Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge by Rainer Maria Rilke

Author:Rainer Maria Rilke
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2022-10-20T00:00:00+00:00

It was in the year after Maman’s death that I first really noticed Abelone. It was an axiom that Abelone was always there. And so it was easy to overlook her. Then, too, Abelone was not the sympathetic type, as I personally had discovered on an earlier occasion, and nothing since had encouraged me to revise that opinion. To become curious about the particulars of Abelone’s life, or to wonder what she was really like, would have struck me as almost nonsensical back then. Abelone was there, and we all interacted with her according to our different needs. But suddenly one day I asked myself: Why is Abelone there? Each one of us had a specific rationale for being there, even if it was not always as obvious as, for instance, the usefulness of Fräulein Oxe. But why was Abelone there? For a while it was said that she needed to take her mind off things. But that was soon forgotten. No one made any attempt to take Abelone’s mind off things. Nor did Abelone give the least impression that she herself was trying to take her mind off anything.

All else aside, Abelone had one sublime quality: she sang. That is to say, there were times when she would sing. She had a strong, unwavering music in her. If it’s true that angels are male, you could say that there was something masculine in her voice: a radiant, celestial maleness. I, who even as a child had been so mistrustful of music (not because it lifted me out of myself more powerfully than anything else, but because it always seemed to put me down someplace different—someplace deeper, where everything was still in process), I gave myself over to this music, on which you could rise as if standing upright, higher and higher, until you thought you must have reached something like heaven. I didn’t guess then that Abelone would open still other heavens for me.

At first our relationship consisted of her telling me stories from Maman’s girlhood. It was very important to her that I understood how bold and dashing Maman had been. In those days, she assured me, no one could equal her in dancing or riding. “She was so fearless and full of life—and then suddenly she married,” said Abelone, still baffled after so many years. “It was so unexpected; no one could grasp why.”

I was curious to know why Abelone had remained single. I thought of her as relatively old, and it never occurred to me that she still might marry.

“There wasn’t anyone,” she answered simply—and became beautiful in the saying of those words. Is Abelone beautiful? I asked myself, surprised. But then I left home to attend the Academy for Young Noblemen, and a dreadful period in my life began. There at Sorö, when I stood at a window, apart from the others, and they left me alone for a while, I would look out into the trees, and in such moments and at night it became clear to me that Abelone was beautiful.

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