World Literature Today
From the Summer 1995 Issue
Miklós Szentkuthy. Bianca Lanza di Casalanza: Naplóregény
1946-47. Maria Tompa, afterword. Pécs, Hungary. Jelenkor. 1994. 171 pages. ISBN 96-3777-0755.
-. Harmonikus tépett lélek: Réz Pál videobeszélgetése Szentkuthy Miklóssal. Budapest. Magvető. 1994. 172 pages, ill.
Miklós Szentkuthy opened a new chapter in the history of modern Hungarian literature. This is a fact, even though his voluminous essay-novel Prae (1934), often compared to Joyce’s Ulysses, did not have the same following in Hungary as did the work of the Anglo-Irish master of modern prose in Europe. Szentkuthy was an immensely productive writer, and even years after his death (in 1988) entire manuscripts or coherent fragments of unfinished manuscripts continue to appear and find publishers. Bianca Lanza di Casalanza belongs to these. The work is not so much a novel with a proper plot as a many-faceted comparative treatise about women who played a part in the author’s life. These women include (apart from the eponymous Bianca, who appears in an attractive red dress in the first chapter) the patient Vivian, the nimble Gigi, the melancholy Olga, and the demonic Betta. As Maria Tompa, Szentkuthy’s ex-secretary, puts it in her afterword, it is really Betta, a veritable femme fatale, who is the central character in this short essay-novel. Szentkuthy was totally immersed in play-acting, and what characterizes his fiction is relentless narcissism. This is perhaps not so apparent in Bianca, where in the best chapter Szentkuthy most ingeniously compares women (and also himself) to precious stones and minerals. These somewhat indulgent light essays, however, later give way to a critical investigation of Webster’s Duchess of Malfi, a play which fascinates Szentkuthy both in its good and bad points, particularly its complex, scheming, and sinister characters. The mentality of the early Baroque with its honest poisoners, weird religious fanatics, and casual murderers seems to fascinate Szentkuthy, and no other Hungarian author embraced so fiercely the axiom that “the world is but a stage.”
Harmonikus tépett lélek (Harmonic Torn Soul) is the edited manuscript of several conversations conducted on videotape with Miklós Szentkuthy in the summer of 1986 by the critic (and now successful editor) Pál Réz. In this slim book Szentkuthy offers his views on religion, art, and literature in a casual, friendly style and in considerable detail. It turns out that his ambition (somewhat surprising from the mouth of a writer known for his nonrealistic prose) is “to experience and represent total reality.” The emphasis is perhaps on total, as reality for this author comprises everything from human psychology and social behavior to culture throughout the ages. Don Carlos and Spengler, El Greco and Milan Füst, Ben Jonson and Márta Molnár are some of the heroes of this tale, which makes very little concession to the exigencies of the political situation. While very critical of the Church, Szentkuthy maintains that “the most perfect works of art are born of religion” and is not ashamed to admit that his interest in Karl Marx’s private life is much greater than in the tedious economic theories of Das Kapital.
This new addition to the small library of Szentkuthy’s works concludes with eight pages of photographs (by different artists) which capture the author of Bianca at his most informal as well as in his blatantly histrionic moods (e.g., dressed up as a bishop). Not only an intriguing writer, Szentkuthy was also a great raconteur and, as this book amply shows, a very colorful figure.
George Gömöri
University of Cambridge