الرواية تعد أحد أهم أعمال الكاتب المجرى الأصل أنتل صرب ( أو الصربى) و يالها من رواية صعبة فقد أخذت معى وقتا طويلا رغم أنها تعتبر متوسطة الطول .و هى تحكى قصة تدور لها على ثلاث محاور متداخلة و متشابكة قد تكون غير ملحوظة بوضوح إلا فى آخرها المحور الأول كيف نحافظ على أسلوبنا فى الحياة و نحقق ما نريده نحن و ليس ما يريده المجتمع منا ؟ كيف نحافظ على أستقلاليتنا دون أن نؤذى غيرنا الذى يطالبنا على الدوام بما لا نهتم به إذ كيف تعيش منعزلا أنعزالا تاما عن المجتمع ,كيف تتجرد من الأفكار و القيم البرجوازية ؟ كيف تخرج و تعيش خارج أطار القيم بل و القانون؟! كيف يمكن فعل كل هذا بتلقائية و عفوية دون أفتعال و دون سيكوباتية و عدوانية ؟!!؟ ففى نهاية الأمر هذا الأنعزال النفسى و هذه القطيعة مع المجتمع لا تحدث إلا تحت ضغط شديد يهدد الصحة النفسية و البدنية لأصحابها .و فى مالجتمعات الغربية الأكثر أحتراما للحرية الفردية يمكن أن نقابل شخصيات غريبة لا تعيش واقعنا المزرى لا تحتك به ! هؤلاء بالطبع أحوالهم أفضل من أقرانهم فى مجتمعاتنا و هنا نرى بطل الرواية ميهاى ( مايكل)الذى أرتبط أرتباط يمكن تسميته بالمرضى بأصدقاء مراهقته و بداية شبابه بزميله فى فصل الدراسة توماس و أخته إيفا و الذين كانا يعيشان بسبب ظروف عائلية سيئة حياة شديدة الأنغلاق و بمعزل عن العالم فالوالد برغم ثقافته العالية إلا أنه شديد الفظاظة و الأم متوفية , فأستمر على نفس منوالهم حتى بعد أن أنتحر توماس و و شردت إيفا فى عواصم أوروبا و قد تسبب عدم تأقلمه هذافى متاعب جمة ليس آخرها هو هجره لعروسه أرجى(أليزابث) بدون ذنب أقترفته و هما فى شهر العسل فى إيطاليا. المحور الثانى هو حب الرجال للنساء و الذى تظهره الرواية بشدة و بأشكال مختلفة فهناك عبادة ميهاى لإيفا أخت توماس و التى تعيش فى بوهيمية شديدة تستبدل الرجال الأثرياء و تعيش حياة ترف لا أخلاقية بالمعنى الدينى و البرجوازى و هناك شبق باتاكى صاحب البنك لأرجى زوجة ميهاى و هو فى نفس الوقت زوج أرجى السابق الذى يريد أسترجاعها , لكن أرجى فضلت ميهاى عليه كى تعيش حريتها و تنطلق من خلال زوجها الجديد و تتحرر من قيود الأهتمام المبالغ و الترضية المكبلة لزوجها الأول, و هناك فى نفس الوقت رغبة الثرى الفارسى فى أرجى فهو يرغب فيها كأمرأة ينفق عليها فهو يريد شرائها و تملكها. الكتاب يتكلم كيف أن أقدار و تصرفات هؤلاء الرجال الجادين و الوقورين تتحكم فيها رغبتهم فى أمرأة ما و ما هم على أستعداد لفعله و التنازل عنه فى سبيل الوصول إليها المحور الثالث الذى يدور حوله الكتاب هو فكرة الحياة و عدمها أى الموت ى كبديل للحياة و ما يقدمه من أغراءات نفسية مبهمة! فالموت حاضر دوما فى الرواية من حيث الأحداث و أساسا من حيث كونه نزعة طبيعية تميز الأنسان من أقدم العصور و ما فكرة الآخرة برأى الكاتب إلا أمتداد و تهذيب لهذه الفكرة التى تسير بالبشر الى حتفهم و تدفعهم للمخاطرة و تزين لهم الأستشهاد الكاتب شديد الثقافة بل موسوعى فلا غرابة فهو بالأساس مؤرخ كبير للأدب الأوروبى قبل كونه روائى . الحوار جميل و المعانى شديدة العمق و القفزالشديد التكرار من وصف الأفعال و سرد الأحداث الى الأفكار تارة و التشبيهات و الأستعارات البلاغية تارة يميز أسلوب الكاتب مما يجعل الرواية أحد الكلاسيكيات الهامة و لكن للأسف غير المشهورة فى الأدب الأوروبى الحديث
Schoolgirl Suicide Cult Forms around Forgotten Hungarian Classic! Okay, that is a little misleading, but the novel Journey by Moonlight by Antal Szerb is rumored to have pushed more than one weepy romantic coed over the edge. Unlike similar cultish works such as Goethe’s Sorrows of Young Werther and Plath’s The Bell Jar, Szerb’s novel is not actually about suicide, at least not in the literal sense. Its appeal is more cryptic and profound; lying in the narrator’s vacillation between the world’s expectations, and their incompatibility with his own youthful ideals, as personified by an elusive femme fatal.The case for Journey by Moonlight as one of, if not the best, Hungarian novel of the last century (that can be read in translation) deserves to be made. Less interesting Hungarian novels have received far more attention in foreign circles. But not once have I heard the rigorous, but bloated masterpieces of Esterházy or Nádas recommended with the evangelical zeal which accompanies that of Szerb’s novel. Unlike those more lauded Hungarian authors, Szerb actually was a renown scholar, and didn’t have to prove his erudition page by page. Nor are the more narrative based works of Márai or Kosztolányi as packed with such tantalizingly sugar-coated ideas. You can’t read Journey by Moonlight without mentally casting it as a film.The story follows Mihály on his honeymoon and eventual abandonment of his wife Erzsi, when the ghosts, both literal and figurative, of his past surface in locations across Italy. With its morbid, magnetic, and simultaneous attractions to love and death, Journey by Moonlight is most easily compared to Death in Venice. But Journey by Moonlight is more pastoral, bubbling over with sticky sweet, but ultimately fatal nostalgia for youth and lost love; it actually has more in common with Haruki Murakami’s South of the Border West of the Sun, or Donna Tartt’s Secret History.Perhaps Journey by Moonlight has never been fully embraced as Hungary’s greatest novel because it was not based in Hungary. Antal Szerb was truly a novelist of the world, setting his first effort The Pendragon Legend in England, Journey by Moonlight in Italy, and Oliver VII in an imaginary European country. Unlike other Hungarian writers, his love of country was never expressed through meditations on Hungarian society, or via revolutionary poetry. Much like his stories, his patriotism was somehow not bound to such terrestrial conventions. A lot of good his subtlety did him; as an ethnic Jew, he was forced by the Arrow Cross into a labor camp in 1944. Antal Szerb died before age 45, at the hands of his own countrymen. It should be pointed out that Szerb was given many chances to emigrate, even while he was enduring the degradations of labor camp, but he refused to leave his family and fellow writers behind. Unlike his protagonist, he never surrendered his ideals in the face of an uncaring and brutal world. He died the quiet death of an unsung hero. The world of literature is vastly richer for his brief journey through its midst."We carry within ourselves the direction our lives will take. Within ourselves burn the timeless, fateful stars."
Do You like book Journey By Moonlight (2001)?
Boy, am I ever having a problem finishing books lately! This one has almost grabbed me, and I've made it to within 50 pages of its 230-page end, but I can't help noticing it's been almost grabbing me since I started it, with no increase in my interest since. Granted, it's hard to read when you've just fallen in love, with a woman with three rowdy sons, and moved house 1000kms, and when you're not absorbed in deep conversation or communion or trying to entertain or discipline children can hardly focus your thoughts for wondering and hoping and worrying about the future. BUT how glorious it would be to have a decent book to escape into now and then! And this too youthful, too loosely constructed, too ultimately mundane and unchallenging, ever-so-slightly tantalisingly dreamlike but in the final analysis cod-realist episodic novel is just not enough! At times - at times - it seems about to break its bonds and careen into unreality, but too quickly it's back behind the safety barrier, as if its author were afraid to break the mold he has selected for his fairly safe, fairly unoriginal and not very inspiring ruminations on Europe and civilisation between the two world wars. It's frustrating, because somewhere in here is the spark of something that could really come to life, rather than the cardboard shadowplay of talking heads - dense with ludicrous coincidences - that this monument to authorial indecision so often becomes. You want to know what it's like, try early Paul Auster with a slight bit more naturalness and less weirdness (and a lot more sociology, rudimentary as it is). It's almost interesting, but I can't help suspecting Szerb of wanting to pay the bills more than he wanted to get to the root of anything, despite the meaningful poses he has his cartoon characters striking in various picturesque locations throughout. The modernist Auster? That's a 3-star maximum, no matter how you cut it. Now for f**k's sake what can I read that will grab me?!
—Ben Winch
Still reading, but if you read only one pretentiously titled and obscurely-middle-European-authored book this year, or perhaps in your life, it should be this small masterpiece by Szerb (killed in 1943), of whom I - I! - had never heard. To describe the plot - with world-weary Hungarian newlyweds on a honeymoon in 1930s Italy, memories of a beautiful brother-and-sister set of schoolfriends from Buda - or perhaps Pest - on the verge of incest, and with suicides, another schoolfriend who becomes a monk - sounds equally tiresome. But in fact it is delightfully funny, its Magyar gloom lightened by a rush through Italy - Perugia, Gubbio, Assisi, the Umbrian plain, an innocent American art history student, ghosts, complicated sexuality perfectly and simply described, and, like all great artists, very sound on fellatio. You need make no allowance for translation - it reads clearly, poetically, delicately. I regret the years I have lived without knowing that he was the real thing - while having wasted so much time trying unsuccessfully to enjoy all the other "novelists from the other Europe" Philip Roth used to try to flog.
—Sam Schulman
The story seems to focus on how our character traits determine our destiny. I was never surprised by the choices of any of the people inhabiting the book but yet kept reading to see what they would do next. And what Szerb does so well in this is maintain the reader’s sympathies for fairly schmucky people, especially the protagonist Mihaly. Much more spiritual than I expected it to be when I picked it up, and the author handles the subject magnificently. Coincidences are abound, though I never got annoyed with them like I do when I read Dickens or many other lesser authors.
—Stephen
