Antal Szerb

Journey by Moonlight (Pushkin Paper)

Journey by Moonlight

Utas és holdvilág

Yolcu ve Ayisigi

The first translation into English of one of the classics of Hungarian literature, a forerunner of today's popular style of philosophical thriller, The Pendragon Legend follows the success of the author's Journey by Moonlight.Steeped in alchemical philosophy and set in London and Wales, this gently ironical murder-mystery combines upper-class comedy with a compelling love interest, a mystical element and an increasingly complex plot.

The Pendragon Legend

In August 1936 a Hungarian writer in his mid-thirties arrives by train in Venice, on a journey overshadowed by the coming war and charged with intense personal nostalgia. Aware that he might never again visit this land whose sites and scenes had once exercised a strange and terrifying power over his imagination, he immerses himself in a stream of discoveries, reappraisals and inevitable self-revelations. From Venice, he traces the route taken by the Germanic invaders of old down to Ravenna, to stand, fulfilling a lifelong dream, before the sacred mosaics of San Vitale. This journey into his private past brings Antal Szerb firmly, and at times painfully, up against an explosive present, producing some memorable observations on the social wonders and existential horrors of Mussolini's new Roman Imperium.

Journeys in Italy

The Third Tower

Len Rix

An early-twentieth-century classic - the turbulent story of a businessman torn between middle-class respectability and sensational bohemia.

A comic fable from one of the masters of twentieth-century prose

Oliver VII

Pendragon Legend

In August 1785, Paris buzzed with a scandal that had everything—an eminent churchman, a female fraudster, a part-time prostitute and the hated Queen herself. Its centrepiece was the most expensive diamond necklace ever assembled, and the tangle of fraud, folly, blindness and self-delusion it provoked. The humiliation the affair brought on the royal family contributed to their appalling deaths in the Revolution just four years later. In this unusual, witty and often surprising version of the story, the great Hungarian novelist Antal Szerb takes the narrative as a standpoint from which to survey the entire age—including aspects of it seldom considered by more orthodox historians. The author’s vast knowledge is worn very lightly and the book teems with amusing anecdotes, but it is, at heart, a deeply personal work, a remarkable gesture of defiance against the brutal world in which it was written.

The Queen's Necklace

Die Pendragon-Legende

A tudós Earl of Gwynedd - ősi walesi arisztokrata család sarja - a lét titkának föltárásához megidézi a túlvilági hatalmakat, okkultista módszerekkel életre kelti Asaph Pendragont, a hatodik Earl ősét, aki második földi létében is igazságot tesz. Elűzi a kései unokákra leselkedő sötét árnyakat, legyőzi a technokrata manipulátort, a bűnöző Morvint és cinkosát, az özvegy darkladyt, Eileen St. Claire-t, akik az Earl óriási vagyonát próbálják megszerezni. Megmenti a filosz Bátky János életét, aki Vergiliusunk a titokzatos walesi démonokkal, tündérekkel, megszállott prófétákkal teli világban, az Earl felbecsülhetetlen értékű könyvtárában. A cselekmény légies könnyedségét fokozzák az idillek (Bátky és Cynthia romantikus szerelme, Bátky kalandja Eileen Mrs. Roscoe-val). A könnyedség ellensúlyozza azt a tényt, hogy Szerb Antal ebben a művében is hatalmas kultúrhistóriai anyaggal dolgozik: a Rózsakereszt-legenda, Fludd metafizikája szerepel itt együtt fantasztikus csodaszörnyekkel. Az élet titkát kutató miszticista nemesúr, a tudós Bátky, a literary gentleman Osborne, a széplélek Cynthia áll szemben a huszadik század konkrét, apokaliptikus erőivel. A walesi táj legendáiból feléledt szellemek nem hagyják cserben a humanista kultúra híveit: Lehne Kretzsch-csel szövetkezve legyőzik a gépesített mammont. Szerb Antal egyedülállóan izgalmas szellemi kalandregénye minden olvasónak ajánlható.

A Pendragon-legenda

Il viaggiatore e il chiaro di luna

Peter V. Czipott

A Pendragon legenda ; Vörösmarty-tanulmányok

Viajante à Luz da Lua

Negli anni Trenta una coppia di Budapest parte in luna di miele per l’Italia. I due nascondono irrequietezza sotto un’apparenza borghese. Ma l’incontro con un’Italia oscura e magica spezza il loro razionale equilibrio. Lui inizia un viaggio mistico e allucinato, prima alla ricerca di un amico d’infanzia diventato monaco in un’Umbria oscura e arcaica; poi in una Roma sensuale dove morte ed erotismo s’incontrano. Lei parte per Parigi a meditare su un matrimonio fallito, ma anche a verificare nel tourbillon d’incontri galanti e pericolosi la saldezza della sua vocazione borghese. La luna di miele si trasforma in un doppio viaggio spirituale, una ricerca sul significato della vita e della morte scritta con elegante levità. «Un libro delizioso». Massimo Romano – La Stampa «Il libro è da considerarsi tra i capolavori della narrativa ungherese del Novecento e, sotto l’apparente semplicità, in esso si ritrova una raffinata strumentazione della pagina». Paolo Pallotta – L’Indice

A collection of Szerb's shorter fiction, which superbly demonstrates his development from young idealist to mature ironist

Antal Szerb

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