set in Europe between the wars it tells the tale of a newly married man who has unresolved issues from his past. His only hope is that there is a chance ‘something might still happen’ to him. A great many critics have reproved the relaxed, often slightly mocking tone of my books, insisting that I cannot possibly respect literature if I talk about it in such a cheerfully familiar way. Szerb himself said so. The doctor assures Mihály that nothing is wrong with him. It was criticised by academics and banned in schools. Journey by Moonlight (Pushkin Paper) (English Edition) eBook: Szerb, Antal, Rix, Len: Amazon.it: Kindle Store Selezione delle preferenze relative ai cookie Utilizziamo cookie e altre tecnologie simili per migliorare la tua esperienza di acquisto, per fornire i nostri servizi, per capire come i nostri clienti li utilizzano in modo da poterli migliorare e per visualizzare annunci pubblicitari. More confusingly, Éva is only the ‘erotic catalyst’ for the children’s games. Szerb poked fun at academia whenever he could. For them, the mosaics were not art; they were relics that held morbid lessons they could not ignore. He is compared to Schulz but I think that's most likely due to their shared tragic deaths. I forgot to mention that the novel is quite funny (dryly so) in places. JOURNEY BY MOONLIGHT is set in the 1930s, but its atmosphere is that of the 19th Century. Everyone was deliriously happy. The time is between World Wars. Mihaly is passive and moody and abandons his wife on their honeymoon on the train in Umbria. Published as Utas és Holdvilág in 1937, Journey by Moonlight is, superficially, yet another Central European interwar novel about obsessed youth, middle age crises, and the temptations of suicide, but it offers a unique twist on that. 'Journey by Moonlight' is unlike any novel I've read: the atmosphere is both dreamy & descriptive, rich in history and detail. She is full of questions. In the matter of art history she was much better informed, and much more discerning, than he, and she had visited Italy before, so he generally left it up to her what they would see, and what they would think when they saw it. But who that's read Proust didn't want to smack the living crap out of most of the characters and the writer himself for all their neurotic indulgences? ISBN-10: 1847495826 The mosaics are the exception to Mihaly’s complacent approach to works of art because they remind him of his childhood friends, Tamás and Éva. He sets off to see the city’s famous Byzantine mosaics, ‘monuments from his private past’, which he has never seen. The characters are interesting, and the dialogue is excellent. Refresh and try again. Antal Szerb was a noted Hungarian scholar and writer. Mihály is not your typical protagonist. It's the story of a recently-married Hungarian couple, Mihály and Erzsi, who have travelled to Italy for their honeymoon. ... TAMAÑO. It is nostalgic for childhood, nostalgic for Europe before Mussolini and Hitler. This one has, this is beautifully written but somehow it did not resonate with me. It. You need make no allowance for translation - it reads clearly, poetically, delicately. In the back-alleys Mihály has the authentic Venetian travel experience promised in guidebooks the world over. Antal Szerb nasce a Budapest il 1º maggio 1901 da genitori ... (EN) Journey by Moonlight review, su theguardian.com. The archive begins in 1908 with 24 issues published that year, and ends abruptly in 1941 with just eight issues. This is a book of intrigues but it won't be off-putting to those that abhore such typical subjects because the writing is so skilled. Mihály thinks, ‘So this is marriage’. He asks Ervin: Do you monks also have the feeling that time goes forward, and the every little bit of it has a special truth? The bus. Do you have a sense of history? Mihály is quite an antihero, but I can't help liking him - perhaps just more so because it's nice to for once read abo. Journey by Moonlight: New Translation. Agnes MacDonald, in her dissertation on the Nyugat writers – the only English text on the subject more detailed than a Wikipedia entry – quotes from a letter Szerb wrote in 1937: Now I am writing a novel about nostalgia. In marriage, and in romances with siblings for that matter, Szerb had a number of successes. So very good - but it is not a masterpiece. He writes wonderfully calm, poetic and full of symbolism and each sentence is a pleasure to read. In college, he was entangled in a romance with two sisters. He later described his writing style as ‘neo-frivolous’. In this way, the mosaics were also mirrors, showing the children their own deaths, teaching that one cannot see one’s own moment in history, but can only innocently and blindly go on. I really should stop thinking of book-finishing as a moral issue. The atmosphere is very strong and I love all the travelling in Europe and brooding about life and death and the displays of the author's huge cultural knowledge that don't come across as snobbish but just natural. This is a book of intrigues but it won't be off-putting to those that abhore such typical subjects because the writing is so skilled. He keeps bumping into old friends like a boat against a dock. It would be Szerb’s last trip abroad. I look at it before I go to sleep every night, but only out of the corner of my eyes, because it silently accuses me of failure, and as the days go by its silence grows louder and louder and mo, The odds that I will finish this book are, according to most statisticians, negligible, so I should just dispense with the charade and chuck this bitch on the discard pile. Antal Szerb was born in Budapest in 1901 to Jewish parents. We acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands on which we work, the Burramattagal people of the Darug nation, and pay our respects to elders past, present, and emerging. He goes home with his father by train, to take up his old post in the family business. The traffic outside filtered through the windows takes on the rhythmic sound of waves; the railing, encircling the library’s upstairs gallery, becomes a ship’s deck, listing in the breeze; the ladders are knotted ropes over the sides of a sinking ship. Oh well! After a quick succession of self-inflicted disasters, including running out on a restaurant bill, he tumbles down a hill into a ravine, knocking himself unconscious, and promptly forgets all the Italian he knows. The dysfunctional siblings live their shorter, more reckless lives in parallel to Mihály and Erszi’s. The contours of time and place erode. Tamás and Éva are one in the same.’. JOURNEY BY MOONLIGHT is set in the 1930s, but its atmosphere is that of the 19th Century. Journey by Moonlight. Antal Szerb performs a similar journey of descent in Journey by Moonlight (Utas és holdvilág), written in 1937, in the midst of another war. It is the book that was placed in Rix’s hand by a Hungarian friend who firmly insisted he read it, adding: ‘Every educated Hungarian knows and loves this book.’, Mihály and Erszi carry on with their honeymoon. In beautiful sentences Antal Szerb illustrates the Tuscan Villages and the Umbrain villages. Now I am writing a novel about nostalgia. Buy Journey by Moonlight By Antal Szerb. This flickering between the real and its representation, between subject and object, is central to the effect of Léger’s triptych. The novel begins with Mihály and Erzsi, both of solidly Budapest bourgeois background, on honeymoon in Italy. The old friends quickly return to a decade-old dispute. There's no moralizing here - just a keen understanding of the nature of human relationships. Killed in a concentration camp during World War II, we will never know if he would have produced another novel as profound as this. But while Szerb strolled the city streets alone, disconcerted by the ripples of fascism, Mihály always has plenty of company. To step off. Mihály is not your typical protagonist. And Venice was the city where, Szerb could see, ‘the Faustian rush to infinite expansion came to a halt’. Those friends, drinking and smoking with no adult supervision, became so dedicated to each other they became their own family. Agnes MacDonald, in her dissertation on the Nyugat writers – the only English text on the subject more detailed than a Wikipedia entry – quotes from a letter Szerb wrote in 1937:. It is sombre in tone and maintains an atmosphere of surreality, but is also playful and ironic. It was not a story of romance in Italy. The petites morts the children act out together are quietly, wildly erotic, dizzying for sure, and all the more pleasurable for their implied finality, which is played on repeat. On Mihály’s last night in Italy, he appeals to Éva, who reappears out of nowhere. He was too weak to stand that day. When he wakes up, a kindly nurse is looking down at him. I don't really have words for why I loved this book so much. ‘This is Tamás,’ Mrs. Szerb said. Appearing like apparitions, Mihály’s old and new friends have messages for him, and they deliver them as if at the bidding of his unconscious. Erszi confronts him, ringing her hands. Antal Szerb’s dreamlike adventure, like Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, ... New York Review Books. Antal Szerb was a Hungarian Jewish Catholic writer, whose literary star was extinguished before his time. He was of a lower class background but hung out with a group of four or five friends in a wealthy neighborhood of Budapest, Castle Hill. Éva and Tamas may both be a sweet tribute to Szerb’s childhood crush. In hospital, nothing is expected of him but to breathe in and out. Meanwhile, Erszi has appealed to the police to find him. Mb. 3 likes. The Inland Sea is an omnivorous, heady debut dense with paradox and provocation. http://www.approaching-my-literature.com/HHR1990.html, Why does Mr. Rix translate the original Hungarian "sajto barok" as Cheese barons? The trip begins to go amiss in the opening lines: ‘On the train everything seemed fine. They had once pored over images of the Ravenna mosaics together and were ‘seized by a restless and inexplicable dread’. - had never heard. The publishing schedule didn’t quite work out: Spring was late. In the intervening years, Szerb was alone and abroad in Paris and London. The basic theme is an adult man (he’s 36) in love with nostalgia for his youth. Forget the past, look to the future. He sticks around Italy and finds Ervin in a monastery in Gubbio. She does not grasp the idea Georges Bataille expressed in a paradox: that ‘eroticism, it may be said, is assenting to life up to the point of death’. If this is Mihály’s unconscious at work, his unconscious is not subtle. Buy [( Journey by Moonlight (New York Review Books Classics) By Szerb, Antal ( Author ) Paperback Oct - 2014)] Paperback by Szerb, Antal (ISBN: ) from Amazon's Book Store. His first great love was Klára Lakner. The honeymoon ends. The large cast of honeymoon-crashers harkens back and brings healthy chaos back into Mihály’s world. He is generally considered to be one of the major Hungarian writers of the 20th century. The time is between World Wars. Fast and free shipping free returns cash on delivery available on eligible purchase. I guess that some will not enjoy this because the "warts and all" depictions of the characters. Antal Szerb (Budapest, 1º maggio 1901 – Sopron, 27 gennaio 1945) è stato uno scrittore, accademico e critico letterario ungherese Biografia. The author is Hungarian, and the novel was originally published in 1937; its English translation appeared in 2000. His light touch but weighty contemplation reminds me of Proust and Walser. ‘My husband’s beloved schoolmate.’. The novels betray Szerb’s love of different forms and genres. He is as much anti-hero as hero, more passive than assertive. ISBN: 9781847495822. Journey By Moonlight is often said to be a book about nostalgia. The prose is in translationese, the plot artificial, the characters are somewhat cardboardish. To love a brother and sister is to reject all expectation. January 1st 2001 Logic is certainly not a concept that I would associate with this novel. In a diary entry dated April 1918, he writes: I have won the Greek rhetoric competition … I have also won the Lord-Prize for the best essay. It is a reassuring hope, something to tell himself as he looks out his office window in Budapest as history moves towards the Second World War. In this case, however, the land of the dead is not the wasteland of Europe’s ruined culture but the hinterland of one’s own memory, of one’s own lost youth and the tragedies that characterized it. The narrator asks us: What is the strange attraction, the peculiar ecstasy that seized him in the back-alleys? Travel promised romance, new landscapes, hotels, cafés. Read honest and unbiased product reviews from our users. This month, the biggest surprise was my countryman. Over time he reconnects with members of his close circle of friends from his schooldays in Budapest, now scattered and having taken up very different lives in Umbria and Rome. Len Rix, did full credit to the original text and Antal Szerb's genius. The actual novel is not as good as the cover art. The picture showed a youngish man with a pale, aristocratic, melancholy face. After escaping a ‘fascista’ who recognizes him – not as his own man, but as Erszi’s lost husband – he finds himself in a strange hotel with plenty of time to think. I'm generally falling in love with Antal Szerb's writing, his gently ironical style and the fact that he both does and doesn't take his characters and their trials seriously. During the Second World War, Szerb was sent to a forced labor camp in Balf. The Sydney Review of Books is an initiative of the Writing and Society Research Centre. JOURNEY BY MOONLIGHT is set in the 1930s, but its atmosphere is that of the 19th Century. VENDEDOR. 1.4. Since then, I managed to put my hands onto all the novels by Szerb translated into English, whose number equals to three. In beautiful sentences Antal Szerb illustrates the Tuscan Villages and the Umbrain villages. Journey by Moonlight is a wallow in nostalgia -- but where Márai's Embers looked only fondly back at the Hapsburg empire and all it represented, Szerb's novel is a yearning for fin-de-siècle decadence, four decades too late. Very intelligent and well read author. 'Journey by Moonlight' is unlike any novel I've read: the atmosphere is both dreamy & descriptive, rich in history and detail. He tried his hand at gothic parody (The Pendragon Legend), historical fiction (Oliver VII and The Queen’s Necklace – both 1943), travel writing (The Third Tower: Journeys Through Italy) and short fiction (Love in a Bottle, 1935). Monks may be lifted out of time, but not their lungs. Mihály is quite an antihero, but I can't help liking him - perhaps just more so because it's nice to for once read about a character who makes me feel practical and efficient in comparison, instead of characters who make me feel inferior. Over the last few years I’ve had a lot of pleasure and satisfaction from books set in and around Eastern Europe*. It is not surprising, then, that the three subjects of her triptych are all associated with the representational power of the visual image and of (self-) performance. Mihály never escapes. This is the sort of book I love...one that you come across somewhere (in this case, a castle library in Italy) and feel sure that it was hiding there all this time, waiting for you to find it. He has his appetite back. Bataille writes: ‘The gulf is death in one sense, and death is vertiginous, death is hypnotising.’. In Journey by Moonlight, Mihály’s academic friend, Professor Waldheim, displays photographs of ‘My distinguished self in pyjamas … my distinguished self in the buff’. Even as adults they are still seeking each other out and carrying the burden of those they lost, such as one who committed suicide. This isn't an abandoned lover or friend or a shirked duty. He is as much anti-hero as hero, more passive than assertive. He tells Mihály that he is angry at him for not looking for ‘people who have gone out of your life’. She held up that very picture. How quickly marriage goes from commitment to lobotomy! When their relationship didn’t work out, he rebounded with Lilla Lakner, Klára’s younger sister, whom he married in 1925. Támas commits suicide as a young man. Consultare utili recensioni cliente e valutazioni per Journey by Moonlight su amazon.it. In his travel book, The Third Tower: Journeys in Italy (1936), Szerb dedicates an entire chapter to the magic of back-alleys, joyfully observing that some are ‘so narrow two overweight men cannot pass through them walking side by side’. The first time I've heard about Antal Szerb was no more than two months ago. Very intelligent and well read author. Well written, unusual, original, occasionally deeply insightful into human nature and overall an enjoyable read. The word for cheese is "sajt" in Hungarian. I counted over 70 such funny mistranslations. The language is not as stilted and the tone is not as anti-women. ― Antal Szerb, quote from Journey by Moonlight “The nature of civilisation everywhere was such that, even with the Greeks, it diverted people’s minds away from the reality of death.” “as long as we keep moving, we don’t notice how tired we are, but only when we sit down.” Journey by Moonlight by Antal Szerb 5,211 ratings, 4.21 average rating, 462 reviews Open Preview Journey by Moonlight Quotes Showing 1-18 of 18 “In London November isn't a month, it's a state of mind.” ― Antal ... ― Antal Szerb, Journey by Moonlight. Of world-weariness and innocence – is perhaps antal szerb journey by moonlight review so disturbed the children for their honeymoon each ’... That 's most likely due to their shared tragic deaths their shorter, passive! 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