Wholly involving
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Mihály, the central character of this elegant and stylish novel (beautifully translated by Len Rix) seems to belong to the early continental 19th century rather than to inter-war Budapest. He is a man in his late thirties, a neurotic and Romantic character, unworldly, more at home in history than in the present, ill at ease in his bourgeois setting at home and equally ill at ease about being in his late thirties. He has a great nostalgia for the time when, as an adolescent schoolboy, he was the hanger-on of a group of unconventional young people: Tamás (who several times tried to commit suicide and eventually managed it); his sister Eva (whom Mihály adored); Ervin (another of Eva's admirers, a convert to Catholicism from Judaism); and János, a suave trickster.
The book opens twenty years later, when Mihály is on his honeymoon in Venice with his wife Erszi. Erszi had left her first husband to marry Mihály because he was `different'; he had seduced and then married her because he was trying to be `normal'. But she did not understand just how `different' he was, and he could not cope with marriage; and, besides, he is haunted by the memory of the now mysterious Eva. During a stop-over on a railway journey, Mihály makes the Freudian error of getting onto one train while Erszi is travelling on another. He is relieved to be on his own and that noone can find him. He travels from one Italian location to another - all beautifully and sometimes hauntingly described. I must not reveal the many strange, mysterious and coincidental events that happen to him; but in any case his thought processes are at least as central to the story as are the various events.
Meanwhile Erszi, unable to face her family in Budapest as a deserted wife, makes her way to Paris. There she, too, in her own way, turns against the respectable bourgeois life she has hitherto been leading. Again I must not elaborate; but the story is full of fascinating psychological twists and turns (though one of them, in an ancient chateau on a rainy night, does, I must admit, strike me as uncharacteristically grotesque and over the top - quite out of tune with the delicacy of the rest of the novel.)
The note of death is heard throughout the novel. As a youngster Mihály had to take part in the theatricals staged by Tamás and Eva which invariably involved death, with Mihály willingly playing the sacrificial victim. Later, there are suicides, cemeteries, Etruscan sarcophagi and the apparent Etruscan notion that "dying is an erotic art", which so resonates with Mihály and had done so for Tamás. Mihály hears a remarkable lecture on that subject from Professor Waldheim, one of his former class-mates whom he meets in Rome - and from that moment onwards Szerb plays some extraordinary games with his readers.
A subtle, rich and wonderful book.
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A beautiful novel of discovery and escape from the world
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This is one of the most absorbing books I have read this year - there was no way I could put it down until I got to the end of it. Peopled with unforgettable characters like every one of us, this is a tale of love, death, individuality, courage, and conforming. The main characters are on a honeymoon trip in Rome, where they talk about their past lives and the people that affected them. There comes a point where the past and present meet, when it is not possible for love or life to continue; each character must make a choice to decide his or her own fate. The language is beautiful and the whole novel has eerie, Gothic undertones as we follow characters to their death, to isolated houses and mountains where they make an attempt to escape from a common, ordinary world. The language flows beautifully and makes you think about your own life as if you were being swept along by a stream of wisdom. This was wonderful, touching and self-reflective...highly recommended.
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a hidden classic..
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having just finished this masterpiece of a novel, i am truly surprised that i had not heard of it before seeing it in my local charity shop. this beautiful story of a man not able to let go of his childhood captivated me and i couldn't put it down until i'd finished. i'd just love to learn hungarian so i could read the original and see whether it's even better!
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Simply magical
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With a subtle wit that allows the reader to be amused at the pretensions and foibles of the characters without making them unsympathetic or into just cyphers, Szerb tells the story of Mihaly and Erzsi and how their honeymoon unfolds. The novel is largely set in Italy and France, with flashbacks to the earlier life of Mihaly in Hungary which build into the picture of his character.
Journey by Moonlight is supposed to be a classic of Hungarian literature and I found that easy to understand from the English Translation by Len Rix. This novel and author deserve to be much more widely known.
The actual physical production of this volume by Pushkin Press is impressive with a sewn binding and very high quality paper used.
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A thoroughly Hungarian book
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A wonderful book, filled with a gentle, yet luminescent poetry and truly resonant symbolism. For those who have read it, surely synonomous with existential angst, midlife crises and thoroughly absorbing poetry. I was introduced to this book by Len Rix, the translator, by whom I had the great pleasure of being taught.
For me, this book was haunting precisely for the reasons other reviewers seem to have found it unsatisfactory. The movement of Mihaly back into the death-obsessed world of the Ulpius household, and the almost delerious sense of fleeing the grey, lifeless world of 'Pest seems to me iconic of the post-Beckettian desire for validation and meaning at all costs. With Mihaly and Erszi we seek meaning, we seek answers in every direction. Whether in the academic, the poetic (the quotation from Rilke's Archaischer Torso Apollos is, perhaps, the closest we get to an answer - "Du musst dein Leben andern") or the sexual, like the characters, we are frustrated in this attempt. Finally, with the closing of the book, and the end of the story, like Mihaly, our search is ended without success. As with Golding's Spire, or Beckett's "Comment C'est", perhaps the meaning of the novel is that there is no meaning to be found. That we shall all have to return to 'Pest. A brave message in a canon often flooded with hamfisted attempts to validate existence with anything that happens to float by.
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