Sunflower

by Gyula Krúdy

English (translation)Original Hungarian

Genres: Fiction, Hungarian Literature, Hungary, Classics, Novels, 20th Century, Literature

208 pages, Paperback

First published September 14, 1918

About the author

Gyula Krúdy was a Hungarian writer and journalist.
Gyula Krúdy was born in Nyíregyháza, Hungary. His father was a lawyer and his mother was a maid working for the aristocratic Krúdy family. His parents did not marry until Gyula was 17 years old. In his teens, Gyula published newspaper pieces and began writing short stories. Although his father wanted him to become a lawyer, Gyula worked as an editor at a newspaper for several years, then moved to Budapest. He was disinherited, but supported his wife (also a writer) and children through the publication of two collections of short stories. Sinbad's Youth, published in 1911, proved a success, and Krudy used the character, a man who shared the name of the hero of the Arabian Nights, many times throughout his career.

Krúdy's novels about Budapest were popular during the First World War and the Hungarian Revolution, but he was often broke due to excessive drinking, gambling and philandering. His first marriage fell apart. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Krúdy's health declined and his readership dwindled. In the years after his death, his works were largely forgotten until 1940, when Hungarian novelist Sándor Márai published Sinbad Comes Home, a fictionalized account of Krúdy's last day. This book's success brought Krúdy's works back to the Hungarian public.

He was called "a Hungarian Proust" by critic Charles Champlin in The New York Times.

Reviews

[Gaurav Sagar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here lies an honest man who had exposed only one woman, to another one whom he loved as he loved life itself in youth, when life was worth living.


Love and death often go hand in hand, for death may be said to be the ultimate destination of sojourn of life which you love; or death is just a phase in the cosmos of universe, for the seeds of life spurt out of grains of death. Nonetheless, the mystifying aspect of death has been keeping us bemused since we understood the concept or perhaps we think so. Love never dies, it keeps coming back, sometimes even from graveyard, for those, whose unfulfilled existence does not let them rest peacefully in the boneyard, invariably find themselves lingering on to the thread of life carried through love since death itself is no impediment for love.



Pistoli, to find some solace amidst his gloomy thoughts, consoled himself by recalling that, after all, nothing base had ever really happened to him, and so he had no cause to complain, when a dark shadow like a bandit’s glided past his porch. It had to be man, for it wore pants. Pistoli howled out: “Is that you, Death?”

The book is something which I never read before, for it is so unique, so demanding perhaps like a feverish dream which suffused you over with the glow of love and melancholy of life. It is like a perpetual hallucination which is suffused with violent romance and is quite lush and mystifying. The language of the book flows like a convoluted dream which may look as impenetrable at times however it requires the patience of a lover to relish its true beauty. It is not a realistic novel: The dead recover, ghosts cuckold the living, and love affairs persist in the afterlife. It is a like a eternal fiesta built upon eroticism, dreams and magic- an epic poem.


Youthful Eveline leaves the city and comes back to her nation home to get away from the memory of her urgent love for the corrupt charmer Kálmán. There she experiences the despairing Álmos-Dreamer, who is moping for affection for her, and is visited by the peculiar and lovely Miss Maszkerádi, a lady who is a power of nature. The plot wanders aimlessly; natural fantasy blends with sheer sham: Krúdy splendidly lights up the moving forms and corrosive shades of the scene of desire. The references to death are similarly as unavoidable; the jubilee is held under stormy skies and in the high breezes of breathing easy. By turns obscene, nostalgic, droll and delicate, skeptical and confident, the novel's genuine subjects are the vanity however unavoidability of enthusiasm, the torment and joy of memory, and the grave that anticipates all of us.

She announced that she had always loved him, and him alone, just like a plant loves the soil it grows in. Thus she consoled and prepared him for death, giving much pleasure and gratification in the process.


The book is about death or loss of old world wherein memories are weaved in together to conjure up a mystical prose, the past is invariably reimagined to find happiness in present. The loss of old world paves way to the birth of new world, however the nostalgia, the events of the past keep haunting the new world per se wherein things moves waywardly as if some inner but demonic force is guiding them. Essentially, Grudy remained the painter of the dream world of old Hungary, not of modern Budapest, but the peregrinations of his per included some of the later, too.

The narrative keeps on shifting throughout the book with meandering viewpoints and stream of consciousness which may remind one of the modernists. One may also sense the presence of Kafkaesque elements as the author allows the dream and reality to mingle like we see in case of great Latin American authors. However the narrative of Krudy has made its unique place which is second to none and unique in every sense. Krúdy’s style is built of imagery that halts you at sentence’s end to ponder what it reveals about the subject. His prose is poetic, and profoundly national, soaked with history, with images , associations, including not only words but rhythms which are Hungarian in nature. The richness of his narrative is quite profuse wherein the metaphors are bombarded towards the reader which extend magical possibilities of the narrative.



The lyrical and deeply Magyar qualities of Grudy’s prose makes it translatable only with the greatest of efforts, unlike the work of more superficial Hungarian authors. His words flew with longing for the provincial Magyar Biedermeier of the previous century. He would paint such scenes over and over, with a magic of which the addicts of his writing never grew tired. His incomparable scenes grew in his mind while he mused for hours, half awake. Yet they did not crystallize until he began writing. He let his pen saunter, amble, canter away, down endless roads and treelined paths laden with the honeyed golden mist of the memories and the old Magyar names of innumerable flowers, trees, ferns, birds.

Words uttered unthinkingly, absentminded glances, careless gestures on the part of our fellow humans, somehow manage to avoid the wise or cynical man, bouncing off his outer wrappings, whereas they seem to follow in the tracks of other people, seeking them out from far, like cats do certain women.


One of the unique features of the Krudy’s prose is meandering narratives as mentioned above however in quite a unique way and effortlessly. The initial phase of the book seems to be driven by women e.g. Eveline, Maszkeradi (who appears to be a feminist) however as we move along the book the power center of the narrative swings towards Pistoli who represents the old Hungary, who is utter crass yet attractive. The author is a master prose stylist whose poetic prose is built upon dream like scenes, endless metaphors alluding to the Hungarian cultural and historical aspects to produce a fantastical experience that might come across as a like inventive memory to the reader as we experience in case of great Latin American authors.


The book does not have a plot per se but a series of events which keep on swaying and oscillating hither and thither that sometimes the reader may feel to be at loss to keep follow the narrative in general. It is to be enjoyed rather than to be followed or assimilated. Gyula Krúdy has been regarded as one of the greatest Hungarian writers, perhaps of the greatest of the world. He has been compared to Robert Walser, Joseph Roth and Bruno Schulz regularly, mainly because of his uniqueness and his genius as an author as Sandor Marai mentioned “few in world literature could so vivify the mythical in reality”. He was called "a Hungarian Proust" by critic Charles Champlin in The New York Times. He wrote because he had to, as if an inner demon is there which forces him to get rid of tribulations of life going in his head and forces him to disburse the anxious ordeals; and what better way it could be than to write.

Had he been a writer, he would have set down his dreams, the mendacious acts committed in his sleep, his conscious self-deceptions, his dreamland swindles – he would have had enough material for a lifetime… No wonder his dazed brain was reluctant to give serious thought to changing his way of life.

[Jonfaith · Rating 4 out of 5]

I live with a fear. Each novel I read will be effaced in my mind. The recall will blur and float into ether. The inscriptions will be softened and removed, leaving only vague blushes of recognition, while fertile patches of perfection are lost to me forever. Novels such as Sunflower are very supect in this regard. There isn't much of a plot as far as any arc is concerned. There are only images. They are certainly eloquent and incisive, but they are but stills and miniatures. Such taunts my seizured brain.

[Mariel · Rating 2 out of 5]

His big buck teeth, protuberant bullish eyes, lowering, growling voice, oversized, meaty ears, calloused knuckles and pipe-stem legs altogether produced a peculiar effect on the females of the region. For there are still many women around who will kiss the spot where her man has hit her; who will put up with years of suffering to receive a kind word at the last hour; who will cut off her hair, pull out her teeth, put out her bright eyes, clench down her empty stomach, ignore her tormenting passion, say goodbye to springtime, beauty, life itself- if her man so commands. Pistoli went about growling like a wild boar, and women wiggled their toes at him, to tease the monster. Thus he lived to bury three wives.

Eveline is a "country miss" of Hungary, a Hungary of bygone times. White walls and cafes to dream of servant girls who wear red shoes to tempt the men into clandestine affairs. Sledding and paying off armed men in the night with booze stashes. My fairy tale belly rejected this mythical fantasy land like the wolf chopped out of the grandmother with the wood ax rather than drool at the corners of a wide smile hanging in the man and rabbit frolicking on the moon sky. Wait, what about the poor young women who get bellies full after these affairs and the products get chopped out with the axes of a cruel society? What about everyone ever who wasn't the born with no problems at all Eveline?

Honestly? I had it up to here with the virgin stuff. I couldn't take the fantasy land of Hungary and the virgin worship. I realize that in the world always there are people who consider the so-called purity of a woman to be the basis of everything else. I don't get it. I would sooner read about hinging all of life on something like... high school football? Something really lame. Anything other than if someone else does something that makes them happy. If these men cannot find fulfillment in any other way than if a woman doesn't have sex then they are not interesting to me as people. Eveline is loved by all (the men) because she is untouched. Untouched by life: hard work (she inherited a fortune, houses, servants), sex, and well, life. I read this months ago and I am still revolted by one of the male characters who was so disgusted by women who pursued sex. How dare they! Someone might come along and say something about culture or product of the time. I don't care about that. It is a fairy tale fantasy that I could not care about.

So Eveline has this ridiculous love interest Andor Álmos-Dreamer. He kills himself for her (it is so stupid) and then in the end of the book is somehow alive again (even stupider). Other men have creepy mother-sex fantasies of the pure Eveline and it is so so boring. She behaves like a little girl and plays make believe because she doesn't have to do anything with her life because she has a lot of money. Good for her. I didn't care if she preferred the country life to Budapest. I felt pretty stupid for wasting my time on a book that is about a girl who decides to live in the country and then her dead boyfriend comes back to life.

Miss Maszkerádi positively abhorred novelists who always write about old men remembering youthful adventures. Thus she could not stand Turgenev, whom Eveline would have read night and day.

She probably would have agreed with me about Sandor Márai's Embers. I read on wikipedia after finishing Sunflower that Márai played a hand in bringing Krúdy again to the Hungarian public's attention. If I had known that I probably wouldn't have bothered with Sunflower (I really hated Embers so sue me). Sunflower is like Embers in the writing style of constant narration that explains to you how important everything is about everyone without ever showing any of it happen. It is only known because the author says that it is so. I don't like this kind of book. Eveline is such a sweetheart. This person is such a good person, such a pure heart. That person is this. It is dull to write this way.

Maszkerádi carries on a love affair with a gnarly tree. I found this one sided affair to at least be more interesting and believable than their melting loins devotion to Pistoli. At least the tree had an excuse to be devoid of a good personality. What kind of a Bluebeard fucked up shit was Pistoli? He locks up his wives in mental institutions. I don't miss the Hungary of ornery horny old men in their sixties if that is what it was like. That she wanted to hug the tree and more was more believable to me than that she wanted him. Wouldn't a lusty young woman want a man who was visually appealing? How come they don't have the right to sleep with someone who isn't decrepit? But hey, so long as the book says everything happens that way. If I'm told Pistoli is a tragic loss to Hungary, a hero, that doesn't make me believe it. Is the only reason to care about anyone is that they are born to an accepted nationalistic identity? Says who? Eveline thoughtlessly expects an authoritative position over her so-called best friend, buys her first fiancee. If she had difficulty with Budapest friends and found it smooth sailing with the country folk I think it had more to do with their accepting her buying them without resentment. I would have found it more interesting if that had been addressed rather than something taken for granted as the perfect Miss Eveline in the right over those who weren't born rich as she was. Sunflower really wasn't for me.

I didn't like The Moon and the Bonfire either. I hope to not read any more NYRB selections about how awful women who have sex are. (Those books probably don't like me either.)

[Steven Godin · Rating 3 out of 5]

From the sublime to the ridiculous, Hungarian maestro Gyula Krúdy orchestrates his singular vision using prose of the art nouveau period, to create a bourgeoisie tale of love, madness, fading dreams and poetic ramblings, all with the feelings of a melancholic, strangely erotic and dreamy fairy tale.

Sunflower sees the weary hearted maiden Eveline leave the city of Pest and return to her country estate to escape the memory of a despairing love to the charmer Kalman, she seems to be quite the girl, with many others falling at her feet in an attempt to languish their love for her. Visited one day by the bizarre Miss Maszkeradi who appears to be a force of nature when it comes to men, she is taken in and all sorts of manipulating takes place. Any plot if I can call it that is somewhat buried in myth, and always finds ways of becoming odd and farcical, one minute drenched in elegant enlightenment, the next bordering on sheer lunacy!, from drunkards in taverns to doomed aristocrats and singing gypsies there is never a dull moment, even if at times things cloud the mind like a haze of morning fog.
Anyone who admires the work Robert Walser, Bruno Schulz or Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky will in all likelihood find this a joy. For me it was certainly worth reading, but wished it carried a little more realism in places.

[Sasha]

It was clear, right from the very beginning: this was unlike any other book I’d read before. SUNFLOWER is a fever dream, violently romantic, lush and crazy and demanding and bewildering and beautiful. Its language follows that dream logic, the metaphors swinging every which way, every mundane act elevated to hyperbole. And it’s dizzying collective of characters?

There is a woman, quiet and too-beautiful, and the two men who love her—one, a good-for-nothing lover hands long open to be granted her wealth, the other, an Álmos-Dreamer [a long line of lovers who have killed themselves for mostly unrequited love.] And, indeed, Andor Álmos-Dreamer kills himself for Eveline—but when Eveline rushes to his cooling corpse, he wakens. Of course he does. There is also Mr. Pistoli, a Casanova now firmly middle-aged, and all the baggage of his past loves, past marriages—three of them, his wives gone mad. Mr. Pistoli is in love with Miss Malvina Maszkerádi, the feisty, determined-spinster. Miss Maszkerádi is in love with a tree, and would like to stay that way, thank you very much.

Ah, but this is the best I can do, for now: Read SUNFLOWER. Read it over weeks and months, it changes every time you return to it, and that is never a bad thing for something so charged with life and language and the strangest ways people decide to live and love. Read SUNFLOWER, read, read, read. I know I will again, and soon, hopefully soon.

[Andrew]

God, I love dreamy prose, and god, I love the fringes of the old Habsburg Empire. And so it follows that I loved Sunflower. I loved it as I remembered the pokey, empty trains along the Elbe and the Danube, I loved it as I sipped Zubrowka, I loved it as I thought of the kisses I shared in Baroque squares. I loved it as I fell asleep to Mahler in a shaft of afternoon light.

If you’re the same, you’ll like Sunflower. If you’re not the same, but you want to be whisked off to another way of being, you’ll hopefully like Sunflower. A beautiful denouement to a terrible year.

[Chrissie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I could not finis h this book. I read 29%.

First, let me point out that the samples available from Amazon should NOT be only the introduction to the book. The introduction is written by a writer different from the author. You cannot glimpse the author's style from this. I also checked the the very beginning of the book that can be read at the Amazon site. This did intrigue me. It was suspenseful, amusing and filled with similes that I enjoyed. I thought the similes were very perceptive. Try this one on page 45:

...at dawn he would have stopped in at St. Roch's Chapel where the poor nuns, like white seagulls by the ocean's dark shore, sat in the pews, row after row, saying prayers as adventitious as birdsong.

One simile at a time, that I like, but when whole paragraphs are nothing but similes about a character you do not even know, well then my interest drops like a stone. You even forget who is being described sometimes! Here, try this description of a croupier in a gambling hall on page 47:

A dyed mustache, meticulous shave, pomaded strands of hair pasted across his bald skull like dark twigs on winter trees: this was the croupier. He wore a green bunting jacket and tight pants, like landed gentry on a city outing. He let the nail grow long on his little finger, and wore an oversize signet ring bought at a pawn shop. He was on familiar terms with everyone present, for that was the style of the house. His bulging frog's eyes took in his guests from top to toe, the rock in his tiepin was the size of a pea, and he wore his watch chain short, in the manner of army officers. His platinum-capped false teeth smiled enigmatically behind blue lips. This man was never bothered by the thought that outdoors it might be springtime....He wore great big American shoes, equipped with ear-and toothpicks in a silver case, a gilt-backed mustache brush, a a silver cigar-cutter, a pocketknife with a handle fashioned from an antler, and matching morocco leather notebook, mirror, wallet and change purse; his back pocket had a Browning automatic, his lapel sported ........

I have only given you about half of the paragraph. This is all about an insignificant character in the tale!

Let me say this very clearly. The beginning of the book aroused my curiosity and intrigued me. Then as I progressed into the novel it went off onto tangents, became overly descriptitve and put me to sleep. I feel tricked. What I read in the beginning is not what the book delivers. I am giving up. What a disappointment. This is a "New York Review Books Classic"!

Oh, and not only did I dislike the excessiveness of the details, absolutely nothing has happened since the first chapter when Eveline left her home in Pest and moved out to her manor Bujdos-Hideaway on the upper reaches of the River Tisza. I have met three main characters: Eveline, Kaliman and Andor Alimos-Dreamer, and have been sufficiently informed about their ancestors with almost exactly the same names. Nice and confusing. A challenge, if you want that sort of a challenge. All Eveline has done is left Pest. All Andor has done is pretend he was dead and then sat up in his coffin. Kaliman, Eveline's former fianceé, tried to sneak into her apartment. That was the exciting part in chapter one, but he only stole a sprig of frozen rosemary from her garden. Yes, it is bizarre. That is what intrigued me, but the writing style makes it impossible for me to enjoy it. Maybe one should rad it as poetry, one paragraph at a time, while you read another book!

[Tony]

I never had much of a talent for simile, which is why writing this review is making me as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

This 1918 Hungarian novel was inventive, shifting storylines and characters. Vignettes were well-told. It's probably something that should be re-read and studied, diagrammed maybe. And yet what I will take away from it, and what was my undoing, was simile.

The book begins with a truly spectacular opening paragraph, and also our first simile:

The young miss lay abed reading a novel by the light of the candelabra. She heard faint creaks from another part of the townhouse: was someone walking in a remote room? She lowered her book and listened. The hands of the clock were creeping up on midnight like some soul climbing a rock face.

I was sold. But while the plot thickened, so did the similes. Every page, every paragraph, seemingly every sentence, as if like and as were unstoppable. I became as distracted as a trial lawyer addressing a naked jury.

To-wit:

--I became as cheerful as a fallen girl after her confession.

--as touchy as a gouty heel.

--I can only crave you, crave you like sunshine that can not be held.

--Her eyes flashed at times like a knifeblade honed at night near a nomadic campfire.

--Meanwhile Risoulette stood in the door bewildered, like a woman who has spilled kerosene on her shirt but cannot find a match to set it aflame.

--I'm not the kind of man you can just drop like a worn boot on the highway.

--But I still love you, just as the groom's best man loves the first locust blossoms.

--Winter whistled in my chimney, and now Spring fills the world, like tunes from a military band on a Danube steamer.

--The moon surveyed the scene over the marshes, like a sheriff who decides to leave the outlaws in peace tonight.

--He took a prolonged draught from a smoky jug, just like a thirsty forest in a May downpour.

--He was suddenly jealous, and as downcast as an ancient sumac tree whose sunlight is cut off by a new wall.

Sometimes he worked in two in one sentence:

--The doves were tumbling in the air above the manor house like distant springtime memories of youth, and Pistoli, in a tragic gesture, interlaced the knobby fingers of his two hands, like the branches of a lilac bush.

Two more, then I promise I'll stop, like a robin who flies into my sliding glass door and then waddles away confused:

--Transience squats by the foot of the bed like a moribund, faithful old servitor.

--Only the insomniac looks on with open eyes, like a cadaver who forgot to die.

[Argos · Rating 1 out of 5]

Yazarın tekniğini anlamadım, romanın örgüsü garip, kişiler bir ölü, bir hayalet, konusu ve zaman kavramı nedir belli değil veya ben anlamadım. İlk yarısını çok ciddiye alarak okudum ama son yarısını hızlı okuma tekniğiyle ve sadece kitabı okumuş olmak ve bitirmek için okudum.
Kitabın başındaki açıklamada yazarın " bilinç akışı" tekniğini ilk kez kullanan bir yazar olduğu, J. Joyce ve W. Woolf'u etkilemiş bir kişi olduğu yazıyor. Zaten bu kitabı almam hataymış, çünkü hem yukarıdaki yazarlara hem de "bilinç akışı" tekniğine çok uzağım. İnsanın okuyacağı kitabı seçmesi için deneyim gerekir denirse bu düşünce tam da bu kitap için bana uydu.

[Alta]

Sunflower by Gyula Krúdy (NYRB, trans. from the Hungarian by John Bátki, introduction by John Lukacs)

Krúdy has been hailed by his fellow Hungarians as not only one of the greatest Hungarian writers, but maybe the greatest. He has been compared to Robert Walser and Bruno Schulz, not because of any similarities, but because, like them, he is unclassifiable, and his greatness has been described by Sándor Márai as “almost past comprehension.” Given all the above, the reader may be slightly disappointed by his novel, Sunflower (written in 1918 and published for the first time in English in 1997). Lukacs’s introduction warns us about the difficulties to translate Krúdy’s poetic prose not only because of his style, but also because of the hidden allusions (cultural, historical) that only a Hungarian can understand. With an ambiguous formulation, he tells the reader that the translator “has tried” and “largely succeeded.”

As I read the book, I tried to find in my mind literary equivalents for it, and the only one I came up with was Craii de Curtea Veche by the Romanian writer Mateiu Caragiale, a novel written around the same time and hailed by Romanian writers as an unequaled masterpiece. What these books have in common, aside from a poetic, archaic style, is an atmosphere of fin-de-siècle, of a gone world that the narrators are trying to bring back through the power of words. The world they describe and which triggers their nostalgia is one in which men drink their fill and reminisce about past lovers—in other words, a world that is itself prone to nostalgic remembrance. In this world, the inn is the emblematic space of dramatic encounters, a microcosm from which stories about other worlds unspool, where an old woman spotted at a nearby table triggers a long story about a bygone beauty and the drama that had once surrounded her. This nostalgia about nostalgia creates a dreamlike universe, but this universe is far from being depicted as some kind of idyllic space; on the contrary, there is a crudeness and even an ugliness to the people in it. The apparent contradiction between this nostalgia and the world that is its object makes me think that these two authors may be impossible to translate for an American audience.

And this brings me to the issue of translation, and to whether translating a book from a very different culture and historical time is possible. In this case, I think the answer is no, not because translating the author’s words might be impossible. What is impossible to translate is what the author hasn’t said, and which is, nevertheless, present in the book: a sensibility circumscribed to a certain culture and historical time. The idea of a bygone world and the accompanying nostalgia may be to some degree universal (in American literature, Gone with the Wind is a great example), but what differentiates an American and a Hungarian is that loss gives the latter a perverse pleasure. Compare the spirit of Scarlet O’Hara who, undeterred by all she’s lost, declares courageously, “Tomorrow is another day,” hopeful that she can start all over again, to Krúdy’s characters who will do tomorrow what they are doing today: reminisce about yesterday.

Add to the above the fact that, unlike most novels, Krudy’s novel has several centers from which radiate several stories. For the first half, a woman, Eveline, seems to be the main protagonist, but then, the focus shifts to her neighbor, Pistoli, who becomes the main character. Pistoli is the incarnation of the “old Hungary” whose loss the narrator (and the author) deplores, and with whom most American readers, especially women, would find it hard to identify: an ugly yet impressive man, presumably in his sixties, who venerates the bottle, takes himself for a philosopher (and doesn’t spare the reader his numerous “witticisms”), thinks with nostalgia about the dozens of mistresses from his past, and sometimes visits his former wives, now locked up (by him) in mental institutions. On the other hand, the mating dance of cruelty between Pistoli and Miss Maszkeradi, a wild woman and feminist avant la lettre, is fascinating, as is the relationship between her friend, the suave Eveline and her suitor, Andor Almos-Dreamer (who is, indeed, a dreamer). The novel doesn’t have a plot per se, but a series of events, which don’t really develop toward a climax; rather, they go up and down, and right and left until Pistoli’s death restores a lost equilibrium and brings some hope for the future of Eveline and Almos-Dreamer.

[Bryant · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a novel about the death of Old World, pre-WWI Hungary, but it feels less like a dirge and more like a wake. Krudy's prose weaves together a ballad of rogation and celebration in its conjuring of a great lost world, filled with madcap midnight revelers, besotted dreamers, endless mystical bottles of wine, and charmingly falstaffian men like Mr. Pistoli, who, before attempting a seduction, does only two things: soaks his feet and clears his throat. Oh, and he occasionally returns home after weeks on the amorous side streets to tint his mustache. Pistoli emerges as the book’s lothario-philosopher, a beguiling cross between Dionysus and St Francis. He embodies the biotic spirit of old Hungary, both as the remembered image of lusty former life and a man who, within his own sphere, constantly remembers and re-imagines his own past in pursuit of an always evanescent present happiness.

Though it's carnal, it's not all carnival, for a pall of loss and degradation brought about by the new world disorder hangs over this book. The signature mark of Krudy’s prose is his relentless employment of simile, repeatedly evoking parallel images that both flesh out their referents but also suggest their incompleteness, as when Krudy writes, “In the afternoon a fog settled over the fields, like gray souls assembled to rehash the mournful circumstances of their demise.” The image of fog is enhanced by the simile, but the comparison also suggests that simply mentioning fog does not suffice to awaken the breadth of image Krudy wishes to convey. The abundant similes often summon images suggestive of an earlier, simpler state of affairs, the loss of which the book bemoans, as when Krudy writes of one woman that she was “a silent queen as beautiful as memory itself.” Simile, then, works to suggest parallels between the older better world and the newer sadder one: “for even the most melodious lovers have a way of dying, just like an old field hand.”

Sunflower is not ultimately about nostalgia per se. It’s about the fantasy that nostalgia induces, for we don’t simply remember. We fancifully, inventively remember. A chilling scene in the book’s closing pages in which an apparently dead Mr. Pistoli is seen standing in his grave, “his hand groping for help,” leaves the reader wondering whether the book indicts the kind of memory—creative memory—in which it constantly engages, or whether, as the scene might also suggest, we bury the Pistolic spirit it at the risk of losing something fundamental about our identities. Among the many powers of this novel is its combination of specific evocation of place and time and the more general expansiveness it achieves by being, like One Hundred Years of Solitude or Waiting for the Barbarians, a book about a contained world that becomes a simile for other ones, like our own.

[Sylvester (Taking a break in 2023) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I hardly know what to say about this one. Krudy writes like no one I've ever read before, although the thought came to me often that the dreamlike and yet vivid way he writes about snow and cold and autumn beautifully offsets the way Gabriel Garcia Marquez writes about the tropics. His skill at conjuring so many emotive images out of one scene is incredible. His mind overflows with dazzling images - I really don't know who is more impressive, the writer or the translator. He goes on and on describing a moment or scene, as if unraveling a ball of silk from which come more strands, each of vibrant and varying colour, and he neglects none of them, but follows them each to their end. And then he will make a very concise statement that is so beautiful and sharp that it takes your breath away. I loved this one in particular -

"A glove pulled off the hand might feel the way Mr. Pistoli felt."

My thanks to Bettie for recommending this one to me. I would have given it 5* except that I wished Krudy cared a little more about plot, but that's just personal taste. If you like magic realism and prose that is poetry, you'll love "Sunflower".

[Bern · Rating 1 out of 5]

yarım kalanlardan...

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have just finished reading this book a few minutes ago and I am still suffused by the glow of it. In the world of Gyula Krúdy, love never dies: It keeps coming back, and we are merely envelopes that contain this love. Set in the Beeches country of Northeast Hungary, Sunflower is a magical novel, with its handful of characters seeking out one another to reprise the loving moments of their lives. Eveline, Miss Maszkeradi, Almos-Dreamer, Kalman Ossuary, Pistoli -- all are memorable and mythical.

The really great books in my life, I feel that I must return to them at some point in my life. My first reading of Sunflower is, I feel, only the beginning of a conversation that will last me all my life.

[Isabelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a great book! I read it as a result of one of my Goodreads friends' recommendation. Thank you very much for suggesting the book to me!
While the plot is fairly classic and simple, the treatment is unique, rich, vibrant... the prose is breathtaking at times! I caught myself in profund admiration of the translator, and immediately thereafter fantasizing about what it must be like to read Krudy in Hungarian. I felt I was caught in a whirlwind of lyricism, folklore, truculence!!
Years ago, when Emir Rustica's movie "Underground" first came out, I had a similar dizzying experience watching the film. I highly recommend this book!

[Kastoori · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book reads like a dream. It's oozing with similes and such lovely ones too! The only major complaint that I have is the fact that Krudy didn't pay much attention to the plot. The book reads like a dreamy montage, conveying the spirit of the scene, beautiful, hackneyed scenes but.

[Kobe Bryant · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has more similes than a Weezy freestyle

[Bryan--The Bee’s Knees · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sunflower is nominally the story of Eveline, a young Hungarian woman from the upper classes, who leaves her home in Budapest and retires to her country manor after the disappointing end to her courtship with a roguish fellow named Kálmán. A friend, Miss Maszkerádi, joins her in her seclusion, and during their rural holiday, various eligible and not so eligible men pursue the two women, including the eccentric Mr. Álmos-Dreamer, the animated country squire Mr. Pistoli, and Kálmán himself, at last recognizing his mistake of letting Eveline go.

I say 'nominally the story of' because there is little else that happens, and thus the real focus of Krúdy's work is the Hungarian countryside and the manners of its people. Published in 1918, the setting of Sunflower, although no dates are given in the text, seems to date back to before the turn of the century, to an idyllic, carefree Hungary--or so it must have appeared to the war-weary, defeated nation at the end of WWI. Krúdy leaves me with the impression that Sunflower was a time of landed gentry and their servants, of cultural mores that were observed as much in flouting them as by observing them (especially by the upper echelon of society), and of a rigid class structure where every person had their place and was content in it.

As such, Sunflower has romantic, fairy-tale quality to it. Where Krúdy shines is as an evocative landscape painter--there were times when his descriptions of the natural world brought back rural memories of my own, even though the places I remember are a world away from his. These passages will probably not appeal to readers who only see place setting and description as a momentary hiatus from the story's action--it seems to me that Krúdy's main subject was the world of Sunflower, and that the true hero was the time and place, of which the characters were only transient residents.

Krúdy's writing is also brimming with metaphor and simile, so much so that some readers may find it tiresome after a while, although it is with such devices that he succeeds in bringing to life the country setting of Sunflower. This ties in to one of the two points from John Lukacs' introduction that I think are worth mentioning to potential readers--the singularity of the Magyar language. This is not the first time that I've read Hungarian writers whose admirers have praised the poetic and magical prose of the authors in their native language, and who have groaned over there being no possible way to adequately translate it. Any fault I find with Krúdy's writing may be more to do with the deficiencies between our two languages than with his style or the translator's ability. But even though I thought it was well wrought for the most part, because this novel is dependent more on description for its success than action, it may not be the best translated work of Krúdy's with which to start.

Mr. Lukacs also notes that Krúdy "never corrected his manuscripts, and he cared little for the proofs". If true, then it is amazing to me that Sunflower is coherent at all, although I think that there is evidence to be found in the novel that does reflect that sort of inattention. There is a disjointed aura to it, and Krúdy implies different tangents he may pick up later but doesn't, or subtly preps me for character actions that he never follows. I don't believe I would like this as a rule, but in this case it gave the book an unpredictable slant I found atypical yet interesting.

On the back matter of the book, a short description of Sunflower and Gyula Krúdy compares him to Robert Walser, Bruno Schulz, and Joseph Roth. While the comparison to Walser seems particularly apt, I think that of Bruno Schulz is misleading. Krúdy is to Schulz as a Monet Landscape is to Munch's The Scream. Instead, I think Sunflower might best be summed up as a romance from a vanished place and time--which is not something I would normally read--but Krúdy's evocative writing makes me willing to also try both works of his currently in translation, Adventures of Sindbad, and Krúdy's Chronicles, if I were to happen onto them. Four stars.

[Beth Bonini · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have a high tolerance for the romantic and fanciful, but even I could not quite enter into this dream-world in which no one works and everyone sits around brooding about love. Set (presumably) in late 19th c Hungary - both Budapest and the countryside of northeastern Hungary (where the author grew up) - it describes this beautiful, timeless world of gypsies and young heiresses, wastrels and eccentrics. There is plenty of longing, and more than enough jealousy and dramatic gestures, but very little storyline. The writing was often gorgeous, often charming, but ultimately I could not engage with the narrative (or lack thereof). Having said that, the introduction by John Lukacs was one of the best (most entertaining and illuminating) that I've ever read on any author, and certainly made me eager to explore more of Gyula Krudy's work.

[Leylak Dalı · Rating 2 out of 5]

Macar edebiyatı sevgime ve Kitap Fuarı'ndaki stand görevlisinin tavsiyesine uyarak aldığım bir kitaptı. Bir daha kendim dışında kimsenin önerisine yüz vermeyeceğim. Diyalog azlığı, betimleme çokluğu, aşırı karakter tahlili, ne olduğunu anlamadığım olaylar ruhumu sıktı. Belki okumak için yanlış zamandı, belki tercüme yetersizdi bilemeyeceğim ama tavsiye isterseniz, "hayır" derim.

[Patrick Cottrell · Rating 5 out of 5]

"One has to be very stupid to find life bearable."

[Jeremy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mandatory.

[Arvind Radhakrishnan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A literary masterpiece!

[Rambling Raconteur · Rating 5 out of 5]

https://youtu.be/v3HGK1lhzSI

[mon!ka · Rating 4 out of 5]

it's rare i'll dog-ear a book as much as i have this one.. rarer still, when i revisit the folded pages mere hours after completing the book and i do not recall which sentence or idea i was trying to save to remember! in fact, every page is filled with so much detail that if opened at random, it could be any sentence greeting you with something you'd like to hold on to for later..

Krudy does not follow any plot here, you're charmed by the visual stimulation (which is endless, and nearly always welcome) and you hope with every page he will come back to a favorite character but the bastard leaves you hanging (that's why i'm giving this 4 out of 5 stars) in my opinion, not nearly enough was written about Almos-Dreamer and Eveline and I felt too much time was wasted on Pistoli and his women.. but even that i can forgive as the initial time spent on the characters was so filling.. *burp*

[julieta · Rating 2 out of 5]

Algo me pasó con esta novela. No me gustó la personalidad que tiene, algo en la forma del autor no me llegó. Tenía ilusión de leerlo, pero me encontré con que no conectaba de ninguna manera con su forma de contar las cosas. Me choca porque nunca se si eso es un problema de la traducción o si es realmente un problema de el estilo, que no me llega. Pero como no creo que vaya a aprender húngaro muy pronto, me parece que me quedo con las ganas de enterarme.

[RH Walters · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a Minnesotan in January this passage brought a smile to my lips
"The marshy groves, the reeds and snaking rills were all snowed under, disappearing for the duration of the season like enraptured women lying sequestered with pagan lovers."
I don't think it gets this cold in Hungary, because pagan lovers do not occur to me when I look at the snowbanks. Or maybe the snowplows iron out the contours that would suggest them.

[Richard Stuart · Rating 4 out of 5]

You might like this book, though there is hardly any plot.

You might love this book, because the writing is akin to a cross pollination of Walt Whitman's inclusivity and Joseph Conrad's over-use of the simile... a fermentation of Hungarian poetry that pours a rare and curious blend of whiskey over the rural grey contours of the mind.

Somehow reminds me of a Dostoyevsky-esque side story in one of his great novels... the ambitious folly of the characters and their dazzling demises.

[Aaron · Rating 2 out of 5]

Krudy takes forever to say anything, constantly peppering "clever" descriptions of attitudes or actions that come across as far too forced and unnatural. If someone recounted the plot of this book to me I would think it was an entertaining melodrama, but Krudy's language is far too in love with itself. Hungarian is apparently a very difficult language to translate, but I doubt all the damage here is a question of translation.

[Nicole]

"Sunflower is like a fairy tale, only more like a dream. Eveline, a ""country miss"" living in Budapest, has her house broken into by her former fianc