Death and Heterotopias: Representations of Modernity in Rilke’s The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

Authors

  • Julian Whitney Bonierbale University of Groningen,  The  Netherlands

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7203/eutopias.0.18578

Keywords:

Rilke, Foucault, death, heterotopia

Abstract

This essay explores the thematization of death and modernity in Rilke’s The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge through a framework of Michel Foucault’s concept of heterotopia. Described as spaces that are simultaneously mythic and real, heterotopias are special spaces embedded with more than one apparent layer of meaning. The special qualities of heterotopias open up a space that is not bound by normal laws of geometry and instead becomes an intersection or point of view between the mythic and real. This essay’s main focus is on an integrative examination of scenes from The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge and Foucault’s concept of heterotopia. After outlining the overlap between the prevalence of images of death strewn throughout the novel and the cultural pressure exerted by modernity on the metropolis, I suggest that it is possible to understand the protagonist’s quest for self-realization by examining his encounters with diverse heterotopic spaces.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

Baudelaire, Charles (1954), The Flowers of Evil, translated by William Aggeler, Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild.

Berman, Marshall (2010), All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity, London: Verso.

Donahue, Neil H. (1992), “Fear and Fascination in the Big City: Rilke’s Use of Georg Simmel in ‘The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge’”, Studies in 20th and 21st  Century Literature, 16, 2, pp. 197-219.

Eiland, Howard, & Jennings, Michael W. (2016), Walter Benjamin: a Critical Life, Boston: Belknap Press of Harvard University.

Foucault, Michel (1986), “Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias”, translated by Jay Miskowiec, Diacritics, 16, 1, pp. 22-27.

Hetherington, Kevin (1997), The Badlands of Modernity: Heterotopia and Social Ordering, London and New York: Routledge.

Garber, Frederick (1970), “Time and the City in Rilke’s ‘Malte Laurids Brigge’”. Contemporary Literature, 11, 3, pp. 324-39.

Gregg , John (1988), “Blanchot’s Suicidal Artist: Writing and the (Im)Possibility of Death”, SubStance, 17, 1, 55, pp. 47-58.

Jervis, John (1998), Exploring the Modern: Patterns of Western Culture and Civilization, Oxford: Blackwell.

Marder, Elissa (2001), Dead Time: Temporal Disorders in the Wake of Modernity (Baudelaire and Flaubert), Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Nietzsche, Friedrich (1980), On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life, translated by Peter Preuss, Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett Publishing.

Orlando, Francesco (2006), Obsolete Objects in the Literary Imagination: Ruins, Relics, Rarities, Rubbish, Uninhabited Places, and Hidden Treasures, Connecticut: Yale

University Press.

Radford, Gary P., Radford, Marie L. & Lingel, Jessica (2015), “The library as heterotopia: Michel Foucault and the experience of library space”, Journal of Documentation, 71, 4, pp. 733-751.

Rilke, Rainer Maria & Andreas-Salomé, Lou (2014), Rilke and Andreas-Salomé: A Love Story in Letters, translated by Edward Snow and Michael Winter, New York: W. W. Norton & Company.

Rilke, Rainer Maria (2009), The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, translated by Michael Hulse, London: Penguin Classics.

Simmel, Georg (1971), On Individuality and Social Forms: Selected Writings, edited by Donald N. Levine, Chicago:University of Chicago Press.

Downloads

Published

2018-07-02

How to Cite

Whitney Bonierbale, J. (2018). Death and Heterotopias: Representations of Modernity in Rilke’s The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. EU-topías. A Journal on Interculturality, Communication, and European Studies, 15, 109–117. https://doi.org/10.7203/eutopias.0.18578
Metrics
Views/Downloads
  • Abstract
    298
  • PDF
    106

Issue

Section

DOSSIER

Metrics

Similar Articles

1 2 > >> 

You may also start an advanced similarity search for this article.