Rilke's "Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge" [1910]//:: The Trivialization of the big D.

[Lorentzen / Nicklaus]

 One central Rilke text that hasn't been mentioned yet, is the novel "Die 
 Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge" from 1910 ( - "Aufzeichnungen" are 
 "notes": Is there an English translation?), a book Sartre was very fond of. 
 It's also one of my favourites. A major theme is the "trivialization of the big 
 D." (- remembering a formulation like this from Vineland). The fight against 
 this trivialization is, I think, the one issue where Pynchon identifies 
 himself strongly with his figure Weissmann. 

 Here comes RMR in m.o.p.a.t.: 

 "Who, today, gives something for an elaborated death? Nobody. Even the rich, 
 who could afford to die in full length, start to get careless and indifferent; 
 the wish, to have an authentic personal death, is becoming more and more rare. 
 Only a while, and it will be as rare as a life of one's own. God, that's all 
 there. One comes, one finds a life, ready, one just has to wear it as a dress. 
 One wants to go or one is forced to do so: well, no stress: Voilà votre mort, 
 monsieur. One dies, how it comes; one dies the death which belongs to the 
 illness one has (because, since one knows all diseases, one also knows, that 
 the different lethal finishings are the properties of the diseases, not of the 
 ill people; and the ill person has, so to speak, nothing to do)./ In the 
 hospitals, where they die so willingly and with so much thankfulness towards 
 doctors and nurses, one dies a death that is hired professionally by the 
 institution; this pleases them." (p. 13) 

 The novel is a spiritual Bildungsroman. It has one of the best endings ever:

 [- Potential SPOILER!]


 "What did they know who he was. He now was terribly difficult to love, and he 
 felt that only ONE would be able to do so. But this one did not want to yet".

 Outside the sky between the trees is blue. - KFL