Cat Step by Alison Irvine

Cat Step

by Alison Irvine

Whale of a Tale: "The North Water" by Ian McGuire

Whale of a Tale...

"The North Water" by Ian McGuire

A book review

Mirth in Venice: Antal Szerb's "Oliver VII"

"Oliver VII" by Antal Szerb

A book review

Having encountered Antal Szerb through his best-known work Journey by Moonlight and its companion piece, the non-fiction travelogue The Third Tower: Journeys in Italy, I was initially surprised at the high spirits of this novel, especially since it was written whilst World War II was raging, changing Europe's landscape forever. True, there were humorous passages, as well as an underlying gentle irony, in "Journey by Moonlight", but Oliver VII is an all-out comic novel, with a convoluted plot worthy of opera buffa.

The eponymous protagonist is the monarch of the fictional European realm of Alturia, in an unspecified period "before the War". Rather than conclude a dubious treaty with a neighbouring state (which includes a royal marriage into the bargain), Oliver sets up a coup against himself and escapes from the country. Against the backdrop of a "stagey" Venice, described as a theatre set "where the whole scene sometimes seems to wobble", Oliver joins a group of seasoned con -men and, after several twists and turns, ends up impersonating himself. The novel is peopled by farcical characters, mistaken identities, hilarious set-pieces and even a walk-on part for a panto dame. At times, I felt that the book was midway between the old-world comedy of P.G. Wodehouse and the more biting satire of Evelyn Waugh. Perhaps it is no coincidence that the dialogue in Len Rix's brilliant translation contains a number of Bertie Wooster-ish exclamations, and that it is the appearance of a journalist on the scene (think Scoop) which propels the plot to its upbeat denouement.

 
As the novel progresses, one starts to realise that it is closer to the darker "Journey by Moonlight" than appears at first glance. Surely it's no coincidence that, like Mihaly in the earlier novel, Oliver escapes to the back streets of La Serenissima in a bid to discover "real life". The parallels between the two books (and their autobiographical aspects) are explained in greater detail in the translator's afterword. The work acquires greater poignancy when one discovers discover that this work was the last written by Szerb before, as a Catholic with Jewish ancestry, he was murdered in a labour camp.

This book is another winner from the "Pushkin Collection" series.

Grim(m) tale? The Jew's Beech by Annette von Droste-Hülshoff

The Jew's Beech by Annette von Droste-Hülshoff

Annette von Droste-Hülshoff (1797-1848) was born into an aristocratic Catholic family near Munster and spent most of her life in rural Westphalia. She never married and rarely tasted city life. This notwithstanding it appears that she was well aware of the prevailing literary trends of the day and her apparently "limited" life experiences did not stop her from exploring deep philosophical issues in her works.

Take this strange novella - "The Jew's Beech". It is, ostensibly, a murder mystery inspired by true events - the unsolved murders of a forester and a Jewish moneylender - which were recorded in the archives of the author's family. The story itself however is just a pretext for an exploration of such themes as good and evil, the corruptibility of young minds and the stifling prejudices which, in a small community, can cloud the minds of even the best of people. 

Annette von Droste-Hülshoff was primarily a poet and Die Judenbuche is her only piece of prose. For better or for worse, it is very much a poet's work. Let's start with the weaknesses first. A master storyteller could have made a nail-biting thriller out of this. Von Droste-Hülshoff however seems blissfully unconcerned about narrative conventions. Many facts are left unexplained, new characters appear with barely an introduction, the structure sometimes feels lopsided with flashbacks and flashforwards. Then there is the famously obscure ending, which lends itself to multiple interpretations and raises more questions than it answers. It leaves one wondering whether the author was being consciously obscure - a proto-(post)modernist, if you will - or whether she was merely unable to tie up the plot's loose ends. 

But in the novella's weaknesses lie also its strengths. The work is rich in allusion and metaphor - chief amongst them the striking image of the lone beech tree of the title. Although the book is firmly rooted in reality, the atmosphere conjured up by the novella is straight out of Brothers Grimm - magical forests, eerie apparitions and unsettling premonitions abound. Indeed this has been justly described as a "Gothic" work - it has many of the genre's tropes and is close in style to the literature of the "Uncanny" exemplified by Hoffmann and like-minded authors.

Alma Classics edition cover

English editions of this novella are rare. The Oneworld Classics edition I read (now reissued as part of the Alma Classics series) uses the 1958 translation by Doris and Lionel Thomas and includes an introduction and timeline.

It may not be "entertaining" in the usual sense of the word and is ultimately frustrating as a murder mystery, but this strange work is certainly worth reading.

Vacanze italiane : Antal Szerb's "Journey by Moonlight"

An Italian Honeymoon - Antal Szerb's "Journey by Moonlight"

On honeymoon in Italy, Mihály chooses a solitary nocturnal ramble in the back alleys of Venice over the pleasures of the bridal bed. It doesn’t take a psychology guru to realise that the marriage is not off to the best of starts. His wife Erszi knows that, this being her dreamy and eccentric Mihály (rather than her practical first husband Zoltán), the explanation for his erratic behaviour is most likely complex and slightly illogical. And that’s exactly what it turns out to be. 

After a (not so) chance encounter with an old acquaintance - János Szepetneki – Mihály decides to recount to Erszi his obsessive youthful friendship with siblings Tamás and Éva Ulpius, to whose “ring” he belonged together with said János and the ascetic Ervin. Oiled by a bottle of Italian wine, and egged on by Erszi’s insistent questions, Mihály implicitly reveals (despite his protestation to the contrary) that his relationship with Tamás and Éva had strong erotic overtones and that this might have something to do with his strange and evident discomfiture with the marital state. What is certainly clear is that Tamás’s eventual tragic death left a long-term mark on the close coterie of friends.

This long “psychoanalytic” session reminded me of a very different novel – Murakami’s Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage . And, like Murakami’s, this novel does develop into a “pilgrimage” of sorts - its first part ends with Mihály, not altogether innocently, contriving to catch a wrong train and separating himself from Erszi. In the subsequent parts of the book, we follow Mihály as, against the backdrop of an Italy exotic, magical, seductive and frightening, he tries to recapture the decadent aura of his youth.

Antal Szerb’s 1937 “Journey by Moonlight” (or, to give its title in its literal translation, “Traveller and the Moonlight”) is one of the best-known of modern Hungarian novels. It certainly deserves to be much better appreciated outside Szerb’s native country. Like all great classics, it is a multilayered work which lends itself to a variety of readings. It is, in its own weird way, a comedy of manners, with a streak of playfully sardonic humour always bubbling just beneath the surface. It is also a novel of “magical realism” written before the term was invented. It is an exploration of pre-World War II society – indeed, at its most obvious and superficial level, it presents to us a cast of characters who are all trying, unsuccessfully, to escape the bourgeoisie they find so suffocating. 

But, as translator Peter Czipott points out in the insightful afterword to this Alma Classics edition, a major theme in the novel is Szerb’s exploration of “nostalgia”. What Mihály is after are the dreams and ideals of his youth, now sadly replaced by humdrum, everyday life. But is it at all possible to go back in time? At one point towards the end, one character warns another not to try to live “someone else’s life”. But, the novel seems to be telling us, our youthful selves are as distant from us as “someone else”.

Szerb was not primarily a novelist, but a literary scholar who published respected works on the history of Hungarian and world literature. He lived for a time in Italy – his descriptions of the country are partly autobiographical but, in a quasi-postmodern twist, they also (knowingly) reflect common literary portrayals of the Bel Paese which Szerb knew so well through his studies. Indeed, one cannot help feeling that this is not the Italy of the Italians, or even that of the Rough Guides and Lonely Planet. This is, by turns, the darkly fascinating and haunting Italy of the Continental Gothic novels, the decadent Italy of fin-de-siecle writers (Mann’s Death in Venice comes to mind), Goethe’s sun-washed Land, wo die Zitronen blühn...

Journey by Moonlight might not always be an easy read, but it certainly is one which repays the effort and which is likely to reveal new depths if revisited. This Alma Classics edition is highly recommended, not only for its fluent translation, but also for its useful explanatory notes.

This edition published February 24th 2016 by Alma Classics (first published 1937 as Utas és holdvilág)

***

What music to go with this novel?  Two suggestions:

Elisabeth Grummer sings "Kennst du das Land...", a Goethe setting from the opera Mignon, by Ambroise Thomas

And then, of course, some decadent Mahler, now forever linked with the haunting images of Visconti's Death in Venice:

Losing one's religion : "The Incendiaries" by R.O. Kwon

The Incendiaries

by R.O. Kwon 

a gripping debut novel about love, faith and their loss

Iraqi Gothic... Ahmed Saadawi's "Frankenstein in Baghdad"

Iraqi Gothic... 

Ahmed Saadawi's "Frankenstein in Baghdad"

Literary folk-horror? "The Willow King" by Meelis Friedenthal, translated by Matthew Hyde

"The Willow King" by Meelis Friedenthal, translated by Matthew Hyde

Literary folk-horror or fictional history?

The 16th and 17th Centuries were an important period for the development of science as we know it. Unfortunately, the history we’re generally fed is a black-and-white narrative made of heroes and villians, with brave, progressive scientists forging ahead despite the supernatural trammels of religion (and, more specifically, the censorship of the Roman Catholic Church and its nefarious Inquisition). 

The truth is much more nuanced and interesting. For a start, within science itself there were several competing approaches. The “mechanical science” of Kepler and Newton would eventually hold sway, but one should not discount the influence of the “natural philosophers” – early chemists and biologists such as Robert Boyle. Natural philosophers tended to follow theologically suspect pantheistic views (hence their clashes with the Church) but most of them also dabbled in alchemy and magic even whilst trying to study these esoteric subjects “empirically”. Some natural philosophers investigated folk remedies and witches' spells, in the belief that they had a basis in “real” science. Thus we meet, for instance, Jan Baptista van Helmont, a 17th Century scholar from the “Spanish Netherlands” (modern-day Belgium), who published studies on a method for treating gunshot wounds, involving dipping the offending weapon itself in a salve made up of, amongst other dubious ingredients, blood and “moss taken from a skull”. But it would be wrong to draw too clear a line between the “natural” and “mechanical” philosophers and brand the latter as more empirical and secular in approach. Newton dabbled in alchemy too, and Kepler had his quasi-supernatural theories about the “music of the spheres”. On the other hand, Helmont, when not hunting for moss in graveyards, was carrying out groundbreaking experiments which have gained him the epithet of “father of pneumatic chemistry”. In other words, this was an era in which the greatest and most rational of scientific minds held opinions which were, by present-day standards at least, manifestly irrational. (Some books which delve into these matters : Miracles at the Jesus Oak: Histories of the Supernatural in Reformation Europe, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science).

In his novel “The Bees” (renamed as “The Willow King” in Matthew Hyde ’s excellent translation) Meelis Friedenthal takes us back to the late 17th Century and immerses us into the philosophical and scientific debates of the age. His protagonist Laurentius is a scholar who has just arrived to complete his medical studies at Dorpat (modern-day Tartu, Estonia), after having hastily abandoned his course at the University of Leiden under suspicion of heresy. Laurentius embodies the contradictions of his world. Well abreast of the cutting-edge works of Boyle and Descartes, he nonetheless clings on to the outmoded views of Aristotle and the medical theories of Galen regarding the body’s “four humours”. Besides, Laurentius appears to be still in thrall to the superstitions of the common people. Over the course of a feverish week spent in a rain-sogged Estonia, where peasants are suffering a terrifying famine and word is spreading of a mysterious and devilish “willow king”, he finds himself taken over by the supernatural dread which marked his boyhood.

This is undoubtedly a quirky work or – if you are feeling ungenerous – a flawed one. Apart from a few chapters, the novel is largely rendered in a third-person narrative which generally follows the interior monologues of Laurentius, interspersed with occasional, pointless exclamations (“Ah!”, “Right!”, “Hopeless!”, “Very well!”) The characters often indulge in learned explanations and debates, providing us (quite unsubtly) with historical context and an overview of current philosophical trends. The plot is initially sketchy and eventually downright confusing. 

Yet, despite my reservations, I lapped this novel up, haunted by its dark atmosphere and the author’s uncanny ability to recreate not just the sights and sounds of 17th century Estonia, but also the very thoughts of his characters. Indeed, my take on the novel is that it is a journey into the mindset of the period, and that the more fantastical parts of the plot are meant to represent the (for us) irrational beliefs of the time. Friedenthal moves deftly between genres – this is, nominally, a historical novel but, when Friedenthal pulls out all the stops, it ventures into Gothic and folk-horror territory and becomes deliciously creepy.

One final tip - it makes sense to read the author’s afterword before delving into the book. It gives context to the novel without any spoilers and might make the work more intelligible to those who are new to the exciting historical period it portrays.

Paperback, 288 pages

Published January 5th 2017 by Pushkin Press (first published 2012)

We sail the Gothic seas - Elizabeth Lowry's "Dark Water"

When I’m reading a book, I generally have quite a clear idea of what I like and don’t like about it. However, I must admit Elizabeth Lowry’s Dark Water flummoxed me.  It was a novel I lapped up, a real literary page-turner. Yet, throughout, I had this nagging feeling that something wasn’t quite convincing me.  Perhaps, by the end of this review, I’ll manage to sort my thoughts out.

The marketing blurbs describe Dark Water as a Gothic novel, whilst comparing it to “Moby Dick” or “Heart of Darkness”.  That is, I think, a good place to start.  I must say that I was also reminded of the “sea stories” of William Hope Hodgson.  Admittedly, no phantom pirates haunt these pages but there are other terrors aplenty...ooh, yes, there are!  And there’s the same sense of claustrophobia which, ironically, can clutch travellers on the open sea and which both Hodgson and Lowry portray so effectively.  Lovers of opera will also catch more than a briny whiff of Britten’s marine masterpieces “Billy Budd” or “Peter Grimes”: the latter, especially, in the final part of the novel.

Dark Water, however, also references what I would call the “asylum Gothic”, made popular in Victorian ‘sensation fiction’ and reprised in contemporary novels (Alison Littlewood’s recent The Crow Garden comes to mind).

The link between these two Gothic environments lies in the main characters. In the first half of the 19th Century, as a newly-qualified physician, narrator Hiram Carver joins the crew of the USS Orbis for a journey from Boston south towards Cape Horn.  Aboard ship he befriends William Borden.  Though barely older than Hiram, Borden already has a reputation in the seafaring world as the “Hero of the Providence”.  Years before, aboard the said ship, Borden negotiated with a group of mutineers for the life of the Captain and a group of sailors, and then led them to safety across the Pacific aboard a fragile dinghy.  He’s a living legend, no less.  Yet, something seems to trouble the man, and a violent episode on the Orbis threatens to bring his career to a premature end.

Back on the terra ferma, Hiram puts his marine adventure behind him and takes up a position at Boston’s Asylum for the Insane.  And so, he tells us,

I began to exist on intimate terms with all that is pitiful, misshapen, and unresolved in the human heart

At the asylum, he meets Borden again, this time as a patient.  For the sake of their previous friendship, Carver is determined to cure Borden, using a new technique which he has developed, at odds with traditional, less humane, approaches.  Carver, in fact, believes that psychological illnesses can be addressed by confronting head-on submerged memories - unwelcome recollections which we tend to bury in our mental “dark water” or, in other words, the “subconscious”.  But memory and truth are uncomfortable bedfellows and perhaps, raking up the past is not always a great idea.  

Lowry exploits the Gothic possibilities of the plot and, for good measure, provides the reader with some impressive set-pieces which further emphasize the novel’s association with the genre.  There is a particularly striking episode in which Carver visits a maimed cousin who lives in a dark mansion,

So exactly like a house of nightmare: a crooked mausoleum hidden away in a waste land of struggling trees, marooned on scant acres of blasted grass.  

The meeting takes place in a room with drawn curtains, where the host quaffs absinthe in a bid for oblivion.  There are other memorable scenes set against the wintry backdrop of the bleak Nantucket coastline.  

In other words, this is all so very much up my alley.  So why my reservations?  I guess part of my problem lies with the character of the narrator.  He first struck me as an interesting and complex figure, especially in his relationships with the rest of the crew and –on land – with his overbearing father and doting sister.  However, as the novel proceeds, so many contradictions surface that, for me at least, he did not remain particularly convincing.  He is often weak but, when required, breathtakingly ruthless. He can be patient with his patients, yet brusque and callous with the people closest to him. He is sometimes indolent, sometimes overbearingly ambitious.  He can be perceptive and sharp, yet incredibly naive.  He’s conflicted about his sexuality.  As a psychological study, he’s just too good to be true.     

And then there’s Borden.  He’s described as a sort of demigod, a supernatural figure.  Now I do appreciate that we’re perceiving Borden from Carver’s perspective, but the “elevated” language in which he’s consistently presented becomes rather over the top.  

And this brings me precisely to the distinctive aspect of Dark Water which, I suspect, will also be its most divisive one.  Throughout the book, there are several extended metaphors which invite a symbolic or mythical interpretation of the novel.  There are, of course, the pervasive ‘marine’ metaphors, not least the evocative image of the “dark water” of our minds.  But there are also recurring references to “food”, “hunger”, “thinness” and “leanness”.  Hiram’s superior at the asylum nicknames him Cassius because, like the eponymous character in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, he has a “lean and hungry look”.   Hunger, or the lack of it, is often indicative of a character’s state of mind. 

From there it’s but a brief step to imagery of a religious, theological, dare I say ‘sacramental’ nature.  Suffice it to mention, without revealing too much, that certain key episodes in the plot are imbued with ritualistic significance, although it’s not clear whether Lowry’s intention is merely to harness the power of religious associations or to present us with a grotesque parody of holy ceremonies.  For me, “Dark Water” worked brilliantly enough as a dark historical novel with psychological undercurrents.  This ‘mythical’ element was hardly necessary.  But I’m just as sure that others will find that it is precisely this added layer of meaning which gives this novel the edge over other neo-Victorian novels.    Anyone with even a passing interest in the Gothic should read this.

"Dark Water" is out on riverrun on the 6th September, 2018

***

The sea has inspired much great music.  I’m tempted to build a playlist to go with this book but, in the meantime, here are some works to get one in the mood.  Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Walt Whitman setting (from his first symphony) portrays a beach at night.  Benjamin Britten’s “Four Sea Interludes” from the opera Peter Grimes portray some of the many moods of the sea.  And there’s a sea-shanty for good measure.  Enjoy!

https://youtu.be/FDaMcBhVAmI

https://youtu.be/MNRT8SvfLNM

https://youtu.be/8aK6k6tt1z4

"An Eden of dangerous things..."

Lauren Groff's "Florida" In “Flower Hunters”, one of the stories in this collection, an angst-ridden mother finds some solace in reading about William Bartram, an 18th century naturalist who, like her had once been “a northerner dazzled by the frenzied flora and fauna” of Florida. She takes an almost perverse pleasure in imagining her homely neighbourhood as a yet undeveloped “damp, dense tangle. An Eden of dangerous things”. The protagonist completely forgets that it’s Halloween, and, as a consequence, her two boys must make do with improvised costumes.“For the older boy, she cut eyeholes in a white sheet for an old-style ghost, though it rankled, a white boy in a white sheet, Florida still the Deep South”. That night, while the boys and their dad traipse off to a Halloween party, she stays at home, reading about Bartram, listening to the rain and worrying about the sinkhole she is pretty sure is forming and threatening to gobble up her house.  The “Florida” of the title is less of a physical, geographical setting, than a complex of feelings, ideas and associations. The images in "Flower Hunters" are quite representative of this literary place, where the genteel, civilised exterior, is constantly ambushed by the dangerous and the unexpected; where relationships are brittle and class wars are still rife; where even the nicest of persons might be monsters in disguise. Several of the tales portray natural perils which, besides being symbolic, are also quite literal. "Eyewall", a ghost-story in all but name, takes place against the backdrop of a battering hurricane. Storms are a central feature of several of the stories, panthers and alligators roam in others, whilst the Biblical association between snakes and evil is reprised in “Snake Stories”. The feeling of menace is sometimes expressed in tales which skirt the Gothic – “Dogs go Wolf” is a Florida-set (where else?) re-imagining of myths and legends of feral children.  The pull of Florida is such that even in the stories set away from the state (and from North America, even), the same feelings and fears hold sway. For the protagonist of “Salvador”, the Brazilian town is as rain-soaked as home, and equally remindful of the inadequacies of a life spent tending to a bed-ridden mother. “For the God of Love, for the Love of God” is set in France, where a Florida couple visit an old friend, now married to a Swiss baron. As relationships and fortunes collapse, the story turns into a grim comedy-of-manners which I can imagine made into a French art-house movie, perhaps a sort of darker version of Le Prénom. France is, again, the backdrop of “Yport”, which follows a mother and her two boys on a journey to the places associated with Guy du Maupassant, an author whom the mother is unenthusiastically researching. The harried mother realizes that she hates the guy – both as man and as writer – but also takes another an important lesson home with her – “of all places in the world, she belongs in Florida. How dispiriting to learn this of herself”. To be honest, “dispiriting” is an adjective which could also fit most of the stories in the collection. There are also themes, concerns and images, which keep returning obsessively, making this an anthology to savour, rather than to read in one sitting. And yes, Florida does deserve to be “savoured”. In just a few pages, Groff can draw a character worthy of a novel, conjure a setting and a mood, surprise the reader with a flash of insight, an unexpected image. At her best, Groff can indeed give us an “Eden of dangerous things”. "Florida" was published on June 5th 2018 by Riverhead