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A Book of Memories
This extraordinary magnum opus seems at first to be a confessional autobiographical novel in the grand manner, claiming and extending the legacy of Proust and Mann. But it is more: Peter Nadas has given us a superb contemporary psychological novel that comes to terms with the ghosts, corpses, and repressed nightmares of Europe's recent past. "A Book of Memories" is made up of three first-person narratives: the first that of a young Hungarian writer and his fated love for a German poet; we also learn of the narrator's adolescence in Budapest, when he experiences the downfall of his once-upper-class but now pro-Communist family and of his beloved but repudiated father, a state prosecutor who commits suicide after the 1956 uprising. A second memoir, alternating with the first, is a novel the narrator is composing about a refined Belle Epoque aesthete, whose anti-bourgeois transgressions seem like emotionally overcharged versions of the narrator's own experiences. A third voice is that of a childhood friend who, after the narrator's return to his homeland, offers an apparently more objective account of their friendship. Together these brilliantly colored lives are integrated in a powerful work of tragic intensity.
720 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1986
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5721 people want to read
About the author
Péter Nádas
105 books233 followersHungarian novelist, essayist, and dramatist, a major central European literary figure. Nádas made his international breakthrough with the monumental novel A Book of Memories (1986), a psychological novel following the tradition of Proust, Thomas Mann, and magic realism.
Péter Nádas was born in Budapest, as the son of a high-ranking party functionary. Nádas's grandfather, Moritz Grünfeld, changed his name into Hungarian, which was considered a scandal in the family. Nádas's youth was shadowed by the loss of his parents. Nádas's mother died of cancer when he was young and his father committed suicide. At the age of 16 his uncle gave him a camera, and after dropping out of school Nádas turned to photojournalism. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, he worked as an editor, reader, and drama consultant. After the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, Nádas quit his job as a journalist and devoted himself to literature. "I resigned, walked out, and turned my back on the system to save my soul," he later said.
Péter Nádas was born in Budapest, as the son of a high-ranking party functionary. Nádas's grandfather, Moritz Grünfeld, changed his name into Hungarian, which was considered a scandal in the family. Nádas's youth was shadowed by the loss of his parents. Nádas's mother died of cancer when he was young and his father committed suicide. At the age of 16 his uncle gave him a camera, and after dropping out of school Nádas turned to photojournalism. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, he worked as an editor, reader, and drama consultant. After the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, Nádas quit his job as a journalist and devoted himself to literature. "I resigned, walked out, and turned my back on the system to save my soul," he later said.
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June 12, 2015Yeah, this was a present from an ex-girlfriend who was way classier and more sophisticated than I am.
It even contains a charming dedication along the lines of having seen this book and thought immediately of me.
Which just goes to show how badly I inadvertently deceived this poor woman.
She lives in Paris now. I occasionally visit and sit smoking and drinking red wine outside lovely little cafes with her and her equally gorgeous girlfriend, feeling like a fucking fraud.
Which is to say, this book looks beautiful on my shelves and is surely a subtle and intriguing work of srs literature.
But I have never read it.
It even contains a charming dedication along the lines of having seen this book and thought immediately of me.
Which just goes to show how badly I inadvertently deceived this poor woman.
She lives in Paris now. I occasionally visit and sit smoking and drinking red wine outside lovely little cafes with her and her equally gorgeous girlfriend, feeling like a fucking fraud.
Which is to say, this book looks beautiful on my shelves and is surely a subtle and intriguing work of srs literature.
But I have never read it.
June 2, 2017
A Book of Memories recalls a lost era of literature: of long, complex sentences; deeply personal introspection; and minute analysis of the subtleties of mundane social interactions, captured in neurotically exhaustive detail. To these hallmarks of Mann, Proust and Musil, Nádas adds a proclivity for endless digression: a stream of consciousness that is coherent, yet nonlinear: it drifts at will through time and space, often channeling third-person perspectives directly through the first-person narrator - all of which make this book both an engaging and challenging read.
But the defining feature of A Book of Memories is its intense romanticism; its profound sensitivity and sensuality. Its fictional author has an obsessive, almost indiscriminate desire to achieve deep emotional intimacy with another human being – a search which speaks to the beauty of love, but also to its futility - the barriers which can never be overcome. As such, A Book of Memories is both exceedingly romantic and overwhelmingly lonely. We see romance as the counterbalance to the violence of the era. The desire to connect becomes urgent, necessary, and ultimately hopeless. It can be difficult to sincerely inhabit such an extreme perspective for too long; sometimes it all becomes a bit too much...
But the defining feature of A Book of Memories is its intense romanticism; its profound sensitivity and sensuality. Its fictional author has an obsessive, almost indiscriminate desire to achieve deep emotional intimacy with another human being – a search which speaks to the beauty of love, but also to its futility - the barriers which can never be overcome. As such, A Book of Memories is both exceedingly romantic and overwhelmingly lonely. We see romance as the counterbalance to the violence of the era. The desire to connect becomes urgent, necessary, and ultimately hopeless. It can be difficult to sincerely inhabit such an extreme perspective for too long; sometimes it all becomes a bit too much...
October 20, 2011
This lyrical montage of random musings, ostensibly grouped under the veneer of memories, is not for the faint of heart. One has to be imbued with self recriminations, patchworked of doubt, second guessing and depressive threads to fully appreciate this torturous journey of self exploration into the disarray of a twisted soul.
Looking out a window, or contemplating another human being can take up whole chapters: time splinters into a multi-temporal glissando, defying any culture specific zeitgeist, and the narrative sequence assumes a dream-like conduit for discovery, contrast and transmission of opulent description, observation and endless rumination. All of it, always succoured through the fringe view of a man apart (well two men, but with a collective narrative consciousness) from the world, so perceptive of human nature and its faults, he can no longer partake of the fray but is condemned exactly because of his heightened perceptions to stand alone with his haul from Pandora’s box; a Sisyphean tragedy of existential exploration with no redemption.
This is a laborious, meandering read: almost entirely predicated on protracted, exhaustive thought sequences which stretch across a wide spectrum of self-loathing, despair, disillusionment, doubt, and depression. One either identifies with sort of thing, or simply won’t be able to make it through the hefty 705 pages. Apparently this book, when published in Hungary in 1985, became a nationwide sensation. This, I can’t understand. This morose contemplation of the miniature simply does not fit into my ideas of a ‘best seller’.
Personally, this book suited me to a T: but then I’m quite happy to sit on the fringe and observe, to torture myself with all kinds of conflicting thoughts about the smallest of things, to ponder an object for hours, to sit in a garden indefinitely and stare at the trees. Thats the kind of personality it takes to really appreciate this cornucopia of melancholia.
Looking out a window, or contemplating another human being can take up whole chapters: time splinters into a multi-temporal glissando, defying any culture specific zeitgeist, and the narrative sequence assumes a dream-like conduit for discovery, contrast and transmission of opulent description, observation and endless rumination. All of it, always succoured through the fringe view of a man apart (well two men, but with a collective narrative consciousness) from the world, so perceptive of human nature and its faults, he can no longer partake of the fray but is condemned exactly because of his heightened perceptions to stand alone with his haul from Pandora’s box; a Sisyphean tragedy of existential exploration with no redemption.
This is a laborious, meandering read: almost entirely predicated on protracted, exhaustive thought sequences which stretch across a wide spectrum of self-loathing, despair, disillusionment, doubt, and depression. One either identifies with sort of thing, or simply won’t be able to make it through the hefty 705 pages. Apparently this book, when published in Hungary in 1985, became a nationwide sensation. This, I can’t understand. This morose contemplation of the miniature simply does not fit into my ideas of a ‘best seller’.
Personally, this book suited me to a T: but then I’m quite happy to sit on the fringe and observe, to torture myself with all kinds of conflicting thoughts about the smallest of things, to ponder an object for hours, to sit in a garden indefinitely and stare at the trees. Thats the kind of personality it takes to really appreciate this cornucopia of melancholia.
November 23, 2022
Godinama sam slušao/čitao o ovom romanu i svaki put sam bio ubeđen da je ovo knjiga za mene. Tako se i ispostavilo, a i dobio sam više nego što sam očekivao. Sebi sam dao vremenski luksuz da bludim polagano po njemu koliko želim i ne žalim. Naposletku, da sam pisac, želeo bih da sam ovako nešto napisao – delikantnost bez mere i suptilnsot sipaj, ne pitaj. Recimo, neko se zajebao i dao Manu, Prustu i Muzilu da režiraju pornić sa neograničenim budžetom pa su producenti, nakon što su odgledali film, uzviknuli: “Alo, režiseri, mora li usred akcije ovoliko o razmnožavanju puževa, eklogama, vrbama, prirodi sećanja, sjaju i bedi buržoazije i arhitekturi? Ko će ovo da gleda?”
Objavljen 1986. nakon što je deset godina proveo u čistilištu istočnoevropske crvene cenzure, reč je romanu u čijem je središtu senzibilitet kao centar bića. Senzibiltet shvaćen kao veo kroz koji se ulazi u svet i filter kroz koji spoljašnjost ulazi u unutrašnjost. Veo istkan od čulnog i nervnog sistema, bioloških supstanci, istorije našeg života, klasnih obrazaca, jezika i kulture u kojoj smo sazrevali praveći crvenu fludinu granicu koja ujedno razdvaja i spaja, uvodi u svet i iz istog isključuje, spaja sa kolektivom i gradi individulanost. I na toj filter-međi doživljaja sveta u jedinici trenutka, koji stalno izmiče i prolazi, prave se osobena sećanja – gotovo kao fotografije usnimljene kroz veo sopstvenog senzibiliteta.
O čemu su sećanja? Ima više tokova. Neimenovani tridestogodišnji Mađar se priseća ljubavnog trougla u istočnom Berlinu sedamdesetih gde se, pokušavajući da se približi glumici Tei, upustio u ljubavnu vezu sa pesnikom Melhiorom, u koga je isto tako zaljubljena i glumica, koja se pak prepušta Mađaru kako bi kroz njega volela njoj nedostupnog mladog pesnika. Njegov ljubavnik planira prelazak preko berlinskog zida, a glumica je sredovečna i udata i prelepa, a Mađar, zarobljen u drugom jeziku, sanja da napiše veliki roman. Drugi tok se tiče pripovedačevih sećanja na odrastenje u poratnoj komunističkoj Mađarskoj – vrlo širok i usporen bildungs, gde se pioniri maleni mešaju sa tropima građanske dekadencije; krvavo ugušena mađarska revolucija iz 1956. sa ljubavnim mnogouglovima njegovih roditelja, gulazi, otac državni tužilac i socijalistička represija sa dečjim igrama, Staljinova smrt sa tajnama školskog wc-a, mumificirano telo komunističkih lidera sa seksualnim sazrevanjem i tako dalje i tako suptilnije. Treći tok je roman u romanu. Pošto je neimenovani pripovedač Mađar želi da se ostvari kao književnik, čitalac ujedno prati i njegov roman o nemačkom Belle Epoque dendiju - jedan Cvajgovski jučerašnji svet Mitteleurope sa lornjonima, kneginjama, čipkama, anarhistima i srebrnim kašikama i naravno, seksom, pošto dendić poput svog kreatora ima vremena da telesno istražuje i žene i muškarce.
U romanu postoji i četvrti tok, ali ajde da ne spojlujem. Mada, ne znam šta znači spojler za roman koji je toliko usporen da, ako se uhvati neka niti, ona vrlo brzo skreće na nove stranputice, u dodatna objašnjenja, pravdanja, samodokazivanja, opetovana zastranjivanjem u samorazotkrivanju i na još vernije iznošenje potankosti svakog trenutka. Naravno, Nadaš u svojim potankostima zna da upadne u pretencioznost, ali ta delikatnost bez mere sasvim ide uz poetiku. Duga rečenica i estetizovana proza čak i o stvarima za koje ne bismo rekli, an prvi pogled, da su nužno materijal za duge, glamurozne deskripcije – intenzivan opis porođaja prasice na 5 strana, brljanje jezika muškaraca tokom poljupca na 6 strana, držanje za ruke dečaka i devojčice i šta koji prst radi u stisku šaka na 3 strane ili kako muškarac otkopčava sve te vrpce, kopčiće, dugmiće i uzlove na haljinama plemkinje kako bi se došlo do njenog tela.
Nije preveden na srpski, ali ko je zainteresovan, a živi u Beogradu, u Geci Konu prodaju hrvatsko izdanje.
Objavljen 1986. nakon što je deset godina proveo u čistilištu istočnoevropske crvene cenzure, reč je romanu u čijem je središtu senzibilitet kao centar bića. Senzibiltet shvaćen kao veo kroz koji se ulazi u svet i filter kroz koji spoljašnjost ulazi u unutrašnjost. Veo istkan od čulnog i nervnog sistema, bioloških supstanci, istorije našeg života, klasnih obrazaca, jezika i kulture u kojoj smo sazrevali praveći crvenu fludinu granicu koja ujedno razdvaja i spaja, uvodi u svet i iz istog isključuje, spaja sa kolektivom i gradi individulanost. I na toj filter-međi doživljaja sveta u jedinici trenutka, koji stalno izmiče i prolazi, prave se osobena sećanja – gotovo kao fotografije usnimljene kroz veo sopstvenog senzibiliteta.
O čemu su sećanja? Ima više tokova. Neimenovani tridestogodišnji Mađar se priseća ljubavnog trougla u istočnom Berlinu sedamdesetih gde se, pokušavajući da se približi glumici Tei, upustio u ljubavnu vezu sa pesnikom Melhiorom, u koga je isto tako zaljubljena i glumica, koja se pak prepušta Mađaru kako bi kroz njega volela njoj nedostupnog mladog pesnika. Njegov ljubavnik planira prelazak preko berlinskog zida, a glumica je sredovečna i udata i prelepa, a Mađar, zarobljen u drugom jeziku, sanja da napiše veliki roman. Drugi tok se tiče pripovedačevih sećanja na odrastenje u poratnoj komunističkoj Mađarskoj – vrlo širok i usporen bildungs, gde se pioniri maleni mešaju sa tropima građanske dekadencije; krvavo ugušena mađarska revolucija iz 1956. sa ljubavnim mnogouglovima njegovih roditelja, gulazi, otac državni tužilac i socijalistička represija sa dečjim igrama, Staljinova smrt sa tajnama školskog wc-a, mumificirano telo komunističkih lidera sa seksualnim sazrevanjem i tako dalje i tako suptilnije. Treći tok je roman u romanu. Pošto je neimenovani pripovedač Mađar želi da se ostvari kao književnik, čitalac ujedno prati i njegov roman o nemačkom Belle Epoque dendiju - jedan Cvajgovski jučerašnji svet Mitteleurope sa lornjonima, kneginjama, čipkama, anarhistima i srebrnim kašikama i naravno, seksom, pošto dendić poput svog kreatora ima vremena da telesno istražuje i žene i muškarce.
U romanu postoji i četvrti tok, ali ajde da ne spojlujem. Mada, ne znam šta znači spojler za roman koji je toliko usporen da, ako se uhvati neka niti, ona vrlo brzo skreće na nove stranputice, u dodatna objašnjenja, pravdanja, samodokazivanja, opetovana zastranjivanjem u samorazotkrivanju i na još vernije iznošenje potankosti svakog trenutka. Naravno, Nadaš u svojim potankostima zna da upadne u pretencioznost, ali ta delikatnost bez mere sasvim ide uz poetiku. Duga rečenica i estetizovana proza čak i o stvarima za koje ne bismo rekli, an prvi pogled, da su nužno materijal za duge, glamurozne deskripcije – intenzivan opis porođaja prasice na 5 strana, brljanje jezika muškaraca tokom poljupca na 6 strana, držanje za ruke dečaka i devojčice i šta koji prst radi u stisku šaka na 3 strane ili kako muškarac otkopčava sve te vrpce, kopčiće, dugmiće i uzlove na haljinama plemkinje kako bi se došlo do njenog tela.
Nije preveden na srpski, ali ko je zainteresovan, a živi u Beogradu, u Geci Konu prodaju hrvatsko izdanje.
December 22, 2024
This novel is a trial. I keep forcing myself onward. For me, it’s almost completely devoid of narrative pleasure. It is admirably executed, with a beautiful mastery of tone and continuity, but a wearying read. I’m waiting to get over the hump. I’m waiting to arrive in that bright land where all is felicity and joy. Will I get there? It occurs to me too that long beautifully written stretches of this book depress me unutterably. There’s no narrative pleasure here, not for me. Perhaps it’s that Nádas’s grasp of psychology is too great. Naturally one would expect him to revel in this capacity for inordinate insights. But it’s a language I don’t understand. So while I can assess the beauty of the prose, the content doesn’t touch me emotionally. Or it does, but I don’t like the way I’m being touched. It’s like a violation.
January 20, 2016
This must be the most romantic book ever written.
I once gave it to a beau, saying he reminded me of Melchior, but I don't think he read it.
(Kind of a dick move on my part. More recently I considered giving Our Lady of the Flowers to a new flame, but wisely thought better of it)
*
(having just read it again, 1-19-16)
George Steiner has remarked that while culture gave way to pop consumerism in western Europe in the postwar years, classic bourgeois civilization was actually fairly well preserved in the communist east. With this in mind it's tempting to call A Book of Memories the last great novel of bourgeois Europe. Published in 1986, before the wall fell. His next novel, the equally great but very different Parallel Stories, comes after the universal triumph of late capitalism and pornography, and bears signs of this new age, but Memories is rather stately, old-fashioned at times. Blurbs on the back of my copy compare Nadas to Proust, Mann, and Henry James, and with good reason. Last great titans of the golden age, they all stand somewhere between the well-ordered 19th century novel and the madness unleashed by modernism. It's easy to see Nadas's affinities with each of them. With Proust, the inner quest to regain the past; with James, the constant machinations and barely perceptible shifts in power between individuals; with Mann, the preoccupation with sickness and decay.
Yes, bourgeois, but with a difference. It takes nothing away from these old masters to point out that they all led pretty comfortable lives. History appears in their work, but generally in the background, as something to have opinions about. By contrast, Nadas, born in Budapest in 1942, grew up over a mass grave. Carnage would resume with the Soviet invasion of Hungary, when he was a teenager. History would leave its mark in the tortured, mutilated bodies of his lovers, family and friends. In Memories we find the grotesque irony of bourgeois Stalinists. The narrator's father is a state prosecutor in the fifties, betraying his friends, condemning people to prison and death all while keeping up appearances and living in desperate fear himself.
In this context the body can become a refuge, however fleeting, from the horrors of history. More than any great writer I can think of, even Joyce or Genet, Nadas is obsessed with the living bodies of his characters. In Parallel Stories this manifests in a number of outright pornographic passages, but that's not really the case here. If anything sex is a rather indirect means for the narrator to pursue his desperate desire to fuse with another human being. Instead of a lot of fucking we find surely the most intense descriptions of cuddling and wrestling ever written. As in Genet, characters become holy sites to which the narrator must return obsessively over and over again...
Not sure what else to say. This is my favorite book of all time. When talking about it I always risk becoming indiscreet about my own life. I'll end with a quote, which I've chosen by opening to a random page (I didn't even have it underlined in my copy, can't underline everything):
'And it was also strange that I thought myself free when I was with Melchior, yet with him I was drowning in the story of my body.'
I once gave it to a beau, saying he reminded me of Melchior, but I don't think he read it.
(Kind of a dick move on my part. More recently I considered giving Our Lady of the Flowers to a new flame, but wisely thought better of it)
*
(having just read it again, 1-19-16)
George Steiner has remarked that while culture gave way to pop consumerism in western Europe in the postwar years, classic bourgeois civilization was actually fairly well preserved in the communist east. With this in mind it's tempting to call A Book of Memories the last great novel of bourgeois Europe. Published in 1986, before the wall fell. His next novel, the equally great but very different Parallel Stories, comes after the universal triumph of late capitalism and pornography, and bears signs of this new age, but Memories is rather stately, old-fashioned at times. Blurbs on the back of my copy compare Nadas to Proust, Mann, and Henry James, and with good reason. Last great titans of the golden age, they all stand somewhere between the well-ordered 19th century novel and the madness unleashed by modernism. It's easy to see Nadas's affinities with each of them. With Proust, the inner quest to regain the past; with James, the constant machinations and barely perceptible shifts in power between individuals; with Mann, the preoccupation with sickness and decay.
Yes, bourgeois, but with a difference. It takes nothing away from these old masters to point out that they all led pretty comfortable lives. History appears in their work, but generally in the background, as something to have opinions about. By contrast, Nadas, born in Budapest in 1942, grew up over a mass grave. Carnage would resume with the Soviet invasion of Hungary, when he was a teenager. History would leave its mark in the tortured, mutilated bodies of his lovers, family and friends. In Memories we find the grotesque irony of bourgeois Stalinists. The narrator's father is a state prosecutor in the fifties, betraying his friends, condemning people to prison and death all while keeping up appearances and living in desperate fear himself.
In this context the body can become a refuge, however fleeting, from the horrors of history. More than any great writer I can think of, even Joyce or Genet, Nadas is obsessed with the living bodies of his characters. In Parallel Stories this manifests in a number of outright pornographic passages, but that's not really the case here. If anything sex is a rather indirect means for the narrator to pursue his desperate desire to fuse with another human being. Instead of a lot of fucking we find surely the most intense descriptions of cuddling and wrestling ever written. As in Genet, characters become holy sites to which the narrator must return obsessively over and over again...
Not sure what else to say. This is my favorite book of all time. When talking about it I always risk becoming indiscreet about my own life. I'll end with a quote, which I've chosen by opening to a random page (I didn't even have it underlined in my copy, can't underline everything):
'And it was also strange that I thought myself free when I was with Melchior, yet with him I was drowning in the story of my body.'
March 5, 2007
This is one of those Proustian let's-write-about-how-the-tea-stain-on-the-doily-reminds-me-of-my -dead-father kind of books. But I love it. There are a lot of central-european themes of displacement and nostalgia, issues of fatherhood/nationhood, and more things that require me to use a lot of dashes to describe them. I cried a lot when I was reading this, but I can't tell you what about--it's just one of those things.
March 7, 2020
"Pamięć" to książka-wyzwanie. I nie chodzi tu wyłącznie o te 800 stron, przez które trzeba przebrnąć. Czytanie powieść Petra Nadasa jest jak wizyta na koncercie w filharmonii, kiedy na co dzień słucha się Zenka Martyniuka.
No, może z tym Martyniukiem trochę przesadziłem, ale jako czytelnik głównie reportaży w zetknięciu z prozą Nadasa czułem się jak miedź brzęcząca albo cymbał brzmiący, jakbym literatury nie znał, jakbym dopiero teraz się z nią zetknął. Dziwne to uczucie. Zwłaszcza, kiedy po Nadasu sięgam po klasyczny repo, wszystko wydaje mi się płaskie i płytkie.
Chyba jeszcze trochę jestem oszołomiony. Choć na początku nie zanosiło się na to, że przez „Pamięć” w ogóle się przebiję. Nie mówiąc już o tym, że mnie ta książka zafascynuje.
Jest to powieść o dorastaniu oraz odkrywaniu siebie i innych. Tłem są Węgry lat 50. XX wieku, a wśród motywów przewijają się wojenne wspomnienia, pokłosie powstania 1956 roku i stalinizmu. Historia opowiedziana jest z perspektywy głównego bohatera, według mnie najciekawszej postaci książki.
Choć chyba najważniejszymi bohaterami „Pamięci” są język i konstrukcja tekstu, które na początku odpychały mnie od tej książki, a później były głównymi powodami, dla których do niej wracałem.
Nadas pisze precyzyjnie i przenikliwie, jak gdyby rozkładając rzeczywistość na czynniki pierwsze. Jak gdyby na oczach czytelnika od razu analizował opisywane sytuacje, gesty, słowa, przedmioty. Nadas z taką samą uwagą i precyzją pisze zarówno o relacjach między ludźmi, jak i o rdzy w bramie, czy o kamieniu. Czasami te jego próby deszyfryzacji i rozbioru wszystkich i wszystkiego wydają się odrobinę śmieszne, kiedy z pełną powagą roztrząsa sprawy błahe, albo nużące i niepotrzebne (w ogóle wszystkio w tej książce jest długie, nawet mgnienie oka, nie mówiąc już o podobno najlepszych w literaturze scenach seksu, które ciągną się przez kilka stron). Ale ta jego pisarska nieustępliwość i konsekwencja sprawiają, że czytelnik otrzymuje świat całkowicie obnażony, a przez to niezwykle atrakcyjny, bo nik tak jak on go nie rozebrał, nie pokazał jego kulisów.
Doświadczenia czytania Nadasa nie potrafię porównać z żadną inną lekturą.
Jedyny problem polega na tym, że jest to literatura bardzo wymagająca. Wręcz elitarna. Taka, która potrzebuje spokoju i skupienia oraz której trzeba poświęcić maksimum siebie. Ale kiedy już to się zrobi, kiedy w pewien sposób zespoli się z rytmem tych długich rozedrganych zdań, to „Pamięć” z nawiązką rekompensuje czytelnikowi te wszystkie wysiłki.
No, może z tym Martyniukiem trochę przesadziłem, ale jako czytelnik głównie reportaży w zetknięciu z prozą Nadasa czułem się jak miedź brzęcząca albo cymbał brzmiący, jakbym literatury nie znał, jakbym dopiero teraz się z nią zetknął. Dziwne to uczucie. Zwłaszcza, kiedy po Nadasu sięgam po klasyczny repo, wszystko wydaje mi się płaskie i płytkie.
Chyba jeszcze trochę jestem oszołomiony. Choć na początku nie zanosiło się na to, że przez „Pamięć” w ogóle się przebiję. Nie mówiąc już o tym, że mnie ta książka zafascynuje.
Jest to powieść o dorastaniu oraz odkrywaniu siebie i innych. Tłem są Węgry lat 50. XX wieku, a wśród motywów przewijają się wojenne wspomnienia, pokłosie powstania 1956 roku i stalinizmu. Historia opowiedziana jest z perspektywy głównego bohatera, według mnie najciekawszej postaci książki.
Choć chyba najważniejszymi bohaterami „Pamięci” są język i konstrukcja tekstu, które na początku odpychały mnie od tej książki, a później były głównymi powodami, dla których do niej wracałem.
Nadas pisze precyzyjnie i przenikliwie, jak gdyby rozkładając rzeczywistość na czynniki pierwsze. Jak gdyby na oczach czytelnika od razu analizował opisywane sytuacje, gesty, słowa, przedmioty. Nadas z taką samą uwagą i precyzją pisze zarówno o relacjach między ludźmi, jak i o rdzy w bramie, czy o kamieniu. Czasami te jego próby deszyfryzacji i rozbioru wszystkich i wszystkiego wydają się odrobinę śmieszne, kiedy z pełną powagą roztrząsa sprawy błahe, albo nużące i niepotrzebne (w ogóle wszystkio w tej książce jest długie, nawet mgnienie oka, nie mówiąc już o podobno najlepszych w literaturze scenach seksu, które ciągną się przez kilka stron). Ale ta jego pisarska nieustępliwość i konsekwencja sprawiają, że czytelnik otrzymuje świat całkowicie obnażony, a przez to niezwykle atrakcyjny, bo nik tak jak on go nie rozebrał, nie pokazał jego kulisów.
Doświadczenia czytania Nadasa nie potrafię porównać z żadną inną lekturą.
Jedyny problem polega na tym, że jest to literatura bardzo wymagająca. Wręcz elitarna. Taka, która potrzebuje spokoju i skupienia oraz której trzeba poświęcić maksimum siebie. Ale kiedy już to się zrobi, kiedy w pewien sposób zespoli się z rytmem tych długich rozedrganych zdań, to „Pamięć” z nawiązką rekompensuje czytelnikowi te wszystkie wysiłki.
December 26, 2019
ôi đọc cuốn này xong có cảm giác giống như mới đi đẻ về ấy: kiệt sức nhưng mà mãn nguyện hihi
December 19, 2023
È possibile che tutto questo non sia successo proprio così.
Una scoperta. Scritto in 12 anni, pubblicato nel 1986, inizialmente asciugato dalla censura. Peter Nàdas si inserisce in scioltezza tra i miei scrittori ungheresi preferiti, con Kristóf e Krasznahorkai. Prosa meditativa, stratificata, dove significati e ricordi si riverberano e la digressione diventa una costante. Pieno di tensioni politiche e sessuali, con descrizioni ipnotiche e dettagli maniacali. Ci sono passaggi prolungati che tendono alla noia e non sempre è facile stargli dietro, ma ripaga con una quantità di momenti dalla sensibilità quasi soprannaturale. Contiene alcune tra le pagine migliori mai lette, letteralmente. Coordinate di riferimento: Marías e Proust, senza di mezzo i nobili. Miglior lettura del 2023, forse.
Per Susan Sontag è il più grande romanzo dei nostri tempi.
[94/100]
Una scoperta. Scritto in 12 anni, pubblicato nel 1986, inizialmente asciugato dalla censura. Peter Nàdas si inserisce in scioltezza tra i miei scrittori ungheresi preferiti, con Kristóf e Krasznahorkai. Prosa meditativa, stratificata, dove significati e ricordi si riverberano e la digressione diventa una costante. Pieno di tensioni politiche e sessuali, con descrizioni ipnotiche e dettagli maniacali. Ci sono passaggi prolungati che tendono alla noia e non sempre è facile stargli dietro, ma ripaga con una quantità di momenti dalla sensibilità quasi soprannaturale. Contiene alcune tra le pagine migliori mai lette, letteralmente. Coordinate di riferimento: Marías e Proust, senza di mezzo i nobili. Miglior lettura del 2023, forse.
Per Susan Sontag è il più grande romanzo dei nostri tempi.
[94/100]
February 2, 2012
This is a book I wish I could have inhabited--spent weeks with in a dusty dacha as I parsed out its story lines and mulled over his sentences. It is written that Nadas spent eleven years writing this book and I can believe it. The prose is beautiful and even when I was lost, I was glad to be inside of it. In the end as the strands of stories wove together, I heard echoes of their earlier forms and it made me want to read the book all over again. This book is a great instructor in handling time as story unfolds seamlessly into flashback and again into story. This could be the book that finally teaches me how to write long. In the last pages when I started to crave Gogol, I knew I had finally, completely entered his world.
February 9, 2025
Bleurghh!! So unbearably dull.
Look, I like a meandering novel in the Proustian style as much as the next man. But this was just so painfully awful, tediously executed, and appallingly dry. If you're going to write this kind of book, where the narrator reminisces relentlessly and goes on wonderful digressions and tangents (often for many pages) then you need to be a much better writer than this. You need to give the reader some exquisite prose and lyrical beauty, the likes of which it is very difficult to compose (or ignore). Sadly, Nadas simply doesn't have the skill to do that and so you end up with a very slow, boring, and thoroughly dry experience. I mean, Nadas can write, but there's a difference between writing and artistry. And for me, that's what's missing here.
The story (not that it matters) concerns a nameless male narrator in Berlin engaged in a highly unconvincing love triangle with a man named Melchior and a woman named Thea. A straight man writing about gay love is a tad inauthentic at the best of times but the narrator also takes us back to his childhood in Hungary where he also fell in love with a boy called Kristian. None of this feels sincere, none of it is entertaining, and none of it is memorable. I struggled to maintain any interest or care about any of these characters; and it goes without saying that there are also large parts of the book that I didn't really follow because my heart wasn't in it (I think the narrator is an author and one of his characters narrates at some point - and i think Kristian narrates at the end too - but honestly, I just wasn't paying attention). It was all I could do to keep reading. I kept waiting for something but it never comes. And aside from the failed Proust impression, there's also a lot of cliched flowery language that feels phoney too. For example:
I could go on (and he does... resplendently, indolently, opalescently) but you get the picture. So even when Nadas isn't aping Proust, his prose is hackneyed and obvious, the kind of thing you'd expect a hipster called Lance on a creative writing course to come up with between Lattes. I'd be willing to forgive it if the story was captivating but it's tiresome in the extreme; or if those flights of fancy where he digresses until you forget where you are were magnificent examples of supreme invention and creativity. But they never are. If you're going to have a character ask: 'what time is it?' then digress for 75 pages about how his nostrils remind you of the housemaid who, when you were ten, often spoke about the works of Kant and made delicious apple pies that sat cooling on the window ledge, before another character finally says: 'it's 7:30pm,' then great, go for it. But it better be utterly wonderful to read.
And it just never is.
The book is too dry. I mean, I have very little respect for Susan Sontag already (she appears to be a left-winger who never did a day's work in her life) but why I'm supposed to care that she considers this greatest work of the century (says so on the cover) is anyone's guess. She clearly isn't that credible. Perhaps she read the dry Proustian imitation language, saw how long the thing is, and concluded... well, it must be good, books like this (with all those boxes ticked) usually are. And that's true, books like this usually do get enormous amounts of praise by ensuring they meet the criteria required for such an accolade. Thank God those days are dying. Because it's nothing but a bloated mess of self-indulgent cliches and forgettable waffle. Walls of text that mean nothing. Walls of text that take you nowhere. Walls of text that crave applause.
I tried coming at this from various angles. It just never took.
Look, I like a meandering novel in the Proustian style as much as the next man. But this was just so painfully awful, tediously executed, and appallingly dry. If you're going to write this kind of book, where the narrator reminisces relentlessly and goes on wonderful digressions and tangents (often for many pages) then you need to be a much better writer than this. You need to give the reader some exquisite prose and lyrical beauty, the likes of which it is very difficult to compose (or ignore). Sadly, Nadas simply doesn't have the skill to do that and so you end up with a very slow, boring, and thoroughly dry experience. I mean, Nadas can write, but there's a difference between writing and artistry. And for me, that's what's missing here.
The story (not that it matters) concerns a nameless male narrator in Berlin engaged in a highly unconvincing love triangle with a man named Melchior and a woman named Thea. A straight man writing about gay love is a tad inauthentic at the best of times but the narrator also takes us back to his childhood in Hungary where he also fell in love with a boy called Kristian. None of this feels sincere, none of it is entertaining, and none of it is memorable. I struggled to maintain any interest or care about any of these characters; and it goes without saying that there are also large parts of the book that I didn't really follow because my heart wasn't in it (I think the narrator is an author and one of his characters narrates at some point - and i think Kristian narrates at the end too - but honestly, I just wasn't paying attention). It was all I could do to keep reading. I kept waiting for something but it never comes. And aside from the failed Proust impression, there's also a lot of cliched flowery language that feels phoney too. For example:
The garden was huge, like a park, shady, mildly fragrant in the warm summer air; pungent smell of pines, their resin dripping from green cones that snap quietly as they grow; firm rosebuds resplendent in red, yellow, white and pink hues; and yes, a single, ruffled, and slightly singed petal that could open no further, now almost ready to fall; and the tall, rearing lilies with their wasp-enticing nectar; violet, maroon, and blue cups of petunias fluttering in the slightest breeze; long-stemmed snapdragons swaying more indolently in the wind; and along the footpaths, great patches of foxgloves luxuriating in the flaming brilliance of their own colours; opalescent shimmer of dewy grass in the morning sun; clusters of....
I could go on (and he does... resplendently, indolently, opalescently) but you get the picture. So even when Nadas isn't aping Proust, his prose is hackneyed and obvious, the kind of thing you'd expect a hipster called Lance on a creative writing course to come up with between Lattes. I'd be willing to forgive it if the story was captivating but it's tiresome in the extreme; or if those flights of fancy where he digresses until you forget where you are were magnificent examples of supreme invention and creativity. But they never are. If you're going to have a character ask: 'what time is it?' then digress for 75 pages about how his nostrils remind you of the housemaid who, when you were ten, often spoke about the works of Kant and made delicious apple pies that sat cooling on the window ledge, before another character finally says: 'it's 7:30pm,' then great, go for it. But it better be utterly wonderful to read.
And it just never is.
The book is too dry. I mean, I have very little respect for Susan Sontag already (she appears to be a left-winger who never did a day's work in her life) but why I'm supposed to care that she considers this greatest work of the century (says so on the cover) is anyone's guess. She clearly isn't that credible. Perhaps she read the dry Proustian imitation language, saw how long the thing is, and concluded... well, it must be good, books like this (with all those boxes ticked) usually are. And that's true, books like this usually do get enormous amounts of praise by ensuring they meet the criteria required for such an accolade. Thank God those days are dying. Because it's nothing but a bloated mess of self-indulgent cliches and forgettable waffle. Walls of text that mean nothing. Walls of text that take you nowhere. Walls of text that crave applause.
I tried coming at this from various angles. It just never took.
October 17, 2018
I tried, but ultimately couldn’t write a review when I finished this book, and maybe I still can’t write a very good one, but this is my attempt to do so while giving away as little as possible.
I loved this novel; I thought it was incredible. I found it formally beautiful, delicious to read, yet also quite challenging and complex, occasionally hard to follow but enjoyably so. The final chapters were extremely haunting, and sitting here now I can’t help but get goosebumps.
For me, it all added up to being one of my favorite reads of 2018, one I will certainly reread. Plus it officially earns Nádas a spot on my list of favorite living authors. Much like Parallel Stories, his other huge novel, which I read last year and absolutely adored, it was a very singular reading experience and it gets my highest recommendation if you like big, baffling, bleak novels.
I loved this novel; I thought it was incredible. I found it formally beautiful, delicious to read, yet also quite challenging and complex, occasionally hard to follow but enjoyably so. The final chapters were extremely haunting, and sitting here now I can’t help but get goosebumps.
For me, it all added up to being one of my favorite reads of 2018, one I will certainly reread. Plus it officially earns Nádas a spot on my list of favorite living authors. Much like Parallel Stories, his other huge novel, which I read last year and absolutely adored, it was a very singular reading experience and it gets my highest recommendation if you like big, baffling, bleak novels.
October 5, 2025
PRODIGIOSO
Libro excepcional, lectura ardua y fructífera.
Libro excepcional, lectura ardua y fructífera.
March 19, 2019
very, painfully, long. Very elegant, convoluted sentences expressing things i've not read expressed elsewhere. The best bit is the love triangle in Berlin, i think, but don't worry about the boring bits, they don't last. In parts a five, in parts a three: four because it is unique, and great literature without being interesting literature a lot of the time (there's a clear difference between incredible skill put to effective but tedious use, and mediochre). Read if you feel like, if you have time: not compulsory, but good. Worth it, given the incredible length? I don't know... Main flaw: believes, as if it was the late 19th century, that a compulsion to be shocking and do 'evil' things is alternative, when it's just a demonstration of your thinking being stuck in artificial binaries inherited from religion (good/bad etc). As it was written well past the 60s that's just intellectually lazy, not 'a revelation'. Although, this part is meant to be Edwardian. Best bit: subtle delineation of social situations, feelings and facial expressions.
February 9, 2025
Having now read both Nádas’ big books - this, ‘A Book of Memories’ and also ‘Parallel Stories’ – I can say with conviction that neither are to be wandered into lightly, and that their complexities are delicate and often vailed. And having read them in reverse order, it’s with hindsight I say that ‘Memories’ feels like a warmup to the more demanding ‘Parallel Stories’. Both take their lead from Plutarch’s second century A.D. ‘Parallel Lives’, which is sometimes published in two volumes, and though I wouldn’t say that Nádas has produced two consecutive volumes in ‘Memories’ and ‘Stories’, once you know both books, you might agree that there is an interesting parallel.
At surface level, Nádas’ prose appears simple, straightforward, introvert even. The difficulty in reading his work lays firstly in having enough patience, and then in joining the many fragmented dots to see or figure out what he’s attempting to accomplish. Anyone craving the dopamine rushes of, say Pynchon or Gass, will need to calm down their expectations… Nádas is a far slower, gentle, and nuanced trip. I’ve read several comparisons to Proust’s ‘In Search of Lost Time’, though having not yet read this myself, I can’t comment.
It’s entirely possible to read pages and pages feeling like nothing has happened, and yet everything has happened. The prose is often constructed of extremely long, sprawling, I think beautiful, sentences that can easily feel like a loss of direction if a reader is not paying close attention.
In both ‘Memories’ & ‘Stories’ Nádas is concerned, near obsessed, with the subtleties of human interaction and the human body - both its (alarmingly graphic) functions and language. ‘Stories’ uses the human body and its functions more for political metaphor, and in ‘Memories’, more attention is paid to our human thought process, memories and emotions:
“[ ]… the mechanics of emotions, about which we are so concerned in this novel, are obscured by the very emotions operating in us, so that we can never say anything meaningful about it; it’s almost as if every occurrence were obstructed by our own sharply focused attention; consequently, in retrospect, we recall not what happened but the way we observed what happened, what emotional response we had to the event, which itself became hazy and fragmentary under our observations; we do not perceive a happening as a happening, a change as a change, a turning point as a turning point, even though we expect life to keep producing changes and dramatic reversals, for in each change and reversal, however tragic, we expect redemption itself, the uplifting sensation of “This is what I’ve been waiting for,” yet just as attention obstructs the event, change is obstructed by anticipation, and thus the really momentous changes in our lives occur unnoticed, in the most complete silence, and we become suspicious only when a new state of affairs has already got the better of us, making impossible any return to the disdained, abhorred, but ever so secure and familiar past.”
‘Memoirs’ is perhaps an easier read than ‘Stories’ in that, firstly, it’s around 400pp shorter, and then also has a less moving parts. Both are concerned with events surrounding the Hungarian uprising of 1956, but neither books are intended as a history lesson, they are far more concerned with the effects and toll the political climate has on their characters; though I suppose through this you could argue that a history lesson of sorts is exactly what Nádas intends.
I loved both books, and have huge respect for the writing and its aims, but they won’t be for everyone. In fact due to their extent, the patience required, some of the most graphic sex scenes and descriptions of bodily functions I’ve ever read (move over Sade), I would urge caution before embarking. The books take time, and less patient readers are perhaps likely to get bored before they get repulsed.
At surface level, Nádas’ prose appears simple, straightforward, introvert even. The difficulty in reading his work lays firstly in having enough patience, and then in joining the many fragmented dots to see or figure out what he’s attempting to accomplish. Anyone craving the dopamine rushes of, say Pynchon or Gass, will need to calm down their expectations… Nádas is a far slower, gentle, and nuanced trip. I’ve read several comparisons to Proust’s ‘In Search of Lost Time’, though having not yet read this myself, I can’t comment.
It’s entirely possible to read pages and pages feeling like nothing has happened, and yet everything has happened. The prose is often constructed of extremely long, sprawling, I think beautiful, sentences that can easily feel like a loss of direction if a reader is not paying close attention.
In both ‘Memories’ & ‘Stories’ Nádas is concerned, near obsessed, with the subtleties of human interaction and the human body - both its (alarmingly graphic) functions and language. ‘Stories’ uses the human body and its functions more for political metaphor, and in ‘Memories’, more attention is paid to our human thought process, memories and emotions:
“[ ]… the mechanics of emotions, about which we are so concerned in this novel, are obscured by the very emotions operating in us, so that we can never say anything meaningful about it; it’s almost as if every occurrence were obstructed by our own sharply focused attention; consequently, in retrospect, we recall not what happened but the way we observed what happened, what emotional response we had to the event, which itself became hazy and fragmentary under our observations; we do not perceive a happening as a happening, a change as a change, a turning point as a turning point, even though we expect life to keep producing changes and dramatic reversals, for in each change and reversal, however tragic, we expect redemption itself, the uplifting sensation of “This is what I’ve been waiting for,” yet just as attention obstructs the event, change is obstructed by anticipation, and thus the really momentous changes in our lives occur unnoticed, in the most complete silence, and we become suspicious only when a new state of affairs has already got the better of us, making impossible any return to the disdained, abhorred, but ever so secure and familiar past.”
‘Memoirs’ is perhaps an easier read than ‘Stories’ in that, firstly, it’s around 400pp shorter, and then also has a less moving parts. Both are concerned with events surrounding the Hungarian uprising of 1956, but neither books are intended as a history lesson, they are far more concerned with the effects and toll the political climate has on their characters; though I suppose through this you could argue that a history lesson of sorts is exactly what Nádas intends.
I loved both books, and have huge respect for the writing and its aims, but they won’t be for everyone. In fact due to their extent, the patience required, some of the most graphic sex scenes and descriptions of bodily functions I’ve ever read (move over Sade), I would urge caution before embarking. The books take time, and less patient readers are perhaps likely to get bored before they get repulsed.
June 2, 2024
Un trattato dell'anima, un'opera complessa, ma non solo per la storia e lo stile in cui viene raccontata (salti temporali, finzione/realtà, ribaltamento finale), lasciamo da parte questo, sulla storia potrei anche aver qualcosa da ridire, alcune scelte non le ho apprezzate, ma è tutto secondario.
Quello che Nadas riesce a far dire e fare ai suoi personaggi credo che nessuno lo abbia mai scritto prima in questa maniera, prendete Proust e Mann, mescolate, provate a immaginare cosa verrebbe fuori e rimarrete comunque spiazzati.
Monumentale.
Ero perso, non esistevo, le mie ossa e la mia carne solida erano diventate gelatina; eppure, nonostante la sensazione di essere strappato da tutto e di non appartenere a nulla, riuscivo ancora a percepirmi come qualcosa: un rospo che premeva pesantemente contro la terra; una lumaca dal corpo viscido che osservava senza batter ciglio il mio nulla; ciò che mi stava accadendo era il nulla, anche se questo nulla conteneva il mio futuro e, a causa degli autunni successivi, anche un po' del mio passato.
Continuavo a sperare di trovare qualcosa che valesse la pena di salvare, qualcosa che desse un senso alle cose e salvasse anche me, che mi liberasse da questa esistenza animale, non fosse qualcosa del mio passato -ero stufo del mio passato, il passato era un ricordo indecoroso come il retrogusto di un rutto e nemmeno qualcosa del mio futuro, dato che al futuro avevo rinunciato da tempo, sempre restio a pianificare il futuro anche solo per un momento; no, volevo qualcosa nel qui e ora, una rivelazione, una redenzione che aspettavo, posso confessarlo ora, ma allora non avevo ancora capito che la conoscenza precisa del nulla avrebbe dovuto bastare.
Ma questa volta non potevo illudermi in, come se qualcosa avesse scheggiato l'immagine che faticosamente creiamo di noi stessi e che desideriamo vedere accettata dagli altri, finché questa immagine distorta non sembra reale anche a noi; non c'era spazio per l'inganno: lo ero questa persona che camminava sull'argine e, sebbene tutte le mie familiari risposte condizionate funzionassero, c'era qualcosa che non andava, un vuoto, più di un vuoto, distorsioni, crepe attraverso le quali era possibile scorgere una strana creatura, un altro qualcuno.
Mi sono reso conto che non potevo essere un'altra persona, potevo solo apparire come un'altra persona, e l'identificazione totale era impossibile come fondere le mie due metà e rendere pubblica la mia vita segreta, o, al contrario, come liberarmi dalle mie illusioni e compulsioni e diventare come le altre persone che di solito sono chiamate sane e salve.
L'insensibilità totale dell'incoscienza, si rivelò un piacere sensuale molto più forte della sensazione di cose reali, per cui se in quel momento avevo un desiderio mirato, non era quello di riprendermi ma di ricadere, non di riprendere coscienza ma di svenire di nuovo.
La raffinatezza morale e, di conseguenza, le nozioni di beni e di male non si trovano mai nelle cose stesse, ma siamo noi a inserirle tardivamente nelle cose, e il motivo per cui i filosofi, gli psicologi e altre persone inutili ci propinano la loro pietosa tiritera sul fatto che queste nozioni sono inside nelle cose e che considerano troppo sfacciato, troppo semplice e troppo banale cercare le motivazioni dei nostri atti dei nostri istinti primitivi.
In genere si pensa che la fine dell'infanzia sia vicina, quando questi piccoli giochi crudeli svaniscono in un benevolo oblio, quando ogni parte del nostro essere ha imparato a sopprimere i nostri desideri e i nostri sogni segreti, e con cupa determinazione ci adattiamo all'insieme di misere possibilità che le convenzioni dell'esistenza sociale ci offrono come realtà.
Ripensandoci ora, da adulto ragionevole, mi chiedo che tipo di punizione mi aspettassi: un pestaggio sanguinoso e spietato? che tipo di punizione si può inventare in un caso come questo, quando sembra che un figlio maschio si sia innamorato del proprio padre? non è forse l'amore stesso, terribile, non equo, fisicamente ed emotivamente devastante, la punizione più grande?
è questa la ragione per cui l'esperienza ci costringe a vedere la bellezza nella bruttezza o, se non possiamo abbandonare il nostro inestinguibile desiderio di perfezione, almeno a essere più indulgenti e comprensivi nei confronti dell'imperfezione, imparando dalla forma umana che tutto ciò che sembra perfetto contiene anche una tendenza alla distorsione, alla stortura e alla deformazione? Non solo perché nessun essere umano può incarnare una perfetta armonia di forme, ma anche perché perfetto e imperfetto vanno sempre di pari passo, sono inseparabili, e se, ignorando le imperfezioni più evidenti, cerchiamo comunque di venerare una persona come perfetta, è semplicemente la nostra immaginazione che ci gioca brutti scherzi?
forse il motivo per cui la sofferenza lascia un segno più profondo è che la sofferenza, basandosi sulla capacità della mente di pensare e quindi di rimuginare, allunga il tempo, mentre la vera gioia, evitando la riflessione cosciente e limitandosi agli impulsi sensoriali, concede a se stessa e a noi solo il tempo della sua effettiva esistenza, e questo la fa sembrare fatalmente accidentale e contingente, sempre separata e strappata dalla sofferenza, così che mentre la sofferenza lascia nella nostra memoria storie lunghe e complicate, la felicità non lascia che lampi nella sua scia...
Siamo tentati, nella nostra analisi frettolosa, di dichiarare un evento perfettamente ordinario, in fondo naturale, la causa di tutte le nostre ferite, ossessioni, malattie mentali diciamolo pure, e lo facciamo perché perdiamo di vista la totalità di un evento a favore di alcuni dettagli scelti arbitrariamente, e terrorizzati dall'abbondanza di questi, interrompiamo la nostra ricerca proprio nel punto in cui dovremmo andare oltre, il nostro terrore crea un capro espiatorio, erigendo per esso piccoli altari sacrificali e pugnalando l'aria con una finta cerimonia, causando più confusione che se non avessimo pensato affatto a noi stessi ; felici i poveri di spirito!
basti pensare agli amanti che, raggiunto l'apice dell'attrazione reciproca con la sua promessa di appagamento annichilente, non riescono a raggiungere l'unione fisica finché non ripiegano da quella sfera rarefatta di amore ispirato a una vicinanza più terrena, finché il dolore dei loro corpi non restringe lo spirito d'amore a una dimensione umiliante e gestibile; Allora, in preda a un dolore atroce, possono dirigersi non verso la beatitudine finale, ma verso il piacere liberatorio di una gratificazione momentanea e fulminea, arrivando non dove erano originariamente diretti, ma dove il loro corpo permette loro di andare.
Non percepiamo un evento come un evento, un cambiamento come un cambiamento, un punto di svolta come un punto di svolta, anche se ci aspettiamo che la vita continui a produrre cambiamenti e capovolgimenti drammatici, perché in ogni cambiamento e capovolgimento, per quanto tragico, ci aspettiamo la redenzione stessa, la sensazione edificante di "Questo è ciò che stavo aspettando", "Tuttavia, così come l'attenzione ostacola l'evento, il cambiamento è ostacolato dall'attesa, e così i cambiamenti davvero epocali nella nostra vita avvengono inosservati, nel più completo silenzio, e ci insospettiamo solo quando un nuovo stato di cose ha già avuto la meglio su di noi, rendendo impossibile qualsiasi ritorno al passato disprezzato, aborrito, ma sempre così sicuro e familiare.
Davanti a voi c'è una bocca semiaperta, che è la domanda che il corpo dell'altro vi sta ponendo, e anche la vostra bocca è aperta, è lì che otterrete la risposta dell'altro corpo; e quando le due bocche si incontrano, su quelle altre labbra ritroverete il vostro respiro, sì, potete considerarla una risposta, e lì recupererete anche la vista perduta; attingete il respiro dall'altra bocca, dal respiro valutate le possibilità del corpo che ora si sta girando verso di voi, il paesaggio interiore di quel corpo si sta dispiegando davanti a voi,ed è proprio questo che l'altra persona vi offre: un vuoto, un'intercapedine che può e deve essere riempita e che pone fine alla sensazione di caduta, perché le labbra, catturate sull'orlo dell'intercapedine, toccano la materia viva, profumata, umida, calda, ruvida, fredda e morbida; toccano così tante cose diverse contemporaneamente e in così tanti modi diversi che la nostra mente, condizionata com'è ad agire, è adeguatamente stimolata.
Quello che Nadas riesce a far dire e fare ai suoi personaggi credo che nessuno lo abbia mai scritto prima in questa maniera, prendete Proust e Mann, mescolate, provate a immaginare cosa verrebbe fuori e rimarrete comunque spiazzati.
Monumentale.
Ero perso, non esistevo, le mie ossa e la mia carne solida erano diventate gelatina; eppure, nonostante la sensazione di essere strappato da tutto e di non appartenere a nulla, riuscivo ancora a percepirmi come qualcosa: un rospo che premeva pesantemente contro la terra; una lumaca dal corpo viscido che osservava senza batter ciglio il mio nulla; ciò che mi stava accadendo era il nulla, anche se questo nulla conteneva il mio futuro e, a causa degli autunni successivi, anche un po' del mio passato.
Continuavo a sperare di trovare qualcosa che valesse la pena di salvare, qualcosa che desse un senso alle cose e salvasse anche me, che mi liberasse da questa esistenza animale, non fosse qualcosa del mio passato -ero stufo del mio passato, il passato era un ricordo indecoroso come il retrogusto di un rutto e nemmeno qualcosa del mio futuro, dato che al futuro avevo rinunciato da tempo, sempre restio a pianificare il futuro anche solo per un momento; no, volevo qualcosa nel qui e ora, una rivelazione, una redenzione che aspettavo, posso confessarlo ora, ma allora non avevo ancora capito che la conoscenza precisa del nulla avrebbe dovuto bastare.
Ma questa volta non potevo illudermi in, come se qualcosa avesse scheggiato l'immagine che faticosamente creiamo di noi stessi e che desideriamo vedere accettata dagli altri, finché questa immagine distorta non sembra reale anche a noi; non c'era spazio per l'inganno: lo ero questa persona che camminava sull'argine e, sebbene tutte le mie familiari risposte condizionate funzionassero, c'era qualcosa che non andava, un vuoto, più di un vuoto, distorsioni, crepe attraverso le quali era possibile scorgere una strana creatura, un altro qualcuno.
Mi sono reso conto che non potevo essere un'altra persona, potevo solo apparire come un'altra persona, e l'identificazione totale era impossibile come fondere le mie due metà e rendere pubblica la mia vita segreta, o, al contrario, come liberarmi dalle mie illusioni e compulsioni e diventare come le altre persone che di solito sono chiamate sane e salve.
L'insensibilità totale dell'incoscienza, si rivelò un piacere sensuale molto più forte della sensazione di cose reali, per cui se in quel momento avevo un desiderio mirato, non era quello di riprendermi ma di ricadere, non di riprendere coscienza ma di svenire di nuovo.
La raffinatezza morale e, di conseguenza, le nozioni di beni e di male non si trovano mai nelle cose stesse, ma siamo noi a inserirle tardivamente nelle cose, e il motivo per cui i filosofi, gli psicologi e altre persone inutili ci propinano la loro pietosa tiritera sul fatto che queste nozioni sono inside nelle cose e che considerano troppo sfacciato, troppo semplice e troppo banale cercare le motivazioni dei nostri atti dei nostri istinti primitivi.
In genere si pensa che la fine dell'infanzia sia vicina, quando questi piccoli giochi crudeli svaniscono in un benevolo oblio, quando ogni parte del nostro essere ha imparato a sopprimere i nostri desideri e i nostri sogni segreti, e con cupa determinazione ci adattiamo all'insieme di misere possibilità che le convenzioni dell'esistenza sociale ci offrono come realtà.
Ripensandoci ora, da adulto ragionevole, mi chiedo che tipo di punizione mi aspettassi: un pestaggio sanguinoso e spietato? che tipo di punizione si può inventare in un caso come questo, quando sembra che un figlio maschio si sia innamorato del proprio padre? non è forse l'amore stesso, terribile, non equo, fisicamente ed emotivamente devastante, la punizione più grande?
è questa la ragione per cui l'esperienza ci costringe a vedere la bellezza nella bruttezza o, se non possiamo abbandonare il nostro inestinguibile desiderio di perfezione, almeno a essere più indulgenti e comprensivi nei confronti dell'imperfezione, imparando dalla forma umana che tutto ciò che sembra perfetto contiene anche una tendenza alla distorsione, alla stortura e alla deformazione? Non solo perché nessun essere umano può incarnare una perfetta armonia di forme, ma anche perché perfetto e imperfetto vanno sempre di pari passo, sono inseparabili, e se, ignorando le imperfezioni più evidenti, cerchiamo comunque di venerare una persona come perfetta, è semplicemente la nostra immaginazione che ci gioca brutti scherzi?
forse il motivo per cui la sofferenza lascia un segno più profondo è che la sofferenza, basandosi sulla capacità della mente di pensare e quindi di rimuginare, allunga il tempo, mentre la vera gioia, evitando la riflessione cosciente e limitandosi agli impulsi sensoriali, concede a se stessa e a noi solo il tempo della sua effettiva esistenza, e questo la fa sembrare fatalmente accidentale e contingente, sempre separata e strappata dalla sofferenza, così che mentre la sofferenza lascia nella nostra memoria storie lunghe e complicate, la felicità non lascia che lampi nella sua scia...
Siamo tentati, nella nostra analisi frettolosa, di dichiarare un evento perfettamente ordinario, in fondo naturale, la causa di tutte le nostre ferite, ossessioni, malattie mentali diciamolo pure, e lo facciamo perché perdiamo di vista la totalità di un evento a favore di alcuni dettagli scelti arbitrariamente, e terrorizzati dall'abbondanza di questi, interrompiamo la nostra ricerca proprio nel punto in cui dovremmo andare oltre, il nostro terrore crea un capro espiatorio, erigendo per esso piccoli altari sacrificali e pugnalando l'aria con una finta cerimonia, causando più confusione che se non avessimo pensato affatto a noi stessi ; felici i poveri di spirito!
basti pensare agli amanti che, raggiunto l'apice dell'attrazione reciproca con la sua promessa di appagamento annichilente, non riescono a raggiungere l'unione fisica finché non ripiegano da quella sfera rarefatta di amore ispirato a una vicinanza più terrena, finché il dolore dei loro corpi non restringe lo spirito d'amore a una dimensione umiliante e gestibile; Allora, in preda a un dolore atroce, possono dirigersi non verso la beatitudine finale, ma verso il piacere liberatorio di una gratificazione momentanea e fulminea, arrivando non dove erano originariamente diretti, ma dove il loro corpo permette loro di andare.
Non percepiamo un evento come un evento, un cambiamento come un cambiamento, un punto di svolta come un punto di svolta, anche se ci aspettiamo che la vita continui a produrre cambiamenti e capovolgimenti drammatici, perché in ogni cambiamento e capovolgimento, per quanto tragico, ci aspettiamo la redenzione stessa, la sensazione edificante di "Questo è ciò che stavo aspettando", "Tuttavia, così come l'attenzione ostacola l'evento, il cambiamento è ostacolato dall'attesa, e così i cambiamenti davvero epocali nella nostra vita avvengono inosservati, nel più completo silenzio, e ci insospettiamo solo quando un nuovo stato di cose ha già avuto la meglio su di noi, rendendo impossibile qualsiasi ritorno al passato disprezzato, aborrito, ma sempre così sicuro e familiare.
Davanti a voi c'è una bocca semiaperta, che è la domanda che il corpo dell'altro vi sta ponendo, e anche la vostra bocca è aperta, è lì che otterrete la risposta dell'altro corpo; e quando le due bocche si incontrano, su quelle altre labbra ritroverete il vostro respiro, sì, potete considerarla una risposta, e lì recupererete anche la vista perduta; attingete il respiro dall'altra bocca, dal respiro valutate le possibilità del corpo che ora si sta girando verso di voi, il paesaggio interiore di quel corpo si sta dispiegando davanti a voi,ed è proprio questo che l'altra persona vi offre: un vuoto, un'intercapedine che può e deve essere riempita e che pone fine alla sensazione di caduta, perché le labbra, catturate sull'orlo dell'intercapedine, toccano la materia viva, profumata, umida, calda, ruvida, fredda e morbida; toccano così tante cose diverse contemporaneamente e in così tanti modi diversi che la nostra mente, condizionata com'è ad agire, è adeguatamente stimolata.
December 30, 2021
„Pamięć” to powieść wyzwanie i to nie tylko z powodu 800 stron. Ciągnące się stronami zdania, przebłyski wspomnień, przenikające się, czasem zaplątane jak we śnie trzy historie, wymagające dużego skupienia, by nie zatonąć w meandrach dygresji. Ale gdy wejdzie się w rytm tej opowieści, to wciąga, pochłania, sprawia, że ma się poczucie obcowania z czymś absolutnie wyjątkowym. Wielka przyjemność i ogromny zachwyt!
February 27, 2014
Laying in bed reading this book conjures up such pleasant recollections of being in Cape Cod. I spent a lot of time in the bus station at Hyannis, waiting for the next bus to Provincetown, my nose buried in "A Book of Memories". I had nothing else to do at the time.
My last morning in Hyannis, the tall blond fellow I shared rooms with at the hostel came into the bus station as well. It was strange, as I never really talked to the guy. Even though our sharing of the same physical space seemed so intimate. This particular morning he was wearing glasses, and complaining at the ticket window about his bus ticket not working. He had a funny accent, possibly German? or Dutch? And he seemed taller and skinnier than I'd previously thought.
At the hostel, he was often gone the entire day. As was I, really. Late afternoons he would come in sweating, like he had just gone out for a run. There was something very large and manly about him, as he sat on his bunk sweating, breathing heavily. We would exchange awkward hellos, but rather leave it at that. When I was alone in the room, I would sneak looks at his various objects splayed out on his bed, trying to construct what kind of person this was I shared the room with. I remember a photograph in a place that looked exotic, maybe Turkey? maybe Canada? He stood next to a female friend smiling happily.
Downstairs in the common area, he cooked his own meals. Then sat at the table eating noisily, not talking to anybody. He seemed to gaze intently out the window at something while he ate. What he gazed at I often wondered but could never figure out. I noticed most people eating in the common area generally kept to themselves, not really talking to anyone either. The hostel was a strangely isolated place.
The only person I talked to was one of the guys who worked at the hostel. He was a tall, lanky fellow. A strange guy, admittedly, but I enjoyed talking to him. He grew up in Maine, and loved cars and jazz music. He felt intimidated by New York City. We would stay up late every night smoking cigarettes and talking about food and travelling. He seemed happy to have someone that he could talk late into the night with. He seemed to look forward to further conversations, but I rather left one morning without warning and without really saying goodbye. I often feel bit guilty about that.
My last morning in Hyannis, the tall blond fellow I shared rooms with at the hostel came into the bus station as well. It was strange, as I never really talked to the guy. Even though our sharing of the same physical space seemed so intimate. This particular morning he was wearing glasses, and complaining at the ticket window about his bus ticket not working. He had a funny accent, possibly German? or Dutch? And he seemed taller and skinnier than I'd previously thought.
At the hostel, he was often gone the entire day. As was I, really. Late afternoons he would come in sweating, like he had just gone out for a run. There was something very large and manly about him, as he sat on his bunk sweating, breathing heavily. We would exchange awkward hellos, but rather leave it at that. When I was alone in the room, I would sneak looks at his various objects splayed out on his bed, trying to construct what kind of person this was I shared the room with. I remember a photograph in a place that looked exotic, maybe Turkey? maybe Canada? He stood next to a female friend smiling happily.
Downstairs in the common area, he cooked his own meals. Then sat at the table eating noisily, not talking to anybody. He seemed to gaze intently out the window at something while he ate. What he gazed at I often wondered but could never figure out. I noticed most people eating in the common area generally kept to themselves, not really talking to anyone either. The hostel was a strangely isolated place.
The only person I talked to was one of the guys who worked at the hostel. He was a tall, lanky fellow. A strange guy, admittedly, but I enjoyed talking to him. He grew up in Maine, and loved cars and jazz music. He felt intimidated by New York City. We would stay up late every night smoking cigarettes and talking about food and travelling. He seemed happy to have someone that he could talk late into the night with. He seemed to look forward to further conversations, but I rather left one morning without warning and without really saying goodbye. I often feel bit guilty about that.
July 8, 2007
This book almost ruined literature for me- it was really that good. Other novels seemed halfhearted and pithy by comparison. It's a tough book, both from the style standpoint of three chronologically separated stories happening throughout the text, and also from the content.
December 22, 2022
Incredibly moving account of a dysfunctional, somewhat unreliable narrator growing up and falling apart in very dysfunctional mid 20th century Hungary and East Germany.
There are a tangled web of relationships and in particular the narrator's childhood experience within his family and school explain much of what follows.
This is my first Nadas novel and I find he writes stunningly beautiful prose and am so happy I still have Parallel Stories to read.
There are a tangled web of relationships and in particular the narrator's childhood experience within his family and school explain much of what follows.
This is my first Nadas novel and I find he writes stunningly beautiful prose and am so happy I still have Parallel Stories to read.
June 13, 2025
Przytłaczająca (w przyjemny sposób) powieści o dojrzewaniu, braku, wyobcowaniu. Zaskakująco aktualne spojrzenie na doświadczenie życia pomiędzy w świecie przyzwyczajonym do binarności, która okazuje się najczęściej jedynie fasadą.
January 12, 2023
Over herinneringen gesproken. De vertaling van Henry Kammer van Péter Nádas’ opus magnum (Emlékiratok Könyve, 1986) verscheen in de tijd dat we naar de Treilerstraat verhuisden in Zaandam. Ik kan me nog zo goed heugen dat het in de boekenkast stond. Vuistdikke, witte, opvallende rug met bloemen en een intrigerende titel: Boek der Herinneringen. Ik was in 1994 als jonge puber nog geen literatuurfan en heb er verder geen aandacht meer aan geschonken. Sprong in de tijd, 2022. Inmiddels Mann, Musil en Proust gelezen. Collega Geertjan raadde me vorig jaar Nádas aan als een vergelijkbare schrijver en een van z’n favoriete.
En inderdaad, een zinderend, fragmentarisch, meeslepend en lyrisch geschreven Midden-Europees meesterwerk. Langzaam en in kleine brokken tot je nemen. Grillig, lastig te doorgronden en verre van perfect met ups en downs. Leest als een koortsdroom waarin je je als lezer moet laten meevoeren.
Drie verhaallijnen lopen door elkaar, drie verschillende alter ego’s van de hoofdpersoon. Het eerste spoor loopt door Oost-Berlijn, jaren zeventig. De ik-figuur heeft een relatie met een vriend die naar het westen vlucht. De tweede is een naar Thomas Mann geportretteerde schrijver aan het begin van de twintigste eeuw die een affaire krijgt met een kamerdienaar. Een derde ik-figuur is het jongetje dat hij was in de jaren voorafgaand aan de Hongaarse opstand van 1956.
Bij Nádas, net als bij Proust, spelen verbeelding en herinneringen een centrale rol. Geuren, kleuren, smaken en andere specifieke details brengen een mens terug naar bepaalde fases in het leven. De stijl is vaak even benauwend als complex. Gevangen in de gedachten van de hoofdpersoon die door elkaar heenlopen en waarbij je als lezer overspoeld wordt door een stroom van bewustzijn, ideeën en gevoelens. Niet zelden worden homo-erotische ervaringen van de hoofdpersoon in detail beschreven. Toch dient het een hoger doel en wordt het niet plat. Altijd is er een existentiële onderlaag en wordt menselijk contact, onderling gedrag en miscommunicatie uitgediept. Daarnaast vormt een rode draad de verhouding van de ik-figuur tot zijn omgeving, ook een belangrijk thema in Musils Man zonder eigenschappen.
Meerdere keren heb ik het boek weggelegd en na een week of wat weer opgepakt. Andere boeken tussendoor gelezen. Soms was ik de draad kwijt. Teruggebladerd, hoofdstuk opnieuw gelezen. Haat-liefde. Altijd weer de drang gehad om erin verder te gaan. Het intrigeert en het prikkelt. Het is een rijke, psychologische, essayistische bildungsroman die tijdloos aanvoelt en daarnaast een prachtige zelfanalyse is van een leven in verschillende fases met memorabele scènes, personages, liefdes, driehoeksverhoudingen, vriendschappen en onzekerheden.
En inderdaad, een zinderend, fragmentarisch, meeslepend en lyrisch geschreven Midden-Europees meesterwerk. Langzaam en in kleine brokken tot je nemen. Grillig, lastig te doorgronden en verre van perfect met ups en downs. Leest als een koortsdroom waarin je je als lezer moet laten meevoeren.
Drie verhaallijnen lopen door elkaar, drie verschillende alter ego’s van de hoofdpersoon. Het eerste spoor loopt door Oost-Berlijn, jaren zeventig. De ik-figuur heeft een relatie met een vriend die naar het westen vlucht. De tweede is een naar Thomas Mann geportretteerde schrijver aan het begin van de twintigste eeuw die een affaire krijgt met een kamerdienaar. Een derde ik-figuur is het jongetje dat hij was in de jaren voorafgaand aan de Hongaarse opstand van 1956.
Bij Nádas, net als bij Proust, spelen verbeelding en herinneringen een centrale rol. Geuren, kleuren, smaken en andere specifieke details brengen een mens terug naar bepaalde fases in het leven. De stijl is vaak even benauwend als complex. Gevangen in de gedachten van de hoofdpersoon die door elkaar heenlopen en waarbij je als lezer overspoeld wordt door een stroom van bewustzijn, ideeën en gevoelens. Niet zelden worden homo-erotische ervaringen van de hoofdpersoon in detail beschreven. Toch dient het een hoger doel en wordt het niet plat. Altijd is er een existentiële onderlaag en wordt menselijk contact, onderling gedrag en miscommunicatie uitgediept. Daarnaast vormt een rode draad de verhouding van de ik-figuur tot zijn omgeving, ook een belangrijk thema in Musils Man zonder eigenschappen.
Meerdere keren heb ik het boek weggelegd en na een week of wat weer opgepakt. Andere boeken tussendoor gelezen. Soms was ik de draad kwijt. Teruggebladerd, hoofdstuk opnieuw gelezen. Haat-liefde. Altijd weer de drang gehad om erin verder te gaan. Het intrigeert en het prikkelt. Het is een rijke, psychologische, essayistische bildungsroman die tijdloos aanvoelt en daarnaast een prachtige zelfanalyse is van een leven in verschillende fases met memorabele scènes, personages, liefdes, driehoeksverhoudingen, vriendschappen en onzekerheden.
October 17, 2016
Having already read his subsequent Parallel Stories - a novel which is extremely daunting, arguably uneven (though it was probably more simply a matter of my having felt periodically totally lost), but full of some of the best passages I have read in any novel - I have long been intending to read A Book of Memories, especially based on Susan Sontag's assertion that it was the "greatest novel written in our time," upon its publication in America. What Nádas excels at is the geology of the personal event, w/ its density and its strata. He is able to take relatively small occurrences apart piece by piece. I am not sure any other writer does it as well as Nádas at his best. When he comes at a human event, he comes at the sensorium, the intellect, emotion, and historicity, doing no small service to any of these. However, it bares emphasis that Nádas is most self-evidently an unparalleled master when it comes to inhabiting the body - the realm of the sensorial. Here, though, what is always striking is always the proximity of the flesh to the business of consciousness and indeed abstraction. Though a philosophical writer - momentously so - Nádas is not a philosopher, and is always working in the theatre of lived experience. Unlike Parallel Stories, however, which is far more architectural and abstract (and far more fundamentally experimental), A Book of Memory is just what its title suggests it is: a narrator wresting w/ memory. And here I just cannot escape noting that I thought of Proust. But how well Proust does this, and how well Nádas does in turn, is foregrounded by the fact that basically nothing I ever read makes me think of Proust. Nádas is literally the only author I can think of who has mounted a comparable immersion in living memory. And Nádas's vision is arguably superior at an ontological level to Proust's in that is more morphological and prone to slippages and sudden (sometimes destabilizing) associative jumps. There is no less order than in Proust, but there is more chaos. When we are dealing w/ memory, if we want to do it justice we have to do equal justice to order and chaos. Same as w/ sexuality, the body, the mind, and history. It is no easy trick to pull off. You will not find it done better anywhere than you will here. There are not better novels. The most you could ever hope for would be to be more or less equal to it.
July 18, 2013
1st from nádas for me...a book of memories, paperback, 706 pages...translated from the hungarian by ivan sanders with imre goldstein...penguin books.
an "author's note"...it is my pleasant duty to state that what i have written is not my own memoirs. i have written a novel, the recollections of several people separated by time, somewhat in the fashion of Plutarch's, Parallel Lives Vol. 1..."
curious, in light of my recent read just finished, The Floating Opera...that includes adam's original & unparalleled floating opera.
divided into three parts, the chapters titled separately...
a quote on a white page: "but he spoke of the temple of his body..."
--john 2:21
part i, chapter one, the beauty of my anomalous nature begins:
a flavor, anyway. onward & upward.
update, 21 jul 13, sunday
how to index this...chapter by chapter? since this has several narratives?
the beauty of my anomalous nature
an eye-narrator, 30-yr-old, remembering the past, berlin. the time is the 1970s--this from the description on the back--have not read that as yet.
contents
part i
1. the beauty of my anomalous nature
2. our afternoon walk of long ago
3. the soft light of the sun
4. a telegram arrives
5. sitting in god's hand
6. slowly the pain returned
7. losing consciousness and regaining it
8. our afternoon walk continued
9. girls
10. melchior's room under the eaves
part ii
11. on an antique mural
12. grass grew over the scorched spot
13. description of a theater performance
14. table d'hote [accent over the "o"...little roof]
part iii
15. the year of funerals
16. in which he tells thea all about melchior's confession
17. the nights of our secret delight
18. no more
19. escape
time place scene settings
*1970s...berlin...30 years after the war...so? 1975?
*2nd floor apt of a villa, on steffelbauerstrasse
schoneweide, "pretty pasture"
*synagogue on rykestrasse...east berlin
*melchior's house on worther platz
*corner of dimitroffstrasse, tobacco shop
*the path around the muggelsee
*heilgendamm, "white city on the sea" (more of a village)
*niehhagen, a neighboring town
*gespensterwald, forest of ghosts
**ludwigsdorf...hilde & eye visited on saturdays
**rehearsal hall
**eye-narrator's rooms...entryway to same...hallway...lights
**standing before a mirror
**mother's bedroom, bed
**enbankment
**hotel room
**the fresh-air cure at a spa
**straight road leading to station...from spa
**a train...connects old town of bad doberan w/kuhlungsborn
**the terrace
**the gym at school
**bathroom
**the maid's room
**prihoda's spacious living room
**melchior's room under the eaves
**opera house, new production of fidelio
**the car...from one theater to another
*from part ii:
*my flat on weissenbugerstrasse, 5th floor
*horse-drawn wagon on worther platz
*at the window of his flat
*summers at heiligendamm
*dr kohler's snail farm
*this forest...a clearing
*1st chapter ends w/the second-person you
2nd chap of part ii:
*tram
*boraros square...tram #6...moszkva square....cog-railway station...large clearing
*the buda hills
*immense, heavily-guarded area that contained the residence of matyas rakosi
*adonisz road...lorant st. gate...felho street...the csuzdi house...swabian hill
*grandfather's law offices on terez blvd
characters
best i can do...deciphering the narrative as i go along...could be wrong on some matters.
*eye-narrator, male, 30-yr-old, as yet not named...though perhaps his last name is thoenissen. why does nádas not provide a name for him? because it is nádas? or otherwise? the eye-narrator is a writer...in the 5th chapter, helene, the fiancee of the eye-narrator of the 5th chapter calls him thomas...so? thomas thoenissen? what's a poor carpenter to do? i'm trying.
*thea sandstuhl, an stage actress
*arno sandstuhl, 50ish, thea's husband, some sort of travel writer
kuhnerts...accent marks possibly missing...dunno how to make them unless i can cut/paste as in nádas.
*frau (sieglinde?) kuhnert...she worked as a prompter in the volkstheater...yes, sieglinde kuhnert...again, in chap. 7
*doctor kuhnert, 50
*long shadows of jews
melchior, male, the eye-narrator's lover etc, a poet
*melchior's grandfather
*electricians
*helene, melchoir's mother, named after her mother who died in childbirth
*an elderly gentleman...and he brought along his own youth...and this character seems magical-real...
**natalya kasatkina, an old friend
**hilde, our maid
**the lady who was our next-door neighbor, fraulein wohlgast,terrace, late at night...nora wohlgast, fraulein wohlgast...she lost her sweetheart in '71 war against france. (?)
**dr kohler...spa
**theodor (thoenissen?), father of eye-narrator...yes, called "theo" in chapter 8.
**mother, passed, died, gone...an angel statue somewhat in her likeness over her grave
**privy councillor frick...below, too...he is a childhood friend of the father of the eye-narrator, they were both at a religious institution, described as spartan, medieval rigor
**fiance, helene? her parents
**frau itzenpiltz
**stonecutter...for angel...(father's depravity=in image of angel...?)
***eye-narrator, young...not clear how young, school-age, this eye is blonde, blue
***krisztian...another young boy/man, a head taller than eye
***his mother
***the principal...as in do not report me.
****the director...stagehands...high-strung extras...wardrobe & lighting crew members...overeager assistant director
5th & below **eye-narrator...thomas, by name, called so by helene
**landlady, frau hubner, a hapless widow
**young lady, fiancee, helene, who is not yet 19 years old
**friend claus diestenweg
**two uncombed, pale-faced young girls, f. hubner's granddaughter & a friend
**the coachman...who brought helene
6th & below**schoolboy again?...eye-narrator
**thinking of him, him again...krisztian? i presume
**my little sister...who has a condition...some sort of learning disability...inarticulate save for smiles and laughs
**a grandmother
**grandfather's growl
**mother
**a father
**guest...at mother's bed...five years in jail...the boy/youth recognizes him, but the reader is not privy to who this stranger is
7th and below**eye-narrator...embankment chapter again...from 4th chapter...the eye-narrator is indeed a hungarian
**night porter, hotel
**police, knocking...door is never answered
**langerhans...this is the director from above...rehearsal
**hubchen...actor...handsome...plays opposite thea sandstuhl
8th and below**dance band set up in the open lobby/spa
**riders...horses
**strollers...at the spa
*young boys & girls w/hoops...on the straight road
**ladies & gentlemen
**heinrich, prince mecklenburg...at the spa
**younger taller princesses
**attendants
**privy councillor frick, peter van frick, above, too
**eros
**an actress...frick-associated
**count stollberg...described as a playmate of the eye-narrator, chapter 8...at heiligendamm, a boy a few years senior the eye
9th & below**
**her
**kirisztian
**the real livia...
**there were several of us inside me who were watching her
**her father was the school janitor & also the sexton for a nearby church
**someone told me her mother said to be a gypsy
**stalin...his funeral
**szmodits...another boy...classmate/age of eye-narrtor
**prem...same
**kalman csuzdi...same
**hungarian fascists
**hedi szan...another girl...of her...classmate/age
**maja prihoda...same
**livia sulu
**the maid. ..maria stein
**a few people standing
**a messenger hurrying past
**a handcuffed prisoner
**their maid...szidonia
10 & below
**the neighbors
**the old man had died on an urine-soaked mattress
**melchior & eye-narrator
**machine-gun-toting soldiers
**the wall
**a friend
**hubchen...thea...frau kuhnert
**noisy throng of theatre goers
**dead man in photo...is not melchior's father
**his father was a french p.o.w.
**terminally-ill patients
**doctors...family doctor
**pierre...melchior's friend...french friend...?
**the invisible third person
**part ii and below:
*eye-narrator (unnamed) regarding a picture, an antique mural, arcadian...plans to use this mural in his narrative
*eros...helios...pan...3 nymphs...hermes [mother father son]...
*the painter
*zeus, daughter
*my betrothed...still helene, i believe
*dryope...arcadian shepherd hermes
*salmakis...hermes...son...aphrodite
*twins
*uranus...hermera
*hermaphroditos
*helene was in love w/
*claus diestenweg, a paternal friend
*eye-narrator as observer
*lamplighter
*slim coachman, @ 20
*3 women, mother, two daughters, late teens, operate a butcher shop
*landlady frau hubner
*unsuspecting passersby
*count stollberg...hilde...dr. kohler (of the snail farm)
*servants
*unauthorized stranger
*helix pomata...common edible snail...street scene, antique mural...contact w/other snails produces profound terror...each is a complete whole...androgynous
*szidonia (before too) 7 years age difference (older?) than maja
*some streetcar conductor #23 tram
*other man in her car watching the conductor watch her
*mother of conductor
*little sister of conductor
*good-for-nothing friend of the mother of the conductor
*the neighbors saw everything
*maja, b/2
*hedi szan...before 2
*livia...b/2
*that gigantic eye
*armed guards (never seen...but known)
*gimlet-eyes guards
*vitez...accent over the "e"...but really, all accents are missing...sue, sue, sue me. or go fish. this is kalman's large black dog who fears the guard dogs of the comrade rakosi plantation
*pista, guard for rakosi...on the other side...at lorant st gate
*comrade rakosi
*mrs huvos
*kalman b/2
*a sow, 4 piglets
*kalman's father & his 2 much older brothers were bakers
*kalman's mother cleans wards at janos hospital
*grandmother/grandfather...private property was nationalized...etc
*mother's older sister klara
*"...maybe just a giant eye with no body to go with it..."
some ideas at work & play
~knowledge of nothingness should have sufficed
~the eye is grit for the karen horney, third-force psychology mill, as he is torn, he presents himself as alienated (p45)...the disarray of a twisted soul...nádas, like many others i've read, describes a self outside the self, i had lost all feeling of my body, i was hovering somewhere above myself yet way too low. that sketch of the self on p45 includes three forces at work, as horney described, expansive, resigned, & self-effacing...and that page/description is a part of a chapter--the soft light of the sun--wherein he is much younger than the 30-yr-old in the first.
~the situation was exceptional only in that i could not identify with either one of my selves, and in this overexcited state i felt like an actor moving about on a romantic stage set, my past being only a shallow impersonation of myself...
~seems conscious, aware of this distorted image...yet who is to say? him? others? ...as if something had splintered the image we so painstakingly create of ourselves and wish to see accepted by others, until this distorted image seems real even to us...
~a curious situation, whereas most of those whom horney describes in her Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle Towards Self-Realization are not aware (as here) that they have an idealized image of their self.
a note on the narration...having read seven chapters. 108 pages...twelve left...about 600 pages to go
there's a sense that the eye-narrator in each is not necessarily the same person...although, they could be the same person, simply at different periods in the man's/boy's life. in the first, he has a male lover...in the 5th he has a fiancee...and, there are different characters in the 5th...yet, in both, he entertains the desire to kill both the male lover and the fiancee. wuzzup wid dat.
there's more than a few interesting scenes where the eye is recalling events from a younger time...we get his take on these events...the last, that caused his mother to faint away, is easily enough understood...verily.
but one before that...frick and the old man...curious, that description and the eye's take on it. i'd hazard his take is suspect, but perhaps there is more coming in the narrative...as things have a way of repeating, seems. instinct.
update at the part-i finished mark, a bit into part ii, 24 jul 13, wednesday evening, 8:31 p.m. e.s.t.
yeah, okay...so this part i, the narrator seems to be the same person throughout, at times, for some, he is much younger...but he is either 30 or in his 30s...
there's this two males and a female thing throughout...and...into part ii...ideas about perception, how we perceive, what we perceive....groups of three, really, throughout...the three school-age kids listed above, in 8 or 9? and...even when there are two on stage, there is the invisible third presence. in part ii, the eye-narrator...can we assume it is the same person?...looks at a picture or sorts...arcadian and he don't mean louisiana...a repeat image of the mother's dream in part i...two males, a female...and various interpretations of that, dream and picture. curious to see where it goes...curious to see this idea of multiple narratives developed...i am assuming now that the three parts of the book contain what is described by many.
on 25 jul 13, thursday evening, 8:33 p.m. e.s.t.
yeah okay so i'm into part two, the 2nd chapter of that section, a relatively long chapter...and...i can't for the life of me make sense of the description of what this book is...allegedly? supposedly? about. this mulch-layered narrative something something. so...the heck with it...i'm reading it w/an eye toward disregarding what i read about it.
i can't see any...visible...difference between the eye-narrator of part one...who at times seemed like a multitude of people...or three...and the eye-narrator of part ii....so? where is this that the other? sheesh...can't forget what i read about this book, can i?
anyway...
at page-454-mark, 27 jul 13, saturday afternoon, 4:43 p.m. e.s.t.
so...i've been looking at the few reviews again & again, going over them, seeing if i missed something, trying to determine if someone is onto something, if there's a key to the mystery of unlocking this story. even looked on wiki...and not much there...not much helpful. here?
opinion seems a bit divided, or confused, one. as i am. not that that is necessarily a bad thing. we learn as we go. but on this narration here...at least one review says there is a different narrator for each of the story's three parts. i believe wiki says the same thing.
me? i don't see that...as in each of the two parts (one chapter left to-go in part ii) i've read, there are similarities of each of the eye-narrators of each of the chapters, there are some of the same characters in chapters. could be the narratives are...what? interspersed, as it says some place? could be. is that important? helps to move about, doesn't it?
in this table d'hote...w/the small roof over the "o"...the name thoenissen is used by a young valet to answer the eye-narrator...is this a "written" chapter? what? how is it different from the others? writing about "raw forces" inside us...this kind of machiavellian attitude that all-is-okay, there is not standard but the one eye can determine...instincts...there's a point, too, where, if this is the portion being written...that the eye...is drowning in the story of my body......but that's not what i wanted to record.
what i wanted to record is also...?...from the previous chapter...or this one. doesn't matter, as the eye says what he writes resembles himself. maybe just a giant eye with no body to go with it...
--(383). and at one point, it is melchior who is typing, the eye writing notes...so i'm anticipating the final voice here.
more than one review has made ado about the homosexual themes within...and yes, that is here, but too, there's this idea of the three...it was as if in kalman and me maja loved not two different individuals but a single one who couldn't be fully embodied in either one alone. and while horney's psychology entertains a number of interesting questions applicable to a gay/character, whose choices might could lead to more neurosis than the average bear...this 3-biz is interesting-curious, too.
reminded of Alexander Theroux and the idea of three in some of his stories, or all of them...An Adultery...Laura Warholic or, the Sexual Intellectual...
done, @9:48 p.m. e.s.t. 28 jul 13 late sunday evening
yeah...and so the mystery of who's the narrator continues save for the next to the last chapter, no more...my name is krisztian somi tot...accent marks missing one over the "a" and the other over the 2nd "o". he is 37 years old in that next to last chapter.
rating?...4? 5? "it was amazing?" if one simply clicks on the 3rd 4th 5th star, the system does not bring up the small box...even 2 would apply, it was okay. 3, i liked it. at times i really liked it. an amazing amount of labor is evident herein.
at some point maybe i'll look over my notes/index and try to decipher what chapters apply to the story's description...it was a dark, foggy winter night and of course i couldn't see anything....and what is this? what # review? 28th? 9th? i think it'd be the 28th...less than 200 ratings...be afraid, be very afraid.
i think the chapters that are being written by an eye-narrator have to do w/the past...w/krisztian and others...and there are a number of those chapters. in the no more chapter, krisztian tells the reader that he has read the manuscript, tells how it came to be...or wait now...krisztian writes about the manuscript as if the first chapter, the opening lines of this story are his friend's manuscript...and yet he also takes issue w/some items his friend wrote about him...that is included in the chapters.
...which makes the 2nd chapter eye-narrator, this thoenissen guy, thomas...one of the other 3 voices herein? huh? i dunno. a wilderness.
an "author's note"...it is my pleasant duty to state that what i have written is not my own memoirs. i have written a novel, the recollections of several people separated by time, somewhat in the fashion of Plutarch's, Parallel Lives Vol. 1..."
curious, in light of my recent read just finished, The Floating Opera...that includes adam's original & unparalleled floating opera.
divided into three parts, the chapters titled separately...
a quote on a white page: "but he spoke of the temple of his body..."
--john 2:21
part i, chapter one, the beauty of my anomalous nature begins:
the last place i lived in in berlin was at the kuhnert's, [accent marks missing here there everywhere] out in schoneweide, on the second floor of a villa covered in wild vines.
the leaves of the creeping vines were already turning red and birds were pecking at the blackened berries; autumn had arrived.
no wonder this is all coming back to me now: three years have passed, three autumns, and i know i'll never go back to berlin, there'd be no reason, no one to go to; that's also why i write that it was the last place i lived in in berlin, i just know it was.
a flavor, anyway. onward & upward.
update, 21 jul 13, sunday
how to index this...chapter by chapter? since this has several narratives?
the beauty of my anomalous nature
an eye-narrator, 30-yr-old, remembering the past, berlin. the time is the 1970s--this from the description on the back--have not read that as yet.
contents
part i
1. the beauty of my anomalous nature
2. our afternoon walk of long ago
3. the soft light of the sun
4. a telegram arrives
5. sitting in god's hand
6. slowly the pain returned
7. losing consciousness and regaining it
8. our afternoon walk continued
9. girls
10. melchior's room under the eaves
part ii
11. on an antique mural
12. grass grew over the scorched spot
13. description of a theater performance
14. table d'hote [accent over the "o"...little roof]
part iii
15. the year of funerals
16. in which he tells thea all about melchior's confession
17. the nights of our secret delight
18. no more
19. escape
time place scene settings
*1970s...berlin...30 years after the war...so? 1975?
*2nd floor apt of a villa, on steffelbauerstrasse
schoneweide, "pretty pasture"
*synagogue on rykestrasse...east berlin
*melchior's house on worther platz
*corner of dimitroffstrasse, tobacco shop
*the path around the muggelsee
*heilgendamm, "white city on the sea" (more of a village)
*niehhagen, a neighboring town
*gespensterwald, forest of ghosts
**ludwigsdorf...hilde & eye visited on saturdays
**rehearsal hall
**eye-narrator's rooms...entryway to same...hallway...lights
**standing before a mirror
**mother's bedroom, bed
**enbankment
**hotel room
**the fresh-air cure at a spa
**straight road leading to station...from spa
**a train...connects old town of bad doberan w/kuhlungsborn
**the terrace
**the gym at school
**bathroom
**the maid's room
**prihoda's spacious living room
**melchior's room under the eaves
**opera house, new production of fidelio
**the car...from one theater to another
*from part ii:
*my flat on weissenbugerstrasse, 5th floor
*horse-drawn wagon on worther platz
*at the window of his flat
*summers at heiligendamm
*dr kohler's snail farm
*this forest...a clearing
*1st chapter ends w/the second-person you
2nd chap of part ii:
*tram
*boraros square...tram #6...moszkva square....cog-railway station...large clearing
*the buda hills
*immense, heavily-guarded area that contained the residence of matyas rakosi
*adonisz road...lorant st. gate...felho street...the csuzdi house...swabian hill
*grandfather's law offices on terez blvd
characters
best i can do...deciphering the narrative as i go along...could be wrong on some matters.
*eye-narrator, male, 30-yr-old, as yet not named...though perhaps his last name is thoenissen. why does nádas not provide a name for him? because it is nádas? or otherwise? the eye-narrator is a writer...in the 5th chapter, helene, the fiancee of the eye-narrator of the 5th chapter calls him thomas...so? thomas thoenissen? what's a poor carpenter to do? i'm trying.
*thea sandstuhl, an stage actress
*arno sandstuhl, 50ish, thea's husband, some sort of travel writer
kuhnerts...accent marks possibly missing...dunno how to make them unless i can cut/paste as in nádas.
*frau (sieglinde?) kuhnert...she worked as a prompter in the volkstheater...yes, sieglinde kuhnert...again, in chap. 7
*doctor kuhnert, 50
*long shadows of jews
melchior, male, the eye-narrator's lover etc, a poet
*melchior's grandfather
*electricians
*helene, melchoir's mother, named after her mother who died in childbirth
*an elderly gentleman...and he brought along his own youth...and this character seems magical-real...
**natalya kasatkina, an old friend
**hilde, our maid
**the lady who was our next-door neighbor, fraulein wohlgast,terrace, late at night...nora wohlgast, fraulein wohlgast...she lost her sweetheart in '71 war against france. (?)
**dr kohler...spa
**theodor (thoenissen?), father of eye-narrator...yes, called "theo" in chapter 8.
**mother, passed, died, gone...an angel statue somewhat in her likeness over her grave
**privy councillor frick...below, too...he is a childhood friend of the father of the eye-narrator, they were both at a religious institution, described as spartan, medieval rigor
**fiance, helene? her parents
**frau itzenpiltz
**stonecutter...for angel...(father's depravity=in image of angel...?)
***eye-narrator, young...not clear how young, school-age, this eye is blonde, blue
***krisztian...another young boy/man, a head taller than eye
***his mother
***the principal...as in do not report me.
****the director...stagehands...high-strung extras...wardrobe & lighting crew members...overeager assistant director
5th & below **eye-narrator...thomas, by name, called so by helene
**landlady, frau hubner, a hapless widow
**young lady, fiancee, helene, who is not yet 19 years old
**friend claus diestenweg
**two uncombed, pale-faced young girls, f. hubner's granddaughter & a friend
**the coachman...who brought helene
6th & below**schoolboy again?...eye-narrator
**thinking of him, him again...krisztian? i presume
**my little sister...who has a condition...some sort of learning disability...inarticulate save for smiles and laughs
**a grandmother
**grandfather's growl
**mother
**a father
**guest...at mother's bed...five years in jail...the boy/youth recognizes him, but the reader is not privy to who this stranger is
7th and below**eye-narrator...embankment chapter again...from 4th chapter...the eye-narrator is indeed a hungarian
**night porter, hotel
**police, knocking...door is never answered
**langerhans...this is the director from above...rehearsal
**hubchen...actor...handsome...plays opposite thea sandstuhl
8th and below**dance band set up in the open lobby/spa
**riders...horses
**strollers...at the spa
*young boys & girls w/hoops...on the straight road
**ladies & gentlemen
**heinrich, prince mecklenburg...at the spa
**younger taller princesses
**attendants
**privy councillor frick, peter van frick, above, too
**eros
**an actress...frick-associated
**count stollberg...described as a playmate of the eye-narrator, chapter 8...at heiligendamm, a boy a few years senior the eye
9th & below**
**her
**kirisztian
**the real livia...
**there were several of us inside me who were watching her
**her father was the school janitor & also the sexton for a nearby church
**someone told me her mother said to be a gypsy
**stalin...his funeral
**szmodits...another boy...classmate/age of eye-narrtor
**prem...same
**kalman csuzdi...same
**hungarian fascists
**hedi szan...another girl...of her...classmate/age
**maja prihoda...same
**livia sulu
**the maid. ..maria stein
**a few people standing
**a messenger hurrying past
**a handcuffed prisoner
**their maid...szidonia
10 & below
**the neighbors
**the old man had died on an urine-soaked mattress
**melchior & eye-narrator
**machine-gun-toting soldiers
**the wall
**a friend
**hubchen...thea...frau kuhnert
**noisy throng of theatre goers
**dead man in photo...is not melchior's father
**his father was a french p.o.w.
**terminally-ill patients
**doctors...family doctor
**pierre...melchior's friend...french friend...?
**the invisible third person
**part ii and below:
*eye-narrator (unnamed) regarding a picture, an antique mural, arcadian...plans to use this mural in his narrative
*eros...helios...pan...3 nymphs...hermes [mother father son]...
*the painter
*zeus, daughter
*my betrothed...still helene, i believe
*dryope...arcadian shepherd hermes
*salmakis...hermes...son...aphrodite
*twins
*uranus...hermera
*hermaphroditos
*helene was in love w/
*claus diestenweg, a paternal friend
*eye-narrator as observer
*lamplighter
*slim coachman, @ 20
*3 women, mother, two daughters, late teens, operate a butcher shop
*landlady frau hubner
*unsuspecting passersby
*count stollberg...hilde...dr. kohler (of the snail farm)
*servants
*unauthorized stranger
*helix pomata...common edible snail...street scene, antique mural...contact w/other snails produces profound terror...each is a complete whole...androgynous
*szidonia (before too) 7 years age difference (older?) than maja
*some streetcar conductor #23 tram
*other man in her car watching the conductor watch her
*mother of conductor
*little sister of conductor
*good-for-nothing friend of the mother of the conductor
*the neighbors saw everything
*maja, b/2
*hedi szan...before 2
*livia...b/2
*that gigantic eye
*armed guards (never seen...but known)
*gimlet-eyes guards
*vitez...accent over the "e"...but really, all accents are missing...sue, sue, sue me. or go fish. this is kalman's large black dog who fears the guard dogs of the comrade rakosi plantation
*pista, guard for rakosi...on the other side...at lorant st gate
*comrade rakosi
*mrs huvos
*kalman b/2
*a sow, 4 piglets
*kalman's father & his 2 much older brothers were bakers
*kalman's mother cleans wards at janos hospital
*grandmother/grandfather...private property was nationalized...etc
*mother's older sister klara
*"...maybe just a giant eye with no body to go with it..."
some ideas at work & play
~knowledge of nothingness should have sufficed
~the eye is grit for the karen horney, third-force psychology mill, as he is torn, he presents himself as alienated (p45)...the disarray of a twisted soul...nádas, like many others i've read, describes a self outside the self, i had lost all feeling of my body, i was hovering somewhere above myself yet way too low. that sketch of the self on p45 includes three forces at work, as horney described, expansive, resigned, & self-effacing...and that page/description is a part of a chapter--the soft light of the sun--wherein he is much younger than the 30-yr-old in the first.
~the situation was exceptional only in that i could not identify with either one of my selves, and in this overexcited state i felt like an actor moving about on a romantic stage set, my past being only a shallow impersonation of myself...
~seems conscious, aware of this distorted image...yet who is to say? him? others? ...as if something had splintered the image we so painstakingly create of ourselves and wish to see accepted by others, until this distorted image seems real even to us...
~a curious situation, whereas most of those whom horney describes in her Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle Towards Self-Realization are not aware (as here) that they have an idealized image of their self.
a note on the narration...having read seven chapters. 108 pages...twelve left...about 600 pages to go
there's a sense that the eye-narrator in each is not necessarily the same person...although, they could be the same person, simply at different periods in the man's/boy's life. in the first, he has a male lover...in the 5th he has a fiancee...and, there are different characters in the 5th...yet, in both, he entertains the desire to kill both the male lover and the fiancee. wuzzup wid dat.
there's more than a few interesting scenes where the eye is recalling events from a younger time...we get his take on these events...the last, that caused his mother to faint away, is easily enough understood...verily.
but one before that...frick and the old man...curious, that description and the eye's take on it. i'd hazard his take is suspect, but perhaps there is more coming in the narrative...as things have a way of repeating, seems. instinct.
update at the part-i finished mark, a bit into part ii, 24 jul 13, wednesday evening, 8:31 p.m. e.s.t.
yeah, okay...so this part i, the narrator seems to be the same person throughout, at times, for some, he is much younger...but he is either 30 or in his 30s...
there's this two males and a female thing throughout...and...into part ii...ideas about perception, how we perceive, what we perceive....groups of three, really, throughout...the three school-age kids listed above, in 8 or 9? and...even when there are two on stage, there is the invisible third presence. in part ii, the eye-narrator...can we assume it is the same person?...looks at a picture or sorts...arcadian and he don't mean louisiana...a repeat image of the mother's dream in part i...two males, a female...and various interpretations of that, dream and picture. curious to see where it goes...curious to see this idea of multiple narratives developed...i am assuming now that the three parts of the book contain what is described by many.
on 25 jul 13, thursday evening, 8:33 p.m. e.s.t.
yeah okay so i'm into part two, the 2nd chapter of that section, a relatively long chapter...and...i can't for the life of me make sense of the description of what this book is...allegedly? supposedly? about. this mulch-layered narrative something something. so...the heck with it...i'm reading it w/an eye toward disregarding what i read about it.
i can't see any...visible...difference between the eye-narrator of part one...who at times seemed like a multitude of people...or three...and the eye-narrator of part ii....so? where is this that the other? sheesh...can't forget what i read about this book, can i?
anyway...
at page-454-mark, 27 jul 13, saturday afternoon, 4:43 p.m. e.s.t.
so...i've been looking at the few reviews again & again, going over them, seeing if i missed something, trying to determine if someone is onto something, if there's a key to the mystery of unlocking this story. even looked on wiki...and not much there...not much helpful. here?
opinion seems a bit divided, or confused, one. as i am. not that that is necessarily a bad thing. we learn as we go. but on this narration here...at least one review says there is a different narrator for each of the story's three parts. i believe wiki says the same thing.
me? i don't see that...as in each of the two parts (one chapter left to-go in part ii) i've read, there are similarities of each of the eye-narrators of each of the chapters, there are some of the same characters in chapters. could be the narratives are...what? interspersed, as it says some place? could be. is that important? helps to move about, doesn't it?
in this table d'hote...w/the small roof over the "o"...the name thoenissen is used by a young valet to answer the eye-narrator...is this a "written" chapter? what? how is it different from the others? writing about "raw forces" inside us...this kind of machiavellian attitude that all-is-okay, there is not standard but the one eye can determine...instincts...there's a point, too, where, if this is the portion being written...that the eye...is drowning in the story of my body......but that's not what i wanted to record.
what i wanted to record is also...?...from the previous chapter...or this one. doesn't matter, as the eye says what he writes resembles himself. maybe just a giant eye with no body to go with it...
--(383). and at one point, it is melchior who is typing, the eye writing notes...so i'm anticipating the final voice here.
more than one review has made ado about the homosexual themes within...and yes, that is here, but too, there's this idea of the three...it was as if in kalman and me maja loved not two different individuals but a single one who couldn't be fully embodied in either one alone. and while horney's psychology entertains a number of interesting questions applicable to a gay/character, whose choices might could lead to more neurosis than the average bear...this 3-biz is interesting-curious, too.
reminded of Alexander Theroux and the idea of three in some of his stories, or all of them...An Adultery...Laura Warholic or, the Sexual Intellectual...
done, @9:48 p.m. e.s.t. 28 jul 13 late sunday evening
yeah...and so the mystery of who's the narrator continues save for the next to the last chapter, no more...my name is krisztian somi tot...accent marks missing one over the "a" and the other over the 2nd "o". he is 37 years old in that next to last chapter.
rating?...4? 5? "it was amazing?" if one simply clicks on the 3rd 4th 5th star, the system does not bring up the small box...even 2 would apply, it was okay. 3, i liked it. at times i really liked it. an amazing amount of labor is evident herein.
at some point maybe i'll look over my notes/index and try to decipher what chapters apply to the story's description...it was a dark, foggy winter night and of course i couldn't see anything....and what is this? what # review? 28th? 9th? i think it'd be the 28th...less than 200 ratings...be afraid, be very afraid.
i think the chapters that are being written by an eye-narrator have to do w/the past...w/krisztian and others...and there are a number of those chapters. in the no more chapter, krisztian tells the reader that he has read the manuscript, tells how it came to be...or wait now...krisztian writes about the manuscript as if the first chapter, the opening lines of this story are his friend's manuscript...and yet he also takes issue w/some items his friend wrote about him...that is included in the chapters.
...which makes the 2nd chapter eye-narrator, this thoenissen guy, thomas...one of the other 3 voices herein? huh? i dunno. a wilderness.
January 25, 2025
Översättningen (alltså den svenska) var märkbart sämre än när det kom till Illuminerade detaljer 1 och 2, men fortfarande besatt av honom.
March 22, 2011
There are parts of this book that are 4-star. There are parts of this book that are 2-star. There is no part of this book that is middle-of-the-road 3 stars!
The book is long -- over 700 pages -- and is basically all memoir. But who's? The narrators (and there are three different ones for each of the three sections of the book) are all writers telling you stories from diffeerent times of their lives, as well as from the lives of characters they are writing about. But they are all purposefully unclear about which is which. Confusing. .. but in that Marcel Proust/Hermann Hesse existentialist type way (if, indeed, you can lump those two together).
A middle chapter the second book is 130 pages long, about 5 times as long as any opther chapter, and forms a great little novella all its own. That, and the raw sexuality of the stories in Part 1, is the best part of the narrative. Great, unnerving stuff about people's relationships with each other as they try to discover what pleasure they can in a strange world of inhibitions and expectations.
The book is long -- over 700 pages -- and is basically all memoir. But who's? The narrators (and there are three different ones for each of the three sections of the book) are all writers telling you stories from diffeerent times of their lives, as well as from the lives of characters they are writing about. But they are all purposefully unclear about which is which. Confusing. .. but in that Marcel Proust/Hermann Hesse existentialist type way (if, indeed, you can lump those two together).
A middle chapter the second book is 130 pages long, about 5 times as long as any opther chapter, and forms a great little novella all its own. That, and the raw sexuality of the stories in Part 1, is the best part of the narrative. Great, unnerving stuff about people's relationships with each other as they try to discover what pleasure they can in a strange world of inhibitions and expectations.
March 26, 2010
Long, rambling, and too sentimental for my taste. This took me longer to get through than usual, and I had to keep struggling to pick it back up. After reading some other works in between I finally finished it. The characters were so narcissistic and closed off from the world around them, it could be really annoying at times. Lots of ego and Freudian ideas throughout the plot, and the attempt to sort of draw it together at the end fell way short in my mind. I love Eastern European work and was really disappointed after the good things I'd heard about it. There's just not enough to it for me to recommend someone spending the time to get through it. I will say his descriptions and writing could be very beautiful at times though.
August 24, 2012
This book appeared in Publisher's Weekly with a brief review saying that it was a logical choice if you had already worked your way through Proust, Musil, and Mann's Magic Mountain. I had, so I picked it up; after that comparison, it had much to live up to. It does.
Nadas is a Hungarian who deserves to be better known in this country. In this volume, he juxtaposes two narrative lines, and it takes a while to sort that out. The best way that I can describe is writing is dreamlike: not in the sense of vague, but in the sense that some things are cloudy and other things are incredibly vivid, and one doesn't always know why.
Nadas is a Hungarian who deserves to be better known in this country. In this volume, he juxtaposes two narrative lines, and it takes a while to sort that out. The best way that I can describe is writing is dreamlike: not in the sense of vague, but in the sense that some things are cloudy and other things are incredibly vivid, and one doesn't always know why.
April 5, 2021
Quite possibly the best Hungarian book I've ever read - and one of the best books I've ever read in general.
I can definitely see how it drew comparisons to Mann and Proust, but Nádas is a literary genius on his own.
The structure...the prose...the hypersensitive and the almost overanalytical descriptions... Wonderful and moving. Chapeau!
I can definitely see how it drew comparisons to Mann and Proust, but Nádas is a literary genius on his own.
The structure...the prose...the hypersensitive and the almost overanalytical descriptions... Wonderful and moving. Chapeau!
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