Customer Reviews
A startling journey indeed - By: A Common Reader, 05 Nov 2008 
In Journey by Moonlight, the Hungarian writer Antal Szerb has produced one of the most memorable novels I have read for some time. When I finished it, I turned back to think about what to writein this review & was immediately drawn back into whichever part of the story I landed in, beguiled by the quality of writing & the narrative pace. Ostensibly about the marriage between Mihály & Erzsi, it would be incorrect to describe this as merely a novel, for it is also a series of statements about existence, relationships & our placein the world.
Mihály & Erzsi are newlyweds & we join them on their honeymoonin Venice. We rapidly learn that Mihály is a vague, other-worldly man, who seems barely planted on the earth.
Even during the first week of the honeymoon he finds himself one night wandering the back streets of Venice forin a sort of dream, not returning to the hotel until dawn. At one point we read a beautifully ironic & sarcastic letter to Mihály from Erzsi's ex-husband Zoltan, giving him instructions on how to care for Erzsi & perfectly describing Mihály's character:
"If I were a woman, & had to choose between the two of us, I too would have chosen you without hesitiation & Erzi surely loves you for being just the sort of person you are - so utterly withdrawn & abstracted that you haven no real relationship with anybody or anything, like someone from another planet, a Martian on earth, someone who never really notices anything, . . . who never pays proper attention when others speak, who often seems to act out of vague goodwill & politeness as if playing at being human"
Erzsi soon realises that her marriage is based on the fiction that the two understand each other perfectly. However when Erzi starts to explain himself, the more confusing he becomes because he holds secrets even from himself, & fails to understand that people other than himself also have an inner life. The marriage is not going to last! But the way it soon ends is uniquely strange, & perhaps shows the shallowness of its foundations from the start.
The story then divides, following the courses of both Mihály & Erzsi as they go their separate ways. Erszi goes to Paris & lives with a girl-friend, meeting up again with Zoltan & various other unique characters. At one point she seems to be offered up to a wealthy Persian as part of a business transaction but manages to assert herself sufficiently to extricate herself & make her own choices after the disastrous second marriage.
Mihály on the other hand continues journeying through Italy, having a series of misfortunes along the way which reveal much about the flawsin his character. An other-worldly but self-regarding & self-indulgent personality, but also self-deceiving, with high ideals which he drops at the merest hint of inconvenience to himself.
It is the energetic writing style which marks this book out as special. The narrative pace is fast, but it is the insights into human existence along the way which make it sparkle. Antal Szerb has no illusions about his characters for all are deeply flawed.
Antal Szerb is a new discovery to me but one of the most valuable. No doubt my enjoyment of this book owes much to the excellent translation by Len Rix & his Afterword sets the bookin a wider context & I am pleased to see that he agrees that irony, distinctively Middle-Europeanin character operates on every level of this sophisticated & remarkable novel. Although Mihály's actions are reprehensible, somehow our sympathies are never quite alienated - "some principle at the core of his being calls to us".
Wholly involving - By: Ralph Blumenau, 04 Nov 2007 Mihály, the central character of this elegant & stylish novel (beautifully translated by Len Rix) seems to belong to the early continental 19th century rather than to inter-war Budapest. He is a manin his late thirties, a neurotic & Romantic character, unworldly, more at homein history thanin the present, ill at easein his bourgeois setting at home & equally ill at ease about beingin his late thirties. He has a great nostalgia for the time when, as an adolescent schoolboy, he was the hanger-on of a group of unconventional young people: Tamás (who several times tried to commit suicide & eventually managed it); his sister Eva (whom Mihály adored); Ervin (another of Eva's admirers, a convert to Catholicism from Judaism); & János, a suave trickster.
The book opens twenty years later, when Mihály is on his honeymoonin Venice with his wife Erszi. Erszi had left her first husband to marry Mihály because he was `different'; he had seduced & then married her because he was trying to be `normal'. But she did not understand just how `different' he was, & he could not cope with marriage; and, besides, he is haunted by the memory of the now mysterious Eva. During a stop-over on a railway journey, Mihály makes the Freudian error of getting onto one train while Erszi is travelling on another. He is relieved to be on his own & that noone can find him. He travels from one Italian location to another - all beautifully & sometimes hauntingly described. I must not reveal the many strange, mysterious & coincidental events that happen to him; butin any case his thought processes are at least as central to the story as are the various events.
Meanwhile Erszi, unable to face her familyin Budapest as a deserted wife, makes her way to Paris. There she, too,in her own way, turns against the respectable bourgeois life she has hitherto been leading. Again I must not elaborate; but the story is full of fascinating psychological twists & turns (though one of them,in an ancient chateau on a rainy night, does, I must admit, strike me as uncharacteristically grotesque & over the top - quite out of tune with the delicacy of the rest of the novel.)
The note of death is heard throughout the novel. As a youngster Mihály had to take partin the theatricals staged by Tamás & Eva which invariably involved death, with Mihály willingly playing the sacrificial victim. Later, there are suicides, cemeteries, Etruscan sarcophagi & the apparent Etruscan notion that "dying is an erotic art", which so resonates with Mihály & had done so for Tamás. Mihály hears a remarkable lecture on that subject from Professor Waldheim, one of his former class-mates whom he meetsin Rome - & from that moment onwards Szerb plays some extraordinary games with his readers.
A subtle, rich & wonderful book.
A beautiful novel of discovery and escape from the world - By: Catfish, 11 Jun 2007 This is one of the most absorbing books I have read this year - there was no way I could put it down until I got to the end of it. Peopled with unforgettable characters like every one of us, this is a tale of love, death, individuality, courage, & conforming. The main characters are on a honeymoon tripin Rome, where they talk about their past lives & the people that affected them. There comes a point where the past & present meet, when it is not possible for love or life to continue; each character must make a choice to decide his or her own fate. The language is beautiful & the whole novel has eerie, Gothic undertones as we follow characters to their death, to isolated houses & mountains where they make an attempt to escape from a common, ordinary world. The language flows beautifully & makes you think about your own life as if you were being swept along by a stream of wisdom. This was wonderful, touching & self-reflective...highly recommended.
a hidden classic.. - By: tracy_bookworm, 20 Dec 2006 having just finished this masterpiece of a novel, i am truly surprised that i had not heard of it before seeing itin my local charity shop. this beautiful story of a man not able to let go of his childhood captivated me & i couldn't put it down until i'd finished. i'd just love to learn hungarian so i could read the original & see whether it's even better!
Simply magical - By: , 08 Oct 2004 With a subtle wit that allows the reader to be amused at the pretensions & foibles of the characters without making them unsympathetic or into just cyphers, Szerb tells the story of Mihaly & Erzsi & how their honeymoon unfolds. The novel is largely setin Italy & France, with flashbacks to the earlier life of Mihalyin Hungary which build into the picture of his character.
Journey by Moonlight is supposed to be a classic of Hungarian literature & I found that easy to understand from the English Translation by Len Rix. This novel & author deserve to be much more widely known.
The actual physical production of this volume by Pushkin Press is impressive with a sewn binding & very high quality paper used.
