is that some parts confused me
especially about his family, and certain passages which he rambled on and on- like
about the king. I still don't know what the point of that is. I think my next task
is to read explanations based on this book and maybe clear some things out. But I
always hate reading interpretations because they are not close to what I feel
about the book- for me being close to a spiritual experience.
I love what he wrote about death- I thought about it a lot- one time on the metro-
imagining what Rilke said- that it's there within us growing. It was strange to
look at the people and see in each death, while their physical bodies are growing
and stretching so full of life. And the part about the lid will never leave my
memory- I have to ponder on that some more... we all should. Oh Rilke what wonders
you have blessed me with- my mind is full of riches!
Also in my search for finding some explanation to this book- I found this wonderful
art book by Ben Shahn (For the sake of a Single Verse):
Very cool!!! :) I wish I lived in a country where this would be available...
--
Pub Pdf- Translated by William Needham
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