Notes of Malte Laurids Brigge

«Notes of Malte Laurids Brigge», which R. M. Rilke worked on for seven years, is the only prose work of the author, considered the pinnacle of his creativity. The main character, twenty-eight-year-old Dane Malte Laurids Brigge, the last representative of a once-noble lineage, is a gifted and deeply feeling nature (to some extent, the alter ego of the writer himself), finds himself in Paris in complete solitude and on the brink of poverty. He wants to become a poet and keeps a diary, which is a mosaic of disparate notes that, at first glance, seem disconnected: a realistic description of Parisian life with its hostels and beggars asking for alms intertwines with memories of childhood and reflections on the meaning of human existence.