Putovanje

by Murray Bail, Mario Suško (Translator)

Frank Delage stigao je iz Australije u Europu u nakani da svoj prototip izvrsna koncertnog klavira predstavi u prijestolnici klasične glazbe, Beču i po mogućnosti, ugovori dobar posao. Poznanstvo s Bečankom Elisabeth unosi novo svjetlo, te na putovanju brodom natrag na rodni kontinent ima dovoljno vremena za razvrstavanje misli i dojmova o nadama i razočaranjima koja preslaguju kockice svjetova, kako onoga iz kojega su krenuli, tako i onoga u koji se upućuju.

Genres: Fiction, Australia, Novels, Literature, Contemporary

143 pages, Paperback

First published September 26, 2012

About the author

Murray Bail (born 22 September 1941) is an Australian writer of novels, short stories and non-fiction.

He was born in Adelaide, South Australia. He has lived most of his life in Australia except for sojourns in India (1968–70) and England and Europe (1970–74). He currently lives in Sydney.

He was trustee of the National Gallery of Australia from 1976 to 1981, and wrote a book on Australian artist Ian Fairweather.

A portrait of Bail by the artist Fred Williams is hung in the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra. The portrait was done while both Williams and Bail were Council members of the National Gallery of Australia

Reviews

[Mandy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Murray Bail is one of Australia’s most acclaimed writers, but he’s not an immediately accessible novelist. His style is often challenging and requires patience and concentration. His latest book The Voyage is certainly a demanding read and although original and inventive in its use of language and style, it’s a book that ultimately I found unsatisfying. There are no chapters or paragraphs, few breaks in the headlong rush of the narrative, and with some odd punctuation. Most confusing of all is the lack of chronology and rapid shifts in time and place, sometimes within the same sentence. It’s the story of Frank Delage, who has invented an innovative and technically advanced piano and arrives in Vienna hoping to sell it in Europe. Vienna, with its rich and traditional musical heritage, is not perhaps the best choice for such a venture, and unsurprisingly his business trip is not a success. He returns to Australia by boat, giving himself time to muse on his experience in Vienna, the people he met there, and the differences between Europe seeped in the culture of the past and the new, modern, sometimes brash, Australia he comes from. As he reflects on his time in Vienna, we are inside Frank’s head, inside his thoughts and observations, and up to a point this is both engaging and compelling. But he remains a vehicle for Bail’s own observations and never really comes alive as a fully-fledged character. Nor do the other main characters in the novel. For those who are Bail fans and enjoy his emphasis on style over story, this will no doubt be a welcome addition to his oeuvre, but for me it didn’t work, and I found it heavy-going.

[George · Rating 4 out of 5]

An unconventional, original, witty, interesting short novel about Frank Delage, a 46 year old Australian who is returning from Europe by ship after being in Vienna, Austria, where he had tried to interest people in the innovative new piano he had designed and manufactures. In Vienna he meets Amalia von Schalla and daughter Elisabeth. Elisabeth, 34 years old, travels back to Australia with Frank.

This novel is short on plot and the characters are not fully developed. It’s a clever book with many witty, thought provoking sentences. A book of vast paragraphs and no separation of dialogue from description.

Here is a quote from the book:

When Amalia asks Frank, what has Australia given the world, Frank is at a loss:

“No composers, painters, novelists?” Amalia encouraged. “Not that I’m aware of,” Delage shaking his head. Von Schalla went on eating the fish. “Our contribution,” Delage still frowning, “has been in small areas, such as being relaxed, swimming in the sea - we grow strong teeth.”

A very worthwhile, satisfying reading experience. A book to reread.

This book was first published in 2012.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Frank Delage, the central character whose thoughts readers share in The Voyage, is the inventor of a new piano, and the novel traces his return journey from his efforts to sell it in Europe. He’s not a very good businessman, and even less successful in marketing, and he has made only one rather dubious sale. Vienna is too conservative to be interested in a new design, and only a fool, he is told, would have tried to market his bold new design there, in a place so mired in musical history. He has, however, after a long time alone, captured the heart of Elisabeth, the daughter of a prominent Viennese patron of the arts, so perhaps it has not been an entirely wasted trip…

However, it would be a mistake to approach this book as a conventional novel about the disappointments of a middle-aged man. When I posted a Sensational Snippet from The Voyage last week I commented on how the rhythm of at least one sentence seemed like a waltz, and others in the long, discursive paragraphs are like the rhythm of waves lapping against the sides of the ship, or rolling across the vast ocean.

To read the rest of my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.com/2012/11/07/th...

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolute beauty of a novel. This may be Bail's masterpiece, though Homesickness is still probably my "favorite." This is a quiet novel, with little to nothing in the way of "action," but something in the interplay between past and present (past being the protagonist's efforts in Vienna to sell his New World version of a piano, present being his sea voyage back to Australia) created a gentle momentum. At times I though of it as the back and forth of left hand and right hand on a piano, and at others as the way a mind wanders away from then back to a piece of music being listened to. But whatever the metaphor The Voyage just... gets something about New World v. Old World tensions and anxieties, Australian in this context but resonant to my US experience, too, and without ever lapsing into didacticism or lecture this is a novel as much about questions and ideas as it is about character and and atmosphere. Superb.

[Justin Evans · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this okay as I was reading it, and I like it a lot more for reading all the negative reviews. Bail does the now standard modernist version of is-this-now-or-is-this-a-memory-and-what's-the-difference-really, and does it fairly well. For the record, "now" is on a boat from Vienna to Australia. The memories are of Vienna. It's pretty easy to get once that's clear.

The story is similarly simple: a man goes to Vienna, music capitol of the Western world, to sell his newly invented piano. He pretty much fails to sell it, but does succeed in picking up the daughter of a Viennese socialite and music aficionado.

The book becomes worthwhile once it's read as the sum of its influences, to wit, Thomas Bernhard (and other cranky Austrians writing about how shit Austria is) + Henry James (New World naif is taken in by/clashes with old world sophisticates) + Virginia Woolf (see above re: now standard modernist form). Bail seems to be wrestling with his own debts to the European modernist and whatever you call Bernhard's time period writers, which can easily be read as a case study in the broader question of Australia's relationship to its European heritage. The answer, in good Jamesian style, is ambivalence.

Bail uses many obviously Bernhardian tics (long paragraphs, complex syntax, Vienna, music, slightly cracked protagonist), but at the same time asserts himself. Our heroic piano inventor goes to Europe, sells one piano to an avant-garde composer who 'writes' a piece that requires the destruction of said piano, then comes back to Australia, where he finds himself inevitably changed, but not changed into a Viennese. Just changed.

I have no idea how anyone would read this who hasn't read, at the very least, Bernhard's "Loser" and James's "The American." It might make no sense at all. For fans of those books, though, this is a nice addition to the corpus.

[Robyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having loved Eucalyptus, I was keen to embark on another Murray Bail novel. The Voyage was completely different, the story continually weaving back and forth, very often mid-sentence, between the sea voyage back to Australia of Delage, inventor of a new concert piano, and a young Austrian woman, daughter of a monied Austrian family, who has chosen to accompany him, and their time together in Vienna, where he has gone to sell the piano, wrong place entirely, he believes, and yet he encounters the daughter, encounters her mother, feels more for the mother but leaves with the daughter, the story weaves between the time on the boat, leaning over the rails, the sadness of the fellow traveller, the Dutchman, whose wife has left him, accompanying them on the journey, there is the interplay, the moving back and forward in time, in Vienna the gradual revealing of the piano, to the elegant and mysterious mother, Amalia von Schalla, to the critic, to the avant-garde composer, there is the gradual insertion of Elisabeth into Delage's life, little sense of his desire for her, but there she is on the boat, the reflections on new world and old, the hick and unlovely surburbia of Australia, the old and venerated brilliance stuck in time in Vienna, the clean sound of Delage's piano representing newness, life, energy, the golden colour of the wood of his piano somehow embarrassing, wrong for a city steeped in classical art, the end of the piano entirely fitting, and Delage somehow changed, in ways we cannot quite understand, perhaps do not need to know.

[Angela Young · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story in The Voyage eddies and swirls and moves in and out of focus and backwards and forwards in the characters' lives and the places they find themselves in, just as the sea - on which the ship that so much of the story takes place aboard - is always moving. And that made me think that this book could have been published the way BS Johnson's Book-in-a-Box The Unforgettables was published: in loose leaves that can be read in any order. But perhaps, because the transitions are so seamless between present and past, place and character - I kept looking back to see how Murray Bail had transported me from one to another - it's cleverer to publish traditionally and then let us make sense of The Voyage from the order Bail himself chose?

Either way Bail writes acutely about the way we are:

The fit between people is never precise, each person becomes known by their differences, a practical tolerance comes to the fore, a social necessity, everyone has their opinions with the finer details, invariably getting it wrong or not quite right, being almost wrong or almost right, not many have the nerve to express themselves openly ... .

But in the end (perhaps I'm just not adventurous enough when it comes to the structure of a novel?) I preferred Bail's earlier work, Eucalyptus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eucalypt... to this particular one, although I am glad to have ridden the dizzying swell that is The Voyage.

[Georgia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bail's writing has the curious effect of making me feel like I'm watching the events unfold from behind slightly foggy glass, or in a dream, or underwater; I like it, but am never sure I've fully understood everything being said.
The Voyage was fairly engaging, the run on paragraphs a bit disorienting at times. I enjoyed the little (but excellent) musical zingers scattered throughout the story - particularly the references to the Sydney opera house (having the worst acoustics of any opera hall in the world). And some of his descriptions of people and life (especially Australian life) feel piercingly accurate.
The quote that hit me the hardest (having just moved to Bris): "Brisbane, Queensland, a city with the worst humidity imaginable, in February virtually unliveable...". Thanks for the heads up...
2.5 rounded to 3.

[Martin Turner · Rating 3 out of 5]

A rambling story of an inventor/salesman who tries to sell his innovative Australian piano in Vienna and the success of otherwise of his trip and the sea voyage (hence the title) home again. Very little seems to be achieved in this narrative which is made difficult to read by the extremely long paragraphs and sentences. There are no breaks for the reader to aim for (ie chapters, gaps in the narrative etc) which make it feel a bit of a slog. However, when I finished I felt as though I had also been on a (long) voyage, but I am undecided whether I was glad it ended or not. Interesting.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

a 3.5, probably... Bail is an odd writer... i have read the entirety of his novels, but not his short stories, and i can hardly assess his style... this book was strange, to say the least... seemingly jumping around in time/place, i found it hard to follow at times... quirky aphorisms and timeless observations abounded, but the plot was rather superfluous to the myriad ramblings and conversational asides... this was a bit of a miss for me, but the skill with which it was written made it worth the trip... mostly...

[Kim · Rating 1 out of 5]

I loved Eucalyptus. This however has produced quite the opposite effect on me. Maybe I'm being picky but I prefer a book with chapters or at least paragraphs. It was rather difficult to follow at times about whether the characters were in Vienna or on the ship. Also until the word email was I used I couldn't even place a time on the story.
I only finished the book because it's 200 pages long and I'm stubborn!

[Anne Sharkey · Rating 1 out of 5]

Disappointing read overall. A lot of repetition and monotony with very little to come away with. Upon further research of the author, previous work like the award winning Eucalyptus could be worth a read. This particular venture however is not one that I would recommend. While some parts are reminiscent of Hemingway, I found The Voyage banal for the most part and had to push myself to finish this novel.

[Uwe Hook · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wanted to like this novel. I persisted with it till the end. But... a brave attempt to suggest stream of consciousness point of view simply irritated. Bail uses punctuation choices, sentence length and a fluid sense of time and place to create his floating narrative but it read like a modernist experiment from last century. Very disappointing.

[Chloë Fowler · Rating 3 out of 5]

Little bit 'meh'...which I feel is a little damning. This is a nice book - not as magic as Eucalyptus but not dreadful either and it's a slim one so not taxing. most fun was trying to figure out when it was set. And that's not entirely a good thing probably.

[Rosemary · Rating 3 out of 5]

People aren't kidding when they say Murray Bail's books are hard to read. I liked the general idea of the book, and his writing style, but the way he jumped back and forth in time almost mid-paragraph was very confusing. Also, the book has no chapters, one of my absolute pet peeves.

[Delores Bebbington · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite frankly, it was boring. I have read other books by Murray Bail, eucalyptus was heavy going but The Pages I enjoyed.

[John Pitcher]

Did not finish it. No chapters and barely any paragraphs make me uncomfortable.

[Jeffrey Milloy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this one. I found it too repetitive and arbitrary: a chore to read.

[Ruby Foster · Rating 2 out of 5]

Murray Bail always writes beautiful prose, but this was a rather dull book

[Sharon · Rating 1 out of 5]

I found it very dry and gave up at about page 20.

[Cosmo Crawley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most novelists spend many years of hard work trying to free themselves from their literary influences. Murray Bail is unusual in that in his first novel, Homesickness, he found an elliptical prose style clogged with literary references and tropes which have subsequently multiplied. He has become so weighed down by more or less baleful literary influences one can almost imagine him adding the pulp of remaindered Thomas Bernhard novels to his food in the mistaken belief that it would nourish his prose. The Voyage is a big improvement on Eucalyptus though: Bail manages to keep his interest in gum trees within reasonable bounds and refrains from writing about the emotional life of women from a female perspective—which isn’t his strength. The novel mostly takes the point of view of its male protagonist Frank Delage, an Australian inventor who is trying to flog his revolutionary new piano in Vienna, “the most musical of cities.” So the novel is partly another satire about an Australian abroad, although in this case “abroad” means an imaginary Vienna of aristocrats and artists mostly reconstructed from Bernhard novels. The narrator frequently delivers his own pronouncements on topics more or less tangential to the story, and these declarations are often entertainingly extreme and cantankerous: another in-joke about Bernhard’s narrators. The Voyage is therefore a meta-novel, and although I don’t usually enjoy the textual games of post-modernism, in this case I had a lot of fun spotting the allusions to the Alpine Beckett and laughing at the jokes about the pet hates I happen to share with the narrator. The novel is skilfully constructed, the narrative moving seamlessly back and forth between Vienna and Delage’s homeward voyage on a container ship, often within the same sentence. Now and then I had to reread sentences in order to find the exact point where the shift in time and place occurred, but this isn’t a criticism because a device which promotes careful reading is often a good thing. The novel is full of sharp observation and dry humour. Those who have read Bail’s other novels will find many of their themes and observations restated here, often in the same words. The pity is that when Bail isn’t imitating Thomas Bernhard’s voice he’s imitating his own.

[J. A. Grante · Rating 3 out of 5]

Third person, past tense. I wanted to like this more. A philosophical journey up the coast of Australia, full of musings on art and beauty and connection — but it’s mostly just men talking. The characters stay abstract, and I found myself drifting. It reads like someone explaining a clever idea they had for a novel, but never quite finishing it.

[Susan Tauster · Rating 2 out of 5]

What a slog of a read. Very short book that drove me crazy with run-on sentences, sudden shifts with no paragraph breaks, and an only moderately interesting story. I stuck with it based on the interesting premise. Unique writing style, but a bit of a bore as stories go.

[Nadine De Vries · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book challenging with no chapters there was no logical breaks.
Once I got more into it, I liked that I was basically in his thoughts and it gave a perspective on that our thoughts never cease!

[YUTAN · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's the first novel I read in English. Sometimes I got confused because of the time changes.

[Meegs · Rating 5 out of 5]

When it comes to the revolutionary construction of the Delage piano, the fresh sound of this reinterpreted instrument is rejected by many and appreciated by few. Given the largely negative reviews posted for Murray Bail’s latest work, no less can be said for the novel itself. The reality is that most readers will neither appreciate nor enjoy this book. For those who do recognize its merits, what a wonderful and incomparable journey it is.

At face value, The Voyage is a tale about Frank Delage’s failed attempts to sell his modernist piano to the musical elite in Vienna, a task akin to selling new and improved ice to eskimos. However, adhering solely to a literal interpretation of the story deprives it of its true genius and, one could argue, its overarching point.  Reading this book as a one-dimensional, literal tale of a traveling piano would be as misguided as reading Animal Farm as a story about animals.

Equal parts postmodern literary experiment and self-reflexive artistic commentary, Bail overturns existing authorial conventions in favor of a more organic form. “So many things in the world,” Delage recognizes, “are arranged for the eyes, not the mind.” Just as the design for the Delage piano abides by this observation, Bail’s novel exists as a refreshing reinterpretation of form in the sea of contemporary literature. Although a cursory read may reveal it to be free form and stream of conscious in nature, there is nothing unrefined about this narrative construction. While some will bemoan the lack of paragraphs and traditional hallmarks of literary structure, others will revel in the true beauty of the form. Lived experiences don’t unfold  in an expository format and the threads that bridge the semantic network of thoughts cannot be so easily categorized. If you surrender yourself to the medium, The Voyage reads the way one’s memories might naturally arise. All experiences are linked, but not necessarily in ways that you might expect or even be comfortable admitting. 

It is this intricate fluidity of thought, experience, and emotion that sets The Voyage apart, not as a hodgepodge of life events, but an intricately woven tapestry of lived experience.  Each observation made by the book’s characters can be seen as either a commentary on the nature of art in society or as a reflection on the literary process itself. This may be a relatively short book in length, but not in depth. The story exists on parallel planes: the more you recognize, the richer an experience it will be.

Ultimately, The Voyage’s pedigree is more Nouveau Roman and Postmodernism than Oprah’s Book Club. It will appeal to a small band of followers who savor the likes of Italo Calvino and giddily embrace the fact that Murray Bail has kept literary experimentation from going the way of the dodo, if only for one more day.

[Roger · Rating 3 out of 5]

Murray Bail is possibly best known for his book Eucalyptus, but has been around for a long time writing in a quirky modernistic style, winning some awards and gathering a following.

The Voyage is a short novel with a slim plot - Frank Delage, who has invented a new type of piano, spends a largely unsuccessful time in Vienna trying to introduce his new instrument into the musical world there, and in the course of doing so meets Amalia von Schalla, a wealthy aristocrat who tries to help him.

The book partly describes Frank's time in Vienna, and also describes his voyage home on the freighter Romance, with Amalia's daughter Elisabeth, who has run away from Vienna to be with him. The book intersperses scenes from Vienna and scenes from the ship in an apparently random manner, along with Frank's thoughts about what he's seen and done, and his history and the fate of his groundbreaking invention.

The style is unashamedly modernistic - there are no chapters, or breaks in the work at all, and the perspective shifts from Vienna, to Frank's thoughts, to the time on the ship, sometimes in mid-sentence. This produces less confusion than you might think, as we view an incident as it occurs in Vienna along with a dissection of it on the ship one after the other.

Frank seems an innocent abroad, being taken in by the Schalla family and having his way with both mother and daughter and supported by them in his venture without really knowing why: in fact he is almost always completely at a loss to understand anything that's going on in his visit and voyage. He doesn't really grasp what it is about his own personality that makes him attractive to women, although he is not slow to take advantage.

The book can be read as a comment on the Old World vs. the New, with Frank being much more of an open personality compared to the von Schalla family. There is a great set piece where a music critic berates the sclerotic state of European classical music, but later on is equally sclerotic of Delage's new piano. However this is not a book that shouts out a message - in its description of a period of time in a life, it comes to no real conclusions about anything in particular.

Bail is not the world's best stylist, so the language can be clunky at times, but in a way this adds to the book, giving the work a slapped-together feel on the surface, while never letting the reader forget how long this book would have taken to craft.

This book has not overtaken Eucalyptus as Bail's best work so far in my opinion, but it is highly readable.

Check out my other reviews at http://aviewoverthebell.blogspot.com.au/

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

“The Voyage” is an odd little novel, about an odd little man on an odd little mission. And its story is oddly compelling, in a quiet, slowly building way.
The story takes place on the slow boat from Europe to Australia, a cargo ship with few passengers. Frank Delage, who has invented a new kind of piano, went to Vienna with hopes of making a splash with his creation, and is now on the voyage home. But we soon see he’s not alone: he left his piano in Vienna, but is accompanied back to Sydney by a beautiful, cultured, 10­years­younger (this fact is mentioned several times) Viennese woman.
Delage isn’t a salesman or a showman; he’s an engineer and a craftsman, and has a meticulous, curious, yet blend­into­the­background sort of personality. He describes himself as “someone without edges ... after a certain distance he tended to fade.” So it is with interest that we wait to find out how Elisabeth von Schalla, daughter of one of the most prominent socialites in Vienna, wound up on the ship with him.
Bail’s writing in “The Voyage” is very stream­of­consciousness, shifting between Vienna and the ship, sometimes within a single sentence, which is sometimes jarring and sometimes feels more like the rocking of a ship, back and forth, back and forth. He doesn’t appear overly fond of periods or even paragraphs ­­ some paragraphs go on for pages, even including dialogue. Delage is treated with quite a bit of depth, but most of the other characters ­­ Elisabeth, her parents, the other passengers on the ship ­­ we see from a single angle, maybe two.
But Bail’s writing has an intimacy to its distance: we are both inside the characters and looking at them from outside, and the details of what happened are parceled out steadily enough that we remain curious not only about the recent events in Vienna, but about what will happen with Delage and Elisabeth.
“The Voyage” is a short book, but it’s not a “quick read.” Its structure demands attention and its pace is far more slow­burn than page­turner. But it invites thought, on human nature and happiness, on the state of music, on the clash of old and new.

[Nicholas During · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are few novels like this one. Reflective on both cultures and nations and people, with a narrative structure that leads the reader back and forth though the experiences of an Australian piano manufacturer pitching his wares, a new piano that has a cleaner sound, in that home of classical music, Vienna. He may fail in his business ventures but succeeds in discovering the truth about himself, his personality and his ticks, and his desires that pop up out of nowhere for a wealthy Viennese wife, and ultimately, sort her, her daughter. All of this search for self-discovery takes place on the slow trip back to Australia by freight container, mostly in the arms of the wealthy but aimless daughter, or a recently cast-off Dutch man sure of his attempt to retake his ex-wife who has moved to Australia. How much can failure teach us? Do we need to exit the world of business and chores to realize who we are and what we want? These seem to be the questions of this wonderful novel, as is a look at the cultural difference between old world Vienna and new world Australia, particular as they pertain to art. There are no values or judgements given here. No real successes or losses. Except for the reader who, though may not always know who is talking to whom, will find, at least I did, a remarkable force to the narrative on a long boat ride back home.

[Noel Arnold · Rating 1 out of 5]

book #36 of 2021: The Voyage (pub. 2013) by Murray Bail (Australian novelist). regrets, I’ve had a few. this book reminded me a lot of the issues I saw in The Buried Giant (book #34 of 2021): constant redundancy: punishing the attentive reader, endless details that amounted - all of them - to nothing, characters who couldn’t shut up but still said nothing. on top of all that, this novel featured an inability of the protagonist to determine a greater attraction between a married woman and her daughter and a constant psychoanalysis of the main character and by the main character of…himself. this author found his main character WAY more compelling than I did. I think I finished the book hoping the whole time that sea creatures would appear and claim the protagonist for a meal: they were on a ship…. alas, no such luck. I may have to edit my insanely enduring hope that the author might pull it together in the end because…they never, ever do.