Δούναβης

by Claudio Magris, Μπάμπης Λυκούδης (Translator)

O Δούναβης είναι ένα προσωπικό στοχαστικό ταξίδι κατά μήκος των 2.888 χιλιομέτρων του ποταμού, από τις διαφιλονικούμενες πηγές του στη Γερμανία ώς τις εκβολές του στη Μαύρη Θάλασσα (στο περίφημο λιμάνι Σουλίνα, τόπο δράσης της βεριστικής όπερας του Σπύρου Σαμάρα «Η μάρτυς»), που μετατρέπεται σε μια συναρπαστική αφήγηση γύρω από το θέμα των συνόρων και της ταυτότητας. Το σύνορο ή τα σύνορα, το εδώ και το πέρα, το γνωστό και το άγνωστο στη διαλεκτική σχέση τους, αποτελούν τη συνιστώσα του Δούναβη, αλλά και όλου του έργου του Μάγκρις. O Δούναβης, αυτός ο γερμανο-μαγιαρο-σλαβο-ρομανο-εβραϊκός ποταμός, που ποτίζει κυριολεκτικά τη Mitteleuropa (είτε ως πραγματική γεωγραφία είτε ως λογοτεχνική) και αποτελεί από μόνος του μιαν οικουμένη, δίνει την ευκαιρία στον Μάγκρις να δημιουργήσει μια αφήγηση-ποταμό, όπου η γεωγραφία, το τοπίο, η γεωπολιτική συναντούν την ιστορία και συνομιλούν με τις φωνές της συνείδησής της, τον Χάιντεγγερ, τον Σελίν, τον Γκριλπάρτζερ, τον Κάφκα, τον Κανέτι, τον Παναΐτ Ιστράτι και τόσους άλλους. Υπάρχει καλύτερη μεταφορά από το ποτάμι ως κατ’ εξοχήν εικόνα της αναζήτησης πάνω στην ταυτότητα; Από την εποχή του Ηράκλειτου, ξέρουμε πως όχι. Όσο για τον μεγαλύτερο ποιητή του Δούναβη, τον Χαίλντερλιν, ο ποταμός είναι «το ταξίδι-συνάντηση Ανατολής και Δύσης, σύνθεση του Καύκασου και της Γερμανίας, ελληνική άνοιξη που θα έπρεπε να ξανανθίσει στη γερμανική γη και να ξαναφέρει πίσω τους θεούς».
(από την εισαγωγή του Νίκου Μπακουνάκη)

Genres: Travel, History, Nonfiction, Italian Literature, Italy, Literature, Germany

552 pages, Paperback

First published October 29, 1986

About the author

Claudio Magris was born in Trieste in the year 1939. He graduated from the University of Turin, where he studied German studies, and has been a professor of modern German literature at the University of Trieste since 1978.

His most well known book is Danubio (1986), which is a magnum opus. In this book Magris tracks the course of the Danube from its sources to the sea. The whole trip evolves into a colorful, rich canvas of the multicultural European history.

He's translated the works of Ibsen, Kleist and Schnitzler, among others, and he also published essays about Robert Musil, Jorge Luis Borges, Hermann Hesse and many others.

Reviews

[William2 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Erudite meditations on the Danube and the blood-soaked lands through which it winds. Danube is not a travel narrative in the classic sense. The river is here a device for writing about a mix of colorful events and persons associated with it. Magris is a critic and his assessment of cultural phenomenon along the river's course is often excellent, especially when he deigns to tell the reader what he's writing about. It's a densely allusive work.

That said, the long essay on Louis-Ferdinand Céline—who stayed at Sigmaringen Castle on the Danube when the collaborationist Vichy government was forced there by the retreating Germans—is fascinating. Céline went from "the great voice of the people" before World War 2 to that of "an iniquitous traitor, an anti-semite hunted down and reduced to the scum of the earth on a level with the Nazi butchers" afterward. Yet Magris makes a compelling argument for his greatness while at the same time acutely rendering judgement.

The section on Jean Paul was beyond me. I never got a handle on the Catherine Wheel of abstractions Magris was spinning there. If there's a problem with this book, it's that the author—this, assuming the translation is accurate—fancies himself a stylist. I'm with V.S. Naipaul on this one: "good writing doesn't draw attention to itself." Yet the book is full of interesting arcana if you're willing to endure the flights of fancy.

Magris seems to have read everything and he wants you to know it. There are short essays on Hermann Schmid's little Danube tale, Franzel the Negress, a fiction in which her white lover makes her famous through his play The Queen of Sheba which, Magris writes, "exposes the whole savage shallowness of racism." The section called "The Archivist of Affronts" tells the story of one Ferdinand Thrän—known for The Cathedral of Ulm: an Exact Description of Same, 1857—who almost destroyed the cathedral by "his obstinate belief in a 'law' of arches which he was convinced he had discovered." More interesting to this reader was Thrän's File of Rudenesses Received, whose "precision and completeness . . .may [have] given a pleasure that compensated for the repulsiveness of what is actually noted."

The insight into the life and writings of the 19th-century Austrian writer, Adalbert Stifter—a great favorite of W.G. Sebald—was most welcome, as was the overview of Sankt Florian Church and monastery where Anton Bruckner played organ and wrote his great symphonic works. Other meditations include the double suicide of Crown Prince Rudolf and Maria Vetsera at Mayerling, 1889; a scathing critique of Wittgenstein's house at 19 Kundmanngasse; the split between humanity and the natural world which Magris sees lasting as long as we eat other animals; an image of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa riding to war across the stone bridge at Regensberg, ca. 1150; a consideration of the putrefactive vigor of the soil in the Central Cemetery, Vienna; a brief overview of Hungarian Marxist scholar György Lukács's life and work, especially how his adherence to Stalinism compromised him; and a canny summation of the poetry of Romanian-born Paul Celan who Magris sees as "...probably the last Orphic poet, a religious reformer of Orphic poetry, bringing it to a blinding, primeval purity before it is snuffed out."

I started this book after finishing Patrick Leigh Fermor's A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water, also memoirs-cum-travelogues-cum-histories of the Danube. At first I thought that Magris's failure to cite Fermor a trifle fishy. But now I'm relatively certain that Magris, who wrote in Italian, was not influenced by Fermor.

Fermor's travels on foot along the Danube as an 18 and 19 year old in 1934-35 saw him meeting with Gypsies, interacting with locals, learning their languages (German, Romani, Hungarian, Romanian, etc.), sometimes drinking to excess, picking up girls. He often did not know from one day to the next where he would sleep. Some nights it was on a thatch of fresh tree limbs, on others in the splendor of some ducal château. At one point in the second volume Fermor rides a magnificent black stallion—Malek—across the Great Hungarian Plain. The river and its banks are much more visibly present in his books due to his gift for rich descriptive writing. One gets from Fermor a sense of the river's every turning, the vast changes in its topography as it moves more than 2000 km to its delta in the Black Sea. In Magris this travel aspect is minimal. Magris does not evoke such an intimate view of the river and its banks, much less mix it up with the common people. We hardly get to know even those friends with whom he travels.

In closing, the book is a rich source of information. However, it's a hodgepodge. It doesn't gel; it never seeks to be an extended narrative. It's an anthology of curios. Moreover, Magris is tremendously private. We learn only of his intellectual inclinations, not his personal ones. Who are these friends so fleetingly mentioned? Where does he live, city or country? We want to know something about him, but he keeps his guard up, there is virtually nothing. This is why, while Magris' book is certainly worthwhile, for me the Fermor books are the far more accessible reads about this fascinating river and it diverse peoples.

[Nikos Tsentemeidis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Όσο με δυσκόλεψε στην αρχή και το παράτησα για 2 μήνες, τόσο με συνεπήρε όταν βρήκα χρόνο να του δώσω τη δέουσα προσοχή και εν τέλει να το απολαύσω μέχρι τέλους.

Το βιβλίο είναι πραγματική εγκυκλοπαίδεια. Μικρές αφηγήσεις που συνθέτουν εν συντομία την ιστορία, τον πολιτισμό, τα γράμματα των παραδουνάβιων περιοχών των τελευταίων αιώνων.

[E. G. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Introduction, by Richard Flanagan
Map

--Danube: A Sentimental Journey from the Source to the Black Sea

Index

[Zozetta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Τα πέντε αστεράκια δεν είναι αρκετά. Από τα ωραιότερα βιβλία που έχω διαβάσει.

[Orsodimondo]

Tutta la mia stima a Magris, lo leggo spesso sui giornali. Ma i suoi libri sono un'altra cosa. Si parla da anni di premio Nobel per lui, ma non credo che ce la far�� mai. E confermerebbe la mia opinione sul Nobel alla Letteratura: spesso non va ai veri grandi scrittori viventi, ma a quelli importanti. Che �� un'altra cosa.

[Vesna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Several months of reading Danube (in intervals) left me with more than 30 pages of notes and for two days I’ve been looking for a way to distill them into a coherent and shorter review. Impossible. This is anything but a standard travelogue. As Claudio Magris takes us on his journey along the Danube, all the places he visits -towns, cities, river banks, castles, country inns, meadows and forests- turn into the vast meditative space of his extraordinarily erudite and cosmopolitan mind trying to unravel the puzzles of contested histories, fluid national identities, complex cultural heritages and varied versions of the idea of ‘Mitteleuropa’, destinies of small nations and empires alike, transient victories and defeats, while making a whole range of philosophical observations from the notion of Nothingness to the ‘banality of evil’, a tour de force of thoughts about the literary traditions of the Danubian countries and the myriad of their writers and poets, the contextual nature of the arts and architecture from the medieval churches to the modern avant-garde, the science of snowflakes and measuring time … this encyclopedic spectrum of knowledge, which never scratches only the surface, pours into the narrative as seamlessly flowing as the river itself.

The Danube, this beloved river of my childhood, ultimately serves him as the metaphor for Time, historical and personal… At the start of his journey, Magris ponders that ever since Heraclitus the river has been the image for the questioning of identity, beginning with that old conundrum as to whether one can or cannot put one’s foot in the same river twice but then, some hundreds pages and kilometers later, he revisits this thought in that perhaps Heraclitus is wrong, and we always bathe in the same river, in the selfsame infinite present of its flowing.

And it was a very nostalgic journey for me, as Magris reminded me that our identity is partly made up of places, of the streets where we have lived and left part of ourselves.

But, as I’ve been living on the other side of the globe from my Danube, there is always the next journey in life, full of unknown wonders, for travelling is perhaps always a journey towards those distances that glow red and purple in the evening sky, beyond the line of the sea or the mountains, to the countries where the sun is rising when it sets with us.

Thank you, Signor Magris.

P.S. By coincidence I discovered that he was a close friend of Javier Marías who bestowed him with a special title in his literary 'Kingdom of Redonda'. Their mutual admiration was quite evident as I listened to their conversation recorded this summer, which sadly turned out to be their last as Marías unexpectedly died three months later.

[Marc Lamot]

I'm going to be very honest: Magris' over-the-top erudition, his impossible-to-follow sentences, the constant detours, the pedantic tone,…, it eventually became a bit too much for me. I didn’t finish it, so I won't rate it. Agreed, Magris has interesting things to say (about the fiction of the concept of 'Mittel-Europa', for instance), but he drowns it in a bombardment of theses about all possible facets of European culture. His postmodernist approach, with a constant mixing of genres and ever diverging musings, gives a very outdated impression. And the fact that it was originally published in 1986, so before the fall of the Iron Curtain, doesn't help either. Perhaps my bad?

[Jonfaith · Rating 4 out of 5]

A parasite of hardship, he takes refuge in absolute negation, splashing about comfortably among the contradictions of existence and of culture, and flaunting the frenzy of them, instead of trying to understand the far more arduous contest between good and evil, truth and falsehood, which every day brings with it.

This is a most episodic erudition, a heartbeat of time through the prism of a lifetime in a chair (recalling Gass) pondering the endless flow of a river, across Europe, across history, eventually allowing the sediment to afford upper case status-- History. My own time by the Danube has seldom been "Blue" as it were but one instead of marvel. I was there once on the Chain Bridge with the woman I love. We were not married then and I was left most mortified at making a move. (I had just read Prague by Arthur Phillips where the protagonist attempts to kiss a woman on the bridge and is rejected).

The quest of Magris along the river does appear solipsistic--but that isn't a complaint. He initially puzzles over the what constitutes the source of the river. There is incredible debate and contention regarding the location. Such assertions have considerable baggage. What do they preclude, what jingoism is evoked? Each page both crackles and groans under the weight of its references: Goethe, Holderlin, Nietzsche, Hofmannsthal.

The book inspires its own echoes -- go see Ister (2004) by David Barison, snuggle up with Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts

The book proceeds down the river, known of course in Ancient Greece as Ister. There is a melancholy of absence--not only of times and traditions, but tongues and manners of grace and civility. I myself was on the banks just a short while back. Looking about at the vineyard my wife's family are cultivating near Sremski Karlovci, or Carlowitz as it was known under the Hapsburgs or Karlofça as it was known by the Ottoman Empire. There is a Roman ruin on a hilltop and down below a 15C church, in the waning light of day the church betrayed a menace and my imagination flinched at the possibility of a Lovecraftean cult of river evil.

Serbia doesn't appear prominent in the book. Magris deliberates on Vienna and its poetic silence.

Silence is not Marx, it is Wittgenstein or Hofnannsthal: it is Viennese.

The Ottomans failed in their siege and back in Beograd someone had to answer for the defeat. It would have been so simple to tweet the succession. The book was penned in 1986 before Glastnost led to a change in format. It also predates the Yugoslav Civil War and the NATO destruction of the bridges at Novi Sod. The EU eventually paid for the removal and restoration: trade must prevail!

It may be that the moment is approaching, when the historical, social and cultural differences will reveal, and violently, the difficulties of mutual incompatibility. Our future will depend in part on our ability to prevent the priming of this time-bomb of hatred, and the possibility that new Battles of Vienna will transform brothers into foreigners and enemies.

Strange how the subterranean rifts in the YU throughout the 80s are ignored in favor of concerns about Bulgaria. Maybe the Brexit can be read into such, if it happened along those storied banks?

[dely · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really struggled to finish this book. The author travels from the source of the Danube to its outfall and it could have been an interesting travelogue but it isn't. First of all, the language is too difficult, pompous and erudite. Sometimes I had the feeling that the author wanted only to show how cultured he is. The author also uses too long sentences with several subordinate propositions and it was a torture to read those sentences. But, maybe the worst part of this book, is that the author takes for granted that the reader already knows everything about history and historical characters and events, geography, philosophers, writers and characters in books. He doesn't talk about important events that occured in the places along the Danube, but mainly about anecdotes or small curiosities. Therefore the reader needs to know the background and the historical event of these anecdotes and curiosities in order to understand them. The author also mentions characters from the Iliad and Odyssey or other books, thinking that everyone has read them and knows what he is talking about. There weren't notes, not a map, nothing. At the beginning I looked up a few things on Google, but then I gave up because I wasn't enjoying the book and the way it was written, and I didn't want to waste even more time with this unintelligible book.
Maybe who has a wider culture than me, will enjoy this book, but for me it was a real torture and I don't know why I didn't gave up after the first chapters. I found interesting only short parts of this book, i.e. the parts where the author talked about authors I know and of which I have read the books. Did this book teach me something new? Not at all. On the contrary, I was only confused. But as said, if a reader is cultured, then maybe he will enjoy this book because it will add a lot of anecdotes and curiosities that maybe can't be found in ordinary history books.

[SurferRosa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Appassionante e interessantissimo viaggio nella geografia, nella storia, nella letteratura e cultura dell'Europa danubiana, dalle incerte e dubbie sorgenti alla foce placida e stanca, ma ugualmente non univoca, del grande fiume. Disincantata e spesso malinconica avventura interiore, le cui sponde sono lambite da acque cangianti come quelle dell'esistenza che scorre dalla nascita alla morte, comparendo inaspettata per poi disgregarsi e sciogliersi nella sua fine.
Il viaggio di Magris è un viaggio senza tempo, perché guidato dall'unica stella polare che (purtroppo) non mente: la consapevolezza della nostra caducità, resa ancor più dolorosa dall'inevitabile slancio, dal desiderio irrealizzabile di eternità che in fondo ognuno di noi si porta dentro. La stella polare brilla sempre così luminosa davanti agli occhi dell'autore che, a rileggerlo oggi che sotto i ponti del Danubio è passata tanta di quell'acqua che il mondo è completamente un altro, anche certe riflessioni figlie dell'ideologia rimangono valide e conservano un loro fondo di verità, almeno una loro verità, quella verità che risponde alla consapevolezza di cui sopra, cioè che l'inesorabile scorrere del tempo fa della Storia degli uomini un discontinuo puzzle, o un mosaico se si preferisce, che non viene mai portato a termine perché sono gli stessi pezzi o tessere che prima o poi, più o meno rapidamente, mutano e che quindi una verità che sia valida per tutti non è mai raggiungibile, così come di due azioni tra di loro contraddittorie, compiute a distanza di molti anni e in situazioni diverse, non necessariamente una deve essere sbagliata . E così Magris, ripercorrendo anche storie antiche come quella degli Svevi e dei Sassoni che nel 1200 si imbracavano a Ulm per andare a bonificare e coltivare terre e costruire città nel Banato o in Transilvania, è consapevole della caducità della realtà contemporanea che osserva nel suo viaggio e, per esempio in Jugoslavia sembra presagire il disastro balcanico che seguirà di lì ad alcuni anni e, lungo tutto il percorso, sembra ardentemente desiderare una unità europea, consapevole e rispettosa di tutte le diversità, a tutt'oggi lontanissima dall'essere raggiunta.
E così quello di Magris è forse soprattutto un viaggio filosofico, se così si può dire, il viaggio del viaggiatore consapevole del fatto che non si viaggia per arrivare da qualche parte, ma che la meta del viaggio è il viaggio stesso. Passando per città famose e piccoli borghi, narrando la grande Storia di guerre e imperatori - quella dei manuali, per intenderci - così come le tante piccole storie degli illustri sconosciuti che nei manuali non ci entreranno mai, Magris segue il corso del grande fiume (che non è blu! quello al massimo è il suo affluente Inn che, perbacco, potrebbe tranquillamente aspirare ad essere lui il corso principale ed il Danubio un suo affluente!) che via via raccoglie nel suo alveo detriti su detriti che vanno a formare una straordinaria congerie culturale.
Da leggere e rileggere per le infinite divagazioni e suggestioni contenute, io mi sono trovato praticamente ad ogni pagina così incuriosito dalle storie che non conoscevo da desiderarne l'immediato approfondimento.
Un libro utile contro i paraocchi di ogni foggia e colore, perché un baricentro non esiste, tutto scorre, e dovremmo ricordarci più spesso che ogni nostro pensiero è sempre e solo il nostro limitatissimo (e spesso arrogante) punto di vista.

[Pilar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nunca se lee el mismo libro dos veces. Hace veintitantos años lo hubiera puntuado bajo, pero hoy le doy cinco estrellas. Ahora sé que requiere haber vivido, un lectura lenta y un tiempo de digestión prolongado.

Claudio Magris escribe en un café triestino sobre la experiencia del viaje que realizó con unos amigos a lo largo del río desde la Selva Negra al Mar Negro. Este es un río de vital importancia en la cultura mitteleuropea, y aunque nace de un simple canalón que vierte su agua de un grifo que gotea, si se cerrara ese grifo, ¿Viena, Bratislava y Budapest quedarían secas? Cualquier hallazgo en sus orillas de una placa, museo o castillo desata un sinfín de disertaciones cultas y multidisciplinares, y es que leyendo a Magris es inevitable que una confunda cultura con erudición. Lo tachan de erudito, cuando en realidad demuestra ser un gran hombre culto, puesto que este texto no supone solo un almacén de autores leídos, sino una forma de razonar muy peculiar, profunda y mansa como las aguas del Danubio. En todo momento está tratando de demostrar si este río, envuelto en un halo simbólico antialemán, es un emisario de las aguas germánicas, de la 'Kulturnation', en Oriente.

No voy a negar que aunque el contenido sea fecundo, el estilo es árido y de gran sobriedad. Pero lo que me realmente me fascina es la imprevisibilidad de cada capítulo. Tomando como excusa una ciudad local, puede versar sobre la ciencia universal de la guerra, el inexorable paso del tiempo, los campos de exterminio, los turcos o el comunismo. Absténganse los que esperen un cuaderno de bitácora del turista o una guía Lonely Planet. No se trata de lugares o personajes, ni de medialunas, ni del Café Central, Francisco José o Musil, sino del trazado del auténtico espíritu, del Genius Loci, de la cultura danubiana.

[Ryan Iseppi · Rating 2 out of 5]

This one almost broke me.

I reckon it took me about six months to finally come to the end of this book, reading it as I did in short angry spurts, and while it made a certain impact on me psychologically, I don't expect to retain much at all of the dizzying accumulation of historical happenings, personal anecdotes, literary analyses, and harebrained philosophizing that Claudio Magris packages as a "travel" book.

Danube is relentlessly intellectual, pedantic, and frankly, aimless, as Magris attempts to fit every single iota of information vaguely related to the Danube region that he has ever encountered into one absurdly ambitious narrative. After this long, hard slog of a book, I don't feel consider myself to have any greater understanding of the region, its cultures, and the interactions between the two, nor can I recall a wealth of anecdotes and incidents worth remembering. Magris apparently cannot help himself when it comes to naming local personalities both known and obscure (though he skews heavily towards the obscure), and though for the first few chapters of the book I read with a Wikipedia page at the ready, after about a hundred pages the constant requirement of researching the people and events mentioned fleetingly paragraph to paragraph became a headache-inducing ritual. This is particularly disappointing in that this is one of the very reasons I picked up this book - I'm always looking for interesting novelists outside the classical European literary canon. Imagine my disappointment to find that a great number of the authors Magris praises, scrutinizes, and eulogizes over the course of this book have never been translated into any other languages, nor have they been in print for decades. Furthermore, Magris drops many rather obscure names (last name only, naturally) as though they are standard household reference points. Büsching, Popa, and Stifter - all chosen randomly from the text - are just three examples of writers known primarily to academics of Magris's stature, yet they are written of as if they represent some universal quality apparent to anyone familiar with European literature.

It must be mentioned, I suppose, that some of the language in this book is truly exquisite. Magris is clearly operating on a different level than the vast majority of mankind, and one gets the feeling that he wrote this book for others in his own intelligence bracket. However, this does not excuse his conflating every bit of Danubian history, culture, and literature, no matter how significant or not, into a model, typification, or microcosm for the human experience. Certain passages are frankly comical, as the reader is swept from a relatively mundane description of a forgotten Wallachian or Lipovenian poet's career into an overarching commentary on the nature of life, or death, or both. A sentence near the end of the book is quite telling: "Every cemetary [is] a continual epos, to beget and suggest every possible novel." Magris has seemingly attempted to literalize this sentiment. Every square meter of earth that lines the Danube contains a trove of tales for our author, some interesting, others not so. However, in failing to discriminate and in consistently over-evaluating the significance of each of them, Magris has come up with something too unreal and melancholic to ever reach the average reader - Magris's Danube never appears to be sensual. The reality of the landscape and the people who inhabit it always takes a back seat to the kind of foggy cultural introspection from which Magris never raises his head. All in all, this is a work by an author with a tremendous intellect, who never once pauses to consider his reader.

[Elena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un libro de reposada lectura. Desde un café triestino, el cultísimo Claudio Magris escribe sobre la experiencia del viaje que hizo con unos amigos a través del Danubio, desde la Selva Negra al Mar Negro. Uno de esos libros híbridos entre la historia, el libro de viajes y la autobiografía del que tanto se aprende y tanto me gustan. Un libro imprevisible donde cada capítulo es una aventura. No sabes por dónde va a salir el escritor italiano.
Desde la ciudad visitada, su mirada y sus reflexiones llegan al nazismo, el comunismo, Napoleón, Joseph Roth o el profesor de instituto que le inoculó el germanismo, el inexorable paso del tiempo o una isla de Ada Kaleh sepultada por el progreso. Si me preguntan no voy a negar que a veces la información abruma y que su estilo árido no es mi favorito. Mi adorado Sebald, por ejemplo, me llega más. Pero seguiré leyéndolo.

[Caroline · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an amazing compendium of history, literary criticism, travelogue, and meditation on twentieth century European crises. Giving four stars is perhaps picky, but a number of times Magris gets so wound up in his prose that he goes off in paragraphs that don’t really make any sense or contribute anything. The book is so long that I began to begrudge him these self-indulgences. Also, it sags in the middle, as he talks about Vienna. In contrast to the really focused and insightful things he has to say about German culture, especially in the section on Ulm, the Viennese are rather amorphous easy-going folk who get a lot of pages because the Hapsburgs are an important topic, but the place itself seems to elude his grasp of anything that will give us a concrete sense of how it feels. Also the earlier section on Germany has a deliglhtful section on an exhaustive study of the upper Danube by an engineer, Neweklowsky.

But overall it’s phenomenal. I have highlighted sentences on almost every page, that encapsulate a period or an author. One recurrently strange thing, reading it in 2014, is that Magris traveled down the Danube in 1983, and from east of Vienna his writing is suffused with observations on life under Communism. Granted, the comments are wedged in among reflections on the ethnic tides and military alliances since Roman times, but it hangs over his encounters and colors his comments on contemporary literature. So odd to think how shortly things would change, at least to some degree.

The other fascinating theme is the ethnic mix and variety of assimilation attitudes in what was still Yugoslavia--whether the surface tension would hold or not.

‘Events which occurred many years or decades ago we feel to be contemporary, while facts and feelings a month old seem infinitely distant and erased for ever. Time thins out, lengthens, contracts, forms all but tangible clots or dissolves like fog-banks into nothing.’

‘Today, questioning oneself about Europe means asking oneself how one relates to Germany.'

‘Shi Huang Ti, the Chinese Emperor who was uncertain whether to destroy or to construct, divided himself equally between these two conflicting passions by building the Great Wall and buring all the books.'

‘[the Black Sea] ‘Those waters which sometimes look black, as if night had her cradle there,’ write Vintila Horia.’

‘…it reveals an interest in those emptinesses, those absences, those things which are not and to which Austria nonetheless gives expression, like Robert Musil’s Parallel Action, consisteing of the events which do not happen and initiatives which are not taken’

‘In this sense the Emperor [Marcus Aurelius], although he travels through remote Pannonia and dies so far from Rome--at Vindobona--is what Gadda would call a sedentary, the sort of man who with patient consistency forms his own personality. The nomadic poets, Baudelaire’s vrais voyageurs, wander without destination, trying every experience and deliberately dispersing their specific personal identity, losing themselves and dissolving into nothingness.’

‘So it comes about that, in Germany, freedom in the modern, democratic sense of the word is countered by the liberties of the classes and corporations, their ancient rights which defend the social inequalities stratefied over the centuries. It is not universal human nature that decided on the values and the rights of man, but the concrete historical facts.’

‘This presage of the end is, however, tranquil and majestic, rich with fertile vitality. In the Balta the Danube merges with the meadows in a vast, inextricable jungle of water, dense trees overhanging the river to form liquid caverns, deep flowing lairs, dar,k green and as blue as the night, in which it is impossible to tell the soil from the water and the sky. Vegetation covers everything, climbing and twisting everywhere in an exuberant proliferation, a play of mirrors reflecting one another.'

[Sciarpina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ecco uno di quei libri di cui non è facilissimo parlare perché quando sono così tanto pieni di tutto e senti durante la lettura che ti arricchiscono e ti nutrono, spesso capita di non trovare tutte le parole necessarie per descriverli. Danubio per me è uno di questi. Né interamente libro di viaggio, né completamente saggio, è piuttosto un libro di atmosfere e memorie dove, partendo dalla sua sorgente (a lungo dibattuta!) a Donaueschingen in Germania fino alla sua foce (altrettanto discussa perché è impossibile identificarne la fine netta) nel Mar Nero in Romania, Magris compie oltre che un viaggio fisico un viaggio nel tempo del territorio danubiano citando fatti storici, battaglie, aneddoti e curiosità, riflessioni e tantissima letteratura. Germania, Austria, Slovacchia, Ungheria, la Jugoslavia di allora, Bulgaria e Romania i paesi toccati e per ognuno tantissimi riferimenti a scrittori e poeti (la maggior parte a me sconosciuti e che mi sono annotata) che nelle loro opere hanno trasfuso l’essenza delle loro terre.
Un libro di non sempre facile lettura, ma per chi è interessato al mondo austro-tedesco-danubiano lo consiglio di sicuro perché imprescindibile fonte da cui attingere per ampliare il proprio bagaglio di conoscenze che gravitano intorno a quel mondo e per iniziare a capire quella parte di Europa orientale che ancora resta molto misteriosa.

[Liviu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read the first chapters after visiting Germany and Austria and they were excellent too - missed visiting the headwaters (there are actually 2 places sort of claiming them) of the Danube but still visited a bunch of the places mentioned in the book

(2015-6) read the last 4 chapters (Hungary, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania but only roughly as the story moves all around the Danube area the author is in, both in time and space); excellent stuff - even if some of the current at the time (1986) had become dated only a few years later when the seemingly forever communist regimes collapsed like house of cards everywhere;

as someone born and raised in those parts and steeped in the local culture (at least what was approved officially or tacitly under communism, so some of the stuff is new for me too) I really, really enjoyed these 4 chapters a lot but I can see how they may seem boring and uninteresting (as for example a lot of English or American South literature is to me) to people who have no ties with those places and have no idea who the people mentioned (whether writers, poets, leaders, nobles, rebels - a book that mentions the savage executions of Gheorghe Dosza and of Horia and Closca when talking about the corresponding cities gets extra points from me by default) were

[Terry · Rating 5 out of 5]

"On one such night a famous Greek corn merchant gambled away his fortune, his red neo-classical palace near the Danube, and his wife."
Danube is full of lost-treasure-like passages such as this. I felt, when I reached the end, as if I'd just read some sort of sacred text. As travelogue it's absolutely everything you could want and more (well, it doesn't always tell you which hotel to choose or where to eat, though it does accomplish that sometimes). What it does do is expound upon the history, mythology, literature, politics, wars, cultures, migrations, etc, that have visited the cities and realms along the Danube, the Holy River, if there is/was one, of the Holy Roman Empire in its post-Roman, German phase. It also succeeded in making me feel almost totally ignorant of European literature (though I was occasionally pleased to see a name crop up that I recognized or had even read, e.g., Thomas Mann), history, cultures, migrations, etc, etc. I know several people who have taken boat trips on the Danube, and I know that I wouldn't think of going without this book.

Just read this (October 22, 2016), and thought it would make a nice addition to my own thoughts of 7 ½ years ago: Richard Flanagan, “Why Claudio Magris’s Danube is a timely elegy for lost Europe,” The Guardian, October 22, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/books/201....

[Carla · Rating 5 out of 5]

CEMITÉRIOS NA ESTRADA

Há uma poesia de Novomeský dedicada a um cemitério eslovaco. Em numerosas aldeias, entre as montanhas, os cemitérios não têm muros ou têm-nos tão baixos que não se notam, são cemitérios abertos e transbordam pelas ervas dos prados, correm ao longo do caminho, como em Matiasovce, em direcção à fonteira polaca, ou ficam à entrada da aldeia, como um jardim diante da porta de casa. Esta familiaridade épica com a morte – que reencontramos por exemplo nas sepulturas muçulmanas da Bósnia, tranquilamente instaladas nos hortos das casas, e que o nosso mundo tende, pelo contrário, cada vez mais neuroticamente a exilar – tem a medida da justiça, é um sentido da relação entre o indivíduo e as gerações, a terra, a natureza, os elementos que a compõem e a lei que preside à sua combinação e desagregação.
Nas drevenice vizinhas dos cemitérios assomam rostos grandes e mansos, parecidos com a boa madeira das suas casas. Os cemitérios isentos de tristeza dizem-nos como é enganador e supersticioso o medo da morte. Talvez, do mesmo modo que estes cemitérios se encontram em frente ou ao lado do dia-a-dia, e não numa zona afastada e recusada, devêssemos aprender a olhar a morte de outra maneira. Lemos numa poesia de Milan Rúfus: «Só pela frente a morte faz medo. / Por trás / só uma bela inocência súbita. / Máscara de carnaval, com que, / depois da meia-noite apanhas água / para beberes ou te lavares do teu suor».

[Max Berendsen · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

Review to follow

[Andrew]

I mean it’s a natural sell for me – I’m a long-time Mitteleuropa fanboy, and I’ve followed the Danube along a similar course with much the same love and devotion as Magris… the palaces, the cliffsides, the glasses of Tokaji! But even if that wasn’t the case, it’s just the sort of travel writing that I consider essential, historical in outlook, freewheeling, dreamy, self-effacing without being self-obsessed, delighted without being cloying, snarky without being smug. More of this please.

[Kelly]

Update: this is just not going to happen now. I am not in a place for its prose. I'll try again in the winter.
* **
This was on the shelf next to the Fermor I just bought. Clever clever salespeople. I bought both.

[Massimiliano · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un grande viaggio letterario lungo il fiume europeo per eccellenza.
Da innamorato della mittel-europa ero molto curioso di leggerlo e non mi ha deluso, soprattutto per tutti gli spunti e consigli di lettura che Magris fornisce.

Interessante notare come sia cambiata l'Europa (o meglio, non lo sia) da quando questo saggio è stato scritto: nonostante URSS e Yugoslavia non esistano più, nonostante i molti cambiamenti avvenuti in poco più di trent'anni (il libro è dell'86), è rimasta un'impronta riconoscibile ai giorni nostri.

E' proprio come il Danubio, che rimane sempre lì.
Gli imperi e i regni si susseguono e sono solo castelli di sabbia in confronto alla corrente del fiume.

[Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un grande viaggio non tanto lungo il fiume, ma nella storia e la cultura, anzi nelle storie e nelle culture della Mitteleuropa. C’è un video con Magris ripreso molti anni dopo, che lo mostra ospite d’onore di un evento culturale, in cui cita un’autore antico dicendo: altri si vantino dei libri che hanno scritto, io mi vanto di quelli che ho letto. E se ne può vantare tranquillamente, perché la sua cultura sembra avere più affluenti del Danubio.
Certo, il libro è del 1986, e quindi, siccome il corso del fiume fornisce comunque l’ordine del contenuto, quasi tutto quello che segue una volta lasciato l’Austria, oggi sarebbe senz’altro da scrivere e da descrivere diversamente. Però l’insegnamento che si tira dalla lettura non ne viene meno: lo spazio e il tempo che sono stati formati dal Danubio hanno caratteristiche più profonde ancora della frattura del 1945-1990 e della guerra jugoslava.
E affascinante come Magris ha cercato di assorbire tutto ciò che ha contribuito ed è scaturito da questo processo quasi geologico. Gli spunti di riflessione e di lettura da trarre da questa lettura sono tantissimi.
Lo stile della narrazione è pure un po’ acquatico, il flusso è molto vario, il contenuto non sempre della stessa limpidezza, non tutti i passaggi di navigazione facile, il paesaggio non sempre della stessa grazia e bellezza. Ma è sempre un’esperienza, come la navigazione fluviale. Consigliato.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I came to shelve this book the most honest shelf was 'odd unclassifiable'. Of course the book is a journey from the Danube's source (there is a fascinating, but thankfully brief, discussion of exactly where the Danube does begin) along its journey through lands that were largely part of the Austria-Hungary to the Black sea in Romania. It is a travel book and much more. It can be compared to Patrick Leigh-Fermoy's books of travelling through pre WWII Hungary (and provides interesting updates on many of the places he visited) but is of course much more extensive.

The 'much more' that makes this more than a travel book is what makes this book so unique and special. It is a look at culture and literature of what was, is, and may be. There is so much in this book that it defies simple definition but the pleasure it gives is also unique and different. I loved it and will be reading it again. It is a book gets under your skin.

[Kevin Tole · Rating 1 out of 5]

I am not sure who is to blame more - the learned poet translator or the wannabee poet intellectual author. Like another reviewer I dragged my way through this book continually affronted by Magris' attempts to blind us with his knowledge and name dropping. This Italian Melvyn Bragg's attempts to provide a book on the diversity of the Danube just ends up as an opportunity for him to namecheck various obscure figures of European thought. HE revels in it along with his bootiful Italian companions. I found it turgid in the extreme. No descriptions of the geography or landscape. There is no heart in this book. Just cold intellectualism. It is dull beyond belief.

[Eric Byrd · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not quite in the same league as Fermor and Sebald, but enjoyable.

[Carlos Manzano · Rating 5 out of 5]

"El Danubio" es algo así como el paradigma de la literatura de viajes. No es un libro de anécdotas, historias más o menos triviales ni sucesos sin apenas importancia: “El Danubio” se adentra hasta el tuétano en la cultura y la historia centroeuropeas, nos lleva de la mano por sus principales hitos, por su idiosincrasia y por supuesto también por sus aspectos más indignantes, supeditando el viaje físico al intelectual, a la experiencia verdaderamente vital.

[Stratos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ένας πλούτος γνωσης που ...αναβλύζει από τη διαδρομή του Δούναβη που καταγράφει ο συγγραφέας. Πρωτότυπο αλλά τόσο ενδιαφέρον βιβλίο που χρήσιμο κυρίως όταν κάνεις ταξίδια στις περιοχές αυτές.

[Martha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not the travel book I was expecting! I haven't met so far any actual inhabitants along the river or much of the actual river itself - rather historical vignettes, philosophical musings and grappling with the third Reich.(which are very interesting and kept me going to my iPad to find out more) But I haven't put it down as I keep thinking I might. Still, I wish I were traveling with Femor.

At the very end of this challenging book , I found what I was thinking I would be reading - just a few lines: "As the boat passes their houses, people come to the doorways and windows, and with cheerful hospitality beckon us to stop and pay them a visit. Some of them, with a few strokes of the paddle, come alonside us offering fresh fish in exchange for rakia." Sadly, they remain just nameless, faceless cheerful people. I would like Margris to have taken up their invitation, gone in their homes and shared a drink. But this is not a book of those living along the Danube but of the dead.

[Maria Beltrami · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ci sono libri che ti guardano per anni dagli scaffali della libreria, di cui senti parlare, ai quali altri scrittori fanno riferimento, tu li guardi, con un misto di diffidenza e senso di inferiorità, e li lasci lì, finché una notte non riesci a dormire, e quasi per caso te li ritrovi in mano.
Questa è la storia della relazione tra me e il capolavoro di Magris.
Pensavo che fosse un libro di viaggio, e infatti lo è, ma il Danubio, il suo stravagante e infinito percorso tra una sorgente assimilabile a un rubinetto e una foce che è un canale in un porto, sono il pretesto per un viaggio attraverso l'Europa, la sua storia e la sua letteratura, i suoi popoli e le sue contraddizioni.
Davvero un monumento, nonostante per molti versi la storia l'abbia superato, a causa della caduta del muro di Berlino e di tutta la frana che quella caduta ha provocato.
Ma resta la certezza che che acque del Danubio siano più potenti della piccola storia degli uomini, a meno che qualcuno non chiuda il rubinetto ...