Just finished Kevin Canty's masterpiece, Winslow in Love. Winslow is a drunken professor who runs off with an anorexic student and has many unsavory adventures. It does not end well, which any normal reader can easily predict.
Winslow has been trying to teach Rilke to his students. He does not read German, so he reads various translations. Rilke is trying to tell him something. It's a riddle he can't solve.
I think the answer to this riddle can be found not in Rilke's poetry but in Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge, (The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge), Rilke's 1910 novel. I may have more to say when I have finished the Rilke.
The pressure to explain, the need for closure, distaste at the subject matter, may cause many readers to avoid this book or hate it, [the Canty, that is] but I was completely drawn in.
I also think he could have subtitled it, "How the West was Lost."
On a much brighter note: Yesterday my cousin and I had a wonderful visit with the Canadian artist Marja Leena Rathje. Her blog is here. Blogging has brought some wonderful people into my life!
Are you reading the Rilke in German? I've heard that it's difficult to find good translations though there are many.
I second that last thought! It was fun to meet at last.
Posted by: marja-leena | July 21, 2009 at 10:36 AM
"Blogging has brought some wonderful people into my life!"
And maintained relationships with others.
Posted by: Brandon | July 21, 2009 at 10:53 AM
I look forward to your comments on Malte.
Posted by: David | July 21, 2009 at 01:17 PM
Marja-Leena: It was a great honor. I have never seen such an exquisite house as yours: your art, your garden, your plants, all the beautiful wood everywhere,the setting, the light: really, I was in awe. Bettie was thrilled, too.
Yes, I am reading the Rilke in German and finding it very much to the point in my present existence. He knew all these things so young. Well, he WAS a genius. I guess that is why he ran off with Lou-Andreas Salome, a woman much older than he who was the first female psychoanalyst. It was all very romantic, but she eventually had to kick him out.
I'm just lucky I know German: my high school had a German teacher and I lived in Germany and Switzerland and got my degree in German after I came back to the States. But I have no German ancestry, in spite of my name, which is my husband's!
Brandon: Yes. I suppose we would have lost touch without this blog, and Facebook is reconnecting the writers' group, too. I'm getting a kick out of Sharna: she is so funny!
David: I am underlining and making notes on my Kindle as I read the Rilke. I'll certainly try to come up with something worthy to say, but I am so against interpretation these days! I mean, it's easy to say it's about Paris and vanishing lives and so on, but having said that, what have I really said? You know?
Posted by: Hattie | July 21, 2009 at 03:43 PM
Oh, Hattie, I've just learned even more about you. You have a gift for learning languages. Thank you so much for your generous words. We must do it again but longer.
Posted by: marja-leena | July 21, 2009 at 05:38 PM