Friday, July 15, 2016

Péter Esterházy: Who read it, got wings – SPIEGEL ONLINE

The time was not enough, that we, who valued and loved him, it could have believed that pancreatic cancer and someone may like to kill him. Something occurred to us, frankly, never mind. That he could be mortal as any other human being.

We, the (, writing as reading and to Hungary), we are a generation younger, are all in one way or another, emerged from his coat. When I grew up, in the seventies and eighties of the 20th century, were most households, I knew, proletarian, the form of government was dictatorship, but books were cheap, and Péter Esterházy was postponed.

from the second book (which later translated by me “production novel”) has my mother bought all his books. I read into it, but since I was a child, I understood nothing. “We find no words petrified we are scared we plinkern:.. Should we so our desire and mood to be delivered?”

As a student I took these early books again at hand and have rarely laughed. But that still was not the moment when he was indispensable to me important as an author. I was only finally able to read it. When I finally turned 30, I translated the first time some of it. It was his great novel: “Celestial Harmonies”. After that I was finally free.

Esterházys rates are such that free them in one, which can be freed. Phrases like these: “1917, so just in time, because then just all came to an end, so that new Allesse could begin my father the Virgin appeared in Felsőgalla (here: Maria) to entrust him three secrets …”

Such sentences full of courage and wit, spirit and joy, humility and self-irony, with its changes of register and to their limits stretched, but never overstretched grammar (because it is a matter of professional pride, to make sure that ” the subordinate clause is not in the main clause slackens as a bad hinge “) have led me to the realization that there is no reason in this world, not to do anything with a phrase in defining not all of what is a possible. Records that the views (and therefore the scope for action, both within and outside of the sentence) enhance, rather than restricting it. I have read and translated

Esterházy has given me wings. “You have to try everything. In the dead ends we need a whole new way walk in”, is in “Introduction to Fiction”.

When I read this, I understood what it was, which paralyzed me, back in the seventies and eighties of the 20th century, when most households proletarian and the form of government was dictatorship. I had no confidence, no support. I was afraid. But from now I no longer had. From now I had also found a stability that Esterhazy had brought seemingly innately.

In him all that was stable, which, initially, was not stable in me completely. God, country, family, words. He had this core without which would have immobilized him. The major weakness of many conservatives (and stubborn Liberal; yes, there is also): to guard its values ​​so anxious that you dare to hardly move. As one would have to worry about that too scarce flags, in which one wraps itself might slip and reveal a. (As what as the one you are?. “Everyone is a person who is a human being.”) Solution: not too tight, not too stiff. Permission is granted his Nichtallwissenheit disclose its In-process-being. Not to use it as an excuse. That would out anyway, because it always comes out everything.

Linguistically and ethically our instance

Since then I have internalized that I write differently, and take also all sentences that produce other, differently. “Celestial Harmonies” definition has helped me as a young author to see: Here is the bar. The moment when you adopted as an artist a My father. And as to me it was the most that have ever read him. He was and still is our instance, linguistically and (ie respectively .:) ethically.

“A writer has to think not in people and nation, but in the subject and predicate” or “About a certain level we do not embark below a certain level “.

What makes this one so difficult is that I had the privilege of not only its texts but know also him personally, and he to work, too nor was a magical man and I will miss so long as I live.

There are his lyrics, that’s great. But he shall not want. How many. We are many who think of him as a family member. It has things he learned as a Father. That the work is one, for example. As the work is. Where most writers I know are hardworking and (not so many, but at least some) also humble. The language that is close to God, and I, I try to get close to the language. “At the most charming can atheists say the word God.”

We have every reason to be grateful: for his work and for his person. Of course: He had it easy. He is born. And as he has also made an effort. We’ll just have another still give a little more effort.

I promise to do my best.

I do not believe that we will meet again. I really regret it. I must now live a much longer time without you, as I always thought. I and the others who are doing well, we now have to make do with what is still possible. Thinking of you, read you, you continue as the instance honor that you have become for us

Your word is true. If we keep it, it will go us better, that’s at least guaranteed. Thank you for everything. Rest in peace.

About the Author

  • DPA

     
      Terézia Mora, 45, grew up in Hungary in two languages. In 1990 she went to study in Berlin. Translated several books by Péter Esterházy, including his major work “Celestial Harmonies”, which was published in 2001 in German. For her translations, she has received numerous awards, just for their own literary work – in 2013 with the German Book Prize for her novel “The Beast”. In September her short story collection “The love among aliens”

  • appears in Luchterhand Verlag.
     

LikeTweet

No comments:

Post a Comment