11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Intriguing, Alluring, Sexy, Dark, November 25, 2004
This review is from: Journey by Moonlight (Paperback)
A classic in Hungarian literature, so I've learned, this work rightly deserves its vaunted status. Deceptive in style, and written almost from a Kafkaesque perspective, one feels as if one is walking in the landscape of "The Castle," but dealing with characters from Donna Tartt's "The Secret History." The blend of the two is intriguing, and the feeling this work gives of 1930s European degeneracy and ennui is alluring and, one assumes, authentic, since it was first published in 1937 but has been made available in English for the first time now. The work isn't for everyone. It can be a bit ponderous and requires a certain mindset to appreciate its subtleties and its pace. But it is well worth reading for those with a literary bent, since, without a doubt, it is a highly nuanced literary work.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Justifiably Acclaimed, September 9, 2005
I'm afraid to say that some of the customers who reviewed this fantastic translation of a classic are terribly wide of the mark. Rix's translation certainly does retain the lyricism and beauty of the Hungarian-language original, and to suggest that his work is an "insult to Szerb" makes one wonder whether the reviewers have an ulterior motive for praising Hargitai's version at the expense of Rix.
Incidentally, as a European man I can tell that I certainly would say "I reckon." Also, has your reviewer examined the original Hungarian passage? It may well be that Tamás' language is the colloquial Hungarian equivalent of "I reckon." Len Rix is a scholar of the highest order (and a fluent speaker of Hungarian, I might add) and to suggest that he is not aware of such subtleties is laughable.
Your reviewers might also like to consider why Rix's translation was regarded as a "Book of the Year" in a number of publications, and why it was praised by none other than George Szirtes, who as they will know is a poet, critic, and Hungarian.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The best Hungarian novel I have read, August 17, 2010
To acclaim a book as "the best Hungarian novel I have read" might seem like faint praise. Actually, between Sándor Márai and Gyula Krúdy, I have read in translation several quite good novels originally written in Hungarian. But JOURNEY BY MOONLIGHT surpasses them. Written in 1937, it deserves to be included among the best European literature of the 1930s, perhaps even a much broader time frame.
JOURNEY BY MOONLIGHT is set in the 1930s, but its atmosphere is that of the 19th Century. The novel begins with Mihály and Erzsi, both of solidly Budapest bourgeois background, on honeymoon in Italy. Mihály is not your typical protagonist. He is as much anti-hero as hero, more passive than assertive. He becomes obsessed with nostalgia for his past and paralyzed by fecklessness concerning his future and he abandons Erzsi to embark on a solo tour of Italy. The novel then traces the remainder of their "honeymoon" until each, by entirely separate paths that do however intersect once, returns to Budapest. During their journeys, each undergoes a number of psychological travails; each encounters other sexual temptations; and each is confronted several times with the choice between conformity to bourgeois values and release of himself/herself to the realm of desire. In addition, Mihály is continuously confronted with the choice between Eros and Thanatos. (For those so inclined, the novel contains abundant material suitable for psychoanalytical interpretation.)
What most distinguishes JOURNEY BY MOONLIGHT is its tone. The novel is light, playful, and ironic. Frequently Szerb's tongue is obviously planted firmly in cheek. The humor usually is under-stated, but it nonetheless elicited from me the occasional chuckle. Despite poking fun at his characters, Szerb at bottom is warm-hearted and good-natured. The fantastical and magical continuously asserts itself on the narrative, but never quite takes over. Sometimes it is shouldered aside by madcap farce and other times it relapses to a seemingly sober realism.
The novel is interlaced with Szerb's gently biting commentary on all sorts of European matters, especially Italian. (Szerb had had extended stays in England, France, and Italy.) For example, he observes of Mussolini's Fascist Italy that: "The Italian papers were always ecstatically happy, as if they were written not by humans but by saints in triumph, just stepped down from a Fra Angelico in order to celebrate the perfect social system. There was always some cause for happiness: some institution was eleven years old, a road had just turned twelve." But Szerb also, even-handedly, applies his trenchant eye to his own: After Milhály awakes from a drunken stupor in an Italian working-class home and neighborhood, "his hand unconsciously groped for his wallet. The wallet was there in its place, next to his heart, where the Middle-European, not entirely without a touch of symbolism, keeps his money."
Throughout, the novel keeps the reader off-balance. It is so playful that one is tempted to pigeonhole it as sheer entertainment, albeit quite charming and sophisticated entertainment. But I think beneath all the dazzle there are some serious themes or messages. In Rome, Mihály is shown some Etruscan drinking bowls, with the inscription (in Etruscan): "Enjoy the wine today, tomorrow there will be none." And Szerb's answer to the novel's (and the Middle European) preoccupation with suicide is that "while there is life there is always the chance that something might happen."
A paragraph about the author, with whom I was completely unfamiliar before this book caught my eye: Antal Szerb (1901 - 1945) was yet another victim of the Holocaust. He was born to assimilated Jewish parents but was baptized and raised in the Roman Catholic Church. He became a Professor of Literature and a highly regarded scholar of Western literature, and he wrote four novels in the last decade of his life. Despite opportunities to do so, Szerb refused to flee Hungary even after the Nazis occupied the country and ratcheted up their anti-Semitic demands on the Hungarian government. In late 1944 Szerb was sent to a forced-labor camp where, in January 1945, he was beaten to death. That story shares a few tragic features with the story of Bruno Schulz. I sense that the Nazi murder of Antal Szerb worked as grievous a loss on world literature as did the execution of Bruno Schulz.
Note: Amazon also carries another translation of the novel, under the title "The Traveler". There are over 270 reviews of "The Traveler", most of them by students at Florida International University where the translator of that rendition is on the faculty. I am in no position to compare the merits of the two translations, but I will say that the translation by Len Rix in JOURNEY BY MOONLIGHT is highly literate and fully engaging.
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