From the Bookshelf of Never too Late to Read Classics…

Journey by Moonlight

Antal Szerb,

Len Rix (Translator)

Start date: August 1, 2020

Finish date: August 31, 2020

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Jun 29, 2020 Chrissie rated it really liked it

Shelves: relationships, love, italy, 2020-read, france, audible-uk, religion, life-stages, swedish-narration, hf

This book gets better as you go--read it to the end before you judge it.

I have read the Swedish translation--Resa i månljus—translated by Maria Ortman. I have no way of determining how close it is to the Hungarian original, published in 1937 and considered a classic. The dialogs feel very modern. Too modern? Other sections seem somewhat stiff.

There is a dreamy, hazy, detached feel to the writing. This sets the mood of the story--one searches to understand, as though groping through a hazy fog. This book gets better as you go--read it to the end before you judge it.

I have read the Swedish translation--Resa i månljus—translated by Maria Ortman. I have no way of determining how close it is to the Hungarian original, published in 1937 and considered a classic. The dialogs feel very modern. Too modern? Other sections seem somewhat stiff.

There is a dreamy, hazy, detached feel to the writing. This sets the mood of the story--one searches to understand, as though groping through a hazy fog. As the characters search to understand themselves, we search to understand them.

The book focuses upon self-discovery, self-awareness and ultimately concerns how the characters choose to live their lives. One can be jolted into a re-evaluation of one’s goals at any age. Here, the central character is thirty-six and on his honeymoon when jolted! He and his newlywed wife are Hungarian. The honeymoon takes pace in Italy—starting in Venice, then on to Ravenna, Florence and Rome, with sidetracks to Perugia, Assis and Gubbio. Alongside the characters, we visit Tuscany and Umbria.

On the honeymoon, Mihály gets separated from his wife, Erzsi. Did he intentionally, or at least subconsciously intentionally hop on the wrong train? The two go off in different directions. Alone, each on their own, where will their trajectories take them? Mihály meets up with childhood friends. Erzsi ends up in Paris! Will either return to Budapest, which was where they thought they would spend their life together?

Death and an individual’s approach to it, is a central theme of this book. How people relate to death in ancient times, in modern times and in different cultures, for example Etruscan, Nordic, Celtic and western society play into the telling. Knowing how one wants to live life must be balanced against our perception of death. Does this change as we age? Some people are drawn toward death instinctively, even when young. Others may be drawn toward death as an escape from life’s pain and unhappiness. Death can be seen as a step into emptiness, space or freedom from the constraints of life. The author draws this remarkably well. He compares it to the feeling one has that first second when one slips on an icy pavement. One can imagine a sense of release. Death might by some be associated with a sense of exhilaration, bordering on eroticism. These ideas are played with in the book.

A fascination with death, made into a stage game by Mihály and his friends as teenagers, viewed as weird at the beginning of the story, becomes comprehensible as one approaches the book’s end.

Helping another determined on taking their own life might be done because you know they are going to commit suicide sooner or later. Might it not be an act of kindness to share that moment of departure with them?

Religion as a means of coping with life is another theme. The author, born a Jew, converted to Catholicism. At the end of 1944 he was deported to a Hungarian concentration camp in Balfe, where in January 1945 he was beaten to death. Friends had sought to provide him with false papers. He had turned them down, stating he wanted to “share the fate of his generation”. He died at the age of forty-three. It helps to know a bit about the author’s own life to understand the book.

The book starts by introducing readers to Mihály and four teenage friends. Later we get to know his wife’s background. What seems bizarre, incomprehensible behavior at the start makes sense at the book’s end. Characters follow different paths. When they are young, they influence each other. Then we come to see how each one grows into their own skin, develops into their own way of being. This too, I find well done. You come to see each as separate, very different human beings, each with their own identity. Two could be viewed as conventional, one as a crook, one is religious and one a free spirit. I am not telling you who is who. There is no judgement, no classifying of good versus bad. This I like too.

If the book leaves you cold at the start, keep going. By the end you view with different eyes that which confused and might have annoyed you at the start.

Björn Löfgren narrates the Swedish version of the audiobook. His articulation of words is clear. The audiobook is easy to follow. The narration I have given four stars. ...more

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