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The Incurable
Millionaire Peter Rarely has imported bears from Transylvania. He has taught parrots to sing "God Save the King." He has hired "some unemployed people" to count to 7,300,000 without stopping (the most successful reached only 1,250,000). But when he spots writer Tom Maclean in the dining car, he worries "he might not be the most eccentric person on the train."
Unable to resist, Rarely offers to pay Maclean double his yearly earnings if he vows not to write another word. Maclean agrees, but will abstaining from writing make him "the first happy writer in the history of literature"?
"The Incurable" was written in 1937 by Hungarian writer Antal Szerb, and is reprint from a new collection, Love In a Bottle (Pushkin Press).
About Recommended
Great authors inspire us. But what about the stories that inspire them? Recommended Reading, the latest project from Electric Literature, publishes one story every week, each chosen by a great author or editor. In this age of distraction, we uncover writing that's worth slowing down and spending some time with. And in doing so, we help give great writers, literary magazines, and independent presses the recognition (and readership) they deserve.
About the
Antal Szerb was born in Budapest in 1901 and died in January 1944. The dates resonate. They create a frame. Initially a devout Catholic, he grew up in the shadow of his Jewish ancestry, amidst the collapse of Empire, the dismemberment of Hungary itself, two bloody revolutions, and the relentless drift towards war. He died in a forced labour camp just days before it was "liberated" by the advancing Soviet army.
Szerb’s achievements in that time are of two what he wrote, and what he became. Denied the university post he so richly deserved, he taught languages in a commercial secondary school. By personality he was perfectly unsuited for the role, and his students adored him. Toiling through the night, he produced volume after volume of critical and scholarly works, almost always breaking new ground. The aim was to show his countrymen the depth of their own tradition and the riches that lay beyond. Placing Hungary firmly in the Western tradition was a political as well as a cultural project.
At the same time he produced a series of enchanting novels and playfully ironic, always gentle, they contemplate human folly with an amused tolerance. They never condemn. His last, Oliver VII, the most generously benign of all, was written with a yellow star in the ascendant. Those who knew him thought him the cleverest, and the kindest, man they had ever met.
About the
Len Rix studied various languages before falling under the spell of Hungarian. In 2006 he was awarded the Oxford Weidenfeld Translation Prize.
About the Guest
Pushkin Press was founded in 1997. Having first rediscovered European classics of the twentieth century, Pushkin now publishes novels, essays, memoirs, children’s books, and everything from timeless classics to the urgent and contemporary.
Pushkin books represent exciting, high-quality writing from around the world. Pushkin publishes widely acclaimed, brilliant authors such as Stefan Zweig, Marcel Aymé, Antal Szerb, Paul Morand and Yasushi Inoue, as well as some of the most exciting contemporary and often prize-winning writers. Pushkin Press publishes the world’s best stories, to be read and read again.
Unable to resist, Rarely offers to pay Maclean double his yearly earnings if he vows not to write another word. Maclean agrees, but will abstaining from writing make him "the first happy writer in the history of literature"?
"The Incurable" was written in 1937 by Hungarian writer Antal Szerb, and is reprint from a new collection, Love In a Bottle (Pushkin Press).
About Recommended
Great authors inspire us. But what about the stories that inspire them? Recommended Reading, the latest project from Electric Literature, publishes one story every week, each chosen by a great author or editor. In this age of distraction, we uncover writing that's worth slowing down and spending some time with. And in doing so, we help give great writers, literary magazines, and independent presses the recognition (and readership) they deserve.
About the
Antal Szerb was born in Budapest in 1901 and died in January 1944. The dates resonate. They create a frame. Initially a devout Catholic, he grew up in the shadow of his Jewish ancestry, amidst the collapse of Empire, the dismemberment of Hungary itself, two bloody revolutions, and the relentless drift towards war. He died in a forced labour camp just days before it was "liberated" by the advancing Soviet army.
Szerb’s achievements in that time are of two what he wrote, and what he became. Denied the university post he so richly deserved, he taught languages in a commercial secondary school. By personality he was perfectly unsuited for the role, and his students adored him. Toiling through the night, he produced volume after volume of critical and scholarly works, almost always breaking new ground. The aim was to show his countrymen the depth of their own tradition and the riches that lay beyond. Placing Hungary firmly in the Western tradition was a political as well as a cultural project.
At the same time he produced a series of enchanting novels and playfully ironic, always gentle, they contemplate human folly with an amused tolerance. They never condemn. His last, Oliver VII, the most generously benign of all, was written with a yellow star in the ascendant. Those who knew him thought him the cleverest, and the kindest, man they had ever met.
About the
Len Rix studied various languages before falling under the spell of Hungarian. In 2006 he was awarded the Oxford Weidenfeld Translation Prize.
About the Guest
Pushkin Press was founded in 1997. Having first rediscovered European classics of the twentieth century, Pushkin now publishes novels, essays, memoirs, children’s books, and everything from timeless classics to the urgent and contemporary.
Pushkin books represent exciting, high-quality writing from around the world. Pushkin publishes widely acclaimed, brilliant authors such as Stefan Zweig, Marcel Aymé, Antal Szerb, Paul Morand and Yasushi Inoue, as well as some of the most exciting contemporary and often prize-winning writers. Pushkin Press publishes the world’s best stories, to be read and read again.
14 pages, Kindle Edition
Published June 3, 2013
10 people want to read
About the author
Antal Szerb
40 books249 followersAntal Szerb was a noted Hungarian scholar and writer. He is generally considered to be one of the major Hungarian writers of the 20th century.
Szerb was born in 1901 to assimilated Jewish parents in Budapest, but baptized Catholic. He studied Hungarian, German and later English, obtaining a doctorate in 1924. From 1924 to 1929 he lived in France and Italy, also spending a year in London, England.
As a student he published essays on Georg Trakl and Stefan George, and quickly established a formidable reputation as a scholar, writing erudite studies of William Blake and Henrik Ibsen among other works. Elected President of the Hungarian Literary Academy in 1933 - aged just 32 -, he published his first novel, The Pendragon Legend (which draws upon his personal experience of living in Britain) the following year. His second and best-known work, Utas és holdvilág, known in English as Journey by Moonlight, came out in 1937. He was made a Professor of Literature at the University of Szeged the same year. He was twice awarded the Baumgarten Prize, in 1935 and 1937.
In 1941 he published a History of World Literature which continues to be authoritative today. He also published a volume on novel theory and a book about the history of Hungarian literature. Given numerous chances to escape antisemitic persecution (as late as 1944), he chose to remain in Hungary, where his last novel, a Pirandellian fantasy about a king staging a coup against himself, then having to impersonate himself, Oliver VII, was published in 1942. It was passed off as a translation from the English, as no 'Jewish' work could have been printed at the time.
Szerb was deported to a concentration camp late in 1944, and was beaten to death there in January 1945, at the age of 43. He was survived by his wife, Klára Bálint, who died in 1992.
Szerb was born in 1901 to assimilated Jewish parents in Budapest, but baptized Catholic. He studied Hungarian, German and later English, obtaining a doctorate in 1924. From 1924 to 1929 he lived in France and Italy, also spending a year in London, England.
As a student he published essays on Georg Trakl and Stefan George, and quickly established a formidable reputation as a scholar, writing erudite studies of William Blake and Henrik Ibsen among other works. Elected President of the Hungarian Literary Academy in 1933 - aged just 32 -, he published his first novel, The Pendragon Legend (which draws upon his personal experience of living in Britain) the following year. His second and best-known work, Utas és holdvilág, known in English as Journey by Moonlight, came out in 1937. He was made a Professor of Literature at the University of Szeged the same year. He was twice awarded the Baumgarten Prize, in 1935 and 1937.
In 1941 he published a History of World Literature which continues to be authoritative today. He also published a volume on novel theory and a book about the history of Hungarian literature. Given numerous chances to escape antisemitic persecution (as late as 1944), he chose to remain in Hungary, where his last novel, a Pirandellian fantasy about a king staging a coup against himself, then having to impersonate himself, Oliver VII, was published in 1942. It was passed off as a translation from the English, as no 'Jewish' work could have been printed at the time.
Szerb was deported to a concentration camp late in 1944, and was beaten to death there in January 1945, at the age of 43. He was survived by his wife, Klára Bálint, who died in 1992.
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