Tottered or Staggered?

It was Damion Searls (not pictured at left) who tipped me off to the new translation of Rilke’s The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge while I was in San Francisco. This is one of those books I’ve beaten my head against many times, started and stopped, bought then resold then re-bought in a rainbow of different editions, turned upside-down and shaken on some instinctive but otherwise unfounded hunch there’s bound to be something to fall out of it for me. But the right vacation always meets the wrong translation, or catches me in an inter-Brigge period where I can’t track down the copy I’m sure I had.

Burton Pike, who along with Sophie Wilkins stirred Musil to life in English, may be the magic key. Here he is up against Stephen “StephenMitchellBooks” Mitchell in the first few lines:

September 11, rue Toullier

So, this is where people come in order to live, I would have rather thought: to die. I have been out. I have seen: hospitals. I saw a man who tottered and collapsed. People gathered around him, that spared me the rest. I saw a pregnant woman. She was pushing herself with difficulty along a high warm wall, which she sometimes reached out to touch as if to convince herself that it was still there. Yes, it was still there. And behind it? I looked on my map: Maison d’Accouchement. Good. They will deliver her—they can do that.

trans. Burton Pike

September 11th, rue Toullier

So this is where people come to live; I would have thought it is a city to die in. I have been out. I saw: hospitals. I saw a man who staggered and fell. A crowd formed around him and I was spared the rest. I saw a pregnant woman. She was dragging herself heavily along a high, warm wall, and now and then reached out to touch it as if to convince herself that it was still there. Yes, it was still there. And behind it? I looked on my map: maison d’accouchement. Good. They will deliver her—they can do that.

trans. Stephen Mitchell