The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge
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A young man named Malte Laurids Brigge lives in a cheap room in Paris while his belongings rot in storage. Every person he sees seems to carry their death within them and with little but a library card to distinguish him from the city's untouchables, he thinks of the deaths, and ghosts, of his aristocratic family, of which he is the sole living descendant. Suffused with passages of lyrical brilliance, Rilke's semi-autobiographical novel is a moving and powerful coming-of-age story.ย This new translation by Burton Pike is a reaction to overly stylized previous translations, and aims to capture not only the beauty but also the strangeness, the spirit, of Rilke's German.ย
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Rainer Maria Rilkeย (1875โ1926) was one of the greatest lyric German-language poets. In 1902 he became a friend, and for a time the secretary, of Rodin, and it was during his 12-year Paris residence that Rilke enjoyed his greatest poetic activity. He spent the last years of his life living in seclusion in Switzerland.ย .
Burton Pikeย (1930-2022) was a translator of German and French, known particularly for his work on Robert Musil, including the translation, with Sophie Wilkins, ofย The Man Without Qualitiesย (1996). He was, as well, a scholar of literature, culture, and translation, author ofย Robert Musil: An Introduction to His Workย (1961) andย The Image of the City in Modern Literatureย (1981).
