Archive
Masters and servants
Anna Edes by Dezső Kosztolányi 1926 French title: Anna la douce
For July our book club read Anna Edes by Dezső Kosztolányi and Passage à L’Est decided to re-read it along with us. You can find her billet here. (spoilers) This is my third novel Dezső Kosztolányi, after Skylark and Le cerf-volant d’or.
We’re in Budapest in 1919. The novel opens with the flight by plane of the communist leader Béla Kun. He governed Hungary from March to July 1919 and he leaves the country with a lot of jewels in his pockets. The end of this short communist period in Budapest is the start of another part of Kornél Vizy’s life as a civil servant. The city is coming out of a miserable time and Vizy’s house, as a bourgeois house, has been occupied by the new power. The caretaker of his house, Ficsor, supported the Bolsheviks and is now in a delicate position towards the inhabitants of the house and needs to make himself useful to the soon-to-be powerful Vizy.
Mrs Vizy is a housewife, still grieving the untimely death of her only daughter. She has nothing better to do than take care of the house and pick at her servant. The current one, Katitza crystallises all the faults a servant could have in Mrs Vizy’s eyes: she eats too much, she’s insolent, she likes to go out with men and she doesn’t respect curfew. Mrs Vizy complains, and complains and complains.
Ficsor must redeem himself for being a communist and decides to provide Mrs Vizy with a new servant, his young acquaintance Anna Édes, or the sweet Anna, since Édes means sweet in Hungarian. She’s currently rather happy with her employment at a widower’s house because she watches two small children. She’s reluctant to leave but Ficsor brings her back to Mrs Vizy. And Anna is the perfect servant. She doesn’t go out, doesn’t steal, doesn’t eat much and works, works, works. A curious relationship grows between Anna and Mrs Vizy but no warm feelings are exchanged. Anna is tamed but doesn’t say much. Nobody really knows what she thinks and according to appearances, she’s the best servant ever. What will become of that?
In Anna Édes, Kosztolányi pursues two aims. He pictures the condition of servants in the Hungarian bourgeoisie at the time. And what he pictures is exactly what Sándor Márai describes in Confession d’un bourgeois. Servants slept in the kitchen, they had dirty bedclothes, they were poorly paid and were supposed to be happy to get bed and board. They were treated like animals or machines and there was no affection. The mistresses always suspected them to steal and complains about servants were common topic of discussion among bourgeois housewives. Márai says they were not better treated in aristocratic houses but at least aristocrats wouldn’t let go an elderly servant and considered them as part of the family.
What Kosztolányi describes is close to slavery for the living conditions but what amplifies everything is the pettiness of the mistresses. Mrs Vizy and her neighbours have nothing else to discuss but their servants. Talk about narrow-mindedness. While the men had a life outside the house, they live shut out indoors and as they don’t have the education a Lady could have, they have nothing to do. They are in a bad place: they’re too high class to work themselves and be occupied by household duties and they’re not high class enough to have had a solid education. They don’t read, don’t follow politics, don’t go to the theatre, barely play an instrument and don’t write letters to relatives. It’s terrible. They have nothing better to do than watch what their servants do. What a waste of life.
Anna Édes concentrates on the story of Anna in the Vizy household but Kosztolányi also relates the professional raise of Mr Vizy. He’s described as a fair and honest civil servant. He works seriously, doesn’t encourage corruption and is willing to improve the services brought to the population. Mr and Mrs Vizy don’t have a happy marriage, he’s utterly bored with his wife and her one and only topic of conversation. Anna’s qualities are a relief to him not so much because the work is better done than because he escapes the endless whining of an irritated wife.
The political context of the years 1919-1920 is also an important part of the book. I didn’t know about that short episode of Bolshevik power in Budapest in 1919. Actually, I didn’t know that communists came to power anywhere else than Russia before WWII. What happened in 1945 seems like a simple repetition of what had already happened in 1919. Same methods. They used intimidation, purged the opposition and anything bourgeois was suspect. It’s the classic consequences of a change of power, similar to the French revolution, the Empire, the Restauration. Don’t tell me they didn’t know what would happen when they shared the world at the Yalta conference.
During our book club meeting, we debated about the best comparison to Kosztolányi. Is Anna Édes more a Zola or a Balzac? Although Kosztolányi’s luminous and precise style is far from Zola’s luxuriant prose, it is true that both show the living condition of poor people and their lack of opportunities in life. However, I think Kosztolányi is closer to Balzac because more than picturing the poverty of these servants, he pictures the nastiness of the bourgeois, their selfishness and lack of humanity. They are grotesque and Kosztolányi shows them as heartless as the daughters in Le Père Goriot. Zola has a political and social agenda. Balzac and Kosztolányi dissect human nature and expose its cruelty. The changing political context also brings back to Balzac whose novels are often set during the Restauration and after the fall of Napoleon. He pictures the shifts in the society and how everyone tries to reposition in the new game. The same atmosphere applies to Anna Édes and I can’t help thinking it’s also a political novel for Kosztolányi, especially when you see how he winks at us in the last chapter.
I’ve read Anna Édes in French, in a translation by Eva Vingiano de Piňa Martins. It was retranslated in 1992 and improved as the first 1944 translation had some passages changed and was bowdlerised (everything related to sex was cut off) Kosztolányi’s style is glorious, at least in this French translation but I don’t see why it doesn’t reflect the original. I’m happy it’s been retranslated and I highly recommend this book. Skylark was deeper in the psychological exploration of the characters, Le cerf-volant d’or depicted well the microcosm of small town life and Anna Édes is the most political of the three. I still prefer Skylark out of the three but all are a pure pleasure to read.
Other reviews: Guy’s here and Max’s here
PS: Don’t ask me why there’s cheese on the cover of that book.
Writing doesn’t know any other country than that of their mother tongue.
The Confessions of a Bourgeois by Sándor Márai. 1934. Egy Polgár Vallomásai. French title: Les Confessions d’un bourgeois.
After a billet about the events told in Confessions of a Bourgeois, I thought that the book deserved a billet dedicated to literature. Márai exposes his views on writing, on being a writer and he unravels how he came to his vision of literature and writing. For him, it’s an obsession and naming it a calling is just a way to embellish an urge. He was 14 when he knew he had to write but it took him years to know what he would write. He’s not a writer who spent his youth scribbling stories or writing theatre plays he would play with his cousins in front of the family. Márai doesn’t mention a lot of influential writers but he does refer to Kafka as a writer who “spoke” to him:
| Il s’avère toujours difficile de cerner la notion d’influence littéraire et de rester objectif et sincère à l’endroit des auteurs qui ont déclenché en vous ce qu’on peut appeler une vision littéraire du monde. La littérature, comme la vie, comporte des affinités mystérieuses. Il m’est arrivé une ou deux fois— pas plus— de rencontrer des êtres qui me paraissaient aussitôt douloureusement familiers, comme si, en quelque époque préhistorique, j’eusse manqué avec eux je ne sais quel rendez-vous. Ces êtres ont la faculté de m’arrêter sur mon chemin et de me révéler à moi-même. | It’s always difficult to grasp the notion of literary influence and to remain honest and objective about the authors who triggered in you what you may call a literary vision of the world. Literature, like life, has mysterious affinities. I happened once or twice –not more often—to meet with a being that immediately seemed painfully familiar, as if I had missed a rendezvous with them in some prehistoric era. Such beings have the power to stop me on my journey and to reveal myself to me. |
I think all readers have had this experience of reading a book which suddenly seemed to have been created only for them. Some writers have a direct access to our inner selves, knocking down the barriers of time, sex or language. That’s a wonderfully soothing effect of reading. After a few years, Márai made up his mind about what a writer should be:
| Je me méfie de ces âmes délicates qui fuient la vie, comme je trouve profondément antipathique l’écrivain « naturaliste », qui, semblable à un violoniste tsigane, « n’écoute que son cœur » et « décrit l’existence » avec une précision minutieuse. C’est entre ces deux pôles extrêmes que vit, crée et se débat l’écrivain. | I am wary of these delicate souls who shy away from life, just as I deeply dislike the naturalist writer who, like a Hungarian Gypsy fiddler only listens to his heart and describes life with a thorough precision. An author lives, creates and struggles somewhere between these two extremes. |
For me, Rilke is a writer of the first category, it is clear in his Letters to a Young Poet while Zola is, of course, one of the other category. As a reader, I enjoy both and struggle with both. I’ve had a hard time following all of Malte’s inner musings in The Notebook of Malte Laurids Brigge and I didn’t enjoy much the lengthy descriptions of Les Halles in The Belly of Paris. I guess Márai has a point when he says a writer should find a middle ground between the two. Philip Roth manages that brilliantly; he can mix the most down-to-earth details with deep thinking. However, I’m not sure about Márai’s idea of writing only in your mother tongue:
| L’écrivain ne peut travailler que dans l’atmosphère de sa langue maternelle, et ma langue maternelle était le hongrois. C’est pourquoi, quelques dizaines d’années plus tard, alors que j’écrivais déjà passablement en allemand, et baragouinais tant bien que mal le français, pris de panique devant ma surdité quant à l’essence même de ces langues étrangères, je rentrai précipitamment au pays pour me réfugier au sein de ma langue maternelle. | A writer can only work in the atmosphere of his mother tongue and my mother tongue was the Hungarian language. Therefore, a few decades later, when I could passably write in German and jabber away in French, I panicked because I was deaf to the essence of these foreign languages. I hurried home to find shelter in my mother tongue. |
Zachary Karabashliev wrote his book set in America in Bulgarian, even if he’s been living in Ohio for years now. He didn’t translate his book into English himself. It seems to confirm Márai’s theory. I’m not a writer and I’m not sure my opinion about this is worth anything. But still. On the one hand, writing in another language can be liberating because the words aren’t loaded with unconscious meanings or don’t carry the same emotional weight. On the other hand, they’re new to the writer but aren’t new to the reader who may load them with a meaning unexpected by the author. More importantly, I wonder if writing in another language doesn’t give the writer to innovate in their adopted language. Perhaps it is an opportunity for the adopted language. Romain Gary never wrote a book in Russian. However, he transposed some of his Russian heritage in his writing in French. He has a unique way of using the French language, something someone with a French background may not have invented. I wonder what Márai who have thought about Beckett or Milán Kundera?
Then, if a writer can only write in their mother tongue, translators are vital. Márai also mentions translations as he discovered French literature in translation.
| Etrange métier que celui du traducteur, qui requiert toujours la présence de deux artistes. Le traducteur est souvent un écrivain avorté, comme le photographe un peintre dévoyé. | Translator is a strange profession as it always requires two artists. A translator is often an aborted writer, just as a photographer is a corrupted painter. |
While I agree that translating literature requires more artistic skills than translating directions for use, the rest of the quote is a little too harsh for me. I think that photography is an art of its own; it’s not the residue of a more noble art called painting. Plus, aren’t translators literature lovers who strive to promote foreign literature in their language? They bring the world to us, readers and allow us to wander outside of our culture, our language. I like better what Zachary Karabashliev wrote in the Acknowledgments section of 18% Gray “I grew up in a country whose language is spoken by fewer than nine million people. Most of the literature that shaped me as a reader and an individual, and later as a writer, was in translation, mostly English works in Bulgarian. This translation of 18% Gray from Bulgarian to English is, in a way, my chance to give back what’s been borrowed, a raindrop returning to the ocean it came from.” I told you I liked the man behind the book.
Last, but not least, I leave you with a quote coming just after Márai sold his first article written in German:
| Ce fut mon premier article écrit directement en allemand. Je rédigeai en cette langue étrangère avec une assurance aveugle. Après coup, l’entreprise me parut d’une folle témérité. Fixer mes idées en un idiome, que certes, je comprenais et parlais, mais en lequel je n’avais jamais encore écrit la moindre ligne, relevait de la gageure. | This was my first article written directly in German. I wrote in this foreign language with a blind assurance. Afterwards, this initiative seemed to be of a crazy boldness. To lay down my ideas in a language that I could understand and speak but in which I had never written a line was a real challenge. |
At my own little level, I know the feeling quite well…
Happy who like Ulysses has explored
The Confessions of a Bourgeois by Sándor Márai. 1934. (Egy Polgár Vallomásai). French title: Les Confessions d’un bourgeois. Not available in English.
Although the title of the book refers to La Confession d’un enfant du siècle by Alfred de Musset, I felt that these verses by Joachim du Bellay suited better to the book. Sándor Márai (1900-1989) is a Hungarian writer and this memoir was published in 1934, which means Márai was still young and had many years to live, which of course he wasn’t aware of. The Confessions of a Bourgeois relate his formative years until he became a writer. The first part covers his fourteen first years until the Great War starts. The second part relates his years from 1919 to 1928 and ends when his father dies.
The first part interested me for the description of his hometown, Kassa. He describes the architecture, the society, the rules, the way of life. There’s a fantastic passage about servants in the Hungarian bourgeoisie and I intend to come by to it when I read Anna Edes. He pictures a society where Catholic and Jews live at peace, where people speak both German and Hungarian. Márai was born in a family from the small bourgeoisie. His father was a lawyer and he built a successful career. Márai had a strict education with every component of what was considered as good education: high school + French + English + piano. He portrays his extended family, showing the most colourful characters, some wealthier than others. Later, he was miserable in his boarding school in Budapest.
| Mes ambitions me liaient à la famille et celle-ci appartenait corps et âme à une classe. Tout ce qui se trouvait en dehors de cette famille et de cette classe –hommes, femmes, intérêts ou relations—n’était que matière informe, brute, impure, assimilable aux déchets. Même à l’église, les pauvres étaient considérés comme des malades responsables de leur état, car ils n’avaient pas sur maîtriser leur vie. | My ambitions were linked to my family which belonged heart and soul to a certain social class. Everything that was out of the realm of this family and this social class –men, women, interests, connections—were only made of an undefined, gross and impure clay comparable to trash. Even in church, the poor were considered as sick people responsible for their circumstances because they didn’t manage to shape their lives. |
After high school, he went to university in Leipzig. This is the starting point of a decade of living abroad. He lived in Leipzig, Frankfurt, Berlin and then six years in Paris, interrupted by months in Florence and frequent visits to London. He wants to discover “Europe” and in his mind, Western Europe means France and Great Britain. What did he do during these years? He wrote articles for different newspapers, especially for the prestigious Frankfurter Zeitung, lived hand to mouth and went from one rented room to the other. He mingled into all kinds of circles. He went to class but never actually got a diploma. He wandered, dreamed, drank and contemplated life.
There are fascinating passages about Berlin in the early 1920s, insight about the French society in the 1920s. (Some observations match with what Edith Wharton wrote in French Ways and their Meaning.) During that time, he got married with Lola, a woman from Kassa who was also in Berlin. These ten years are the decade during which he matures into a writer. He stores – consciously or not – material for future books.
Then, he eventually decided it was time for him to go home, not in Kassa, but in Budapest. He wanted to come back to his culture, but more importantly, to his language. He didn’t think that a writer could fully express themselves in another language than their mother tongue. (More of that in an upcoming billet) Hence the du Bellay reference.
What did I think of this memoir? First, a word about the translation. My French copy was translated by Georges Kassai and Zéno Bianu. I found it annoying because of the extensive use of quotation marks around words. For example:
| Je n’avais aucune intention de “faire carrière” et, au fond, je n’attribuais guère d’importance à mes relations avec ce “journal de province” | I had no intention to “make a career” and actually, I didn’t care much about my connection with this “provincial newspapers” |
Please tell me why we need quotation marks here. Either it’s the right choice of word, either it’s not, and then the French dictionary is thick enough to provide the translator with a better fit. Isn’t making a choice –no matter how imperfect it is—the job of the translator? It’s not the first time I’ve noticed this under Kassai’s pen. This frequent indecision irritated me.
I’m not much into knowing writers through their memoirs or their detailed bios. I bought this because I wanted to read about Hungary at the beginning of the 20thC to illustrate and understand its literature better. Save for the first part, most of the book (almost 600 pages) is set outside of Hungary. I was very disappointed that he totally skipped the Great War’s years and politics in the 1920s. Two sentences about the war (he was mobilized at 18) and not a word about the devastating consequences it had on the Austro-Hungarian empire and thus, on his life. In once sentence, you learn that he can’t go back to Kassa since it’s now in Czechoslovakia. The war made him stateless. Isn’t this a major event? He mentions the fascists when he relates his stay in Florence, he mentions the economic disaster experienced by the German bourgeoisie, the riots in Berlin. But all this is said on a light tone, in the middle of a paragraph, without analysis or personnel assessment of the events. Frustrating, especially when he writer is a journalist.
What does he say, then? He’s self-centred, talks a bit about the characters that cross his life. He was quite a womaniser and never was seriously involved with a woman and suddenly, he’s married. One meeting for tea and a few months later, they’re married. He must have been in love, given his track record with women but he doesn’t say a word about his feelings. It’s called “confessions” but the man himself remains aloof. He neither uses this book to analyse the world he lives in –which Musset did—nor to expose his inner self—which Rousseau did. It’s just his peregrinations, his thoughts about writing, being a writer and his slow process of turning from an adolescent to a man, an author. To be honest, I didn’t like much the man half revealed in this book. I want to read one of his novels now, to see how this mildly interesting man was as a writer.
What happened to him later? The fled from Hungary in 1948, lived in different European countries and eventually settled for the rest of his life in San Diego, California. He only wrote in Hungarian.
Here’s one last quote:
| Mais dans les instants privilégiés de notre existence, une explosion assourdissante –le pianissimo du silence équivaut quelquefois au fortissimo d’une déflagration—nous avertit que nous nous sommes trompés de chemin, que nous n’habitons pas là où nous voudrions vivre, que nous n’exerçons pas le métier pour lequel nous sommes faits, que nous recherchons les faveurs et suscitons la colère de personnes avec lesquels nous n’avons pas grand-chose en commun, alors que nous traitons avec indifférence celles qui nous importent vraiment. Si l’on reste sourd à ce genre d’avertissement, on risque de passer à côté de la vie, de passer une existence mutilée et superficielle. Il ne s’agit nullement d’un rêve, fût-il diurne, mais d’une sorte d’illumination qui nous révèle notre réalité profonde, nos obligations, nos engagements et notre destinée personnelle –tout ce qui, au-delà de la misère échue à la condition humaine, nous appartient en propre. | But during the precious moments of our existence, a deafening explosion—the pianissimo of a silence sometimes equals the fortissimo of a blow—warns us that we have taken the wrong path, that we don’t live where we’d like to, that we don’t have the profession we are meant for, that we seek the favours and raise the anger of people with whom we have barely anything in common while we treat with indifference the ones who really matter. If one remains deaf to that kind of warning, one risks to miss out on life, to live a mutilated and shallow existence. It has nothing to do with a dream, even diurnal. It is a sort of enlightenment which reveals us our true reality, our obligations, our commitments and our personal destiny, everything that belongs to us, above the misery inherent to the human condition. |
Loneliness as a trait of character
L’histoire d’une solitude by Milán Füst 1956 (Egy magány története) Translated by Sophie Aude. No English translation found. (I even twitted to George Szirtes to ask if he knew any but he doesn’t)
I’d never heard of Milán Füst before stumbling upon this novel in a bookstore, which again points how much we need brick-and-mortar bookstores to discover new writers. Milán Füst (1888 – 1967) is a Jewish Hungarian writer. Imagine what he’s been through during his life: like a Frenchman a century before, he has lived under several political regimes. He was born in Austria-Hungary, after WWI, it collapsed; he lived through the 1920s, the 1930s, WWII and communism. I wonder how someone can cope with all the changes. For the record, Füst was friend with Dezső Kosztolányi and Frigyes Karinthy. (I haven’t read Karinthy but he wrote a novel entitled Reportage céleste (de notre envoyé spécial au paradis) in other words, Celestial Report (from our special correspondent in paradise). Doesn’t it sound marvellous?) Füst is famous enough in his country to have a literary prize named after him and be seen as a Nobel Prize candidate in 1965. Füst’s most famous novel is A Story of my Wife, which is available in English, unlikeA Story of a Solitude.
Vendel Probst is the hero of A Story of a Solitude. He’s our narrator and relates some events of his life during the 1910s. He lives in Pest, not yet united with Buda. As the novel opens, Vendel is living with his mother when a young woman knocks at their door. She says her name is Erzsébet Lakos-Lőwy and that she’s coming on behalf of a mutual friend. She needs money. The Probsts believe her and give her the money only to realize later they’ve been conned. However, the young woman was enchanting and her image lingered in young Vendel’s memory. At his age, he’s never been in love and he dreams of falling in love:
| Il aurait fallu chercher quelqu’un que j’aurais enfin pu aimer vraiment, et sans tracas ni entrave…Je caressais le rêve d’un amour léger et vaporeux, qui ne pèserait pas, se répandrait au contraire dans un cœur comme touché par le rayon du soleil, d’un amour qui coulerait tout transparent et tendre comme le miel. Mais qui a jamais rien connu de tel ? je savais bien déjà que pareil amour n’existe pas. | I should have looked for someone I could really love, no strings attached…I caressed the dream of a misty and light love, a love which would have no weight, which would spread in a heart as if touched by a sunbeam. I dreamed of a love that would flow crystal clear and sweet as honey. But who has ever experienced that? I knew already that such a love didn’t exist. |
After graduating from university where he studied painting, Vendel works in a museum; he’s a specialist of Caravaggio. During WWI he joins the army and has not been sent to the front yet when he enters into a fight with a captain. Both are judged, the captain is sent to the front and Vendel is punished. As he fell ill, he’s transfered to the hospital. And, who does he find working there as a secretary? Erzsébet! Only she says she’s Teréz now. Imaginative as he is, he soon thinks himself in love and his feelings are returned since Teréz pulls strings to liberate him. They don’t get married but live together in Vendel’s apartment and he gets his old job back in the museum.
I think A Story of a Solitude is a coming-age-novel. It’s partly based upon Füst’s life – he was 22 in 1910; Vendel is the same age as Füst and there are probably similarities between young Füst and Vendel. In the foreword, Péter Esterházy mentions that Füst reported to a friend an incident with a young woman similar to the first encounter between Erzsébet and Vendel. The relationship between Vendel and Teréz is interesting but not in itself. It’s the Ariadne’s clew that holds the novel together. I thought that Füst mostly intended to relate how Vendel turned into a man.
Vendel has a formidable mother, both Jewish and German in her education. The mix is so powerful, especially in the absence of a father, that it’s almost lethal. When Vendel’s mother moves to Vienna with her new husband, Vendel stays behind in Pest and enjoys his freedom. She’s the usual Jewish mother in her way to keep in touch with her son but without the overwhelming love. She’s attentive, protective but her German side tempers her displays of affection. Her principles are rather rigid; falling in love is to be avoided; studying Caravaggio is not a serious occupation…She’s controlling and steps in if she thinks her son goes overboard according to her values. Vendel tries to break free and even if he’s in his twenties, he acts as a rebellious adolescent:
| Il est vrai que je m’étais toujours plus à scandaliser ma mère, c’est un vice que j’ai depuis longtemps. Car elle savait bien, par-dessus le marché, que je vivais avec quelqu’un. Il était en effet impossible qu’elle ne sache pas tout sur moi, puisqu’elle me faisait en effet surveiller, se faisait envoyer des rapports à mon sujet, — mais j’y reviendrai plus tard. | It is true that I always enjoyed shocking my mother, it’s a vice I’ve had for a long time. Because she knew very well, to top it off, that I was living with someone. Indeed, it was impossible that she didn’t know everything about me since I was under surveillance and she had someone send her reports about me, — but I’ll come to that later. |
Needless to say that Teréz is not marriage material in the eyes of Vendel’s mother.
During this formative decade, Vendel will also see his character settle. He knows more about himself, his likes and dislikes and forms an opinion about his personality. He comes to the conclusion that solitude and imagination are the two roots of his self.
| Lorsque que je me suis assis pour écrire cette histoire, j’ai longtemps délibéré pour savoir quel serait son titre. Je voulus d’abord l’intituler Histoire de chien, mais je le remplace maintenant par Histoire d’une solitude, c’est ce que je viens d’écrire tout en haut, car c’est bien de cela qu’il est question, et de rien d’autre. De ce que seules la solitude et l’imagination, rien de plus, sont faites pour moi. C’est triste, mais c’est ainsi. | When I sat down to write this story, I pondered a long time to find its title. First, I wanted to entitle it The Story of a Dog but now I replace it by The Story of a Solitude. It’s what I just wrote at the top, because that’s what it is about and nothing else. About how only solitude and imagination agree with me and nothing else. It’s sad but so it goes. |
He refuels on his own and needs time to let his imagination wander. After he settled this, he’s more at peace and able to live his life.
I also enjoyed this book as it shows another side of Hungary than the one in Kosztolányi’s novels. In Skylark (1923), you’re in Hungary. People speak Hungarian, eat Hungarian and live among themselves. It’s a mono-cultural environment. In A Story of a Solitude, you’re in Austria-Hungary. Vendel’s mother is probably of Austrian origin and moves to Vienna with her new husband; the officers in the army are mostly Austrians. The dialogues are full of German words (not translated, and I suppose they were in German in the original Hungarian text). A few samples of his lively prose:
| Was heisst das ? Seulement. Qu’est-ce que c’est seulement ? Vous avez de drôles de façons de parler, vous, Hongrois. | Was heisst das ? Only. What’s only ? You have strange ways of speaking, you, Hungarians. |
| Pouah ! Popanz ! Doch eine Schweinerei. Continuez à dessiner. | Pouah ! Popanz ! Doch eine Schweinerei. Keep on drawing. |
| Schon wieder etwas. Avec toi, il faut toujours s’attendre aux pires complications | Schon wieder etwas. With you, I expect the worse complications. |
It gives back the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the city but also the domination of Austrian over Hungarians. You can imagine the sound of different conversations in the streets in German or in Hungarian. Beside the mixed languages, the text is also full of thoughts about life, spiced up with a good sense of humour.
| Pour être plus précis, il semble que quiconque connaît bien la vie et y a bien réfléchi soit capable de rire aussi froidement, même si c’est à sa propre existence ou à sa propre mort qu’il pense. | More precisely, it seems that anyone who knows life well enough and has thoroughly thought about it is capable of laughing so coldly, even if they think about their own existence or their own death. |
The fight between Vendel and the captain, the young woman reminded me of Lermontov. I had the feeling that Füst wanted to root his work in the Russian literary tradition. Furthermore, I know I’m more than obsessed but again, after reading this book written by a Jewish man from Central Europe, I can feel how much this cultural background influenced Gary’s writing.
Eventually, I’ll leave the last words of this billet to Vendel:
| Et il y avait encore beaucoup d’autres choses. Mais ce n’est quand même pas possible de tout raconter. On n’aurait assez ni de poumon, ni de tristesse. | And there were lots of other things. But it’s not possible to tell everything. One wouldn’t have enough lungs or sadness for that. |
I read. It’s like a disease
L’analphabète by Agota Kristof. 2004. Not translated into English but really easy to read in French. The title means The Illiterate.
| Je lis. C’est comme une maladie. Je lis tout ce qui me tombe sous la main, sous les yeux. Journaux, livres d’école, affiches, bouts de papiers trouvés dans la rue, recettes de cuisine, livres d’enfants, tout ce qui est imprimé. J’ai quatre ans et la guerre vient de commencer. | I read. It’s like a disease. I read everything that comes into my hands, everything within eyesight. Newspapers, text books, posters, pieces of paper found in the street, recipes, children books, any printed thing. I’m four and the war has just begun. |
This is the start of L’analphabète by Agota Kristof. I can’t tell you whether it’s a paragraph or just a few sentences as I borrowed the audio book from the library. It’s only fifty minutes long and it’s read by the actress Marthe Keller. I can relate to that first quote. I remember how I was impatient to learn how to read, how I wanted to read and like her, I used to read everything I could. L’analphabète is a short text in which Agota Kristof narrates her relationship with writing and reading. She was born in a poor village in Hungary in 1935 and she says she always loved reading and inventing stories.
After the war, she attended a boarding school for destitute girls and she started earning money by writing and playing sketches for the other students. She was so poor that she had to fake illness when her shoes were at the cobbler’s because she didn’t have another pair to walk to school.
Then she fasts forward and she’s twenty-one, fleeing Hungary through the mountains with her four-month-old daughter and her husband. They cross the border from Hungary to Austria. She relates the journey from Austria to Switzerland, the fresh start in a new country and how she became a writer. Two things struck me in her book, the behaviour of Austrian and Swiss populations and her simple but deep relationship with books.
The Austrian villagers welcomed the refugees and helped them reach Switzerland. They gave them food, shelter and train tickets. Everything was under control, they knew the process. She describes how the Swiss were waiting for them at the train station, offering tea and coffee. As refugees, the Swiss first brought them to special homes. Then they dispatched them in different cities and helped them find an apartment, a job in a factory. She remembers the controller in the bus, sitting by her and telling her she shouldn’t be afraid, that the Russian tanks wouldn’t come to Switzerland. That kindness struck me and it struck me that it struck me. I thought “What? We, Europeans, didn’t always treat illegal immigrants the way we do now? When did we start treating refugees as criminals?” I thought about Lampedusa and its sad reputation as the destination to escape misery. And I thought about what the candidates who run for the French presidential election say or avoid saying about immigration.
I was also really moved when Agota Kristof tells her need to read and write and also her relationship with other languages. There’s a chapter entitled Langues ennemies (Enemy languages). It tells her first encounter with a foreign language when she and her parents moved to a German speaking part of Hungary. German, the language of the former dominating empire, Austria. Then Russian is the language imposed by the new communist regime. It’s an enemy that kills Hungarian culture and smothers the cultural life. Then comes the French, the language imposed by fate when she finds solace in the French-speaking part of Switzerland. Agota Kristof explains she became illiterate, living in a country whose language she couldn’t speak, cut out from the society because of the language barrier and living through a long cultural desert. She depicts how she eventually managed to speak French but still couldn’t read or write. It lasted six years until she went back to school and learnt how to read and write. She was delighted to read again and overwhelmed by the new reading possibilities, all the foreign books available in French. I don’t know how I would cope with a situation like that: no book during five years except for the rare ones she could find in Hungarian from the Geneva library. Five years without reading anything new, without understanding newspapers, cereal boxes or administrative correspondence. I can’t imagine it. The French is also an enemy language for her because it slowly kills her native language in her and because it’s a constant fight to speak it and write it properly. Even after thirty years, she still needs a dictionary. It has imposed itself as her writing language but not without collateral damages for her Hungarian self.
This book is written without pathos. Its tone is factual, descriptive but the absence of expansive feelings doesn’t mean that the reader doesn’t feel strongly for her. Marthe Keller chose to read it with a foreign accent and it enforced the impression of listening to Agota Kristof herself. I listened to it twice and the second time, I finished it in my car, after a working day. When I started the engine, I was stressed by the accumulation of the tiny details of a whole working day. Deadlines to be met, suspicion of incompetence from someone I need to rely on, fear to disappoint. Then Agota Kristof’s literary voice invaded the small space in the car and erased my worries. They seemed so futile compared to what she was telling. Again, it’s a simple description without complaining but I felt compassion for her, awe for her perseverance, her ability to face difficult times. And my problems shrinked back into their appropriate size and kept the right proportion. I owe her one.
Alas, it’s not translated into English…It’s available in German (Die Analphabetin: Autobiographische Erzählung) and if you know French, you can probably read it in the original, it’s not very difficult and it’s short.
PS: I think the cover of the French edition is irrelevant.
Update in 2017: It’s been released in English in 2014. The title is The Illiterate.
I, János Bátky, Hungarian citizen, come face to face with Englishness, Welshness and Irishness
The Pendragon Legend by Antal Szerb. 1933 French title: La légende de Pendragon; translated into French by Natalia Zaremba-Huszvai and Charles Zaremba.
Antal Szerb is a Hungarian writer of Jewish origin. He was born in 1901 in Budapest and died in 1945 in a camp, killed by Hungarian fascists. I discovered The Pendragon Legend when Max reviewed it here.
János Bátky is a Hungarian scholar who lives in London and he’s the Narrator of this novel. It’s 1933, our Narrator attends a party and is introduced to the eccentric Lord Owen Pendragon, Earl of Gwynedd. They have a common interest in esoteric and occult books. The count invites him to Gwynedd, his castle in Wales. It’s a rare opportunity, the castle’s library is filled with rare and ancient books and Bátky is excited to put his hands on original rarities. Before going, a mysterious phone-call warns him not to go. If curiosity doesn’t kill the cat, it threatens our Narrator’s life as he becomes involved with a strange family, drawn to legends and mysticism. The novel is an odd mix of detective story, gothic tale and social autopsy. A dangerous cocktail for a writer but the barman Szerb is a master and it’s excellent.
More than the plot of the novel, I loved Bátky’s subtle sense of humour and Szerb’s deciphering of Britishness. Max wrote a spot-on entry about János Bátky’s guide to romance and indeed the novel points out several times the difference between continental and British attitude toward love and sex. The book is full of ironic notes, aphorisms, little remarks about the UK. Here is Bátky sleeping in the family castle in Wales and feeling uncomfortable in his room:
-
En tout cas, j’allumai la lumière. La chambre était encore de deux cents ans plus historique que lorsque je m’étais couché. J’avais déjà vu de telles chambres dans des musées londoniens ou des châteaux français, mais toujours avec des étiquettes et des guides pour suggérer ce qu’il faut imaginer, Napoléon faisant les cent pas les mains croisées dans le dos ou une dame maigrichonne à côté de son rouet. Anyway, I switched on the light. The bedroom was two-hundred years more historical than when I went to bed. I had already seen that kind of room in London museums or French castles but they always had tags and guides to prompt what to imagine. Napoléon pacing across the room with his hands behind his back; a skinny woman beside her spinning wheel.
Part of the book’s charm comes from this and I really appreciated that the translators scattered the text with English words such as Well, All Right, Dear Me, or I say. It enforced the feeling of being in Great Britain and reminded me all the time that Bátky was a foreigner there. Remember how I had problems saying Anthony Trollope? That was piece of cake compared to Gwynedd, Llianvygan, Abersych or Pierce Gwyn Mawr because I can’t even imagine how it’s supposed to sound. Some words seem bound to be photographed rather than said aloud. That said, I downloaded a sample of the English translation and I wonder if the French version isn’t even wittier than the English one:
-
Ses yeux étaient plus vifs que l’Angleterre disciplinée ne le permet d’habitude. Le sujet devait être pour lui le sujet des sujets. The fervour in his eyes was certainly un-English. The subject was clearly close to his heart. (Translated by Len Rix.)
The literal French would be His eyes were brighter than usually allowed by disciplined England. The subject must have been THE subject.
Apart from the exquisite irony, Szerb is a wonderful writer when it comes to nature and lanscapes. His descriptions of the Welsh wilderness are beautiful, lots of greenery very few sheep, he mustn’t have visited the same places as me. Here is an example, if you can, read the French, the English is my translation.
-
Quand nous montâmes en voiture, il faisait déjà nuit. Le vent furetait impatiemment entre les arbres de la forêt que nous traversions et, de temps en temps, la pleine lune montrait son grand visage rougeoyant. A ces moments, on pouvait voir la fuite sauvage, exaltée mais néanmoins silencieuse, des nuages vers l’est. It was already dark when we got into the car. The wind was impatiently snooping between the trees of the forest we were driving through and from time to time, the full moon showed up her big red- glowing face. In these moments, one could see clouds wildly but yet silently fleeing towards the East.
Picturesque, isn’t it?
For who reads this blog regularly, the novel will sound out of my usual path. That’s true. But that’s precisely the joy of blogging, being tempted by books I would never have picked on the shelf by myself. Thanks Max!
The Golden Kite by Dezsö Kosztolanyi
Aranysárkány aka The Golden Kite by Dezsö Kosztolányi 1925. 363 pages.
Foreword:This novel takes place in a Hungarian small town named Sàrszeg around 1900. It’s the same imaginary town as in Skylark, by the same writer. It is about a teacher, Antal Novak and his students, which means it talks a lot about school and the Hungarian school system. I read this novel in French and the translator converted the Hungarian realities with words corresponding to the French school system. Now, I’m writing a review and I don’t know which English words I should use. I could use the American school system, well-known to everyone thanks to their dominating role in the cinema industry. But I can’t. Talking about “high school”, “senior year” and “finals” also brings along images of prom nights and cheerleaders. It doesn’t suit at all the atmosphere of The Golden Kite. Plus, I don’t know if the school system was already like that in the US in 1900. What is described here is very close to the French school system and I don’t think it’s only the work of the translator. There are similarities in the exams, in the solemnity of high school and of old tradition. Therefore, I’ve decided to use the French words chosen by the translator. “Baccalauréat” or its shorthand “bac” is the final exam for “gymnase” (high school, French Swiss word). Like in the Hungarian system of The Golden Kite, this exam is a rite of passage and it’s composed of a written and an oral part. The “terminales” are the students in their last year of lycée, the ones who will take the bac at the end of the school year.
Now, the review:
The Golden Kite was written in 1925 and although the title is mentioned on the English page of Wikipedia, I couldn’t find any book cover on Amazon or Book Depository. It doesn’t seem to be available in English as a stand-alone but it may be included in anthologies. If it hasn’t been translated into English or is out of print, than I feel so sorry for English speaking readers as they are going to miss a tremendous book. For francophone readers who would buy the French edition, don’t read the blurb as it gives away events that take place around page 200 in a book of 368 pages. (A very irritating habit, in my opinion)
The opening scene of The Golden Kite is a sprint race. Vili Liszner, a terminale, is an athletics lover.
|
Le coup de feu claqua. Posté derrière le coureur au bout d’une ligne tracée à la chaux, un lycéen tenait dressé le canon du pistolet et fixait les petits nuages de fumée qui tardaient à se disperser dans le ciel matinal. Dès l’apparition de la flamme, un deuxième garçon avait mis en route le chronomètre. Il n’avait pu toutefois s’empêcher de crier : – Vas-y ! Vili courait déjà. Le départ avait été impeccable. D’un bond de panthère, net et sans à-coups, il s’était levé au dessus du sol, et quelques secondes plus tard, il était déjà lancé à toute vitesse vers la ligne d’arrivée. Dans ses yeux, les prés défilaient au galop. Ses souliers cloutés griffaient la piste. Sa tête, battue par des cheveux à la tzigane, était rejetée en arrière et son visage se tordait dans un effort grinçant. Le sol palpitait. |
The gun went off. Posted behind the racer at the end of a line traced with chalk, a lycéen hold up the barrel of the gun and stared at the little clouds of smoke that longed to vanish in the morning sky. As soon as the flame showed up, a second boy had started the stopwatch. However he couldn’t help shouting: – Go! Vili was already running. The start had been perfect. With a panther leap, clean and without a jolt, he had risen above the ground and within seconds, he had launched himself toward the arrival line. In his eyes, the fields flashed at a gallop. His studded shoes were scratching the track. His head, blown by his tsigane hair, was thrown back and his face contorted in a wincing effort. The ground was quivering. |
The scene is vivid; we can see it right before our eyes, like in a film. From this scene we can deduct that Vili is more an athlete than a student, that his parents are rather wealthy since he can afford a gun for departure and studded shoes. Vili’s nightmare is school and especially math and physics classes. He doubts he can pass his bac. It’s the first of May, a public holiday.
Antal Novàk is the math and physics master. He’s a widower and has a sixteen year old daughter, Hilda. Novàk loves his job. Teaching is a calling and he’s a humanist. He’s devoted to his school, spending hours in his lab to prepare classes, willing to help his students become men. He’s against corporal punishment, preferring discussion. He’s the kind of teacher who throws teas for his pupils and promotes modern teaching methods. He’s respected among his peers and admired by the bourgeois of Sàrszeg. But he’s not loved, he’s even ridiculed by his students and perhaps envied by his peers. His daughter Hilda is rather wild and unbalanced. She’s been dating Tibor Csajkàs for two years now, first openly and then, after her father’s interdiction, secretly. From the start we guess that dramatic events will take place, shattering Novàk’s orderly life and breaking his peace of mind.
I loved this book, it is as good as Skylark. and I have dozens of wonderful quotes. I tried to share some, the translations are mine, unfortunately. Kosztolányi managed to mix philosophical thoughts (What is it to be a good teacher? Isn’t life an absurd sum of misunderstandings? How do you become a man? Aren’t childhood and adolescence the best parts of life?) with the chronicle of everyday life in an Hungarian town of that time.
I was amazed by how contemporary it is. I thought about Sexy by Joyce Carol Oates and I, Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe. Vili reminded me of American athlete students, good in sport but with low grades. And Novàk was like their teachers who’d do anything to avoid giving them bad grades because of the fame they bring on their town or school. The class of terminales was like any class of that age nowadays. Here they are, gathering to study before the exam:
|
Ils parlaient de plus en plus des matières scolaires. La parole était monopolisée par Dezsö Ebeczky, le premier de la classe, qu’ils détestaient tous cordialement. Non pas parce qu’il travaillait bien. Après tout, on a le droit de bien travailler. Mais travailler aussi bien que lui, c’était quand même écœurant. |
They spoke more and more about school classes. Dezsö Ebeczky, the best student in class was speaking all the time. They all heartily detested him, not because he was a good student. After all, one has the right to be the best student. But being as good as that was really disgusting. |
Kosztolányi also unravels the unique relationship between student and teacher. I liked the passage where Kosztolányi explains that Novàk isn’t really human for his pupils. They can’t imagine he can get sick, has been a child or he has a home life. Even his clothes seem of different fabric as they are teacher clothes. And it’s true that teachers have a special aura, that they are stuck in their role and are hard to imagine as mothers, sons of anyone and spouse. The descriptions of the exams were accurate, the fear before the D-day, the parents’ expectations, the frantic cramming until the last minute. They organize cheating during the exams:
|
Fóris, qui surveillait, les mis sévèrement en garde à plusieurs reprises sur le sérieux danger que constituait la fraude, dite « pompage ». Ledit « pompage » n’en fut pas moins organisé. Gyuszi Olàh avait prévu de copier la réponse aux questions à l’aide d’un code ad hoc, en vingt-trois exemplaires d’un coup, pour que le savoir, comme il se doit en une époque démocratique telle que la nôtre, devînt le bien commun. |
Fóris, who was invigilating warned them strongly against the serious danger that cheating represented. It was called « pompage ». The so-called « pompage » was nonetheless organized. Gyuszi Olàh had decided to copy the answers to the questions with an ad hoc code in twenty-three copies in a row, so that knowledge becomes a common good, as it is suitable in a democratic era such as ours. |
The journalists write articles about the bac, to question its utility
|
Il fustigeait surtout “l’institution désuète et inhumaine” du bac, qui « avait déjà fait parmi les jeunes d’innombrables victimes » |
He castigated the “old-fashioned and inhuman institution” of the bac that “had already innumerable casualties among the youth” |
I don’t know how it is abroad, but in France, the bac is an institution. This exam was created under Napoleon and if its substance has changed, the form remains. The written part takes place the same day in the whole country and it starts with philosophy. Every year, journalist talk about it in headlines and wish good luck to the candidates. Every year, we hear the same kind of debate: “Is the bac still up-to-date?”, “Is it useful?”, “Shouldn’t it be done differently?”, “Is it still a rite of passage?”
There’s a beautiful chapter about what it meant to pass the bac at this time. Of course, we must not forget that only the upper classes went to lycée at that time. (And in France, also poor but brilliant students. Teachers considered it was their mission to detect brilliant minds and push them as far as possible.) The students become men: at the diploma ceremony, they receive their first cane, they are allowed to drink alcohol, smoke in public. They are treated as equals by the adults. It’s an important rite of passage.
As an aside, Kosztolányi has a real gift to describe nature and its soothing impact on the human soul.
|
Dans une ombre irritante, des peupliers trembles se dressaient, semblables aux colonnes d’une cathédrale, et leurs couronnes de feuillage bruissaient dans la brise telles les orgues d’une église. Des peupliers blancs cherchaient le ciel de leur branches en balais. Les chênes, sérieux, hochaient la tête, imitant le grondement ininterrompu des chutes d’eau. Ici les grands lycéens avaient presque l’air de petits enfants. |
In an irritating shadow, some aspens rose like the columns of a cathedral and their crown of foliage rustled in the breeze like the organ of a church. White poplars looked for the sky with their broom-like branches. The oaks nodded seriously, mimicking the continuous rumbling of waterfalls. Here, the great lycéens almost looked like small children. |
Or
|
Un silence de sieste s’étalait sur la ville muette. |
A silence of afternoon nap was stretching over the mute city. |
A last one for the end, one that made me think of Thomas Hardy:
|
La vie n’est faite que de méprises empilées les unes sur les autres. |
Life is only made of piled up misunderstandings. |
In conclusion: a must-read among my best reads of this year.
Eleanor Rigby is Hungarian and lives in Normandy. Or in Vancouver ?
Pacsirta by Dezső Kosztolányi, translated in English as “Skylark” and in French as “Alouette”.
No one is exactly the same after reading Skylark. It took me time to land down in my own life after I turned the last page of this novel. It is so sad and moving.
This novel by the Hungarian author Deszö Kosztlányi has already been beautifully reviewed by Max from Pechorin’s Journal and Guy from His Futile Preoccupations. Please read their excellent reviews to find details on the plot and Kosztlányi’s style. Their English is obviously much better than mine and I share their views.
Skylark is Akós and Antonia Vajkay’s daughter. They live in the provincial town of Sászeg. She’s 35. She’s unmarried. She’s ugly. In September 1899, she leaves her parents to spend a week at her uncle’s, in the country. Skylark opens with her departure and closes on her return. This week of holiday is a catalyst. Something had been boiling for years and after that week, a precipitate named “spinster” is born. The parents eventually admit that Skylark is too ugly to get married. Skylark stops hoping to meet a husband. They all love each other so much that they suffer in silence to protect the each other. Skylark will never unveil what really happened in the country. The parents will never tell her how fun their week without her was. All carry a huge amount of pain.
Skylark is about women and about parenthood.
In 1899, the only reason a woman would definitively leave her parent’s house is marriage, the only way a woman can reach adulthood and independence. Names reveal how insignificant women are at that time. Akós’ wife is named Antonia. Her husband is talked as Akós. She is designated as “his wife”, “the woman”, “the mother” but never Antonia. As a woman, she has no proper identity. She only exists as a mother or as a wife. In addition, Kosztlányi never tells Skylark’s real first name. She will keep her nickname forever. Only a husband would have called her differently.
Like all animals, human parents raise their children with one aim: their future autonomy. Skylark will never leave the family nest, her ugliness cut her wings. It is a handicap; she will never be able to live on her own or find a place in society. She is like a mentally handicapped child you love but will depend on you forever. Her parents will have to take care of her until they die and worry about what will become of her after their death. She’s a burden for her parents and they know it. They never said it aloud to each other before this very week off, because it would have intensified their pain and because they are ashamed of this feeling.
Some events in life create a new version of yourself, depending on how other people look at you. At the beginning of your adult life, you were just yourself. Then you added a “spouse self”, ie who you are as a spouse. When you become a parent, a love storm comes in your existence, creating a “parent self”. In the eyes of your child, you are a parent. When you are with your child, you act like a parent, whatever the age of the “child”. Skylark never leaves her parents. They spend all their time together. As a consequence, the Vajkay never go out of their parent role or identity.
When the children are away, roles shift, and the other selves show up. That’s what happens to Skylark’s parents. They forget hours. They have lunch at the restaurant. They go to the theatre. The mother wants a new handbag. They stop thinking their identity as being “Skylark’s parents”. They are adults and spouses again. I have to say I feel that way too when my children stay a few days at their grand-parents’. My husband and I forget meal hours, eat junk food, go to the cinema and work late without thinking of the nanny. We miss them but also enjoy the temporary freedom.
Skylark’s return announces the winter of her parents’ life. The roles are reversed, Skylark acts like a parent. They erase the traces of their joyful week like teenagers would hurry to tidy the house before their parents come back. Skylark finds her father too skinny: she decides to cook for him to fill out again. In French “to fill out again” is said “se remplumer”, literally “to feather again”. Isn’t it ironical to be “feathered again” by a Skylark?
The town of Sászeg is also a character of this novel. According to the foreword included in my copy, Kosztlányi’s home town inspired the fictional Sászeg. For a modern reader, it is interesting to discover the way of life of provincial Hungary at the turning of the 20th century.
The translator compared Kosztlányi to Flaubert. I would rather compare him to Maupassant, who has a more compassionate look on people. I noted several references to France throughout the novel: one character reads Le Figaro, the men drink Sylvaner, a white wine from Alsace. The newspaper talk about the Dreyfus Affair – was it such a scandal as to interest the foreign press? Maybe Kosztlányi was francophile.
Before ending this post, I would like to say how wonderfully Kosztlányi writes. The scenes when Skylark weeps in the train or silently cries in her bed are poignant. The description of life in Sászeg is vivid. The French translation was agreeable to read, except for one detail. I just didn’t like all the “attendu que” (“given that”) abundantly used in some chapters. This locution is typical for court ruling, I had sometimes the impression to read a judgment.
This novel is a masterpiece and I highly recommend it.
By the way, Skylark has sisters: Jeanne, from A Life by Guy de Maupassant, Liz Dun, from Eleanor Rigby by Douglas Coupland and Eleanor Rigby, the one of the song. Hence my title.
Book Around the Corner 