Sunflower
Page 26
“And what about me, couldn’t I understand you?”
“Let’s wait for winter. The first, the second, the third winter...Let’s wait for the monotonous evenings of this place, the courses of the moon, the howling-wolf nights. We’ll just have to make sure to wind the clocks each day, bury our memories, sit in tranquility by the warm fireside, play enough tric-trac, and never, ever write letters without each other’s knowledge, no matter how overcast the twilight.”
“I’ll be waiting for you.”
“Let crazy life rush headlong on the highway for others; we shall contemplate the sunflowers, watch them sprout, blossom, fade away. Yesterday they were still giants, but now, in autumn, they are thatch on the roof.”
(Margaret Island, 1918)
Notes
when Jacobins lurked in old Pest:the Hungarian Jacobins were led by I.J. Martinovics, who was executed, along with several co-conspirators, in 1795.
Berzsenyi: Dániel Berzsenyi (1776–1836), poet, often called “the Hungarian Horace.”
the poet Kisfaludy: Sándor Kisfaludy (1772–1844) was an early figure of Hungarian Romanticism, famous, among others, for a sequence called The Sorrows of Love.
Fanny’s Posthumous Papers: novel in the form of letters, written by József Kármán (1769–1795).
Mrs. Baradlay in Jókai’s novel: Mór Jókai (1825–1904) was the leading Hungarian novelist of the nineteenth century; Mrs. Baradlay is a character in his most famous work, The Sons of the Stone-Hearted Man (1859).
kuruc: late-seventeenth-, early-eighteenth-century freebooter, partisan of Prince Rákóczi’s insurrection against Austrian imperial rule.
cimbalom: hammer dulcimer.
Louis the Great: Louis I (1326–1382), called “the great,” of the House of Anjou, king of Hungary and Poland.
Prince Rákóczi: Francis II. Rákóczi, prince of Transylvania (1676–1735), who led an insurrection for Hungarian independence from the Austrian empire, 1703–1711.
Jósika: Baron Miklós Jósika (1794–1865), father of the Hungarian historical novel.
aszú: fine sweet wine of Tokay made by adding choice grapes dried on the vine to ordinary must, producing a surface scum dubbed “noble rot.”
Mrs. Blaha: Lujza Blaha (1850–1910), popular actress and singer.
Queen Elisabeth: Elisabeth of Wittelsbach, wife of Francis Joseph: assassinated in 1897.
Kossuth-style: à la Lajos Kossuth (1802–1894), leader of the 1848–49 Hungarian revolution, after which he lived in exile in Italy.
kampets dolores: (Hungarian Yiddish) no more sorrows; it’s all over.
the poet Tompa: Mihály Tompa (1817–1868), a popular poet of lyrical subjects.
This is a New York Review Book
Published by The New York Review of Books
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www.nyrb.com
Translation copyright © 1997 by John Bátki
Introduction copyright © 1997 by John Lukacs
Originally published as Napraforgó in installments in the Budapest daily Virradat during the first half of 1918, and in book form later that year. The present translation is based on the complete, corrected version published by Szépirodalmi Könyvkiadó, Budapest, 1978. It was first published in the English language by Corvina Books, Budapest, 1997.
Translator’s acknowledgments: This translation was made possible by a Fellowship from Collegium Budapest Institute for Advanced Study, 1995–96. I thank Rector Lajos Vékás for his friendship and support. I am deeply grateful to Nick Woodin for his friendship, encouragement, and thorough criticism in editing the manuscript.
Cover art: Witkacy, Jadwiga Jancczewska, c. 1913
Cover design: Katy Homans
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication
Krúdy, Gyula.
[Napraforgó. English]
Sunflower / by Gyula Krúdy ; introduction by John Lukacs ; translated by John Bátki.
p. cm.—(New York Review Books classics)
Originally published: Budapest : Corvina, 1997.
I. Bátki, John. II. Title.
PH3281.K89N3613 2007
894'.511332—dc22
2007006867
eISBN 978-1-59017-408-1
v1.0
For a complete list of books in the NYRB Classics series, visit www.nyrb.com or write to:
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