The wandering years of Cicero
Miklós Szentkuthy
(June 2, 1908-July 18, 1988) began his career as a secondary school teacher and held this post until 1957 when he made his living by the pen. While his personality and his consciousness as a writer reveal his affinity with the great 20th century experimental novelists Proust and Joyce, his originality as a thinker puts him into a category entirely by himself. A theorist of the novel, he gives careful consideration to the Novel with a capital “N”: the Novel as a literary genre and as a historical category and a category of human existence. His objective is to write the “Work”, that is the recording of every gesture he makes, every gesture of European man and every moment of his life, all of which are equally important for the completion of the “Work”. Several of his novels are to appear in French translation, notably Frivolities and Confessions (Frivolitások és hitvallások, 1988), Black Renaissance (Fekete reneszánsz, 1932), Chapter Concerning Love (Fejezet a szerelemről, 1936) and Toward the only Metaphor (Az egyetlen metafora felé, 1935).
Szentkuthy was once asked why in heaven’s name, in the Spring of 1945, he chose to write a novel about Cicero. He replied: “By chance.” He borrowed the twelve-volume collection of Cicero’s letters, he said, from the library of the high school where he taught. It was the Latin German edition of the work (in Wieland’s masterful translation) that provided the impetus for the novel. Szentkuthy’s answer is characterized by the same delightful mixture of preciseness and playful mystification that came to be the trademark of the writer and his work. For the borrowing of the text may very well have provided the impetus for the volume, but at the same time Szentkuthy clearly used the figure of Cicero as a vehicle for his favorite and fundamentally biographical theme, namely, how a shy, skinny, ugly, lonely man can overcome his physical limitations thanks to his extraordinary sensitivity and his towering intellect. All else-the ancient Rome’s architecture, legal, medical, social, cultural and political conditions-while fascinating, are simply the informative and picturesque backdrop for the eternally human drama. What seems to be the author’s prime concern is the process by which Cicero is able to put his experience and talents in the service of his works and how he evolves as the City’s leading intellectual. Szentkuthy died before finishing the novel. His co-worker Mária Tompa painstakingly transcribed the manuscript and prepared it for press. The cover depicts Cicero, yet the face with its amused, quick eye and thick, sensual lips could be Szentkuthy’s.
(Cicero vándorévei) Szépirodalmi, 1990