Antal Szerb (1 May 1901,

Budapest Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population ...

– 27 January 1945,

Balf Balf () is a town in Hungary, a district of Sopron Sopron (; german: Ödenburg, ; sl, Šopron) is a city in Hungary on the Austrian border, near Lake Neusiedl/Lake Fertő. History Ancient times-13th century When the area that is today W ...

) was a noted Hungarian scholar and writer. He is generally considered to be one of the major Hungarian writers of the 20th century.

Life and career

Szerb was born in 1901 to assimilated

Jew Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""Th ...

ish parents in Budapest, but

baptized Baptism (from grc-x-koine, βάπτισμα, váptisma) is a form of ritual purification—a characteristic of many religions throughout time and geography. In Christianity, it is a Christian sacrament of initiation and adoption, almost ...

Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

. He studied Hungarian, German and later English, obtaining a

doctorate A doctorate (from Latin ''docere'', "to teach"), doctor's degree (from Latin ''doctor'', "teacher"), or doctoral degree is an academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism ''l ...

in 1924. From 1924 to 1929 he lived in France and Italy, also spending a year in

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

, England, from 1929 to 1930. As a student, he published essays on

Georg Trakl Georg Trakl (3 February 1887 – 3 November 1914) was an Austrian poet and the brother of the pianist Grete Trakl. He is considered one of the most important Austrian Expressionists. He is perhaps best known for his poem " Grodek", which he wr ...

and

Stefan George Stefan Anton George (; 12 July 18684 December 1933) was a German symbolist poet and a translator of Dante Alighieri, William Shakespeare, Hesiod, and Charles Baudelaire. He is also known for his role as leader of the highly influential literar ...

, and quickly established a formidable reputation as a scholar, writing erudite studies of

William Blake William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his life, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual art of the Romantic Age. ...

and

Henrik Ibsen Henrik Johan Ibsen (; ; 20 March 1828 – 23 May 1906) was a Norwegian playwright and theatre director. As one of the founders of modernism in theatre, Ibsen is often referred to as "the father of realism" and one of the most influential playw ...

among other works. Elected President of the Hungarian Literary Academy in 1933, aged just 32, he published his first novel, ''

The Pendragon Legend ''The Pendragon Legend'' (Hungarian: A Pendragon-legenda) is a 1934 novel by the Hungarian writer Antal Szerb. It was published by Pushkin Press. The book is a philosophical thriller/comedy/murder-mystery/ghost story set first in London and then ...

'' (which draws upon his personal experience of living in Britain) the following year. His second and best-known work, (''Journey by Moonlight'') came out in 1937. He was made a

Professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...

Literature Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially prose fiction, drama, and poetry. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include ...

at the

University of Szeged , mottoeng = Truth. Bravery. Freedom. , established = , type = Public research university , founder = Emperor Franz Joseph I , affiliation = European University Association, Science Without Borders, Confucius Institute , budget = US$220 m ...

the same year. He was twice awarded the ''

Baumgarten Prize The Baumgarten Prize was founded by Ferenc Ferdinánd Baumgarten on October 17, 1923. It was awarded every year from 1929 to 1949 (except for 1945). In its time, it was the most prestigious literary prize awarded by Hungary and is considered as equ ...

'', in 1935 and 1937. Szerb also translated books from English, French, and Italian, including works by

Anatole France (; born , ; 16 April 1844 – 12 October 1924) was a French poet, journalist, and novelist with several best-sellers. Ironic and skeptical, he was considered in his day the ideal French man of letters. He was a member of the Académie França ...

P. G. Wodehouse Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, ( ; 15 October 188114 February 1975) was an English author and one of the most widely read humorists of the 20th century. His creations include the feather-brained Bertie Wooster and his sagacious valet, Jeeve ...

, and

Hugh Walpole Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole, Commander of the Order of the British Empire, CBE (13 March 18841 June 1941) was an English novelist. He was the son of an Anglican clergyman, intended for a career in the church but drawn instead to writing. Among th ...

. In 1941 he published a ''History of World Literature'' which continues to be authoritative today. He also published a volume on the theory of the novel and a book about the history of Hungarian literature. Given numerous chances to escape anti-Semitic persecution (as late as 1944), he chose to remain in Hungary, where his last novel, a Pirandellian fantasy about a king staging a coup against himself, then having to impersonate himself, ''

Oliver VII ''Oliver VII'' is a 1942 novel by Antal Szerb. The first English translation was published in 2007. In the book, the restless ruler of an obscure central European state plots a coup d'état against himself and escapes to Venice in search of ‘re ...

'', was published in 1942. It was passed off as a translation from the English, as no 'Jewish' work could be printed at the time. During the 1940s, Szerb faced increasing hostility due to his Jewish background. In 1943, Szerb's ''History of World Literature'' was put on a list of forbidden works. During the period of Communist rule, it would also be censored, with the chapter on Soviet literature redacted, and the full version would only be available again in 1990. Szerb was deported to a

concentration camp Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simply ...

in Balf late in 1944. Admirers of his attempted to save him with falsified papers, but Szerb turned them down, wanting to share the fate of his generation. He was beaten to death there in January 1945, at the age of 43. He was survived by his wife, Klára Bálint, who died in 1992.

Work

Szerb is best known for his academic works on literature. In the ten years before the Second World War, he wrote two monumental works of literary criticism, characterized by a brilliant and ironic style intended for an educated reader rather than an academic public. In addition, Szerb wrote novellas and novels that still attract the attention of the reading public. ''The Pendragon Legend'', ''Journey by Moonlight'' and ''The Queen's Necklace'', for instance, fuse within the plot the aims of the literary critic with the aims of the novel writer. The author gives importance to the exotic in these novels, with a meta-literary outlook. In these three novels, the stage of the narrative action is always a Western European country: leaving quotidian Hungary allows the writer to transfigure the actions of his characters.

''The Pendragon Legend''

In his first novel, ''The Pendragon Legend'', Szerb offers to his readers a representation of the United Kingdom and its inhabitants. England and, in particular,

, hosted Szerb for a year and not only suggested to him new and interesting directions for his research, but also offered him the background for his first novel. ''The Pendragon Legend'' is a detective story that begins in the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

and finishes in a Welsh castle. The author provides a non-native's look at the country, in a way that is consistent with the parody genre. In '' The Quest for the Miraculous: Survey and Problematic in the Modern Novel'', Szerb claims that among the literary genres he prefers the fantasy novel. It fuses the quotidian details of everyday life with the fantastic feats that he calls “the miracle”. In the case of ''The Pendragon Legend'', this allows the reader a cathartic experience through the adventures of the Hungarian philologist who serves as the protagonist of the novel.

''Journey by Moonlight''

(literally, "Traveler and Moonlight"), published in 1937, focuses on the development of the main character, Mihály - a bright and romantic, albeit conflicted, young man who sets off for a honeymoon in Italy with his new wife, Erzsi. Mihály quickly reveals his bizarre childhood experiences to her over a bottle of wine, alluding to a set of seemingly unresolved longings for eroticism and death which Erzsi seems to only vaguely comprehend. The plainspoken disharmony between the newlyweds leads to Mihály's detached self-recognition: he is not ready to be Erzsi's husband. He then leaves his wife for his own journey through the Italian countryside and eventually

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus (legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

- figuratively tracing the sparkling fanaticisms of his juvenile imagination, even rekindling bonds with changed (and some unchanged) childhood friends - all among the impressive foreign landscapes and peculiar liveliness of its inhabitants. Szerb celebrates the exotic cult of Italy, the leitmotif of thousands of writers from the past and present, relaying his own travel impressions of Italy though the mind of his eccentric protagonist, Mihály. Szerb explores the altogether interrelatedness of love and youthfulness within bourgeois society.

''The Third Tower''

Szerb also published an interesting diary, '' The Third Tower'', recounting his travels to the cities in the north of Italy -

Venice Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 ...

Bologna Bologna (, , ; egl, label= Emilian, Bulåggna ; lat, Bononia) is the capital and largest city of the Emilia-Romagna region in Northern Italy. It is the seventh most populous city in Italy with about 400,000 inhabitants and 150 different nat ...

Ravenna Ravenna ( , , also ; rgn, Ravèna) is the capital city of the Province of Ravenna, in the Emilia-Romagna region of Northern Italy. It was the capital city of the Western Roman Empire from 408 until its collapse in 476. It then served as the cap ...

. Before going back home, he visited

San Marino San Marino (, ), officially the Republic of San Marino ( it, Repubblica di San Marino; ), also known as the Most Serene Republic of San Marino ( it, Serenissima Repubblica di San Marino, links=no), is the fifth-smallest country in the world an ...

, Europe's oldest state, and

Montale (San Marino) Montale is one of three towered peaks overlooking the city of San Marino, the capital of San Marino. The other two are De La Fratta and Guaita. Overview Montale is the smallest of the three peaks of Monte Titano. The tower on the peak was cons ...

inspired the title of the book. The diary is divided into paragraphs which alternate descriptions with his personal thoughts.

Selected bibliography

* , 1927 * , 1936 * , 1927 * ''William Blake'', 1928 * , 1929 ("An Outline of English Literature") * , 1929 * , 1929 * , 1929 * ''Cynthia'', 1932 * , 1934 ("History of Hungarian literature") * , 1934 **tr.: ''

'', , 2006 * , 1935 (short stories) **tr.: ''Love in a Bottle'', , 2010 * , 1935 **tr.: ''A Martian's Guide to Budapest'', , 2015 * , 1936 **tr.: ''The Third Tower: Journeys in Italy'', , 2014 * , 1936 ("The Quest for the Miraculous: Survey and Problematic in the Modern Novel") * , 1937 **tr.: The Traveler translated by Peter Hargitai, Püski-Corvin Press NY, NY, USA. 1994. **tr.: Journey by Moonlight, , 2014 * ''Don't say... but say...'', 1939 * , 1941 ("History of World Literature") * , 1943 ("Oliver VII," published under the pseudonym A. H. Redcliff) **tr.:

, 2007 * , 1943 **tr.: ''The Queen's Necklace'', , 2009 * , 1943/1944 ("100 poems")

Translations

English *'' The Traveler'' (1994) (earliest translation of ) *'' Journey by Moonlight'' (2002) , 9781906548506 *''

'' (2006) (another translation published 1963) *''

'' (2007) *''The Queen's Necklace'' (2009) *''

Love in a Bottle ''Love in a Bottle'' is a Dutch romantic comedy directed by Paula van der Oest. Plot Two people in different countries fall in love over videocalls during the COVID-19 pandemic. Reception De Volkskrant liked the film but said the plot got qui ...

'' (2010) *'' Journey by Moonlight'' (2014) *''The Third Tower: Journeys in Italy'' (2014) *''A Martian's Guide to Budapest'' (2015) *'' Traveler and the Moonlight'' (2016) Czech * 1946 * 1985 * 1998 Dutch * 2007 * 2005

Audiobook An audiobook (or a talking book) is a recording of a book or other work being read out loud. A reading of the complete text is described as "unabridged", while readings of shorter versions are abridgements. Spoken audio has been available in sc ...

* 2006 Finnish * 2008 French * 1990 * 1992 German * 1966 * 1978 * 2004 * 1974 * 2003 * 2005 * (older translation of ) 1966 * 1972 (published in East Germany) * 2006 * (translation of ) 2006 * (translation of ) 1938 Hebrew *''מסע לאור ירח'' 2008 Italian * 1989 * 1999 Polish * 1971 * 1959 Slovak * 1972 Slovenian * 1980 * 2011 Spanish * 1941 * 2000 *''La leyenda de los Pendragon'' 2004 * 2018 Serbian * 2009 * 2010 Swedish * 2010 Turkish * 2008 * 2016

References

External links

United States Holocaust Memorial MuseumHungarian book foundation database''Guardian'' Review of Journey by Moonlight''Guardian'' Review of The Pendragon Legend
* * ttps://web.archive.org/web/20050506051912/http://www.lyrikwelt.de/autoren/szerb.htm a photo of the author at lyrikwelt.debr>REVIEW : The Third Tower by Antal Szerb
{{DEFAULTSORT:Szerb, Antal University of Szeged faculty Hungarian male novelists Jewish Hungarian writers 1901 births 1945 deaths Hungarian civilians killed in World War II Writers from Budapest Burials at Kerepesi Cemetery People executed by blunt trauma Hungarian people executed in Nazi concentration camps 20th-century Hungarian novelists Baumgarten Prize winners 20th-century Hungarian male writers Deaths by beating in Europe