{"id":5414,"date":"2011-02-22T00:32:26","date_gmt":"2011-02-22T04:32:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=5414"},"modified":"2016-06-27T17:54:23","modified_gmt":"2016-06-27T21:54:23","slug":"dezso-kosztolanyi-kornel-esti","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2011\/02\/22\/dezso-kosztolanyi-kornel-esti\/","title":{"rendered":"Dezs\u00f6 Kosztol\u00e1nyi: Korn\u00e9l Esti<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"
Korn\u00e9l Esti<\/strong><\/em><\/span>\r\nby Dezs\u00f6 Kosztol\u00e1nyi (1933)<\/span>\r\ntranslated from the Hungarian by Bernard Adams (2011)<\/span>\r\nNew Directions (2011)<\/span>\r\n233 pp<\/span><\/pre>\n
Last year, Dezs\u00f6 Kosztol\u00e1nyi’s wonderful\u00a0Skylark<\/em> (my review here<\/a>)\u00a0— a tale about an unfortunately ugly girl’s relationship with her parents, a relationship that changes dramatically when she goes away for a couple of weeks — just missed\u00a0being in my year end “best of” list<\/a>.\u00a0If I were writing the list today, in fact, it just might be there, just as it may have been on the list had I written it on, say, a Tuesday rather than a Friday. I was thrilled to see that New Directions was publishing a new translation of his somewhat-autobiographical Korn\u00e9l Esti<\/em>, a book written near the end of his life (1885 – 1935).<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Korn\u00e9l Esti <\/em>begins with one of the most fascinating opening chapters I’ve read in a long time. The first-person narrator, a writer, is around forty years old. Ten years earlier he severed his relationship with one of his closest and most constant companions, Korn\u00e9l Esti. But, in a line echoing the opening to\u00a0The Inferno<\/em>, the narrator thinks enough time has passed.<\/p>\n
I had passed the midpoint of my life, when one windy day in spring, I remembered Korn\u00e9l Esti.\u00a0I decided to call on him and to revive our former friendship.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Before we meet Korn\u00e9l Esti, who is also around forty — in fact, he is the exact same age as the narrator — the narrator takes us briefly to his childhood with Korn\u00e9l Esti. One wonders why he would ever want to revive this friendship. The narrator was a well-raised boy, calm and controlled; but not his friend: “There were no two people on the planet more different than Korn\u00e9l and myself.” This only led to trouble for our narrator:<\/p>\n
Once Uncle Loizi was coming toward us, an old friend of my father’s, whom I had always liked and respected, a three-hundred-pound magistrate. Korn\u00e9l shouted at me:<\/span><\/p>\n
“Stick your tongue out.” And he stuck out his own till it reached the point of his chin.<\/span><\/p>\n
He was a cheeky boy, but interesting, never dull.<\/span><\/p>\n
He put a lighted candle in my hand.<\/span><\/p>\n
“Set fire to the curtains!” he urged me. “Set fire to the house. Set the world on fire.”<\/span><\/p>\n
He put a knife in my hand too.<\/span><\/p>\n
“Stick it in your heart!” he exclaimed. “Blood’s red. Blood’s warm. Blood’s pretty.”<\/span><\/p>\n
I didn’t dare follow his suggestions, but I was pleased that he dared to put into words what I thought. I said nothing, gave a chilly smile. I was afraid of him and attracted to him.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Yes, their friendship could have led to many bad endings. It was still pretty bad. For one thing, the narrator and Korn\u00e9l Esti were uncommonly alike in appearance. Even if the narrator didn’t follow Korn\u00e9l Esti’s urgings, he was often maligned,\u00a0sometimes just by association\u00a0and sometimes\u00a0due to mistaken identity.\u00a0It almost cost the narrator all he had.<\/p>\n
I paid.\u00a0Paid a lot. Not only money. I paid with my reputation too. People everywhere looked at me askance. They didn’t know where they were with me, whether I was right or left of center, whether I was a patriotic citizen or a dangerous rabble-rouser, a respectable family man or a depraved voluptuary, and altogether whether I was a real person or just a dream figure — a drunken, double-dealing, lunatic scarecrow who still flapped his ragged, cast-off gentleman’s coat whichever way the wind blew. I paid dearly for our friendship.<\/span><\/p>\n
All that, however, I instantly forgot and forgave on that windy spring day when I decided to call on him.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The author seeks Korn\u00e9l Esti at a hotel at which he’s rumored to be staying. At first, he cannot find his old friend, but soon Korn\u00e9l Esti appears, standing in front of the mirror. Though it is never explicit, the reader has known for some time that Korn\u00e9l Esti is a clear double to the author (and to Kosztol\u00e1nyi), but if anything this makes all we’ve read more interesting, particularly the near suicidal urges. It’s a great opening to the book and a fine introduction to Kosztol\u00e1nyi’s keen observations, which he packs into lively prose.<\/p>\n
At the end of the first chapter the author and Korn\u00e9l Esti decide, “Let’s write something, together.” Korn\u00e9l Esti will come up with the stories, exaggerated vignettes from his own past, and the author will put them down in writing. Together they will edit for style. And, in a final bit of play, Korn\u00e9l Esti suggests:<\/p>\n
“You put your name to it.\u00a0And my name can be the title. The title’s in bigger letters.”<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I was in. Unfortunately, this virtuosic opening didn’t lead to the type of novel I was expecting (and I’d like to read this again without the expectations). With the play between the author and alter-ego I was expecting some great ancestor to Philip Roth’s Operation Shylock<\/em> (review to come) or The Counterlife<\/em>\u00a0(my review here<\/a>).\u00a0Rather than continue to examine the relationship between the author and Korn\u00e9l Esti, the book goes into those vignettes\u00a0from Korn\u00e9l Esti’s life, any one of which has little to do with another. I was, sadly, disappointed that an interesting concept led to a series of disconnected episodes, and that affected my overall view of this book (I’d rate Skylark<\/em> above it). Still, I have to wonder if I’d read it with a different frame of mind whether I would have ended up loving this one. Most of the vignettes, after all, are striking.<\/p>\n
For example, I loved the first one.\u00a0Korn\u00e9l Esti is six years old; it is his\u00a0first day at school and he’s terrified. One of my favorite scenes in all of literature is when Stephen Dedalus goes to boarding school in James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as Young Man<\/em>,\u00a0which came on the page as if it were my own memories (though I never went to boarding school). I have to say that here Kosztol\u00e1nyi nearly matches it, particularly when Korn\u00e9l Esti’s mother leaves him alone at the classroom door. His terror and his desire to be back with her, to not be left alone, are viscerally felt, as is the profound transformation of his fear:<\/p>\n
He could see children, more children than he’d ever before seen in one place. It was a crowd, a crowd of completely unknown little people like himself.<\/span><\/p>\n
So he wasn’t alone. But if it had previously plunged him into despair that he was so alone in the world, now an even more alarming despair seized him, that he was so very much not alone in the world, that all those other people were alive as well.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
In another vignette, in which we may see some of the inspiration for Skylark<\/em>, Korn\u00e9l Esti is a nineteen year old, leaving his home town for the first town, travelling by train. In the car with him is a mother\u00a0and\u00a0her young daughter. Korn\u00e9l Esti is fascinated by the mother. Then, suddenly, he takes in the daughter, an unfortunately ugly\u00a0girl:\u00a0“his soul wandered around those two souls, glancing now at the mother, now at the girl.\u00a0What sufferings, what passions must tear at them. Poor things, he thought.”<\/p>\n
In another we also find Korn\u00e9l Esti on a train. This time, he’s travelling through Bulgaria. He knows not a word of Bulgarian, but he’s challenged himself to have a full conversation with the Bulgarian conductor without ever letting on that he cannot communicate.<\/p>\n
Though that vignette is perhaps not believable, others are\u00a0obviously fictitious, such as the one where Korn\u00e9l Esti travels to a town that is completely honest. The advertisements are\u00a0self-deprecating, explaining that in their food products they use substandard ingredients and you’re probably better off buying from someone else. The mayor himself admits he doesn’t have the citizens’ interests at heart. As it turns out,\u00a0everyone is happy, and even the businesses disclosing the worst are thriving.\u00a0No one expects much, so things turn out to be great.<\/p>\n
A few other vignettes aren’t even about Korn\u00e9l Esti, like the one involving a young love affair (“If a girl jumps into the well, she loves somebody.”) that ends in marriage and tragedy. One thing all of the stories have in common: a strangeness mixed into the normal tones of a conventional narration.<\/p>\n
Korn\u00e9l Esti<\/em> has its longueurs, and, as I said, it doesn’t necessarily live up to the promising first chapter, but it is a lively book, a delightful read, and the work of a master I hope to get to know better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Trevor reviews Dezs\u00f6 Kosztol\u00e1nyi\u2019s 1933 book, Korn\u00e9l Esti<\/em>, translated from the Hungarian by Bernard Adams. Read the full post<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5425,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"libsyn-item-id":0,"libsyn-show-id":0,"libsyn-post-error":"","libsyn-post-error_post-type":"","libsyn-post-error_post-permissions":"","libsyn-post-error_api":"","playlist-podcast-url":"","libsyn-episode-thumbnail":"","libsyn-episode-widescreen_image":"","libsyn-episode-blog_image":"","libsyn-episode-background_image":"","libsyn-post-episode-category-selection":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_thumbnail":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_theme":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_height":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_width":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_placement":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link_text":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_custom_color":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-explicit":"","libsyn-post-episode":"","libsyn-post-episode-update-id3":"","libsyn-post-episode-release-date":"","libsyn-post-episode-simple-download":"","libsyn-release-date":"","libsyn-post-update-release-date":"","libsyn-is_draft":"","libsyn-new-media-media":"","libsyn-post-episode-subtitle":"","libsyn-new-media-image":"","libsyn-post-episode-keywords":"","libsyn-post-itunes":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-season-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-type":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-title":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-author":"","libsyn-destination-releases":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-enabled":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-input-enabled":false,"libsyn-post-episode-premium_state":"","libsyn-episode-shortcode":"","libsyn-episode-embedurl":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[800,182],"tags":[1046,1045,546,969],"coauthors":[505],"class_list":["post-5414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-dezso-kosztolanyi","tag-1046","tag-1045","tag-hungarian","tag-new-directions"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/Kornel-Esti.jpg?fit=343%2C530&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-1pk","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5414"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5414\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18948,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5414\/revisions\/18948"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5414"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=5414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}