I adore Rilke. Ever since my German Comparative Literature class on dopplegangers, the uncanny, and the like

I connected with his writing the most. I began this book and it was intriguing to learn his background. I did pause when I learned of his death, which saddened me. I didn’t realize he had cancer.

I haven’t completed to book yet, but I quite enjoyed the writing and look forward to continuing pro read it. I do struggle when reading history so it may take time. As such, I am leaving a review now — this is well written, grounded in an interesting unheard POV and kind of funny. I think folks interest in Rilke will at the very least be entertained.

During his WWI service, seventeen-year-old Maurice Betz had with him a volume of poetry by Rainer Maria Rilke. In 1925, Betz worked with Rilke to translate his novel The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge into French. Conversations with Rilke is his memoir about this time.

Betz brings alive the poet as a person. How he loved walking in the Luxembourg Gardens. How Rilke laughed “in an almost guttural voice, his eyelids pursed into little creases, his head shaken by nods.” We learn of the books he read, enjoying Colette’s “fire of the senses and the natural freshness found in her spontaneous images.”

Rilke enchanted listeners with his stories, a “fine-spun net of memories and phantoms in which he himself seemed imprisoned.”

Rilke’s letters are shared, one noting how the Notebooks came to be. “I have always written very rapidly,” Rilke wrote; “many of my New Poems are somehow written by themselves, sometimes several in one day, in the definitive form.” But the Notebooks were a different story. “The figure of Malte was pursuing me.” The book was “a chopped up, fractured rhythm,” images and memories leading him into “a number of unforseen directions.”

Betz shares Rilke’s attention to detail, craftsmanship learned from Rodin, thoughtfully choosing the correct words for translating his German into French.

Rilke passed in 1926, making this a wonderful contribution to understanding the mature poet. I found it a wonderful read.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book through NetGalley.

This is one for the aficionados. If you already love Rilke and everything he wrote, then this is the book for you. Maurice Betz, like you, is a huge fan, but can go one better - he got to spend time with the man himself, translating The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge into French in partnership with Rilke throughout 1925.
This a his love letter to Rilke, to Paris and to the art of translation.

I am curious about Rilke - his name and quotes from his work often appear in the books I read, but I have never read any of his work myself and I know very little about his life. This did not feel like the best place for me to start.

I found Maurice Betz's fascinating and enjoyed reading about his younger years. Will Stone's Introduction was informative.

Will I read more about Rilke? Maybe not.
Will I read more by Maurice Betz? You bet! And I would happily read any more translations by Will Stone.

My thanks to NetGalley and Pushkin Press for an advance copy of this memoir and collection of memories about a translator and his relationship with a poet, their discussions, their work and their legacy.

I have been fortunate to meet a few of the people whose art have allowed me to deal with life and its many annoyances and travails. One has to understand in meeting people that one considers heroes that this meeting might be the most important day of one's life. To the hero or heroine, it might be just another Tuesday. A few that I have meet exceeded all my hopes, a few were perfunctory and fine, a few were jerks. One is told not to meet heroes, for what happens if things go wrong. Does on think less of the work that touched a person in so many ways? There are many questions and lots of fears, the largest being rejection, something that bother almost all of us. Thankfully none of this happened to the translator and writer Maurice Betz, when he wrote a letter to his literary hero. And we are all the better for it. Conversations with Rilke by Maurice Betz, translated from the French by Will Stone, is a biography of a translator, a poet, the times they shared, and what happened after.

Maurice Betz was at a loss as so many men were at the end of the First World War. The world was a darker place than once was thought, damaged bodies and minds seemed to be everywhere, as well as a lack of purpose. Betz though had a plan. Being a reader, a writer and poet, Betz had carried in his bag throughout most of the war a copy of a book by the poet René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke, better known as Ranier Maria Rilke. Betz was fascinated by the work, and was drawn to it in ways he didn't understand. Rilke was Austrian, but living in Paris, and Betz had the idea, more of a calling that Betz would be the best to translate Rilke from German into French. So Betz sent a letter, explaining his love of Rilke, his ideas, and including a chapbook of poems from another writer by accident. This might have caught Rilke's interest as the poet wrote back, and soon both men were working on translating The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. Between long sessions finding the right works, the men would walk the streets of Paris, discussing art, literature, and the many rich celebs that were drawn to Rilke. This was a friendship that continued after Rilke's death, until Betz's strange passing in 1960.

A book that is a biography about a translator, a memoir of a poet living in Paris, and a series of essays dealing with art, people, and of course Paris. The book is very well written, and for a book of such a small size is very descriptive about things that should not be interesting, but are fascinating nonetheless. Betz describes the paper that Rilke uses in letters, the handwriting, the words, and one is brought back to a time of letters, and discussions. Betz lets Rilke discuss life and follows up with his own thoughts and ideas, raising even more questions. The translation by Stone is very smooth, one really gets a feeling that one is sitting in a cafe listening to Betz discuss his day. I really liked the information about translating, why this word would work, and not that. The give and take between the two that never really is discussed in many books.

Fans of Rilke will find this a treasure that has been lost for quite awhile. Those, like myself who find the idea of translating works from one language to another will also learn about the process and how difficult translating can be. A really one of a kind book, about a time where words were thought to change the world.

This was a lovely memoir. A testament to a friendship between two incredible artists that will linger in my heart for some time. Thank you so much to Pushkin Press and Netgalley for allowing me to read this exactly when my heart needed it most! What a gift!