| Title | : | The Pendragon Legend |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 190128560X |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781901285604 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 313 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1934 |
The Pendragon Legend Reviews
-
'Tell me,' he asked, with some embarassment, as we strolled along: 'you're a bloody German, aren't you?'
'Oh, no. I'm Hungarian.'
'Hungarian?'
'Hungarian.'
'What's that? Is that a country? Or you are just having me on?
'Not at all. On my word of honour, it is a country.'
'And where do you Hungarians live?'
'In Hungary. Between Austria, Romania, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia'.
'Come off it. Those places were made up by Shakespeare.'
The Pendragon Legend or a Hungarian scholar's very non-scholarly, tongue-in-cheek adventures with the British, the Welsh, the (possibly) Rosicrucian Order, mysticism, sexuality and hilarity, not in this particular order. And sometimes it reads like
Antal Szerb is taking the piss out of the
The Da Vinci Code, the only hitch being that this novel was published in 1934, almost 70 years before. Literary time travel at its best or what?
Once again,
Len Rix, the translator is brilliant, because -improbable as it may seem - the novel in English reads almost like in Hungarian with the same flavours, aromas, feelings, what have you. The translation is as amazingly impossible, entertaining and hilarious as the novel itself.
Please note that in whatever mood you may read this book, make sure you don't take it seriously. Because it is no more and no less than romp through Britain and literary genres from murder mystery to adventure to parody, from ghost story to comedy. Even so the simplicity and yet complexity of the plot is quite amazing.
The protagonist, unscholarly scholar, János Bátky (alterego of the author himself) is a cross between Dr Watson & Sherlock. Add a clumsy Indiana Jones to the mix and you are right there where you need to be. :)
A British friend of mine whom I gave this book as a present told me that the book read just like it was written by a British author and for this particular book, and I guess also for Antal Szerb, you cannot give a higher praise than that. -
'Tell me,' he asked, with some embarassment, as we strolled along: 'you're a bloody German, aren't you?'
'Oh, no. I'm Hungarian.'
'Hungarian?'
'Hungarian.'
'What's that? Is that a country? Or you are just having me on?
'Not at all. On my word of honour, it is a country.'
'And where do you Hungarians live?'
'In Hungary. Between Austria, Romania, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia'.
'Come off it. Those places were made up by Shakespeare.'
And he roared with laughter.
(from The Pendragon Legend, page 31)
I lived with Hungarians. I worked with Hungarians. I drank with Hungarians (and no less than Hungarian homemade palinka!). Boy, I even went punting with Hungarians.
And yet, all that I recall from the fascinating Hungarian language is two words: hupikék törpikék.
Which sounds just lovely when you hear it and it's an excellent icebreaker speaking with your average
beautiful Miss Polyglot, but, in fact, means 'Smurfs'. Now you know it: go and conquer parties!
How did I come across Antal Szerb? No idea.
But what I know is that 'The Pendragon Legend' turned out to be a serendipity of a book. I was looking for a decent gothic novel in the wake of Poe and Machen and, this book - to some extent - is a gothic novel, but that's not all. There is much more here and Szerb managed to mix plenty of sweet and sour ingredients with an excellent final result.
Now, how can I describe this?
There is this certain Young Frankensteinesque mood in 'The Pendragon Legend', so much that I expected Frau Blücher to pop up, but dismissing this novel as a parody would be unjust.
There is a quintessentially British sense of humour bringing P.G. Wodehouse and the early Evelyn Waugh in mind, but nonetheless Szerb pokes fun at Englishmen, Scots, Welshmen and Irishmen from the continental point of viewof Janos Batki, 'Doctor of Philosophy specialised in useless information'.
Batki is a Hungarian academic in London toying with his rather obcure research in 'English mystics of the Seventeenth century'. Having no impelling economic problems, he spends a good deal of his time in the Reading Room of the British Museum, under the very same dome that plays such an important role in 'New Grub Street' by George Gissing and 'The British Museum is Falling Down' by David Lodge.
Not so here. Batky will leave London and his vague studies at the British Museum behind in the pursuit of intellectual curiosity. An invitation from the distinguished Earl of Pendragon (a man 'with a remarkably handsome head' but charged of being 'mad as a hatter') will take the Hungarian Phd to Wales where a very funny and very creepy serie of events will happen.
A scholar of Blake and Ibsen, Antal Szerb spent only one year of his life in the UK. And yet, in such a short time he was not only able to complete a once acclaimed World History of Literature, but also to grasp a lot about Britons and their idiosyncrasies. The Hungarian author was clearly fascinated by Britons and I bet he had great fun while writing 'The Pendragon Legend' which was his first novel.
You can get that Szerb was witty and well-read as well as a man who loved to court women and being playfully seduced by a pretty face. Not your standard academic bookworm, then.
Quite surprisingly to Janos Batki - Szerb alter ego here - courtship is not an intellectual pleasure, but actually quite the opposite as he firmly believes that beautiful women are not meant to be clever. Worse: beautiful women might be imprisoned to make the world a better place. As you can see, this is a novel where the main character does have some interesting opinions.
But don't take Antal Szerb wrong, please. He was not a misogynist as the irresistible character of the rubenesque Lene Kretzsch - a modern and sexually liberated intellectual - can prove in this novel.
Despite of its name 'The Pendragon Legend' has nothing of Arthurian. This is an entertaining romp with some spooky moments, mysticism, cheeky saxophone interludes (if you know what I mean), brilliant dialogues and many a good and sharp observation. Much credit to Pushkin Press and the excellent translation by Len Rix for making this book available to an English reading audience.
As a self proclaimed bookworm I couldn't help but finding 'The Pendragon Legend' extremely engaging and a pleasure to read. True, the finale sort of disappointed my expectations, but what came before was brilliant enough.
All things considered, it's high time I pay my first visit to Budapest.
'A Martian Guide to Budapest' written by Antal Szerb in the 1930s might be of use.
(if you tell me where I can buy that). -
Ever since social distancing and self-isolation started, I only reread my favorite YA series from way back when (notably The Hunger Games and The Precious Gems series). However, since this Hungarian classic is our current book club pick, I had to read it in these crazy times as well ... and what can I say? It was good. Sometimes, funny even. But above all, it was absolutely wild. Not at all what I expected ... but in a good way.
“Nothing is more frightening than the completely inexplicable.”
At an end-of-London-season soirée, the young Hungarian scholar-dilettante Janos Bátky is introduced to the Earl of Gwynedd, a reclusive eccentric who is the subject of strange rumors. Invited to the family seat—Pendragon Castle in North Wales—Bátky receives a mysterious phone call warning him not to go; but he does and finds himself in a bizarre world of mysticism and romance, animal experimentation, and planned murder. His quest to solve the central mystery takes him down strange byways—old libraries and warehouse cellars, Welsh mountains and underground tombs.
I was recommended this book during my trip to Budapest by a lovely woman working in the Massolit bookshop. It was her current and when she told me that Antal Szerb is basically Hungary's most famous writer, I knew that I wanted to pick up something by him. Funnily enough, he was even born in Budapest himself (as is the protagonist of this debut novel), so I will forever link this book forever with the beautiful city that is Budapest.
At Pendragon Castle, doors creak, lights go out, a mysterious horseman rides across the sward and things go bump in the night. There is love interest, with Janos becoming enamoured with Cynthia, the "maid of the castle", and intrigued by Lene, a Teutonic femme fatale. Apart from the eccentric Earl of Gwynedd, with his hidden laboratory in which he experiments on semi-extinct species, Janos has to endure the company of Maloney, a preposterous Irishman who maintains that Connemara is the seat of civilisation, and Osborne, the archetypal effete upper-class Englishman. They journey with him to the castle, and various plots are then set in motion.
Instead of writing a review, I want to go through some of the bullet points which I want to discuss with my book club. I'm curious to see how fruitful our discussions will be, because I don't think the book is the easiest to dissect the themes and plot points. However, I would be curious to compare the German translation (which my fellow book club members read) with my English translation, since Antal Szerb's mother tongue was Hungarian but he was fluent in German and English as well. And so in the original he interwove all three seamlessly ... however, in a translation that wouldn't work so well. There are some instances in my English translation were characters speak German (and it's written in German without a translation to English), I'd be curious to know how that was accomplished in the German translation.
Furthermore, I would like to discuss how they vibed with the setting of this book and whether or not they found it authentic. The Pendragon Legend was published in 1934, and is supposed to play in 1933. It is set (in the beginning) in England but the majority of the story is set in Wales. I was utterly confused with this because the novel gave me such an old feel; at all times I was convinced that it was set during the 19th century. Had the characters been riding in carriages instead of in cars, I wouldn't have been surprised. Their world-views seemed so old-fashioned to me, at the center of the story is the mysterious Earl of Gwynedd with his mysterious castle that is supposedly haunted. Our protagonist Janos Bátky is obsessed with the occult. When it comes to his relationships he fashions himself a knight and his beloved one the "maid of the castle".
Whenever I tried to picture that this was supposed to be the 1930s, I got utterly confused. I couldn't do it. Hitler was only mentioned once, and that by a German character in a joke-like manner. When she talks about how quickly her kidnappers got to her she says that she didn't even have the time to say "Heil Hitler", that's how quick it was. Antal Szerb was born to Jewish parents, even though he himself converted to catholicism. I am aware that this book was written in the early 1930s, but it is horrible when you think about the fact that in the 1940s, despite numerous chances to escape anti-Semitic persecution, Szerb chose to remain in Hungary, even though 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 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.
So, up to this day, Szerb is known for his anti-fascist stance. I understand that it's hard to address these topics in one's work without being persecuted, but writing a book in 1933, the year that Hitler came into power, and then not have it reflect any of the current politics of the time, seems weird to me. Like I said, in most aspects, this book felt ... Victorian?
Anyways, another topic I would like to discuss with my book club is the intertextuality of the text. You can almost read The Pendragon Legend as a love letter to literature. There are so many authors, works, fictional characters etc. cited and referenced. It is absolutely brilliant. I loved finding the references (most notably to Shakespeare and Doyle but also Carroll, Dantes, Wallace, Kästner, Dumas and many more are mentioned). Janos Bátky is a scholar and quite obsessed with books, he loves libraries, he loves musing about literature. I want to discuss in which ways Szerb took inspiration from other writers and used certain common literary devices in this novel. I found it especially endearing how he tried to evoke a "Sherlockian" style, when two characters start to investigate and constantly dress themselves up in the most ridiculous fashion. On top of that, in Szerb I have finally found a writer who knew his goddamn Shakespeare.“Except for a rag around his loins, he was stark naked—not something you expect to see in broad daylight in these island. The stout branch in his hand served as a walking stick; the grey shock of his bear and hair flew in every direction. It was a disturbing, fantastic, strangely threatening sight, complete with the obligatory wisps of straw in the hair that every self-respecting lunatic in Britain has sported since the days of King Lear.”
There are many references to the Bard in this novel, albeit the one cited above is the most brilliant one. In the past, I had the displeasure to encounter writers who used Shakespeare in their work (most notably M.L. Rio in If We Were Villains) and did such a disservice to the man, that I'm sure he was turning in his grave. With Szerb, however, it's clear that Willy was smiling down on him with content. Szerb gets it. His references to Shakespeare are sometimes subtle, sometimes funny, but always authentic to the source material. I love it!
Furthermore, I definitely want to address the sexism and racism inherent in this story. I don't quite now what I expected but I was somewhat shocked at how openly the female characters were belittled in this story. And since most of the men had these derogatory sentiments about women and the female characters themselves were written in a way in which they were not much more than a stereotype, I don't think that we can separate the sexism performed in the story from Szerb's as a person. First and foremost, let's talk about the three women in this story:
1) Cynthia, the niece of the Count. At one point in the story, our protagonist falls in love with ... her? Well, not really, he is very open about the fact that he is only in love with what Cynthia presents, not her as a person. He loves her because she is the niece of the Count, because she is wealthy, because she is "the maid of the castle". Whenever Cynthia expresses her interest in the intellectual (e.g. books, studying), Janos belittles here: “I can never feel much attraction to a woman whom I consider clever—it feels too much like courting a man.” At one point, he even says, and that not jokingly: “The Mohammedans excluded women from Paradise, and I would exclude them from libraries, especially the pretty ones. Their mere presence obstructs my reading.” Janos is often blinded by romance (and/or sex), and it becomes annoying pretty quickly. He seems to be blinded by beauty, he's so obsessed with it. He reduces the women he meets to how beautiful and "worthy" they are. So, Cynthia is supposed to be the innocent, pure, dumb damsel in distress who needs saving.
2) Eileen St Claire, however, is supposed to be the exact opposite. She oozes sex. She is the sinful dame who breaks men and brings them nothing but pain and despair. There isn't a single point during this narrative where she isn't sexualised. She is the widow of Roscoe, yet also the past lover of the Earl, and becomes the new lover of Janos. The Earl never get over her, so that the mere mention of her name triggers a visceral reaction from him. Eileen uses sex as a weapon and is criticised for it, hell, Szerb even makes her die for it in the end. When she wants Janos to testify against the Earl (on the topic of Maloney's weird death), she seduces him and pressures him with sex / withholding sex. After their wild night, Janos feels shame and sees the "true" sinful nature of Eileen and disregards her. It's quite ridiculous.
3) Lene Kretzsch is probably my favorite character in this novel because she provides great comic relief. However, when it comes to her as a woman, all I can do is sigh. Similarly to the other women in this story, her body is sexualised and Janos cannot keep from telling us how much of her there is. She, too, uses sex as a weapon and seduces the young Osborne (who might as well be gay) in a truly overbearing manner. But then, on the other hand, she isn't presented as a woman because she's quite practical and brave—you know, not like a "real" women. Sigh. When Osborne describes her, he says “Well, I don’t want to flatter her, but I’ve always thought of her as a clever, active, thoroughly decent sort—in a word, a real man.” So yeah, all her good qualities make her a man. Of course. That makes sense.
So even though, I do have a soft spot for the women in this tale, the notion that intelligence is exclusive to men is very apparent throughout the novel, and it started pissing me off quite early on. Our protagonist seems to be obsessed with how a woman looks and what she represents. If she doesn't fit into his narrow view of what a woman should be, and if she aspires to more than that, she is considered a man.
In terms of racism, there are some instances in which this novel almost seems imperialist, which surprised me, because early on, one character mentions that both Hungary and Ireland fought their way out of tyranny, yet when it comes to the plight of India, all characters seem either oblivious or are downright belittling the Indian struggle for independence (“The two brown people next to our table … probably making secret plans to liberate India …”). Overall, the book seems pretty pro-British, because even though it takes many jabs at British culture (“Don’t be so goddamn English!”), it is all done in great fun, and Szerb's love and admiration for England and Wales is very apparent throughout the novel. Another reviewer has called The Pendragon Legend "a hymn of Anglophilia, or more correctly, Britannophilia", and I have to agree with that notion.
Furthermore, there are many instances of dated language, such as referring to Chinese people as "yellow" or using the word "negroe" when talking about Black people. It is very interesting to see that Janos who tries to seem open-minded when warning one of his friends when it comes to dining with a Chinese friend (“But I thought to warn you, I’m lunching with a Chinese friend. I don’t know how developed your sense of colour is, or how you feel about yellow gentlemen.”), is from our modern perspective very ignorant and racist himself. When Janos and Maloney meet the Chinese friend, Janos notes “his most affable oriental smile”, which is also downright ridiculous... as no such thing as an "oriental smile" exists. On top of that, from our modern perspective, it is extremely dated that when Lene and Osborne dress up for their investigation they constantly use blackface and pose as Indians and as "negroes".
Lastly, I would like to discuss the supernatural / paranormal aspects of the story and how crazy the ending was. I totally didn't expect this, and so I was extremely surprised by the mysticisms displayed in this story. There is a mention of a mysterious night rider, the Earl (apparently) can see in the dark and across long distances, the old Asaph is raised from the dead, the Earl and his ancestors searched for the Philosopher's Stone to prologue life... rituals with virgin are performed, tombs are opened ... all in all, this book is fucking wild! All threads converge towards the end as Janos gets held captive in a mysterious house and he realizes that it all was about the Coming of the Prophet Elias and the Great Work. I'm not well versed when it comes to alchemy and so all of this was utterly confusing to me.
So, you could definitely read up on the spiritual and cultural movement of Rosicrucianism before diving into this book, if you want to understand the book more deeply. Apparently, this secret order concerned itself with the "universal reformation of mankind", through a science allegedly kept secret for decades until the intellectual climate might receive it.
But don't be scared, it's also rather fun to dive into this novel without any background knowledge. When in the early pages, Janos admits “I don’t know whether it was in fact in or in imagination—I can’t always tell them apart,” it is a reflection of his state of mind, but by the end, when he is completely lost, we can’t blame him, for we too are unsure. The reader becomes just as confused as our protagonist, and ultimately we are left with the search of meaning—in regards to this tale, and in regards to life. Everyone will come to a different conclusion. And that's the beauty of it. -
U suštini okultna misterija i stranger-in-a-strange-land priča (Madjar u Britaniji), napisana 1930ih i smeštena u iste te godine. To je, valjda, i razlog zašto je ovaj roman tako neretko odraz svog vremena, u smislu pojedinih... obrazaca ljudske prirode, koji su danas takodje prisutni, ali pretpostavljam malo manje vidljivi. (U jednom trenutku neko neironično kaže heil hitler, a seksizam je na dobar dan.) Što se tiče okultne misterije, ona je mlaka, doduše uz zanimljivo satanističku završnicu (a la skoriji film The Witch). Sve u svemu, nije ovo loše napisano, te otud i ne mogu da dam knjizi manju ocenu, a da sam uživao – pa i ne baš.
3- -
"So my Lord is also a student of the subject?"
"That's a rather strong term to use, in this island of ours. You study something, we merely have hobbies. I dabble in the English mystics the way a retired general would set about exploring his family history. As it happens, those things are part of the family history."...
He seemed to embody a historical past the way no book ever could. My intuition told me that here was the last living example - and an exceptional one at that - of the genuine student of the arcane in the guise of the aristocrat-alchemist, the last descendant of Rudolph II of Prague, and one for whom, as late as 1933, Fludd had more to say than Einstein.
An expat Hungarian intellectual narrates a very British caper. (Perhaps this what I felt was missing in the Jeeves books: more ideas... and after all I'm not 100% English myself.) The Pendragon Legend, written after the author had spent time in England researching his serious non-fiction, is a satirical melange of many styles of popular British upper-class novel of the twenties and thirties, with a narrator somewhat less straightforwardly likeable than Bertie Wooster et al (closer to a Somerset Maugham character written in more polished prose), and it works really rather well. Had I read it before so many of its tropes were familiar - often from later stories - it might have been a five star. And the easiest way to describe it is, even more than with most books, by way of allusion.
From the long tradition of Gothic horror comes the journey to the castle with occult history (there are better books suited to the current weather...); the scientific bent of the current lord's researches recalls nineteenth century works from Mary Shelley to R.L. Stevenson to Arthur Machen. Mysteries tinged with supernatural possibilities may refer to Sherlock Holmes adventures like 'The Speckled Band' and The Hound of the Baskervilles. Twentysomething characters take matters into their own hands in a Famous Five-ish manner like they do in Ken Russell's The Lair of the White Worm. There are Rosicrucians, horsemen of the apocalypse, ninja-like assassins.
And romance swirls into all this like...Cold Comfort Farm, maybe? But it's not that simple. There are femmes fatales in the wings, there are more bedroom scenes than a similar English writer of the period would have dared, a couple of characters may be gay or at least bi, and our hero, like Wooster, is surrounded by strong-minded women he isn't always that keen on. (It's quite understandable in the none-too-bright Bertie, seems fair enough not to want to be intimidated by one's fiancee. But Janos Bátky admits to being that depressing creature, the intelligent man who doesn't find high intelligence in a woman terribly attractive. However we all have unfair turn-offs related to things people can't help, and the narrator often does appear to be sending himself up subtly.) An article I saw earlier this year compared Antal Szerb to Simon Raven as well as to Wodehouse; I'd meant to save this until after I'd read some Raven, but forgot; perhaps it's the racier element of these adventures that led to the Raven allusion. And the other way in which The Pendragon Legend isn't always as cosy as Wodehouse are the oddments of Imperial racism during scenes in London. (The Jeeves stories I've read have been so ahistorically nice in this respect that I wondered if the recent editions had been Blytoned. Although being actively rude about people in a book does involve mentioning them in the first place...)
These things are par for the course in a novel of this age though, and most of The Pendragon Legend is great fun. (The repeated use of the word "kind" to describe it in several blurbs is a touch misleading; this is a good book, simply not as twee and fwuffy as one might expect.) It has a slightly different angle on very British sorts of writing, whilst pitching the humour perfectly - an excellent translation - and it deserves many more readers among people who like similar stories of the early to mid twentieth century. -
Fantástico libro el escrito por el húngaro Antal Szerb. ‘La leyenda de los Pendragon (A Pendragon Legenda, 1934)’ es una historia que transcurre sin freno; está escrita de tal modo que prácticamente te la leerías de una sentada. Nuestro protagonista y narrador es el joven filólogo húngaro János Bátky, que durante una fiesta de sociedad a la que es invitado entra en contacto con el conde de Gwynedd. Este le invita a visitar su castillo, el legendario Llanvygan, a estudiar a sus ancestros, los Pendragon. Y es aquí donde empieza el locurón, con herencias, intentos de asesinato, esoterismo, rosacruces, ladrones, mujeres fatales, experimentos con anfibios, y lo mejor, unos secundarios maravillosos, así como el sentido del humor del autor.
-
3.5*
Whatever I had expected of this book, they did not come true at all because this book turned out to be the most unpredictable read of 2020 so far.
In a way, this book was a bit like going for a walk in the hills and suddenly being slapped across the head by a fish falling from the skies. And in a way, that also describes 2020 so far. So, it's been a timely read.
In all seriousness, Antal Szerb was having fun here in this collage of all the genres that I can only describe as a satire of all of the popular fiction that had been written up to the book's date of publication...and somehow preempting Scooby Doo, Indiana Jones, The Da Vinci Code, and I am sure some "rad" 70s fiction that I am glad I have not discovered, yet.
We get a scholarly MC, who ends up banding with a motley crew on the way to a Welsh castle, which may or may not be haunted, to visit an aristocrat, who may or may not also be an evil practitioner of the occult ... or a version of Dr. Frankenstein ... one can't be too sure.
We also have weird prophets, superstitious priests, potential human sacrifice, a whole lot of atmospheric fog that appears just at the most thrilling moments. We have Englishmen with upper lips so stiff that it takes a whole lot of questionable femininity to make them wobble, and we have an Earl's daughter, who spoils the usual script of a murder mystery that ends in falling for the crime-solving hero.
This was a romp. It was fun, but for crying out loud, don't ask me what I've just read.
"I was back in my historic bed (Queen Anne, I believe). With time, this room had come to seem like home. A not entirely restful home. Somewhere above my head the giant axolotls swam. A few yards from my window stood the balcony Maloney had fallen from. And there was the vivid memory of the night rider circling the house with his flaming torch. It was home to me, as a trench would be to a soldier. I pulled my head down under the blanket." -
"While it is a fact that English castles are swarming with ghosts, they are visible only to natives--certainly not to anyone from Budapest."
Szerb pays tribute to the quirky England he grew to love during his couple of years there in the early 30s by playfully ripping on every genre of a particular kind of English fiction: the gothic murder mystery, the gothic romance, the romantic gothic ghost story, and so on.
He does so with glee and aplomb and is so in love with his genres that he actually improves on them while gently mocking them. "Pendragon" is hilarious and weird. Imagine one of those insufferable Dan Brown books written by the Marx brothers and set just before the rise of Nazism in Europe. Plop a superfluous Hungarian scholar of Rosicrucianism and other obscurities in the British Museum and wind up the clockwork acts for the ensuing onslaught of occult conspiracy, dreaded Teutonic Neue Sachlichket goddesses, ghosts, immortality, sex, more ghosts, crazed prophets, sex, possibly drugs, and then sex.
My only criticism is its abrupt ending and utter lack of resolution, but, shit, that might be part of the point, so maybe I should reconsider leaving off that other star... -
Szerb's novel is a curious hybrid, a mix of murder mystery and ghost story, romantic comedy and Gothic chiller, social commentary and humour. While the whole is never more than the sum of its parts (the resolution, for example, doesn't convincingly meld these disparate genres) this is still an impressive first novel, self-assured and wittily expressed.
According to the very helpful Afterword, Antal Szerb was a polyglot academic who diverted some of his scholarly interests, along with other more unorthodox delvings, into fiction. He was very well regarded as a scholar until his anti-fascist stance led to an untimely and brutal death in a labour camp in 1944. The Pendragon Legend resulted from a year he spent researching and people watching in Britain, and was published in Hungarian in 1934.
The reluctant hero, Janos Bátky, is a Hungarian researching at the British Museum in 1933 when he gets invited to the Earl of Gwynedd Owen Pendragon's 18th-century seat at Llanvygan Castle in North Wales. This furnishes him with the opportunity to look at rare manuscipts related to Rosicrucian origins. Along the way a number of chance encounters, unexplained happenings and sexual dalliances thicken the plot till it becomes a veritable potage of intrigue and confusion. Bátky, ever the bemused observer of the British (and others) in their natural environments, finds that, like it or not, he becomes involved in the action and very much out of his depth. People are not who they seem to be, truths are not self-evident and a centuries-old supernatural legend becomes reality.
There is no doubt that Szerb had great fun writing this novel. In it he is able to indulge in some of his passions as bibliophile, literary omnivore and landscape traveller: his alter ego Bátky gets to research unique manuscripts in the Earl of Gwynedd's library at Llanvygan; he happily jumps from one accomplished parodic passage to another, by turns a comedy of manners, a detective story or a horror tale; and he revels in the geography of North Wales, particularly the ancient Pendragon Castle loosely modelled on the ruined Castell Dinas Brân near Llangollen in modern-day Powys, and its successor Llanvygan Castle perhaps an amalgam of Valle Crucis Abbey and Plas Newydd in the same town. The name Llanvygan, Llanfeugan in Modern Welsh, is perhaps a memory of the church of St Meugan's at Llanrhudd in Ruthin, traditionally founded by a 6th-century saint implausibly claimed as Merlin's teacher.
Szerb then peoples these places with eccentrics, from the Earl himself (a recluse Victor Frankenstein figure), a German vamp called Lene Kretzsch, an Irish adventurer called George Maloney and miscellaneous relatives of the Earl, whom he throws together in a series of confusing encounters to provide the essential red herrings of the traditional crime novel. It is tempting to see in the Earl of Gwynedd a distant echo of the real-life eccentric archaeologist Lord Carnarvon, excavator of Tutankhamun's tomb, supposed succumber to King Tut's Curse in 1922, whose tomb was placed within the ramparts of a Hampshire Iron Age hillfort.
I found this an entertaining novel, full of delightful touches to please any dilettante reader. As it drew towards its conclusion, however, I became less convinced by the supernatural elements that began to dominate. True, these were homages to Gothic models such as The Castle of Otranto and Szerb's contemporaries such as the Welshman Arthur Machen (whose The Great Return, published in 1915, was also set in North Wales). But despite the powerful passages describing Bátky's experiences in the denouement, intellectually I still felt a little cheated, though this is my only reservation. Here, too, may be a good place to mention the translation by Len Rix, easy to read, neither consciously archaic for a story written in the 1930s nor laden with obviously modern idioms, written in such a manner as to seem as though English was the original language of the novel: a fine achievement.
Curiously, for a book with Pendragon in the title, there is little overtly Arthurian about the story other than a North Walian connection and the discovery of a sleeping lord underground, like the legendary king in his cave waiting for the summons. There is lots that is suggestive: a 12th-century tale of a knight who dares to stay the night in the haunted castle of Dinas Brân before confronted the giant Gogmagog; the modern myth that the castle is the original Grail Castle; and that dubious connection between Llanvygan and St Meugan, Merlin's teacher. It's all so reminiscent of Rorschach inkblots, those symmetrical smears in which you can see whatever images you fancy. And so, not inappropriately, the 2006 edition of the Pushkin Press translation contains just such a cover illustration by the artist Luca Pagliari, setting the tone for the whole convoluted tale. -
Neočekivano dobro provedeno vreme uz fantastiku sa detektivskom potkom, zdravom dozom humora i krimi zapletom.
Tek na pola knjige sam skontao kada je napisana - po senzibilitetu pre pripada drugoj polovini veka. -
gripping cat and mouse game, full of irony and with a pinch of dark myth.
-
La historia de una vieja familia inglesa se ve llena de sucesos sobrenaturales, nuestro héroe, un filólogo húngaro, se me involucrado en esta extraña historia. En momentos me pareció que se trataba de una novela juvenil, aunque avanzando algunas páginas me pareció un poco más complicado, aunque siempre fue un libro divertido y sencillo de leer, al final estamos frente a una novela gótica con un misterio detectivesco, pasé un momento muy agradable con este libro.
-
I haven't ever read anything like this book. And to be honest one of the reasons I picked it up was because it looked gorgeous. I mean physically. Smaller than a "standard" book, a ribbed thick front cover, with a lovely simple illustration on it, decent quality smooth thick paper, clear typeface. I really did judge this book by it's cover. I was certainly rewarded!
Written by a Hungarian, translated into English, about a Hungarian scholar who is in Wales. A strange setting. Gothic, dry, mystery, romance, intrigue - all these words I use to describe the story! Following Janos Batky in his quest to discover the secrets of his host, the Earl of Gwynedd. Things are not as they seem in his posh country manor!
I hate talking about the content of stories too much, just read it. -
The Pendragon family has always been involved in the occult and this is what draws János Bátky, a young dilettante scholar who is studying 16th-18th century alchemy and Rosicrucianism. It’s said that one of the earlier Earls of Gwynedd has risen from the dead, and the current Earl is studying the process of death and resurrection. When Bátky gets an invitation to visit Llanvygan, the seat of the Pendragons, he jumps at the chance and then finds himself entangled in a murder mystery and in occult rituals that almost cost him his life.
In fact, the book is a gentle but insightful satire on the mores of the 1920s and l930s, spoofing the British, the Welsh, the Irish, Europeans in general, and especially the British class system. It can be characterized as a gothic fantasy detective story. This veneer of civilization overlays the dark symbolism of the primeval Welsh forest and the even darker workings of those immersed in occult practices. What really happened in that strange hut in the woods? People died, we know, but who was the perpetrator? Readers must decide for themselves.
Recommended for those who like literary fiction and want to do some chuckling in the process. -
This novel really makes me proud of my Hungarian heritage and it also made me completely fall in-love with our literature. It was very interesting to accompany a Hungarian in Wales where he was treated equally with citizens and even adored (which may be different to contemporary society’s behaviour). Szerb’s style feels simple yet so complex and easy to read. It’s unlike other books. All I can do is recommend it to everyone.
-
Nach der "Reise ins Mondlicht" ist "Die Pendragon Legende" eher eine Enttäuschung, ein recht lustiger Mysterienkrimi. Wer so etwas mag, dem wird es gefallen aber ich kann weder mit Krimis, noch mit Mistery viel anfangen...
-
Végül is helyenként vicces és stabilan szórakoztató kis könyv volt ez, nem panaszkodhatok. Csak valahogy több irodalmiságot vártam, több szellemes megfigyelést a külföldről meg a külföldi magyarokról, több korrajzot és kevesebb ökörködést. De hát ez nem a könyv hibája.
Mondjuk ha vicces marhaságokat akarok olvasni, arra ott van Rejtő, neki jobban áll. -
Der Philosoph und Globetrotter Dr. János Bátky wird von einem walisischen Aristokraten dem Earl of Gwynedd eingeladen, ihn in seinem Schloss zu besuchen um in seiner Bibliothek seine Studien fortzusetzen. Was der Icherzähler der Geschichte noch nicht weiß, damit wird er mitten in einen Erbschaftsstreit gerissen. Die eine Seite trachtet dem Adligen nach dem Leben - der verhinderte Mörder wird aber noch in derselben unter den seltsamsten Umständen getötet. Neben diesem Handlungsstrang beginnt gleichzeitig eine Geschichte die sich um die Rosenkreuzer dreht und die Bátky in einen unheimlichen Bann ziehen wird. Eine Geschichte zwischen Kriminalroman und Gruselgeschichte beginnt und der Leser wird erst ganz am Ende herausfinden ob sich nun alles mit Intrigen erklären lässt oder ob vielleicht doch ein Ahnherr des Earls das Geheimnis des ewigen Lebens entdeckt hat.
Sprachlich und stilistisch glänzt Antal Szerb ebenso wie die Übersetzerin Susanna Großmann-Vendrey. Das Buch ist mit feinem Humor durchzogen, ohne jemals an der Ernsthaftigkeit der Erzählung Zweifel aufkommen zu lassen. Von Anfang an wurde ich an Oscar Wilde und an Edgar Allan Poe erinnert. Das mag zu einem gewissen Teil auch an der Geschichte selbst liegen, im Wesentlichen aber stammt dieser Eindruck von dem feinen britischen Humor, den der Ungar in seinem Werk verewigt. Die Charakterisierung der Personen kann als gelungen bezeichnet werden, insbesondere der Protagonist wird in seltener Qualität dargestellt. Der durch Vorurteile verschleierte Blick des Icherzählers auf die anderen Charaktere, spricht für die Qualität der Erzählung, die sich erlaubt Klischees zu verwenden und dennoch zwischen den Zeilen durchblicken lässt, dass diese Personen komplexer sind als vom Protagonisten gesehen.
Das Buch ist eine uneingeschränkte Empfehlung, wenngleich man festhalten muss, dass Szerb am Schluss etwas schwächelt. Das Ende ist zwar durchaus gelungen erzählt, aber ich hätte etwas mehr erwartet. Vor allem ein mehr an Spott und Ironie wie über die ganze Geschichte. Nichtsdestotrotz verdient sich das Buch gelesen zu werden; es ist ein echter intellektueller Leckerbissen, der durchaus auch philosophische Aspekte beleuchtet. -
Oh man, I devoured this. This was a book that just kept me on the edge of my seat, while putting a smile on my face at the same time.
See, until now, my experience with Hungarian literature was rather bleak and depressing. The books I have read before written by Hungarian authors were all dark and wallowing in melancholia. So this is a refreshing change. The Pendragon Legend is actually a satire and a Gothic novel: it incorporates plenty of references to the occult and mystical societies that the author was highly interested in, in a murder mystery format that somehow reminds me of the dark Gothic novels by Mary Shelley or Emily Bronte. And yes, this is gripping. I finished it in just a few days.
The Pendragon Legend is about a Hungarian scholar, Janos Batky, who is doing research in the British Museum. Somehow this character is almost autobiographical, and there are plenty of parallels between the author's interests and the main character's. He gets invited by a certain Earl, to his castle in Wales. And this is where strange things start happening.
First, there was the telephone call that warns him not to go. Then there are the strange noises and weird occurrences. The mysterious deaths. The devilish rituals. There are just so many elements of the occult that pepper this book, that for all intents and purposes it could be classified as Satanic by the conservative, but at the same time, there are also funny moments that break up the tension.
I am not a big fan of the occult nor of European mysticism, but I must say that this book was well-researched. Real characters are referenced in multiple parts, and it makes me wonder why people back then were so obsessed with these mysteries. I suppose people wanted to turn metals into gold, and other people wanted to become immortal. These were the prevailing desires back then, that is, until the Age of Reason illuminated European history.
Anyway, this novel might not be the most profound, but nevertheless I recommend it for some light entertainment. And of course, as a diversion from the darker offerings of other Hungarian writers. I give it 4 out of 5 stars.
See my other book reviews
here. -
I read this one inspired by Jenni's comments--and I liked it in very much the same way she did. It's not quite like anything else I've ever read. As I look over the Goodreads reviews, I see Szerb reminding people of many other authors, depending on whom they've liked--for me he seemed like P.G. Wodehouse, John Dickson Carr, and Umberto Eco. With maybe a little Nabokov. It's a whimsical, affectionate send-up of British mores between the wars (post-modern irony before that had been invented) and also a very fair mystery, with touches of the romantic supernatural. I laughed, but I think I would have laughed a good deal more if I could have read the original Hungarian. And at the same time there were some seriously spooky parts. I couldn't help feeling a kindred spirit, as late in the book the narrator is lost and alone in the wilds of Wales, and says "I went on 'by the uncertain light of the moon,' as Virgil puts it, and felt the magnificence of the adjective 'uncertain.'" Or earlier as he says of the girl he (sort of) loves, "Cynthia, with her blond hair in the sunshine, was silent as beautifully as a line of Theocritos." I have no idea what that even means, and yet I know exactly what it means. A wonderful writer who died in a concentration camp in 1945.
-
“She asked me, in a voice choking with emotion:
‘Oh, Doctor...do you even know algorithms?’
‘By heart,’ I replied, and drew her to me.”
Yet another 1930s book that mixes the English gothic novel and John Buchan, with a hint of Aldous Huxley, set in North Wales and written in Hungarian.
Much of The Pendragon Legend concerns a young Hungarian dilettante and his three chums zipping around the less-travelled byways of Wales in a 1932 Delage tourer (nice motor) in pursuit of Rosicrucians, assassins, and giant axolotls (”an abomination”, growls the local vicar, not unreasonably).
This caper almost takes itself seriously, but there is enough wit – and even philosophy – in between times to keep the reader (or at least this one) happy. Nicely translated too.
“’Lene Kretzsch is a robust, fine-looking creature’...
‘Hm. And her character?’
‘Very modern’
‘That is to say of easy virtue?’
‘Not exactly. She is sachlich. Neue Sachlichkeit. Bauhaus. Nacktkultur. The chauffeur type. Love is a psycho-physical fact.’ ...
‘And this is what you call ‘modern’?...One should remember that even in our grandmothers’ time women did not limit their concerns to embroidery and fainting.’” -
A delightfully ridiculous country house burlesque of early 20th century occult thrillers. Szerb was on my vague list of authors to investigate at some point, but
a friend's review made clear that this was definitely the first of his books I should read - and just to seal the deal, she then kindly sent me her copy. I can say little that she hasn't already covered, except to quibble with the Simon Raven comparison she quotes; at their most devious, the characters here still have a childlike charm which even Raven's comparative innocents lack. Still, it's no bad thing for a book to be Foucault's Pendulum recast with a bunch of Wodehouse characters who've picked up bad habits behind the master's back. -
I would never intentionally use the word "romp" in a review, but this book calls for it, as several other reviewers have discovered, as well. A gothic-romantic, mysterious, supernatural, thoroughly British romp written by a self-mocking, clever, witty Catholic Hungarian with Jewish ethnicity (atrociously killed in a labor camp in 1945). I enjoyed this as much as Dan Simmons'
Drood for the unpredictable adventure-cum-love affairs-cum-psychedelic visions, and to realize Szerb was writing 70 years ahead of Simmons (but certainly himself influenced by Dickens and Collins, 70 years previous), it's exciting to come across such a fresh, but relatively undiscovered, talent. -
I was impressed.
This book really immerses you from the first flip of a page, and the first exchange of dialogue between characters. I would call this a modernist work, but of a very unconventional and bold nature. Dark humour mingles with despair, hope, emancipation of body and soul, as well as elements of the Gothic tale, to create a blend that never ceases to be entertaining and philosophical at the same time. Highly fun to read, this book could definitely stand among other classics of the modernism age, topping them perhaps in its crescendo moments - usually the sparkling dialogue scenes and the philosophical pondering of several characters. -
Nagyon kellemes kis kaland, egeszen szellemesen es humorosan irva. Valahol egy Lovecraft regeny, Indiana Jones, Rejto es Sherlock Holmes furcsa szerelemgyermeke a tortenet.
Abba a sajnalatos hibaba estem, hogy elotte par eloszot, beharangozot, rovid ajanlot olvastam hozza amiben arrol beszeltek, hogy Szerb Antal legmeghatorozobb regenye, a magyar es akar a nemzetkozi irodalom remeke a Pendragon-legenda. Igy vartam a magam reszerol is ezt a felismerest, ami vegul elmaradt. -
Una historia de detectives y conspiraciones que nunca esperé que me hiciera reír tanto, porque es una sátira a las novelas góticas y al ocultismo, que está tan bien escrita que me hacía reír cada dos por tres.
-
Ez a könyv mindent tud, amit egy könyvnek tudnia kell. „Oly gyakran találkozunk ma irodalmi mezbe öltözött ponyvával, hogy üdülést jelent számunkra a ponyva mezébe öltözött Irodalom”. (Sz.A.) Hát ez pont ilyen, nagybetűvel!
-
"Легенда за Пендрагон" на Антал Серб беше интересно литературно приключение. Янош Батки е унгарец, заселил се трайно в Англия, доктор по хуманитарните науки, случайно се запознава с граф Гуинед, ексцентричен аристократ, и е поканен от графа да изследва семейната му библиотека в замъка Ланвъган, където предстои да се случат интересни и зловещи събития.
Историята е изградена на основата на действителни личности, граф Гуинед е наследник на Лъвелин Велики (среща се още като Лиуе��ин Велики), принц на Гуинед и в последствие владетел на по-голяма част от Уелс, преди англичаните да го завладеят. Разказът е пълен с множество препратки, към историята и различните действителни личности, и носи усещането за една старинна атмосфера, със своите малки селища, средновековни замъци, изоставени руини, които крият тайни, това създава усещане пътуване в миналото и запали интереса ми към Уелс.
Янош Батки не е в образа на типичен детектив, а и криминалната нишка не е водеща, тя допълва и насочва интереса към семейните тайни. Не знам на какво се дължи това, но през голяма част от времето сякаш бях в история за Шерлок Холмс. Предшествениците на граф Гуинед, а и самият той имат силно развит интерес към окултното и се в хода на семейната история са тясно свързани с ордена на Розенкройцерите.
През цялото време витае една мистериозност, която кара читателят да се чуди до къде се простира истината и откъде започва въображението и в някои моменти реалността сякаш се слива със нещо недействително и свръхестествено.
Айлийн Сен Клер, типичната фатална жена, има много добре премерена роля в историята и ѝ придава един особен привкус.
В крайна сметка, някои тайни трябва да си останат погребани, времето на окултните общества е отминало. -
Szerb's gothic parody is somewhat outrageously set in mid-Wales, considering that he was Hungarian. Part of his trick is to involve a Hungarian scholar, János Bátky, obsessed by English /Welsh legend, as protagonist. Not long in before mysterious strangers turn up and Bátky is invited to a castle (in Wales), the seat of the Pendragon family. Our protagonist admits he is a non-believer in the supernatural, but thankfully for the plot, is willing to change his stance. Not a long wait again, and there is death, a quest for immortality, kidnappings, chases, and dangerous liaisons.
The stand-out feature though is in Szerb's self-mocking approach, at the same time as telling his gothic tale he is quite cleverly and subtley, taking the mick. Bearing that in mind, we can live with the convenient coincidences, but the fault of the work is that its too long; Szerb is clearly having fun, and just meanders too much in making his point, the ending in particular is inflated sufficiently to spoil it. -
Lo compré devido a la buena critica que hizo el podcast “Todo tranquilo en Dunwich” sino nunca me hubiese fijado en él, pues parece la clásica historia de investigar.
Un sorpresón, este libro no puede ser más pulp y entretenido. Mezcla todo: humor negro, protagonista con carisma que narra en primera persona, casa encantada, monstruos, fantasmas, asesinatos, caminatas por bosques…
Un joven de 30 y poco es invitado a un castillo junto a un lago por un Pendragon. Para que puede investigar en su infinita biblioteca. Ya en el castillo pasara todo tipo de cosas. Este chico investigara y enamorara.
Lo malo: el machismo del autor.
