Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Publication
Amsterdam Van Gennep 2011
User reviews
LibraryThing member baswood
Very European, very existential and very good. Antal Szerb's [Journey by Moonlight] was published in Hungarian in 1937 and this edition was translated by Len Rix in 2001. Rix himself describes the actions of Mihaly; the central character as immoral, absurd and farcical, but I find his actions those
I love books with a good opening sentence and this one has a killer:
"On the train everything seemed fine. The trouble began in Venice, with the back alleys.
Mihaly and Erzsi are on honeymoon in Venice (a warning for anyone considering honeymooning in Venice) and Mihaly is already feeling trapped. He takes himself off for a walk and fails to return to the hotel until the following morning. He tries to explain to Erzsi his actions and tells her of his adolescence when he came under the spell of Eva and her brother Tamas. He spent much of his time with this curious couple who were obsessed with death and the act of dying. There were others in this circle of friends; Ervin a Jew who converted to Catholicism and Janos Szepetnecki a youth already involved in criminal activity. It is a visit from Szeptnecki that jolts Mihaly out of his comfortable marriage with the wealthy Erszi and sends him on a quest to discover himself. In typical Mihaly fashion he gets off a train to buy some coffee, getting back on to the wrong train effectively separating himself from his newly married wife. He embarks on a ramble around Italy relying on fate to show him the way.
Tamas we learn has committed suicide, but Eva, Janos and Ervin are all in Italy and Mihaly stumbles upon them as he vaguely tries to sort out some sort of meaning for his existence. Death and/or suicide seems to hover tantalisingly close and I was reminded of Albert Camus opening paragraph in his [Myth of Sisyphus] There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Antal Szerb's lightness of touch, his sense of fun and his use of irony serve to keep his book from plunging the reader into some sort of turgid tragedy. We are able to be amused by Mihaly and at the same time be interested and wonder at his lack of perspicacity. Zoltan: Erzsi's ex husband writes to Mihaly telling him to sort himself out, to make up his mind about Erzsi and says:
if I were a woman and had to choose between the two of us I would choose you without hesitation and Erzsi surely loves you for being the sort of person you are; - so utterly withdrawn and abstracted that you have no real relationship with anybody or anything, like someone from another planet, a Martian on Earth, someone who never really notices anything, who cannot feel real anger about anything, who never pays proper attention when others speak, who often seems to act out of vague goodwill and politeness as if just playing at being human.
It is not too difficult to understand why Mihaly is such an outsider to the world of business and affairs that Zoltan inhabits, but it is also not so difficult to see why Erzsi is so attracted to him. Later Erzsi tells him that "The world won't tolerate a man giving himself up to nostalgia, it wont tolerate any deviations from the norm. Any desertion or defiance and sooner or later it turns the Zoltans on you."
Antal Szerb intrigues with some fine writing, with some ambiguous discussions on the meaning of life, but also he has a good story to tell. He takes us on a tour of Italy, he wallows in Mihaly's nostalgia, there are ghosts and images from the past and meetings with old friends. There is also on the fringe of this world; the fascists who hover in the background; Mussolini is in power and from our perspective we know that Mihaly's world will be subject to violent change. Antal Szerb is not unsympathetic to his female characters, they are strong and resolute and we are allowed to see the world through Erzsi's eyes.
I enjoyed this book very much, it nearly persuaded me to jump in the car and go to see those Italian towns, but then like Mihaly I am a man of inaction and that is why perhaps I liked the book so much. A four star read.
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of a sane man in world of absurdity. (but that probably says more about me than it does the book). We can never know exactly what Szerb thought because much of what he writes seems ironical and ambiguous. Don't let this put you off reading because the book is not 'difficult' even if you cannot come to terms with Mihaly and his perceived weakness of character.I love books with a good opening sentence and this one has a killer:
"On the train everything seemed fine. The trouble began in Venice, with the back alleys.
Mihaly and Erzsi are on honeymoon in Venice (a warning for anyone considering honeymooning in Venice) and Mihaly is already feeling trapped. He takes himself off for a walk and fails to return to the hotel until the following morning. He tries to explain to Erzsi his actions and tells her of his adolescence when he came under the spell of Eva and her brother Tamas. He spent much of his time with this curious couple who were obsessed with death and the act of dying. There were others in this circle of friends; Ervin a Jew who converted to Catholicism and Janos Szepetnecki a youth already involved in criminal activity. It is a visit from Szeptnecki that jolts Mihaly out of his comfortable marriage with the wealthy Erszi and sends him on a quest to discover himself. In typical Mihaly fashion he gets off a train to buy some coffee, getting back on to the wrong train effectively separating himself from his newly married wife. He embarks on a ramble around Italy relying on fate to show him the way.
Tamas we learn has committed suicide, but Eva, Janos and Ervin are all in Italy and Mihaly stumbles upon them as he vaguely tries to sort out some sort of meaning for his existence. Death and/or suicide seems to hover tantalisingly close and I was reminded of Albert Camus opening paragraph in his [Myth of Sisyphus] There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Antal Szerb's lightness of touch, his sense of fun and his use of irony serve to keep his book from plunging the reader into some sort of turgid tragedy. We are able to be amused by Mihaly and at the same time be interested and wonder at his lack of perspicacity. Zoltan: Erzsi's ex husband writes to Mihaly telling him to sort himself out, to make up his mind about Erzsi and says:
if I were a woman and had to choose between the two of us I would choose you without hesitation and Erzsi surely loves you for being the sort of person you are; - so utterly withdrawn and abstracted that you have no real relationship with anybody or anything, like someone from another planet, a Martian on Earth, someone who never really notices anything, who cannot feel real anger about anything, who never pays proper attention when others speak, who often seems to act out of vague goodwill and politeness as if just playing at being human.
It is not too difficult to understand why Mihaly is such an outsider to the world of business and affairs that Zoltan inhabits, but it is also not so difficult to see why Erzsi is so attracted to him. Later Erzsi tells him that "The world won't tolerate a man giving himself up to nostalgia, it wont tolerate any deviations from the norm. Any desertion or defiance and sooner or later it turns the Zoltans on you."
Antal Szerb intrigues with some fine writing, with some ambiguous discussions on the meaning of life, but also he has a good story to tell. He takes us on a tour of Italy, he wallows in Mihaly's nostalgia, there are ghosts and images from the past and meetings with old friends. There is also on the fringe of this world; the fascists who hover in the background; Mussolini is in power and from our perspective we know that Mihaly's world will be subject to violent change. Antal Szerb is not unsympathetic to his female characters, they are strong and resolute and we are allowed to see the world through Erzsi's eyes.
I enjoyed this book very much, it nearly persuaded me to jump in the car and go to see those Italian towns, but then like Mihaly I am a man of inaction and that is why perhaps I liked the book so much. A four star read.
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LibraryThing member DieFledermaus
This beautifully written, highly atmospheric and evocative book has a rather passive, annoying main character so in the end I didn’t love it as much as Szerb’s Oliver VII, a perfectly light, airy and ironic fable about a king who stages his own coup and ends up disguised as himself. Mihaly and
The best part of the book was Szerb’s evocative writing. He creates a memorable portrait of the isolated, intense existence of Mihaly’s group – they were obsessed with death, religion and separation from a conventional life. There are also nicely atmospheric descriptions of the various Italian cities that Mihaly travels to as well as cosmopolitan Paris. Even with all the death and decay, Szerb maintains a light touch in other scenes – Mihaly’s relationship with an earnest American art student and a British doctor, Erzsi’s puzzling of the men in her life in Paris. A kind of mystery lurks under both Mihaly and Erzsi’s experiences. An early nausea and feeling of being sucked into a whirlpool led to Mihaly’s friendship with Eva and Tamas. This recurs at some points in the novel. Fate also follows Mihaly around and facilitates his meetings with his old friends. There are stories of ghosts and suicides and disappearances. Sometimes both Mihaly and Erzsi wonder if everyone in their lives is playacting except for them.
Mihaly and Erzsi married each other for seemingly opposite reasons – Erzsi wanted something other than her first conventional marriage and tried to find it in the odd and dreamy Mihaly while he wanted to want a bourgeois existence with Erzsi. Mihaly’s search in Italy is predictably fueled by his long-standing obsession with Eva. He can be rather annoying in his denial of feelings and passivity – after telling Erzsi the story of his past, she questions his feelings for Eva and he is adamant that he never loved her which is clearly untrue. He also just lets experiences happen to him and sponges off his family and others that he meets. Szerb has a tidy, bittersweet but not unhappy ending where Mihaly and Erzsi both get what they think they want – Eva and a death wish or an exciting break from conventional relationships – but the situations are defused in a slightly ridiculous fashion. Very well-done.
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his new wife Erzsi are on their honeymoon in Italy. It is clear early on that everything is not well – Mihaly has subconscious urges to run off and finally lets Erzsi in on his unresolved issues. They stem from his conflicts with his childhood clique – the siblings, Eva and Tamas, who killed himself under mysterious circumstances, passionately intelligent Ervin, who disappeared, and sardonic and competitive Janos who they encounter in Italy. After a chance accident, Mihaly and Erzsi are separated and Mihaly decides to take the opportunity to look for his friends though he does it in a passive way, relying on fate. Erzsi leaves for Paris and has new adventures and encounters with some of Mihaly’s friends there.The best part of the book was Szerb’s evocative writing. He creates a memorable portrait of the isolated, intense existence of Mihaly’s group – they were obsessed with death, religion and separation from a conventional life. There are also nicely atmospheric descriptions of the various Italian cities that Mihaly travels to as well as cosmopolitan Paris. Even with all the death and decay, Szerb maintains a light touch in other scenes – Mihaly’s relationship with an earnest American art student and a British doctor, Erzsi’s puzzling of the men in her life in Paris. A kind of mystery lurks under both Mihaly and Erzsi’s experiences. An early nausea and feeling of being sucked into a whirlpool led to Mihaly’s friendship with Eva and Tamas. This recurs at some points in the novel. Fate also follows Mihaly around and facilitates his meetings with his old friends. There are stories of ghosts and suicides and disappearances. Sometimes both Mihaly and Erzsi wonder if everyone in their lives is playacting except for them.
Mihaly and Erzsi married each other for seemingly opposite reasons – Erzsi wanted something other than her first conventional marriage and tried to find it in the odd and dreamy Mihaly while he wanted to want a bourgeois existence with Erzsi. Mihaly’s search in Italy is predictably fueled by his long-standing obsession with Eva. He can be rather annoying in his denial of feelings and passivity – after telling Erzsi the story of his past, she questions his feelings for Eva and he is adamant that he never loved her which is clearly untrue. He also just lets experiences happen to him and sponges off his family and others that he meets. Szerb has a tidy, bittersweet but not unhappy ending where Mihaly and Erzsi both get what they think they want – Eva and a death wish or an exciting break from conventional relationships – but the situations are defused in a slightly ridiculous fashion. Very well-done.
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LibraryThing member labfs39
Mihály is on his honeymoon in Italy, when he becomes overwhelmed with nostalgia for his childhood, especially his friendship with Éva and Tamás Ulpius. The Ulpius household was very unusual, in part because they eschewed the bourgeois upbringing of Mihály's middle-class family. But his
Despite the darkness of the novel's plot, it's not a dreary read. Szerb is in turns humorous, ironic, and acerbic. His writing is both entertaining and thought-provoking. He frequently alludes to Dante and the Divine Comedy, but his novel turns the plot on it's head: the first chapter is "Honeymoon" and the last is "At Hell's Gate." There is a manipulative and death-loving Beatrice; and a con artist and petty thief who plays the role of Virgil. I'm sure a grad student could have a lot of fun picking this theme apart. As for me, I look forward to reading another novel by Szerb; Rebbecanyc had particularly recommended The Pendragon Legend.
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relationship with the Ulpius children was also unusual in that they played with the notion of death as the ultimate form of love and loyalty. Mihály is now obsessed with the questions of whether he "sold out" when he became an office worker and "married well", and with the fate of his friends, one of whom died in mysterious circumstances. As Mihály becomes more and more fixated on mortality, his life in the mortal world becomes disorganized, and he wanders pilgrim-like, not is search of God or truth, but death. Despite the darkness of the novel's plot, it's not a dreary read. Szerb is in turns humorous, ironic, and acerbic. His writing is both entertaining and thought-provoking. He frequently alludes to Dante and the Divine Comedy, but his novel turns the plot on it's head: the first chapter is "Honeymoon" and the last is "At Hell's Gate." There is a manipulative and death-loving Beatrice; and a con artist and petty thief who plays the role of Virgil. I'm sure a grad student could have a lot of fun picking this theme apart. As for me, I look forward to reading another novel by Szerb; Rebbecanyc had particularly recommended The Pendragon Legend.
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LibraryThing member Philhclark
Bought for my birthday by my brother who now lives on the Continent and is exploring more writer from central Europe. I was at times pulled in by the main character and at others shouting at him in my head, calling him a whinging idiot. Szerb is a sharp observer of the human condition and by the
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end I felt the resolution worked. Show Less
LibraryThing member Ianaf
Hungarian couple on honeymoon in Italy, as the husband describes his adolescent friends to his new wife they start to reappear in his life and lead him astray (again). Weird, wonderful, needs a second reading.
LibraryThing member dom61uk
A stunningly original novel of interpersonal relationships that explores themes such as spirituality and death. Heavy going? On the contrary, it's quite a page-turner, as the action moves through Northern and Central Italy (during Fascism) and then to Paris. Szerb's style is elegant and his
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characters are convincing. I enjoyed this immensely. Show Less
LibraryThing member charlespuskas
casual unfolding of story with some scepticism, symbolism, and irony, a symmetrical plot of Mihaly and Erzsi with missteps along the way concluding in a satisfactory manner.
LibraryThing member gregandlarry
After a while I found this book tedious. The situations were so completely different to today and the characters so old fashioned that I could not continue. It didn't even give me much insight into the era.
LibraryThing member magistrab
The first story is about a famous classics professor named senator La Ciura, who, despite the fact that he is an irascible curmudgeon, befriends a young newspaper reporter. They find that they are both Sicilian and thus begins a friendship between this unlikely pair. After they have forged this
This is a flawless translation of three delightful Italian short stories. Once again the New York Review of books has triumphantly provided us with another must-read classic.
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friendship, the senator goes on a trip to Spain but before he sets sail, he tells the reporter about an important experience he had when he was 24 that had a profound impact on his life. The tale the senator tells is passionate and descriptive and has a delightfully unexpected twist. The second story tells the heartwarming tale of a modest accountant on his way home from the office with the bonus he received from his company for Christmas. The final story is about Don Bastassano, a man who is obsessed with acquiring lands on the island of Sicily. He keeps a detailed map of all these lands which had been acquired through less than scrupulous means. He becomes the subject of gossip among the other nobles who like to speculate about the don’s amount of wealth, property and his personal habits.This is a flawless translation of three delightful Italian short stories. Once again the New York Review of books has triumphantly provided us with another must-read classic.
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LibraryThing member marek2009
An 1st rate book from an author I hadn't previously heard of. It has an excellent reputation and great reviews from reliable critics, entirely deserved. It has haunted me since I read it, and has given me a lot to think about for a long time. I will try and read more by the author, who apparently
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taught at the university of Szeged. Show Less
LibraryThing member snash
An excellent tale with numerous threads; accepting societal norms, the power of the past, the lure of religion, death, and drama. It is all written with an understanding of psychology and the support of atmospheric scenes.
LibraryThing member jonfaith
So human. It is a messy affair, a poet and failed conformist chooses escape to avoid bourgeois suffocation. I felt the novel was tender and illuminating.
LibraryThing member le.vert.galant
A work of nuanced psychological acumen and a great example of pre-WWII continental literature.
LibraryThing member thorold
Journey by moonlight sometimes reads like Where angels fear to tread as rewritten by someone brought up in the spirit of German romanticism. Mihály is an emotionally-troubled young man who after years of drifting has tried to anchor himself in the bourgeois "real world" by marrying Erszi.
Mihály is still carrying around a lot of emotional baggage from his claustrophobic teenage friendships with a group of avant-la-lettre goths, addicted to role-playing games and death-imagery. In the meantime one of them has taken his own life (or possibly been murdered), another has become a Franciscan friar, another has adopted the persona of a wheeler-dealer crook, and only Éva, the girl they were all (including her brother) in love with, seems to have turned out halfway normal.
Lots of glorious Italian tourist-trail atmosphere, hardly spoilt by the posters of Mussolini on every wall, lots of romantic longing and fantasising about death, but all set off against common-sense reality with a delightfully ironic detachment. As in Forster, the Italian zest for life is set up in opposition to northern melancholy and over-analytical thinking, but unlike Forster he's clear that work and business belong on the "life" side of the scales, together with sex and pasta, whilst art and love and (mystical-)religion are classified with the other death-wish items.
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Unfortunately, she has married him largely for the opposite reason: she is looking for a Tyger to drag her away from boring respectability. So it's perhaps not such a surprise that when, a week or so into their Italian honeymoon, Mihály accidentally gets on the wrong train and loses touch with his new bride, he doesn't make any great effort to find her again. Mihály is still carrying around a lot of emotional baggage from his claustrophobic teenage friendships with a group of avant-la-lettre goths, addicted to role-playing games and death-imagery. In the meantime one of them has taken his own life (or possibly been murdered), another has become a Franciscan friar, another has adopted the persona of a wheeler-dealer crook, and only Éva, the girl they were all (including her brother) in love with, seems to have turned out halfway normal.
Lots of glorious Italian tourist-trail atmosphere, hardly spoilt by the posters of Mussolini on every wall, lots of romantic longing and fantasising about death, but all set off against common-sense reality with a delightfully ironic detachment. As in Forster, the Italian zest for life is set up in opposition to northern melancholy and over-analytical thinking, but unlike Forster he's clear that work and business belong on the "life" side of the scales, together with sex and pasta, whilst art and love and (mystical-)religion are classified with the other death-wish items.
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LibraryThing member stillatim
This is very confusing--Szerb's book reminds me so much of the English novel* (of the ironic-E. M. Forster paradigm), but is just slightly off. This might have something to do with the problems of translation; the prose just isn't that crisp, and the gentle-irony thing does depend on the crisp
Well, persevere through the extremely long narrative-within-the-narrative chapter, which you can probably skim with little loss. After that chapter, "Journey's" slight offness becomes endearing, anyone who likes Italy will spend half their time wishing they were reading the book in Italy, and the irony will carry you through. If, of course, you're not keen on that kind of novel, this won't do much for you.
*: Lest you think this is a stupid thing to say about a Hungarian, know that Szerb wrote "An Outline of English Literature," as well as a history of world literature. I'd love to know more about the Hungarian context, and to read more novels in this vein, if it's a Hungarian tradition as well.
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prose thing. Other confusions include the deep religiosity ('spirituality', if you must), which is equally unlikely in the Forsterian world, and the marketing, which isn't Szerb's fault, but rest assured that, despite the dark cover image, this "dreamlike adventure" is not at all "like Bulgakov's Master and Margerita," except that they both have very slow, dull sections towards the start. Well, persevere through the extremely long narrative-within-the-narrative chapter, which you can probably skim with little loss. After that chapter, "Journey's" slight offness becomes endearing, anyone who likes Italy will spend half their time wishing they were reading the book in Italy, and the irony will carry you through. If, of course, you're not keen on that kind of novel, this won't do much for you.
*: Lest you think this is a stupid thing to say about a Hungarian, know that Szerb wrote "An Outline of English Literature," as well as a history of world literature. I'd love to know more about the Hungarian context, and to read more novels in this vein, if it's a Hungarian tradition as well.
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LibraryThing member otterley
This book starts with a honeymoon and ends with a journey home, but passes through some interesting byways and times in between. Mihaly and Erszi part, almost by accident (but perhaps not quite) and end up as wanderers through Europe and through their own pasts.
LibraryThing member soylentgreen23
Well, this is a tricky one to review, for anything I say here will count as a spoiler and I must choose either to spoil it all or to remain silent. For the sake of the reader yet to come, I will opt for the latter, and conclude this briefest of reviews by saying that this book is one of the most
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magnificent - and personally important - books that I have read in the last decade. Thoroughly thrilling and incredibly moving, the story told here truly resonated and will continue to do so with me for a long, long time. Show Less
Awards
Hungarian Big Read (87)
Language
Original language
Hungarian
Original publication date
1937
2001 (English translation)
Physical description
253 p.; 21 cm
ISBN
9789461640215