Tibor Déry - The Portuguese Princess

Tibor Déry was born in Budapest in 1894. As a young man, he was an active party member in the liberal republic under Mihály Károlyi. However, within a year Béla Kun and his Communist Party had risen to power. Hungary was declared a Soviet Republic and Déry was exiled. He returned in 1934, only to be imprisoned on numerous occasions by the right wing Horthy regime – once for translating Retour de L'U.R.S.S (he also translated Lord of the Flies and Kipling’s Naulahka into Hungarian). During this period he wrote his great (and ironically titled) epic novel, The Unfinished Sentence – an epic novel that is around 1,200 pages long.

He became a supporter of communism, but after being expelled from the Communist Party due to a “cleansing of Hungarian literature” in1953 he began writing satire on the regime and was a spokesman during the 1956 uprising. He wrote Niki: The Story of a Dog in the same year. His involvement in the uprising led to his imprisonment, but he was released in 1960. He died in 1977.

The Portuguese Princess (published by John Calder in 1966) is a collection of four stories (one of them divided in six parts) that centre on Hungary: predominantly during the German occupation of Budapest, its immediate aftermath and the post-war Communist regime. Despite the overtly dangerous or despondent circumstances he writes about, Déry writes vulnerable but humane characters, whose eccentricities and outlook on life amuse and often appeal. His style is deceptively simple in tone and structure, but contains passages of richly imagined or starkly effective description. This also means that his character-driven stories have a coherent, appealing narrative and that his themes are put across effectively.

This collection obviously would have had greater relevance during the more immediate post-war and Cold Wars periods. However, certain details that he describes remain strong in the public consciousness: the Jews being led to their deaths, and the heavy bombing of civilian areas, the effects of Soviet Communism. The descriptions of the war-torn streets of Budapest, under attack from foreign powers, which are meant to be their salvation, can be paralleled with the involvement of foreign nations in the Middle East in recent times. The dilemmas the characters face and the ways in which they deal with them – showcasing kindness, bravery, pettiness and selfishness – are realistically portrayed. Déry’s writing is both satirical and sympathetic, and he is an excellent observer of humanity and its foibles. He also provides a crucial insight into this period in Hungary’s history, of which not so many people now would have a clear understanding, such as the short-lived rule of the Arrow Cross Party, the immediate post-war situation in Eastern Europe, or the peculiar hypocrisies that existed within Hungarian Communist society.

The first story, the very short ‘A Charming Old Gentleman’, concerns Uncle Miko, who is exactly what the story’s title says. He is also a chronic embezzler: having lost his wealth a decade earlier, he insists on paying his own way by working himself, only to get sacked when they find him taking funds. In addition, he has a love of good food and beer, which he hides from his wife, who is happily convinced that he is looking after his digestion by eating light meals and taking a walk for his constitution each evening. This walk actually involves a trip to a local restaurant. He embezzles, but yet insists on working and not living off his son-in-laws; he lies to his wife, but does so to keep her content, and dreads telling her about his working ‘mishaps’ because she becomes ill. Miko’s dishonesty, used to fund his love for the good things, actually displays his obvious love and appreciation of all aspects of life – this, combined with his affectionate, mischievous nature endears him and his positive outlook on life to the reader.

‘Games of the Underworld’ begins on Christmas Eve in Budapest, 1944. The six stories focus on different characters inhabiting the “underworld” – citizens sheltering in the cellars of their apartment buildings from the near-incessant shelling. In the first, Frances Rusko, her daughter Evi and fiancé Janos, must shelter in the cellars when the Russians begin their bombardment. Frances and Evi share affectionate and witty banter; this and Evi’s description of cooking and eating duck shows a positive fondness for life which is juxtaposed with the shelling, the dead soldiers outside and the revolutionary activities of Janos’s brother. The second, ‘Dawn of December’ is mostly set in the cellars. As the walls shake violently, many of the characters get on with everyday activities. The old maid following her routine is both amusing and somewhat worrying: when the shelling stops in the morning, she cleans her flat, gets ready, and proceeds on her ‘daily inspection’ (complete with hen companion) of the deserted streets, noting a dead soldier – upon her return, she instructs someone to inform Uncle Lajos as to the street where his soldier son is lying dead. The attempts of the cellar dwellers to live normally, the description of the desolate urban landscape and the lady’s eccentric behaviour are alternately amusing and saddening. In ‘Horse’ an old man discovers a horse in a dairy. Not wanting the animal to be killed, he brings it down into the cellar. Most are split between killing and caring for the horse. This is paralleled with the of the Jews being rounded by the Arrow Cross in order to be killed, and the girl Juli’s decision that the horse ‘will not join the procession’ of those sent to the slaughter, whilst the citizens do nothing, leads her to commit murder. In ‘The Parcel’ the resident should obey a decree stating that if a citizen is found near a house, the residents must bury him in the nearest public park. Doing so would be dangerous, so they move him, pleased that the people in another building will have to deal with it – only for the body to be returned the next morning. Darkly amusing, this story looks at the petty behaviour of people, even when under siege. ‘Aunt Anna’ concerns the sudden arrival of Anna, whose outspoken manner sets her at odds with the others, who have quietly replicated their lives in the cellar and are frightened of speaking out. Anna sacrificing her life so that her deserter son can escape is the act of someone who refused to be cowed and took a stand against the war, and is contrasted with the passive inaction of the others. The last in the sequence, ‘Fear’, sees Aunt Mari and the widow Daniska moving into a safer cellar in a wealthier house. Existing class, political and religious tensions are raised; the wealthier residents continue to order those in lower positions around; those allied with the pro-Nazi Arrow Cross Party know they should hand over the two Jews with foreign passports, but fear being executed by the Russians by thus displaying their political sympathies; and the two women are terrified that the young deserter, now hiding in this building, may be found and denounced. The arrival of a group of rowdy, drunken Arrow Cross soldiers brings all this to a head.

The title story ‘The Portuguese Princess’ follows three orphaned children, Tutyu, Johnny and Peter. Displaced by the war and struggling to survive, these three unrelated children eke out an existence together. However, when they ‘treat’ themselves with the little money they have to watching a performance of the “Bloody Adventures of the Portuguese Princess”, the beautiful set designs, archetypal characters and moral undercurrent enthral the children, and allow them to be children for the first time in years. Whilst Tutyu feels an affinity with the princess, Peter sides with the villainous Black Knight, wanting him to abduct and kill. Thus Tutyu and Johnny finally see him for the vicious, heartless boy he has become and probably will remain, and part ways with him. The last story, the highly satirical ‘A Gay Funeral’ reveals a bourgeois society existing within a Communist state, in which the wealthy Mrs V. refuses to let her husband die, despite his crippling pain and desire to stop living. Before his death Mr V. claims that he has lived a lie, not making himself or anyone else really happy; he entreats his niece to appreciate life and to have a ‘sense of proportion’.

LH

Aidan Higgins

Aidan Higgins (born 1927) is one of the most important contemporary Irish writers. His work won him numerous awards, including the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and although he was once shortlisted for the Booker, he’s not very well known in the UK. John Calder published a few of his works in the Sixties and Seventies, and the brave Dalkey Archive have recently reissued some of them, so there's some hope that his work may be reassessed by the new generations.

Brought up in a landed Catholic family in County Kildare, his upbringing has informed his work, especially his acclaimed first novel, Langrishe, Go Down (1966). An experimental work, it was later adapted as a BBC television film by British playwright Harold Pinter. The extent of his learning, as well his experiences of travelling and living in London, Germany and South Africa, have also influenced his writing.

In Balcony of Europe (1972) he utilises Irish and Spanish settings (also referencing England, Germany, Finland, Russia and America) and employs various European languages - primarily Spanish - and different English dialects (favourite American, English or Irish expressions used by characters are significant throughout). He is clearly intrigued by cultural difference and similarity as displayed through language. References to European culture and history are blended with mythological, religious and poetic imagery, displaying the wide extent of his learning, as well as the continuing influence of his Irish Catholic upbringing.

Balcony of Europe opens in Dublin. Middle-aged painter Dan Ruttle watches his mother decline and die in a few days in hospital. His father is poor, having spent unwisely all his life, and they are both estranged from his brother. Dan eventually responds to his friend Roger Amory’s repeated insistence that he and his wife Olivia come to stay with him in Spain. They arrive in a town in Andalusia, once called the ‘Balcony of Europe’. Dan is soon fascinated by the attractive, sensual Charlotte Bayless, a young American-Jewish woman married and with a young child. They begin a love affair– a relationship that is not much of a secret to Charlotte’s husband Bob or Olivia. The affair consumes them both for a while, causing Dan to lose interest in his work and to become jealous of her flirtations with other men. The natural end of the affair coincides with the Ruttles’s departure. Despite now being dispersed across Europe and America, the community of ex-pats that was formed in Spain still keep in contact for a while – letters that reveal the tenacity of their personal relationships and their occasional dissatisfaction with their lives. Dan and Olivia’s new life on isolated, rural Aran now contrasts with the lives of their former friends.

The supporting cast of characters flit in and out of the narrative – some seen once, others making regular appearances. There is the chess-playing neo-Nazi Finnish baron, still loyal to the memory of Hitler; Charlie Vine and his chatterbox lover Salina; a short, misogynistic homosexual who once travelled to Russia on the Ost-West Express and now loiters in the hope of being seduced by ‘lovely’ boys; Hans Andersen’s stay in Malaga in 1860 contrasted with Dan and Charlotte’s visit a century later.

The novel is ostensibly divided into four parts dealing with consecutive periods of time, but the structure is loose, not especially linear and somewhat akin to that of a short story collection. Different characters, incidents, dreams and meandering trains of thought are focused on in different chapters within a slowly developed and minimal plot. Parallels are formed between Dan’s native Ireland and Spain: the hold of Catholicism, an isolated populace, invasions and expulsions, bloody civil wars. Higgins’s Spain is realistic, not a picturesque travel fantasy: a place where American planes fly ominously overhead, local men spy on foreign women undressing at the beach, men are rumoured to be informers and the rural landscape is beautiful but raw. The rise of tourism outside of Andalusia is ‘hell’.

Religion, sex, relationships and death provide central themes – Charlotte’s sensual nature and her ‘Jewishness’ are focused on in great detail, linked to her New World status and ongoing references to the slaughter of Jews in Europe during the war. Dan’s mother is attended to by chanting nuns in hospital during her dying moments. The baron speaks of a coming apocalypse whilst American planes fly above –the result of the recent Cuban crisis. Surreal dreams come to both Dan and Olivia. Literary, historical and classical references are woven into the narrative at various points, paralleling the characters with figures such as Shelley, and portraying the rise and fall of civilisations and the possibility that our own might be destroyed if the Cold War escalates. This gives way to Ruttle’s isolated, but tentatively more successful later existence on Aran.

LH

Johan Borgen

Johan Borgen is justifiably regarded as one of the most important figures in modern Norwegian – and indeed, Scandinavian – literature. Although his writing gained something of an international audience towards his death, it never paralleled the reputation he holds in his native country.

Growing up in a period of social change in early twentieth-century Norway, and undergoing further tumult during both World Wars (the latter conflict saw him interned by the Nazis because of his political views), he drew on his experiences in his writing, especially in works such as Days at Grini (1945), an early and significant examination of the German occupation in Norway. However, he is most renowned for his Lillelord trilogy, a series of novels focusing on the life of the character Wilfred Sagen: from his upbringing in Kristiania (now Oslo) just before the First World War, following through his adulthood until after the end of World War II. The first novel, Lillelord, which is partly based on his childhood in Oslo, stands as an excellent example of Borgen’s psychological insight and understanding of the human condition, as well as his abilities as a shrewd social and historical commentator. We were lucky to inherit an English translation of Lillelord from the amazing Calder list – it’s one of its most hidden and shining gems.

Affectionately called ‘Lillelord’ (‘little lord’) by his family, Wilfred lives a sheltered existence within the safe cocoon of a cultured upper-class society. He excels at his studies, appreciates the arts and is a talented musician. His widowed mother, reluctant to wake up to the problems of the outside world, indulges him, trying to prolong his childhood. Although generally seen as the perfect little gentleman, some find his apparent perfection disturbing, suspecting that there is something duplicitous and insubordinate behind the mask.

Wilfred himself is fully aware that he leads a double existence, to the extent of having a split personality – on the surface a cultivated but childlike boy, but one harbouring manipulative and destructive tendencies. As he develops over the course of the novel, a series of experiences, including criminal acts, the discovery of the truth about his father and his sexual awakening, lead him into wishing to rebel against a suffocating society, one which rejects change and knowledge and instead embraces convenient half-truths, assumptions and the established order. This process will isolate him and drive him to insanity.

Wilfred’s growing understanding of the society he lives in and his mental and moral decline provides a remarkable insight into the mind of an intelligent boy in his mid-teens. Caught between childhood and the adult world, he is disgusted and beguiled by both states. ‘Lillelord’ finds himself suffering the frustration, confusion and feelings of displacement now regarded as typical of his age - during a period when the concept of teenagers was entirely alien, where psychological issues were an embarrassment and effective treatment was in its infancy. This is paired with the transformation occurring within Norwegian society. In the background, the threat of war between Germany and England looms closer, there is talk of socialist reform and new technologies are demonstrated, creating the sense that the characters’ comfortable existence is about to be shattered by the advanced but frightening modern world which would fully emerge after the First World War.

LH

Pope's Letters

I have just finished reading a large selection of Alexander Pope's letters in a lovely little hardback published by OUP forty or fifty years ago. It's strange, when you love a poet, to read his letters and find them so uninspiring, so sugar-coated – even petty-minded at times. No grand ideas discussed, no spark, no real depth of humanity, only polite conversation, literary chit-chat and whining about poor health.

Perhaps Pope saved all his best thoughts for his poems and didn't give too much importance to letter-writing. Or perhaps he didn't have much to say in prose, as he led a fairly uneventful life and rarely left his Twickenham house.

The only interesting letters for me were the ones he wrote to Jonathan Swift and John Gay, not so much because of what he said in them but because they cast some light on his friendship with these two authors.

As I was returning this book, I spotted Martin Amis's Money on display, so I grabbed it and it's going to be my next read.

AG

Bad publishing

I'll admit it: I am a bad bad publisher. I have published *** and ***, and even ************************************************ (hiatus magnus lachrymabilis). The thing is, when you publish something good it may get some attention, and even a good review, but when you publish something bad it oozes into oblivion, leaving an indelible mark of shame in your conscience. I have just picked up a book I've published. I remember I didn't want to publish it, really, but was finally persuaded by financial considerations, and deadlines. It was a decent commercial success in the end, but it's still a blot on my conscience. How many books like this are published?

AG

Nabokov - Not impressed at all

From our local library I have borrowed the Weidenfeld & Nicolson edition of Nabokov's stories, a 600p+ royal hardback which collects all his shorter fiction. It comes with extraordinary quotes, such as Updike's "Nabokov writes prose the only way it should be written – that is, ecstatically" or Martin Amis's "The variety, force and richness of Nabokov's perceptions have not even the palest rival in modern fiction. To read him in full flight is to experience stimulation that is at once intellectual, imaginative and aesthetic, the nearest thing to pure sensual pleasure that prose can offer".

Although I was hoping, in fact, to find a copy of Lolita (which I have now reserved), I was glad to have a chance to read, for the first time in English, the work of "one of the twentieth century's greatest prose stylists". So I got my teeth right into this lovely volume and read a dozen stories in a couple of days. The stories are arranged chronologically, and I jumped back and forth at random just to have an idea of Nabokov's different themes and styles.

I must say I was deeply disappointed with what I have read so far. I found Nabokov's prose florid, overcooked, slightly patronizing, always trying too hard, lacking that simplicity and intelligence which is the mark of true genius – and, above all, I often had a feeling I was reading a bad translation from the Russian. And the stories I have read were not that hard-hitting.

You may remember I had a similar problem with John Updike's prose. Maybe I just can't connect with these great "stylists". After all it's all so subjective. Still, I'd like to check out if Lolita is really that great masterpiece that it is purported to be. But it'll take at least a couple of weeks before I can get my copy from the library, so in the meantime I'll carry on reading from this volume, and I'll be happy to eat my words and change my mind about Nabokov's writing.

AG

Apes (of God) - Part Two

Further to my post of last Tuesday, I am delighted to report yet another glorious day in the history of British publishing. John Blake has announced "a last-minute addition" to their October schedule, the spoof memoir of the late King of Pop's chimp, entitled Bubbles: My Secret Diary from Swaziland to Neverland.

If you want to follow the war of tongues between the snobs who accuse John Blake of being not entirely motivated by unmercenary considerations and the anti-snob party, who defend John Blake for championing books that people actually want to buy, unlike most other backwards-looking publishers, read the story and – above all – the comments on The Bookseller.

I told Elisabetta about this book as we were walking home, and she crumpled with laughter and almost fell over. She couldn't believe I had not made it up.

I wonder who has written or will write the book – some ghost-chimp? For a human being, to ape a monkey's thought processes must surely be a sign of some genius.

I look forward to reading the book.

AG