This is an excerpt from The Notebook of Malte Laurids Brigge by Rainer Maria Rilke (1910). Translated from German by William Needham. Narrated by Joseph Voelbel.
This was Rilke's only novel, it was written in a water closet in Paris, as Rilke didn't have enough money at the time to afford a place with a real study. This particular excerpt was chosen for it's enigmatic inclusion of a much debated historical personage by the name of St. Germain, and also for it's mystical and religious overtones.
Rilke's eye for the unique is singular, and although there were many parts to this book that could have been included in this excerpt, for example, the opening of the novel where Rilke discusses people's faces, this recounting of St. Germain, was a point in the book that jumped out at me the most. This book partly inspired my short story, "Inside the Mind of Le Comte", which the interested reader can also find on this channel.
Here's that excerpt about faces:
"Did I say it before? I'm learning to see—yes, I'm making a start.
I'm still not good at it. But I want to make the most of my time.
For example, I've never actually wondered how many faces there are.
There are a great many people, but there are even more faces because
each person has several. There are those who wear one face for years
on end; naturally, it starts to wear, it gets dirty, it breaks at the
folds, it becomes stretched like gloves that are kept for travelling.
These are thrifty, simple people; they don't change their faces, and
never for once would they have them cleaned. It's good enough, they
maintain, and who can convince them otherwise? Admittedly, since they
have several faces, the guestion now arises: what do they do with the
others? They save them. They'll do for the children. There have even
been instances when dogs have gone out with them on. And why not? A
face is a face.
Other people change their faces one after the other with uncanny speed
and wear them out. At first it seems to them that they've enough to
last them forever, but before they're even forty they're down to the
last of them. Of course, there's a tragic side to it. They're not used
to looking after faces; their last one wore through in a week and has
holes in it and in many places it's as thin as paper; bit by bit the
bottom layer, the non-face, shows through and they go about wearing
that.
But that woman, that woman: bent forward with her head in her hands,
she'd completely fallen into herself. It was at the corner of rue
Notre-Dame-des-Champs . I began to tread softly the moment I caught
sight of her. Poor people shouldn't be disturbed when they're deep
in thought. What they're searching for might still occur to them." - Rilke
If you enjoy my work, please subscribe and consider tossing me a donashe in the paypal or crypto tip jar :)
To do so click the Cash Icon to the left of the Subscribed button. [USD/ETH/BTC/VTC/USDT/STORJ]
I provide all this content for free in the hopes of furthering interest in great philosophical literature.
