ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. Herbert Read who, in introducing a distinguished but by no means outstanding addition to the genre, complained that no category of literature was so poor in masterpieces as autobiography. It is possible to argue that these various kinds of writing do not so much obscure the genre as define it, that is., that they are in fact constitutive of a genre rather than pendants to it. This may give the impression that certain chapters in particular the appendices are 'causeries', although it seems to me that the real 'causerie' is on behalf of the genre to which these books contribute, rather than on behalf of the authors themselves. As even the most devoted of its readers must admit, and as the most subtle of its commentators has demonstrated, Rilke's 'Malte' remains a bifurcated and disunified work.
