The Notebook of Malte Laurids Brigge

novel by Rilke

Also known as: “Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge”, “The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge”

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Article History

The Notebook of Malte Laurids Brigge, novel in journal form by Rainer Maria Rilke, published in 1910 in German as Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge.

The book, which is composed of 71 diary-like entries, contains descriptive, reminiscent, and meditative parts. Brigge, its supposed author, is a 28-year-old poet from a noble Danish family who lives in poverty in Paris. In the first part Brigge records his experiences in Paris and his impressions of the city’s horrors: its outcasts and beggars, its disfigured and emotionally wounded, and, above all, the many guises of death he finds there. The remainder of the book, beginning with entry 40, relates episodes from Brigge’s childhood and youth in Denmark.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Kathleen Kuiper.