Threads in Three Sections: A Reading of The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

Author(s): Eleanor Honig Skoller

Source: SubStance, Vol. 10, No. 3, Issue 32: Versions: Feminisms': A Stance of One's Own (1981),
pp. 15-25
Published by: University of Wisconsin Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3684083
Accessed: 10-11-2015 19:42 UTC
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Threadsin ThreeSections:
A Readingof TheNotebooks
ofMalteLauridsBrigge
ELEANOR HONIG SKOLLER

I stillrememberexactly,one day long ago, at home, I found

a jewel-casket.It was twohandsbreadthslarge,fan-shapedwith
a borderof flowersstampedintogreenmorrocco.I opened it: it
was empty. I can say this now afterso many years. But at the
time, when I had opened it, I saw only in what its emptiness
consisted:in velvet,in a littlemound of light-colored,
no longer
freshvelvet;in thejewel-groove,which,empty,and lighterbya
trace of melancholy,disappeared into it. For an instantthiswas
unendurable. But to thosewho, being loved, remainbehind,it
is perhaps alwayslike this.'
-Rainer Maria Rilke

Seeing whatis not thereis a formof speculation.When fedbythedesireto

represent that lack, to materializeit, speculationis hypostasizedinto theory.
The distance between a highlywroughtfiction,even a poem, and a theoryis
an illusion,a matterof threads: what kind theyare and how theyare woven.
The formsspeculationmay appear in depend on the weaving,on the size and
frequencyof the alternatelyfilledand emptyspaces thatcreateitssurface,its
textures.Two of the definitionsof texturesignal the connectionsunder discussion: the structureformedby the threadof a fabricand a compositeof the
elements of prose and poetry.Rilke's TheNotebooks
ofMalteLauridsBrigge,a
fictivetheoryof the formationof a poet, is itselfa weaving,a textilewhose
centerpiece is a descriptionof otherweavings,of six sublimetapestriescalled
La Dame aI la licorne.The threads of TheNotebooks
seem to be movingto and
fromthe weavings-to and fromthe womanand thecreaturein the tapestries
-forming intricateconnectionsthe complexityand power of whichcan be
more fully discerned when read across Freudian/Lacanianpsychoanalytic
theory.
"I am learningto see," writesMalte (14). "Have I said itbefore?I am learning to see" (15), and stillone more time,"I thinkI ought to begin to do some
work,now thatI am learningto see" (26). Malte senses thathis relationto the
thingsaround him is blurredand indistinct;but he suspectsthatsome sortof
delineating process is takingplace in his psyche. He recognizesthis process
when he findshis place at his usual table at the Duval crimerie usurped by a
Sub-Stance N0 32, 1981

15

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16

Eleanor Honig Skoller

stranger."The connectionbetweenus was established,and I knewthathe was

stiffwith terror.I knew that terrorhad paralyzed him,terrorat something
thatwas happening insidehim"(50). Maltehad seen himself,
mirrored,doubled.
He was thatman. He was here, in here,and there,outthere-with everything
else: "withinme... somethingis happening that is beginningto draw me
away and separate me fromeverything"(51). The painfulencounteris onlya
foreshadowingof Malte's increasinglywrenchingstrugglewiththe realization
that,as Rimbaud said '"JEestun autre."2In a primeexample (beforethe fact)
of Lacan's mirror-stage,he is thrustinto the Imaginary-the realm of the
specular-where what he sees is irreduciblyseparate fromwhat he is and
what he is is irrevocablyconnected to what he sees:
Hot and angry,I rushedto themirrorand withdifficulty
watchedthrough
the
masktheworkingof myhands.But forthisthemirrorhad beenwaiting.Its
momentofretaliation
had come.WhileI strovein boundlessly
anguish
increasing
to squeeze somehowout of mydisguise,it forcedme,bywhatmeansI do not
a strangeand
know,to liftmyeyesand imposedon me an image,no,a reality,
unbelievableand monstrous
withwhich,againstmywill,I becameperreality,
meated:fornowthemirrorwasstronger,
and I wasthemirror.
I staredat this
unknownbeforeme,and it seemedto me apallingto be alone
greatterrifying
withhim.Butat theverymomentI thought
this,theworstbefell:I lostall sense,
I simplyceasedtoexist.Forone secondI hadan indescribable,
painfuland futile
thentherewasonlyhe: therewasnothing
buthe. (94-95)
longingformyself,
Something is happening to him "againsthis will."The strangenessof itall, his
intense unease causes him staggeringfear: of the outside, of thingsoutside
that would enter him,absorb him and of whatwas inside thatwould growso
he fearsthatin thisstateof
big it would replace him. But most significantly,
oscillation between overwhelmingagressivityand debilitatingdefensiveness,
he would be leftmute, rendered inarticulate.
Caught in an orbitbetweenvertigoand nausea, he suffersthe fearthathe
"might not be able to say anythingbecause everythingis beyond utterance"
(61). The irresistableinferencehere is thatitis Malte'saccess to language,that
is to say, his poetic power, thatwill change the coordinatesof his orbit,that
will retrievehim as Rilke himselfis retrievedby his inventionof Malte and by
poems like the following:
Mirrors:no one'severyetdescribed
whatyoureallyare.
you,knowing
Time'sinterstices,
youseemfilled
withnothingbutholesof filters....
At timesyou'refullof painting
....
But themostbeautiful
willstay
untiltheclearfreedNarcissus
thereto herchastekisses.3
penetrates
Malte's own "penetration"into the Symbolictakes place in a masterful
scene in which a piece of cardboard and some flowersare substitutesforhis
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The Notebooks
ofMalte LauridsBrigge

17

mother: a scene of separation fromthe mother,of expulsion fromthat"desparate paradise"4 occasioned by the interventionof the father,the Nom-duPare. The scene occurs when Malte falls ill and his motherand fatherare
brought back froma ball. "'What nonsense to send for us,' he [Father]said,
speaking into the room withoutlooking at him"; and Malte is leftalone to
endure his fever.He no longer has Maman, only "Maman's dance-card and
whitecamellias,whichI'd neverseen beforeand whichI laid on myeyeswhen
I felthow cool theywere" (87).
There are threadsthatconnectMaman's dance-card(wherenames of men
are inscribedin a seriesof substitutions
thatare thedance partners)and white
camellias lyingon Malte's closed eyes which,when open, gaze on the empty
jewel-casket in my epigraph. The three objects, dance-card, camellias and
but of themall, thejeweljewel-casket,all femininefripperies,are significant,5
casket is crucial to Malte's emergence as a poet, not merelyas a symbolof or
link with the feminine,but as constitutiveof his writingself.
Jewel-casketis M. D. HerterNorton'stranslationforRilke'swordSchmucketui.6Norton's choice mightat firstglance seem overstated:he could have used
jewel-box or jewel-case. A closer look however vindicates him. This may
indeed be an instancein whichnuance and meaning,ratherthanbeing lostin
translationare, on the contrary,found. As JeffreyMehlman demonstratesin
his essay, "Portnoy in Paris," a translationoften renders visible what was
unseen in the originallanguage.7 The German word (Schmucketui)
is itselfan
unusual one, elegant,even precious,containingwithinit the Frenchworditui
meaning container,case or box. Rilke'sfancyingup of theword forjewel-box,
or the diminutive,Schmuckkiistchen,
usually Schmuckkasten
mayhave led Norton
to decide on 'jewel-casket." It is significantthatin Americanusage the word
casket means coffin-usually a fancyor elegant one.
Norton's choice of translationhighlightsone of Rilke'smost pronounced
concernswhichhe statessuccinctly
in theopeninglineof a late versefragment:
"Lifeand death:theyare one, at core entwined."8In a letterto a Swissfriend
about the production of the Duino Elegiesand the Sonnetsto Orpheus,Rilke
writes of "the determinationconstantlymaturingin me to keep life open
toward death... ." 9 But perhaps most tellingof his involvementwith the
imbricationof life and death are the opening lines of The Notebooks
themselves: "So, THEN people do come here in order to live; I would sooner have
thought one died here" (13).
The hyphenbetweenjewel and casketis, in the Nortontranslationat least,
an elastic distance between life and death. The jewel-casket:a box for gems,
petrifiedand rockymatter,reminderof coffin:a containerforthe dead, is, at
the same time, Freud's "jewel-case... a favouriteexpression for the female
genitals... ." o10Thus a locus forthe possibilityof lifethatis a "circuitousroute
to death" can be said to reside in thejewel-groove.The "traceof melancholy"
that lightensit is a glimmerof the exquisite pain of knowledge: the sightof
nothing,the emptyfemalespace thatcontainsnothingbut can shape itselfto,
sheathe, whateverfillsit,the malleable mold: "and whata melancholybeauty
it gave to women when theywere pregnantand stoodthere,in theirbig bodies,
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18

Eleanor Honig Skoller

rested,were twofruits:a child

upon which their slender hands instinctively
and death" (23).
The open jewel-casket,so evocativelydescribed,can be takenfora pudendem, unveiled, revealed as empty,lackingand thus "foran instantunendurable." The sight,repressed and re-veiled-fetishized-in "light-colored,no
longer freshvelvet"is made profoundwithitstraceof melancholy-the path
around Nietzsche'sBaubo into the Greek wayof life: form."Are we not,"asks
Nietzsche, "preciselyin this respect,Greeks? Adorers of forms,of tones,of
words? And therefore-artists?""
The groove in thejewel-casketis a made space, an embodimentof metaphor when it is defined"as the measureof an empty'space' induced byrepression. The metaphor,by posing itselfas thatwhichis not spoken, hollowsout
and designates thisspace."12 The jewel-groove,a fissuredspace acrosswhich
desire flowsin the transferof meaning,is a metaphorforthe fountof love of
women (double genitive: give and take) who have "surmountedthemselves
and become lovers" and have lamented lost loves in verses thathave become
fields of love and desire (198). The poets Sappho, Louise Lab%, Gaspara
Stampa are foremostamong Malte's models of excellence. Malte is one of
these poets-a man, in H61ene Cixous' phrase,"capable of lovinglove"-who
is preparing himself,as she says,"to slip somethingbyat odds withtradition."
Only the poets can do this,declares Cixous, "because poetryinvolvesgaining
strengththrough the unconscious and because the unconscious,that other
limitlesscountry,is the place where the repressed manage to survive .... " 13
While the unconscious is representedin Rilke by a concretephysiological
image, the blood, the underlyingdynamicconcepts of flow and circulation
parallel Freud's descriptionsof unconsciousdrives.Rilke'sand Freud's notions
of the processes involved in the relationshipbetweenthe conscious and the
unconscious are strikingly
similar.Experience,real or fantasized,mustbecome
unconscious, onlythe topographyis different.Indeed, Rilke's"blood-remembering"14 prefiguresby a few years Freud's writingson memorytraces,and
the mnemic and perception-conscioussystems.
Malte realizes thatin order to writeone must forgetones' memories("of
many nightsof love ... of the screamsof women in labor ... of havingbeen
beside the dying ... the dead .. ." [26]) and waitwithgreatpatienceuntilthey
are part of one, of one's glances and gestures,transfusedinto (the) blood;
only then can theybe retrievedand rememberedin poems. Malte's maternal
grandfather, Count Brahe, dictatinghis memoirs,recalls the Marquis de
Belmare:
'Booksare empty,'
criedtheCount,'... itis bloodthatmatters,
itis in theblood
thatwe mustbe abletoread.He hadmarvelous
histories
andcuriousillustrations
in his blood,thisBelmare;he couldopen it wherehe pleased,something
was
alwaysdescribedthere;nota page in hisbloodhad beenskipped.'
Books, empty,but full of blood are tied to the emptyjewel-casketthat
holds the promiseof lifeconceivedin the swollenblood of lovers,engendered
in the blood that inscribesthe bodies of women withtime and measure,and
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The Notebooks
ofMalte LauridsBrigge

19

with number, which is according to the OxfordEnglishDictionary,poetry.

constant
du pottique,"
Numbers are a 'ferment
15 as Wordsworthknew,when he
wrote: "Will no one tellme whatshe sings?- /Perhaps the plaintivenumbers
flow/ For old, unhappy,far-offthings... ."16 For Malte,the rhythmic
flowof
numbered syllablesis held in a bloody suspension untilit appears as poetry.
are interlacedby a thread that ties the single
Love/women/blood/poems
to his own father'slast wish thathis death be
of
the
father's
non/nom
syllable
made certain by piercing his heart from which as Malte notices "twice in
succession blood escaped, as if it were pronouncinga word in two syllables"
(139). Hence, Malte's project:to writehimself("But thistimeI shallbe written.
I am the impressionthatwillchange" [52].) by being written-in and by (the)
blood.
In his desire to cover the irreparablegap between him and himself-a
state posited by Freud in his lapidaryphrase wo es war,sollIch werden-Malte
weaves his writing.

II
It seems that women have made few contributionsto the discoveries and inventionsin the historyof civilization;there is,
however,one techniquewhichtheymayhave invented-that of
plaiting and weaving. If that is so, we should be tempted to
guess the unconsciousmotiveforthe achievement.Nature herselfwould seemto have giventhemodel whichthisachievement
imitatesbycausing the growthat maturityof the pubic hair that
conceals the genitals.The step thatremainedto be takenlay in
making the threads'Zadhereto one another,while on the body
they stickinto the skin and are only matted together.If you
rejectthisidea as fantasticand regardmybeliefin the influence
of lack of a penis on the configurationof femininity
as an idWe
fixe,I am of course defenseless.
-Sigmund Freud

In the weaving of a text there are threads connectingweaving withthe

of theendless movementof
writingof texts:a metaweaving:the manifestation
the chain of signifierswhose meaningslidesin the movement,takeson power
in its trajectory,is anchored or knottedhere and there-at thosepointswhich
Lacan calls pointsde capiton.Significationis alwaysdelayed, nachtriiglich,
apres
coup. Roland Barthes says in S/Z (a metaweavingpar excellence): "the text,
while it is being produced, is like a piece of Valencienneslace created before
us under the lacemaker's fingers .... 17 The makingof lace-and texts-is
the fashioningof somethingwhose matteris mostlyholes, airy nothings,a
(signification)insistsin directionand intertangle of relationswhose visibility
section-in the patternedsurface,the textileitself.Barthes'extendedanalogy
between lacemaking and textmakingis to the point:
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20

Eleanor Honig Skoller

while
each sequenceundertaken
inactivebobbinwaiting
hangslikea temporary
its neighborworks;then,whenitsturncomes,thehand takesup thethread
is filledout,theprogress
of
again,bringsitbackto theframe;and as thepattern
decapiton]
whichholdsitand is gradually
each threadis markedwitha pin[point
heldand then
movedforward:thusthetermsofthesequence:theyarepositions
leftbehindin thecourseof a gradualinvasionof meaning[apriscoup]."S

Malte has lovely memories of lace and Maman: "'Shall we look at them,
Malte?' she would say and was as joyful as if we were about to be given a
present.. ." (121). And then theywould unroll the lengthsof lace thathad
been sewn togetherand wound on a spindle and would watch the various
designs unfold before them. Each one created an ambience.Some laces were
dense and opaque, othersopen and loose,dizzying,saddening,Binche,Alenlon
and the "long trackof Valenciennes." Withthe last one, the veryfinepillowon our eyes'" (122).
laces, "Maman said: 'Oh, now we shall get frostflowers
And threads of frostflowers
and white camellias, of closed and open eyes,
resurface in the text.
Rilke, like Barthes,is captured by the suggestivepower of lace and writes
of it as emblematicof a great human labor thatcan produce "However slow,/
this thing,not easier than life,but quite /perfect,and oh, so beautiful..... " "9
Becoming a poet, like the labor of lacemaking,is slowwitharduous attention
to detail. In the lacy surface of The Notebooks
the emergence of the poet is
enmeshed withtheovercomingof loss (of the mother,of theself),withsurpassing the other, and with learning to love with a "penetrating,radiant love"
(214). And women are the teachers: "For centuriesnow they[women] have
performed the whole of love; theyhave played the fulldialogue, both parts.
For the man has only imitatedthembadly. ... What ifwe were to startat the
outset to learn the work of love, which has alwaysbeen done for us?" (119,
121). Were men to do so, theywould become lacemakersand poets "male
mothers"20-as Nietzsche calls them.
Maman and Malte intuit,as theyrewindthe spindle,the powerfullyevocative, femininestrengthand complexityof the fragilelaces. "'Justthink,ifwe
had to make them,'said Maman, lookingreallyfrightened.I could notimagine
that at all. I caught myselfhavingthoughtof littleinsectsincessantlyspinning
these thingsand which on thataccount are leftin peace. No, of course,they
were women" (122). The lack of a penis, the configurationof femininity,
is
marked by makingpresentwhatis absent,by seeingsomethingthatis nothing,
by the play of the unconscious. "The text,in short,is a fetish"21and the
reader, using the same psychiceconomy of denial that the child uses upon
seeing the lack of the female genital,can exclaim over and over, "I knowvery
welltheseare onlywords,butall thesame.. ." 22 The poet daydreamsand writes
his desire in an infiniteline of substitutions:"There are tapestries,Abelone,
wall tapestries. I am imagining that you are here; there are six tapestries:
come, let us pass slowlybefore them" (111).

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The Notebooks
ofMalte LauridsBrigge

21

III
This is the Creature
This is the creaturethere never has been.
They never knew and yet,none the less,
theyloved it the way it moved, its suppleness,
its neck, its verygaze, mild and serene.
Not there,because theyloved it, it behaved
as though it were. They alwaysleftsome space.
And in thatclear unpeopled space theysaved
it lightlyreared its head, withscarce a trace
of not being there.They fed it, not withcorn,
but only withthe possibility
of being. And thatwas able to confer
such strength,its brow put fortha horn. One horn.
Whitelyit stole up to a maid-to be
withinthe silvermirrorand in her.
-Rainer Maria Rilke,
trans.J. B. Leishman

Woven, it is estimated,between 1506 and 1513, the six tapestriesof the

series known as La Dame a la licornewere discoveredin 1847 by George Sand
who was travellingin the Frenchcountryside
withProsperMerim'e.23Merimee,
who worked for the Louvre, was able to have the tapestriessent to Paris,
restoredand hung in the Cluny Museum whereRilkesaw thembetween 1903
and 1920 when he wroteTheNotebooks.
Each of the fivetapestrieswhichshow
La Dame in a stylizedbucolic settingof floraand fauna witha unicorn,a lion
and heraldic flags,depicts one of the senses; the sixthis a dedication: &mon
seul desir.This dedication to desire could be Malte's whose sole desire is to
write,to become imbricatedin the chain of signifierswhose movementis fed
by desire. The phrase, a monseuldesirindicatesa trajectory;to, towardactive
masculinedesignationis thewomen's
movement,libido. Yet thisprototypically
motto. It appears on her tentand is embodied by the unicorn,a fabled and
mythiccreature,who cannot be caught or tamed except by a virginwho is its
'master-woman.'Desire circulates.This tapestry,the center of
maitre-femme,
Malte's descriptionof all six-themselves the centerpieceof TheNotebooks-is
its navel, the place fromwhich,like Freud's dream-thoughts,
threads"branch
out in every directioninto the intricatenetwork"24thatconstitutesTheNotebooksand Malte as a writingsubject.
A monseul desirshows La Dame standingin the opening of her tent.The
lion and the unicorn stand on eitherside of her holdingthe flapsof the tent
open in softfoldsforminga triangularlabilespace around her. The triangular
configurationof the opening structuresa female space. The triangle,the

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22

Eleanor Honig Skoller

shape of the pubic hair thatcoversthe genitals,is the delta, the mouthof the
river,source of life. In about 1571 FranCoisClouet, in his painting"Diane de
Poitiers,"25showed such a draped opening in whichis seen threewomen. In
the foreground,at the opening is "Diane de Poitiers,"seen onlyfromthewaist
up. Her expression is pensive and intelligent,her bare breasts,nubile,seem
perfectlyshaped. Just to the rightand slightlybehind her, a wet-nursewith
round, veryfullbreastsis sucklinga swaddled infant.Her leeringsmilegives
her face a stupid look. Between the twowomen is a bowl of fruitand the head
of a cherub figure. In another room behind them is the thirdwoman who
appears to be liftinga roundjug thatreiterates,in the recessesof the painting,
the roundness of the breasts,the heads of the baby and the cherub,and the
fruitthat fillthe foreground.Even furtheraway,behind the woman withthe
jug, at the side of the fireplaceis a hangingthatshowsa seated whiteunicorn.
Here, too, the unicorn is present in a draped opening of a female space, a
space of desire and fecundity:the purityof possibility.
It is as ifthe painting,laterthan the tapestriesbysome sixtyyears,allowed
the viewer a look into the mysteryof the desire of the woman only to reveal

No. 1370 "DianedePoitiers"

c. 1571)
(probably

Francois Clouet (c. 1510-1572)

x 32 in.)
o.921 x 0.813 m (361/4

SamuelH. KressCollection

NationalGalleryofArt,Washington

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The Notebooks
ofMalteLauridsBrigge

23

more mysteryand desire. This bringsto mind Marcel Duchamp's assemblage,

Etant Donnes which turns the viewer into a voyeur.The only way it can be
viewed is by lookingthroughtwosmallholes-peep holes-in a largewooden
door behind which is a naked woman, shorn of pubic hair,lyingspayed out,
unbearably exposed. Octavio Paz pointsout that"whatwe see is the image of
our desire."26
From a jewel-casketwhich her maid holds open beforeher, Malte writes,
La Dame "lifts... a chain, a heavy, magnificentornamentthat has always
been locked up" (113). The image is one of theofferingof thevirginto desire,
to life that is open to death. Of the next tapestry,Le Toucher,Malte wonders:
"Is this mourning,can mourningbe so erect,and a mourning-dressso mute
as this velvet,green-blackand faded in places?" (113). These threads knot
withthose of the emptyjewel-casketmade of longerfreshvelvetwithitsjewelgroove made lighterby a trace of melancholy.And so the textis formed.La
Dame's green-blackfaded dress is a traceof mourningnotonlyfortheloss of
innocence, but for the loss of desire,as well,because desire satisfiedis always
loss: la petitemort,death.
It is significantthat Malte ends the firstof his Notebooks
witha description
of the last tapestryLa Vue (Sight)of which he writes:"Everythingis here.
Everythingforever"(113). With (a) sightbegins the circulationof desire, the
effort to find, re-find, 'retrouver'
(retrieve) the mother, the self-forever
"fixed ... ," as Lacan says,"in a line of fiction."27La Vueis a depictionof that
specular momentin whichthe childbecomes aware of himselfas separateand
other. Malte writesof La Dame:
We haveneveryetseenherweary.Is sheweary?Or hassheonlyseatedherself
becausesheis holdingsomething
onemightthink.
Butshe
heavy?A monstrance,
curvesherotherarmtowardtheunicorn,
and thecreature
and
bridles,
flattered,
rearsand leans upon her lap. It is a mirror,
thethingshe holds.See: she is
showingtheunicornitsimage-. (113)
The distancebetweena monstranceand a mirrormaynotbe as greatas it first
appears; they are separated, and joined, by no more than a thread. Malte
looked in the mirrorand saw "a strange,unbelievableand monstrousreality..."
(95). The unicorn too is a strangeand monstrousreality.The etymologyof
monstrous is revealing: from the Latin monstrum
somethingmarvelous or
prodigious,originallydivineportent;monstranceis derivedfromthe Medieval
Latin monstrantia,
formed on the present participleof the Latin monstriare,
A monstranceis a vessel in whichthe Host, the
formed
on
monstrum.28
show,
is exposed. The
body of Christ,of whom the unicornis a medievalsymbol,29
mirrorshowingthe image of the unicorn,a monstrouscreature,is a displacement of the monstrancethat displaysthe Host.
The mirror("Mirrors:. . . Time's interstices")holds the image of a "possibilityof being"-a space of nothing.In the tapestriesthe unicornis a cluster
of holes; yethe fillsin spaces,jumps over gaps. He is a metonymy,
the signifier
of desire: connectingand displacing.30His marvelousand prodigiousphallic
horn is the phallus of the woman: La Dame a la licorne,'WomanwithOneHorn.
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Eleanor Honig Skoller

And Malte, in his desire to be the phallus forthe mother,writeshis tapestries

with his phallus/penfor Abelone whom he loves: "Abelone, I am imagining
that you are here. Do you understand,Abelone? I thinkyou must understand" (113).
Malte imagines Abelone's presence. The imaginaryis the realm of the
mother-also absent-and of the specular: the image; here objectsare extensions of the mother.In place of Maman, Malte is leftwithcamellias,a dancecard, pieces of lace and an emptyjewel-casket.In his desire to findagain what
is foreverlost to him-except on the level of the signifier-Malte becomes a
poet and a lover: "(To be loved means to be consumed.To love is to givelight
withinexhaustibleoil. To be loved is to pass away,to love is to endure)" (209).

NOTES
1. Rainer Maria Rilke, TheNotebooks
ofMalteLauridsBrigge,trans.M. D. HerterNorton(New
York: Norton, 1964). All page referencesare found in the textin parentheses.
2. Arthur Rimbaud, letterto Georges Izambard in Rimbaud,ed. and trans.Oliver Bernard
(1962; rpt. Baltimore: Penguin, 1966), p. 6.
3. Rainer Maria Rilke,Duino Elegiesand The SonnetstoOrpheus,trans.A. Poulin,Jr. (Boston:
Houghton MifflinCo., 1977), p. 143.
4. Marcel Proust,Swann'sWay,trans.C. K. ScottMoncrieff(New York: The Modern Library,
1956), p. 32.
5. Michele Montrelay writes in "Inquiry into Feminity,"MIF, No. 1 (1978), p. 93 of the
masquerade of femininityconsistingin a "piling up of crazy things,feathers,hats and strange
baroque constructionswhich rise up like so manysilentinsignias."
6. Rainer Maria Rilke,Werkein drieBanden,III (Frankfurtam Main: Insel Verlag, 1966), 325.
7. JeffreyMehlman, "Portnoyin Paris,"Diacritics,II, No. 4 (1972), 21-28.
8. JohnJ. L. Mood, ed., trans.,RilkeonLoveand Other
(New York: Norton,1975),p. 69.
Difficulties
9. Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnetsto Orpheus,trans. M. D. Herter Norton (New York: Norton,
1962), p. 130.
10. Sigmund Freud, Dora: An Analysis
(New York: CollierBooks, 1963),p. 87.
ofa Case ofHysteria
11. FriedrichNietzsche,TheGayScience,
trans.WalterKaufmann(New York: Vintage,1974),p. 38.
12. Montrelay,p. 96.
13. H61'ne Cixous, "The Laugh of theMedusa," trans. Keith Cohen and Paula Cohen, in New
An Anthology,
FrenchFeminisms:
eds. Elaine Marks and Isabelle de Courtivron(Amherst:Univ. of
Mass. Press, 1980), pp. 249-50.
14. Mood, p. 93.
15. Robert L. Mitchell,rev. of Poitiques:thioriecritiquelittiraires.
MichiganRomanceStudies,1
(Ann Arbor, Michigan: Michigan Romance Studies, 1980) in TheFrenchReview,54 (1980), 332.
16. WilliamWordsworth,Selected
ed. Mark Van Doren (New York: The Modern Library,
Poetry,
1950), p. 487.
17. Roland Barthes, S/Z, trans. Richard Miller (New York: Hill & Wang, 1974), p. 60.
18. Ibid.
19. Rainer Maria Rilke,NewPoems,trans.J. B. Leishman(New York: New Directions,1964),p. 99.
20. Nietzsche, p. 129.
21. Barthes, S/Z, p. 160.
22. Roland Barthes, The Pleasureof theText,trans. Richard Miller (New York: Hill & Wang,
1975), p. 47.
23. Annis Pratt,"Aunt Jennifer'sTigers: Notes toward a Historyof Women's Archetypes,"
FeministStudies,4, No. 1 (1978), 178.

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TheNotebooks
ofMalteLauridsBrigge

25

24. Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation

ofDreams,trans.,ed. James Strachey(New York: Avon,
1965), p. 564.
25. The titleof the Clouet paintingappears in quotation marksbecause it is in question. Sir
in France 1500 to 1700, 2nd ed. (1970; rpt. Middlesex,
Anthony Blunt in Artand Architecture
England: Penguin Books, 1977) says the following:"The 'Lady in her Bath' in the National
Gallery,Washington,traditionallyidentifiedas a portraitof Diane de Poitiers,but more probably,
as suggested by Irene Adler, [is] of Marie Touchet, the mistressof Charles IX" (p. 119).
26. Octavio Paz, Marcel Duchamp,AppearanceStrippedBare, trans. Rachel Phillipsand Donald
Gardner (New York: Viking Press, 1978), p. 117.
27. Jacques Lacan, "The Mirror Stage as Formativeof the Functionof the I as Revealed in
PsychoanalyticExperience," as translatedby FredericJameson in his essay, "Imaginary and
Symbolic in Lacan: Marxism,PsychoanalyticCriticism,and the Problemof the Subject" in Yale
FrenchStudies,Nos. 55/56 (1977), p. 353.
28. C. T. Onions, ed. TheOxford
(Oxford:Clarendon Press,1966).
ofEnglishEtymology
Dictionary
29. Peter Lum, FabulousBeasts(New York: Pantheon Books, 1951), p. 68.
30. Jean Laplanche and Serge Leclair, "The Unconscious: A PsychoanalyticStudy,"trans.
Patrick Coleman, Yale FrenchStudies,No. 48 (1972), p. 151.

University
ofWisconsin-Milwaukee

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