The Glance of Countess Hahn-Hahn (down the Danube) [Hardcover]

Peter Esterhazy (Author), Richard Aczel (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 29, 1998 | ISBN-10: 0810116421 | ISBN-13: 978-0810116429 | Edition: 1

Takes readers on a journey of the imagination, down the river Danube to where it empties into the Black Sea. The hero is a professional traveller, commissioned to undertake a voyage of discovery. Communicating his experiences to his employer, the Traveller weaves a tapestry of narratives.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Like the region it describes, this offbeat, eccentric novel from Hungarian author Esterhazy (Helping Verbs of the Heart) can't quite decide what to be. Purportedly a travelogue from a hired Traveller to his Patron, it is also a memoir of a central European nobleman; a panegyric to the Danube and its meaning as a unifying/dividing symbol; a satire of postmodernism; a postmodernist history of Central Europe. The writing is wry, obscure and filled with cryptic references to little-known (to an American readership) personages, as well as to Hegel and Wittgenstein, with several nods to Kundera. The tone is personal, even intimate, but the strangeness of the text?presented as a series of telegrams from the Traveller to his employer?seems to hold the reader at arm's length as the narrator journeys down the Danube from Donaueschingen through Vienna and Budapest to the Black Sea. Within this context, Esterhazy decries the effects of communism and what he sees as its warping of the human spirit: "Nothing dramatic happened, only that he began to speak more softly, grew more attentive, pricking up his ears, night and day, like an animal. And it was now that his defencelessness and subservience, his anxieties and inhibitions really made themselves felt, as qualities which he, the child of state socialism, had inherited from the system after all." This ultimately chilling work will stay with the brave reader for days.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

It is scarcely one year since this remarkable Hungarian's novel The Book of Hrabal delighted and, doubtless at times, confounded readers. Likewise, Esterhazy's latest work presents challenges as it unfolds. To journey along with the narrator--known as the traveler--one must attentively navigate the maze that is the text: truly a wordsmith's tour de force. Continually juxtaposing past and present, all action proceeds down the course of the Danube. Questions are asked--tongue in cheek. And although they meander from place to place, Esterhazy's surreal ruminations constitute a stunning travelogue. Alice Joyce --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 246 pages
• Publisher: Northwestern University Press; 1 edition (April 29, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0810116421
• ISBN-13: 978-0810116429
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 1.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,852,512 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Hard to follow but got caught up in the flow, January 22, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Glance of Countess Hahn-Hahn (down the Danube) (Hardcover)

The first 40-50 pages made me almost stop because I was so put off by the 'style' of the writing. But I kind of understand what reviewers mean by how the book uses its own 'language' to get a sense of the danube's 'life force' for lack of a better description. Not an easy read for a casual reader like myself. You have to be open to something different before this book can have any effect on you or else you're better off skipping it.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars The countess' glance? She's blind., April 10, 2003

By 

John L Murphy "Fionnchú" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Glance of Countess Hahn-Hahn (down the Danube) (Paperback)

After reading ... Richard Teleky's essay collection, "Hungarian Rhapsodies," I had dismissed in that review his article on Esterhazy and admitted that I felt no attraction to Esterhazy's watered-down postmodernism in spite of Teleky's attempts to arouse Western readers' interest in this writer so admired by Hungarian critics. Now, knowing that translation and my own ignorance may have prejudiced me, I decided to give Esterhazy his own chance to win me over as a reader. Maybe I was wrong and Teleky was right?

I vowed to approach this book optimistically. I thought this imaginary travelogue could appeal; I figured it'd serve as an appetizer for the main course, the meatier and even denser non-fictional account of a second journey down the same river that Claudio Magris serves up as "Danube." Two books on journeys down the river through Central Europe, both emerging post-1989. I started with what seemed the easier one, the fictional journey.

Outside of the account of his native Budapest in the middle of the narrative, related with a heavy debt to Italo Calvino's "Invisible Cities," this novel meanders when it should flow in a linear direction, like the river itself. Vienna barely registers, Romania's blurred, and the comlplicate meta-fictional structures and intricate levels of intertextuality left me with no aftertaste. Nothing to savor. Doldrums. Sargasso-ish sea.

I know it's au courant to borrow Borges' imaginary books to cite, Joyce's nightmare dialogues, the whole 20c of European Lit when it comes to experimenting with Traveller vs. Tourist and truth vs. fiction, but Esterhazy here fails to reward my efforts.

From about pp. 130-190, yes, the Budapest section does satisfy a bit, but despite the book's paltry footnotes, there is much that left me empty and I couldn't have cared less to track down the erudition Esterhazy possesses and I lack. Unlike Magris (who the former author mentions very late in the book--written a few years after Magris' magisterial survey), the Hungarian author appears to not much care about the story, the characters, or the plot. The book's clumsily conveyed (at least in English) and the reader's given no context from which (unlike Joyce or Borges) some meaning can be extracted given diligence and attention.

What the plot builds up to is anyone's guess; he seems to have tired of the whole enterprise after the Budapest section. Only bare fleeting bits of emotion felt by people who have suffered in the mitteleuropean landscapes he rushes past remain to move you as a reader. Rarely have I read such an ambitious book by a purportedly renowned novelist that fails to rise to even a basic level of engaging my attention--and I've read my share of such post-modern efforts, and I'm familiar with the effort often expected from readers before the pay-off accrues. Here, no jackpot.

Maybe again this post-1989 cynicism and detachment is the proper pose to assume, but Esterhazy through this book comes off looking like a fop, and the fictional fashions he dons look secondhand and no more trendy or even retro this time around. Stick to Magris for a far more nourishing assortment of Danubian delights. Esterhazy whips up a souffle that sounds intriguing on the menu, but when delivered looks flimsy and tastes flat. This entree leaves you feeling you've spent too much (time) for too little (value).

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Too brilliant for me, June 15, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Glance of Countess Hahn-Hahn (down the Danube) (Paperback)

This is the last time that I'm going to try to read a book that the critics describe as brilliant. I might have known that it would go over my head. It did give me a sense of traveling down the Danube River and of the rich culteral background of the aria. I wish I had copied down every name that the writer dropped ,to look up later. Then I would have learned something. This is clearly an aria of the world of which my knowledge is sourly dificient. About 80% of the book, though, didn't make any sense to me. I am herewith sending out a plea to all book reviews. Please use reviewers with average intelligence, not eggheads.