Two Twenty First Century Hungarian Short Stories - by Zsófia Bán and Miklós Vajda

"When There Were Only Animals" by Zsófia Bán (from Best European Fiction 2012

"Portrait of a Mother in an American Frame" by Miklos Vajda (from Best European Fiction 2013)

I have been reading a bit of literature from countries once in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, all over works from authors dead long ago.  One of the best resources for contemporary European short stories in translation into English is the Best of European Fiction series of anthologies.  I have on my E Reader the 2012, 2013, and 2015 editions so I decided to see what I could find.  There are lots and lots of stories that were written by authors from locations once in the Empire.  Today I will post briefly on the two Hungarian stories I found.  Both of the stories center on long ago still lingering issues the narrator had with their mother.

"When There Were Only Animals" by Zsófia Bán 

"When There Were Only Animals" is a very interesting story about narrators tangled relationship with mother and her attempts to discover the truth about old family mysteries.  The narrator is a marine biologist who spends much of her time in Antarctica studying penguins.  There are numerous" metaphorical threads, the unreliability of old maps, the frozen whiteness of Antartica, old photo albums and memories of old family events.

Zsófia Bán was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1957 and grew up in Brazil and Hungary. A writer, essayist, and critic of art and literature, she made her fiction debut in 2007 with Esti iskola [Night School: A Reader for Adults], followed by Amikor még csak az állatok éltek [When There Were Only Animals, 2012]. Her short stories have been widely anthologized, and her two books of fiction have both come out in German (Abendschule, 2012, Als nur die Tiere lebten, 2014, Suhrkamp, both translated by Terézia Mora). She lives and works in Budapest, where she is Associate Professor at Eötvös Loránd University. From banzsofia.neg

"Portrait of a Mother in an American Frame" by Miklos Vajda

"Portrait of a Mother in an American Frame" also focuses on the narrator's attempt to come to terms with his mother. It is more a memoir essay than a story.  The narrative unfolds during a very turbulent period in Hungarian Empire.  His mother was  from a very distinqushed family, very cultured.  I admit I loved it when the narrator talked about how his mother started him reading Balzac and Dickens in his youth.  We learn her history gradually as the story unravels.  The narration jumps around a lot but the narrator, with a very multicultural background but he moves to America and frames his view of his Pan-European mother through the lenses of his American experiences.

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"The Tales of Hershel Summerwind" by Itzik Manger. 1935

A very generous gift of books from Yale University Press is making this project possible.  

Yiddish, German, and Austro-Hungarian literature are interrelated in many complex ways.  In The Origins of Totalitarianism Hannah Arendt takes as one of her central themes the idea that modern totalitarian forms of government developed as a result of vicious anti-Semiticism. If she is right, then it was the development of Nazism partially as a hatred from European Jewish culture that ended up destroying Viennese culture that produced  so many great writers and murdered most of the original readers of Yiddish literature.  Stefan Zweig moved to Brazil to escape the destruction of the culture he loved and shortly afterwards he and his wife committed suicide.

Itzik Magner's life mirrors the movements of many other Jewish writers attempting to escape from their Nazi controlled homelands.   Magnar was born in Czernonitz in the Ukraine in 1901, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (as was Gregor Von Rezzori).  He moved to Warsaw in 1928 as it afforded him more publishing and theatrical opportunities for his dramas.  He was very successful but in 1938 to escape the Nazis he moved to Paris (as did Josesph Roth in 1933).  In 1940 he moved to London and became an English citizen.  In the mean time the Nazis burned all of works they could find and murdered a large percent of his readers.  In 1958 he moved to Isreal.  He was a tremendous success as a playwright there and when he died there in 1969 he was declared an Isreali National Poet with hundreds of mourners at his funeral.  Leonard Wolf's introduction to the Yale collection presents a marvelous portrait not just of Manger but of the era.

Leonard Wolf says under a surface simplicity Yiddish fiction and poetry is among the most complex and sophisticated in the world.  The authors were almost all very erudite, learned men (no female Yiddish writers of repute as far as I can see).  Manger intended to complete a book of ten short stories modeled on Bocaccio's Decameron.  He planned it to be told by Jews from ten different countries terrorized by the Nazis.  It was to be set in an undergroud bunger where they were all hiding out from the horrors of the Nazis.  Each person was going to tell the group a story to help pass the time.  Sadly he only competed two of the stories.  Wolf has thankfully included them both in the Yale Collection. One is "The Story of Hershell Summerwind" and the other is "The Story of the Nobleman's Mustach".  I shall post on both of these short stories and another unrelated story in the collection.  

Hershel Summerwind is eighteen.   His story draws on childhood memories and the very wide spread folk tale of a boy whose father remarries when the boy's  beloved mother dies.  The step mother treats him with great cruelly. His father wants him to "grow up".  The step-mother has a pet rooster who she thinks is the reincarnation of her first husband.  Hershel and the rooster hate each other and a lot of the fun of the story is seeing them battle it out.  On the day of his sister's wedding, his father sends him in a wagon to the father's best friend's house to get a barrel of twenty year old wine, a wedding gift.  Hershel has some great adventures and misadventures on this errand.  A flock of drunken birds takes him for a long flight in one hilarious segment.  This is a very good totally fun to read story.  

 

I Was Jack Mortimer by Alexander Lernet-Holena 1933

I Was Jack Mortimer by Alexander Lernet-Holenia is an interesting set in Vienna novel in the noir mode.  I found the first third or 

so of the novel well done but after that I thought it went seriously down hill.   

The story is told in the first person by a cab driver.  One fine day he picks up a fare, an ordinary seeming m

man, well dressed is all he noticed.   When he arrives at the man's requested destination he discovers 

man is dead, having been shot several times.   At first he thinks he must of course report this to the

police.  Then he decides that if he goes to the police and tell them he did not notice a man being shot

several times in his cab they wil see him as a suspect.  He goes through the man's pockets and finds

out he is Jack Mortimer, an American.  In the next phase of the book the author takes us to the 

American west in cowboy country on the border with Mexico to learn about the real life of Jack

Mortimer.  Clearly the author knew nothing about American cowboys other than what he saw in 

movies of the 1930s.  The novel takes a turn for the stupid as it enters Mexico and Jack falls for

a beautiful señorita.  The longer the novel stays in America, the worse it gets as the author tries 

to set up a plausible reason why Jack Mortimer was murdered in Vienna.  Once we return to Vienna

it was interesting to see the narrator's angst as the police to begin to see him as a murder suspect.  

Overall I am glad I have read another book by an author from Vienna but I do not endorse

reading until you have read higher regarded Viennese writers like Joseph Roth and Stefan Zweig. 

I want to try to be fair to this book and I admire Pushkin Press for the many books they have 

published in translation so I am quoting their description of the book below.

"The cast of this brilliant thriller ... are pure Raymond Chandler ... but the Viennese setting gives it an extra, stylish twist. It's excellently written and fearsomely gripping." The Times A taxi-driver in 1930s Vienna impersonates a murder victim-with unsettling consequences "One doesn't step into anyone's life, not even a dead man's, without having to live it to the end." A man climbs into Ferdinand Sponer's cab, gives the name of a hotel, and before he reaches it has been murdered: shot through the throat. And though Sponer has so far committed no crime, he is drawn into the late Jack Mortimer's life, and might not be able to escape its tangles and intrigues before it is too late... Twice filmed, I Was Jack Mortimer is a tale of misappropriated identity as darkly captivating and twisting as the books of Patricia Highsmith.Alexander Lernet-Holenia was born in Vienna in 1897. He served in the Austro-Hungarian army in the First World War and became a protégé of Rainer Maria Rilke. During his life he wrote poetry, novels, plays and was a successful screenwriter. His uneasy relationship with the National Socialist Party resulted in his removal from prominence in 1944, but after the end of the Second World War, he again became a vital figure in Austrian cultural life. He died in 1976."

In reading the works of German and Austrian authors who were adults during the Nazi era I do

want to know how they dealt with the times.  I know this does not impact the artistic value of

their work but it interests me.  Here is Wikipedia's account of our authors activities.

Lernet-Holenia participated in the Invasion of Poland as a reactivated and drafted lieutenant of the reserve, an experience on which he based his 1941 novel Die Blaue Stunde (The Blue Hour) which after the war became known under the title Mars im Widder (Mars in Aries). It has been called "the only Austrian resistance novel" because the plot features an ideologically troubled central character, hints at the existence of active political opposition, and because the Nazi government banned and quarantined the first edition of the book.

Although Lernet-Holenia made himself a lucrative business as a popular screenplay writer during the Third Reich, he was one of the few accomplished Austrian authors who kept his distance from National Socialism, and refused to endorse the Nazi political system or to participate in its notorious blood and soil literary efforts. However, to stay in business he had to make arrangements with the regime, which included becoming chief dramaturgist at the "Heers-Filmstelle" (the audiovisual media center of the Wehrmacht in Berlin, charged with producing propaganda films for military cinemas) after the Polish campaign. Robert Dassanowsky has stated that "[Lernet-Holenia's] early actions in the Reich were confused, appearing to vacillate between naiveté and the often clumsy, often shrewd acts of a survivalist ... a unique but not incomprehensible position." Lernet-Holenia became more outspoken as the war progressed. After his removal from his public position in 1944 he escaped service on the Eastern combat theatre through contrived illness and the help of the resistance network.

 

Hotel Savoy by Joseph Roth 1926

So far I have read and posted on two novels by the great Viennese writer, Joseph Roth, his acknowledged master piece The Radetsky March and a sequal to it, The Emperor's Tomb.  I have added Roth to my read all I can list (meaning translated and in a Kindle edition).  

 Hotel Savoy is set in the years right after WWI  in a large city which sounds like it might be Vienna, Roth's home, but we never learn the name of the city.  I guess it is any town of some size in eastern or Central Europe.  The narrator is returning home from a long walk from a Siberian POW camp.  He is classical educated but he cannot find a job.

The central place and really the center of the novel is the Hotel Savoy.  It is kind of a combination Grand Hotel for the rich of Europe on the first three floors and above that it houses very poor war veterans, displaced persons and the girls who dance naked in the hotel bar where the rich can patronize them and hire them for sex.  There are at least twenty five who stay at the hotel that Roth brilliantly particularizes. One of the things I learned from reading the novels of Roth and Stefan Zweig's memoir, The World of Yesterday was how pervasive prostitution was in between the wars Vienna. You have to see this as a reduction of elemental humanity to commerce and a sign of the degradation of women in the societies. It is saying if you are a poor but passably attractive woman you can either clean the toilets of the rich or be a prostitute.  Visits to prostitutes were also a mark of manhood and of course fun sometimes.  

Every body in the hotel is scrambling to make money through some kind of scam. Hyper-inflation is just starting and there is a lot of currency trading.  The hotel savoy is very international if not cosmopolitan. 

One exciting event happens in the hotel that all the residents were excited over.  The super rich Jewish American industrialist Broomfield comes  to the hotel to stay for a while. Every one wonders why.  Through a lucky break the narrator is hired by Broomfield to screen the people who want to see him and be sort of a personal assistant.  

You can see social unrest building in the city as more ex-soldiers pour into the city, many staying at the Hotel Savoy, more and more citizens are near destitution, and inflation continues.  This is a world where only how much money you have matters.  An apocalyptic event closes the novel.  

This is very much worth reading.  The next Roth work I read will probably be Job. 

I just wanted to put this picture on my blog.  

German Literature Month November 2013.  I thank Caroline and Lizzy for hosting this great reading event.

So far I have read and posted on these works, all but Kafka are new to me writers. 

The Tin Drum-by Gunther Grass

"The Judgement" by Franz Kafka

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque -very powerful war novel 

"A Letter from an Unknown Woman" by Stefan Zweig. 

The Death of the Adversary by Hans Klein - a work of genius

"The Job Application" by Robert Walser 

Chess Game by Stefan Zweig-I will read much more of his work

"The Battle of Sempach" by Robert Walser

I have also listed to podcasts of "Basta" and "Frau Wilkes" by Robert Walser

The March of Radetsky by Joseph Roth I hope to read all his work

Memoirs of an Anti-Semite by Gregor von Rezzori amazing work of art.

"Flypaper" by Robert Musil

"Mendel the Bibliophile" by Stefan Zweig - I totally love this story.

"The Dead are Silent" by Arthur Schnitzler an entertaining work from 1907

"There Will Be Action" by Heinrich Boll a very good short story by Nobel Prize Winner

Transit by Anne Seghars 1942 very much worth reading

The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig - an elegy to a lost culture. 1942

Austerlitz by W. G. Sebald. 2001. 

The Emperor's Tomb By Joseph Roth 1938 

"Flower Days" by Robert Walser 1907 (no post) 

"Trousers" by Robert Walser -1909 (no post)

Medea By Crista Wolf

Passport by Herta Muller. Romania Nobel Prize winner, German language writer. 

Mrs. Roth 

 

, 

The Emperor's Tomb by John Roth (1938, 160 pages) His Last Novel

I

I am really glad I decided to once again participate in 

German Literature Month November 2013.  I thank Caroline and Lizzy for hosting this great reading event.

So far I have read and posted on these works, all but Kafka are new to me writers. 

The Tin Drum-by Gunther Grass

"The Judgement" by Franz Kafka

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque -very powerful war novel 

"A Letter from an Unknown Woman" by Stefan Zweig. 

The Death of the Adversary by Hans Klein - a work of genius

"The Job Application" by Robert Walser 

Chess Game by Stefan Zweig-I will read much more of his work

"The Battle of Sempach" by Robert Walser

I have also listed to podcasts of "Basta" and "Frau Wilkes" by Robert Walser

The March of Radetsky by Joseph Roth I hope to read all his work

Memoirs of an Anti-Semite by Gregor von Rezzori amazing work of art.

"Flypaper" by Robert Musil

"Mendel the Bibliophile" by Stefan Zweig - I totally love this story.

"The Dead are Silent" by Arthur Schnitzler an entertaining work from 1907

"There Will Be Action" by Heinrich Boll a very good short story by Nobel Prize Winner

Transit by Anne Seghars 1942 very much worth reading

The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig - an elegy to a lost culture. 1942

Austerlitz by W. G. Sebald. 2001. 

The Emperor's Tomb by Joseph Roth is a sequal to his  The Radetsky March (1932) and should be read only by those who have previously read and enjoyed the first book. I enjoyed them both but I did find The Radetsky March the much better of the two.  The second book is only 160 pages and I do endorse reading both of them in close sequence.  

A. S. Byatt in a very good short article in The Guardian says that this novel is about mothers, wives, and women where the first one was about fathers, grandfathers, uncles, and brothers in arms in the Royal Austrian army and a country dominated by the Emperor Franz Joseph. It is very much about prostitutes and how omni-prescent they were in old Vienna.  There was also a constant fear of disease.  It was a very "macho culture" where dueling scars were a mark of manhood and a distaste for brothels or a concern over illnesses made one suspect in the eyes of your all important fellow officers.   The Emperor's Tomb follows the life of a grand-nephew of a founder of the Nobel Trotta line.

In this novel the central character goes from being a young dandy in Vienna ( a great place to be a well healed young man about town) to being inducted into the military and winding up in Siberia.  In a scene you knew it broke Roth's heart to write, he talks about the day Austria voted to be unified with Germany and the growing proliferation of Nazis Swastikas in his beloved home town.

Ok, not the master work that The Radetsky March is but still it has great scenes, and weak ones, but I am still very glad I read it.  I will next read by Roth The Savoy Hotel, kind of a Grand Hotel type of work.

"Mendel the Bibliophile" by Stefan Zweig (1929, translated by Anthea Bell)

I am really glad I decided to once again participate in 

German Literature Month November 2013. 

So far I have read and posted on these works, all but Kafka are new to me writers. 

The Tin Drum-by Gunther Grass

"The Judgement" by Franz Kafka

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque -very powerful war novel 

"A Letter from an Unknown Woman" by Stefan Zweig. 

The Death of the Adversary by Hans Klein - a work of genius

"The Job Application" by Robert Walser 

Chess Game by Stefan Zweig-I will read much more of his work

"The Battle of Sempach" by Robert Walser

I have also listed to podcasts of "Basta" and "Frau Wilkes" by Robert Walser

The March of Radetsky by Joseph Roth I hope to read all his work

Memoirs of an Anti-Semite by Gregor von Rezzori amazing work of art.

"Flypaper" by Robert Musil

Pushkin Press has just published The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig.  The stories have been translated from German by the award winning translator, Anthea Bell.  I love this collection though I do have an issue with it.  There are no explanations as to when the stories were first published or where. know Anthea Bell knows when these stories were first published and readers need this data.  In the case of "Mendel the Bibliophile" even a Google search did not find the information.  To anyone who ever edits a literary anthology, please include original date and place of publication information.  

Note added-Susie Cat has found this story online in German and kindly supplied us with the 1929 publication date.  My great thanks to her!

I have already read and posted on "A Letter From an Unknown Woman" (included in this collection) and his short novel, Chess Game.  I like both of these items  a lot and see them as world class works of art.  My blog is in theory about literary works on people who lead reading centered lives.  I have deviated a lot from this but it still is the core identity of The Reading Life.  It is almost as if in  "Mendel the Bibliophile" Stefan Zweig has written the perfect reading life story. I love this story beyond reason.  I would repudiate all criticism of it.  I am getting very into stories of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire and its imperial capital Vienna.  Related to this, many of the best writers of the Empire, including Zweig, were Jewish,  is my burgeoning interest in Yiddish literature.  These are very intricate relationships.  Old Vienna at its apogee and Yiddish societies were very much cultures of the book.  There were many speakers of Yiddish in the Empire.  These were both doomed cultures.  

"Mendel the Bibliophile" is one of the greatest works about a reading centered life I have ever read. The only way to read it is in the new anthology, which I do endorse buying.   This story is told by a man revisiting a cafe in Vienna he has not been to in twenty years.   He is amazed to see Jakob Mendel, a famous bibliophile and renowned dealer in books sitting in the same table he saw him at twenty years ago.  Mendel has an incredible memory and knowledge of books.  Collectors all over the world contact him, he gets his mail at the cafe, seeking titles.  He cares nothing for money but his small expenses.  He has turned down huge offers from wealthy patrons to manage libraries.   

There is just so much in this story.  It has a lot to say about Viennese culture, Jewish life in the Empire, memory, the love of books, and the absurdity of life in war.  The ending is heartbreaking in its sadness and when I saw the meaningless way Mendel's life ended I was deeply moved.  

Loving reading and loving physical books are overlapping things but they are far from the same.  I read almost exclusively e-books and much prefer that experience. Normally I am sentimental over only a few cherished books.  I see the e book as opening up a vast new world of reading possibilities.   But I also see the tears of Jakob Mendel and I hope I understand what he is weeping for.

There are 22 stories in the 750 pages of The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig.   I hope to read and probably will post on all of them.