The Making of an Alter Ego

In 'The Making of an Alter Ego', Augustus Young shines new light on Rilke’s famously perplexing autofiction, 'The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigg', chronicling his own attempts to uncover the story within the story. 'The Notebooks. . .'  has puzzled readers ever since it was penned a century ago. It is about a young poet in the throes of an artistic crisis indirectly drawn from Rilke’s personal and intellectual life. It offers fertile ground for Young’s audacious and indeed virtuosic detective work in unravelling subplots in its composition. Young takes the reader on a journey of discovery into one of literary history’s most singular creative minds. Through an exploration of Rilke’s many correspondences, his relationships with his contemporaries, we are given fresh insight into the man and his most baffling and alluring work. By reordering the elliptical novel’s structure, and through transcriptions of key passages, the reader arrives at Rilke’s creation of an alternative self. This is volume two of 'Things That Happen When Reading Rilke' and follows volume one – 'The Making of a Pure Poet'.