Another literary monster

[Ya Sam]

1500 page novel by the Hungarian writer Peter Nadas. Not translated yet. In 
terms of sex, it might turn out to be to AtD what Justine is to Winnie the 
Pooh...


"It has become accepted to talk of Nádas as the author of the body. He 
writes about bodily sensation and its emotional and rational consequences in 
the spirit that they deserve, i.e. in a sensual fashion. It is a pervasive 
paradox in his writing that while he sees clearly that bodily sensation is a 
treacherous chimera, futile in its very multi-faceted richness, he remains 
unable to neglect it. ‘No point in fucking,’ thinks Kristóf’s uncle, Ágost 
in the copulation scene that takes up over a hundred pages of the first 
volume. And while Nádas seems to be talking for chapter after chapter about 
the male genital organ, and in baffling detail, too, this is not of the 
essence. What is of the essence, however, is concealed, so the reader never 
finds it out. To use a Platonic turn of phrase, in Nádas it is not the cloak 
that is removed from the human body: it is the human body that becomes a 
cloak.

This time the cloak is a rich tapestry – 1500 pages of memorable resonances 
between the perceptions, emotions, thoughts, gestures and stories of the 
various characters. And actually, Nádas says little more beyond the 
structural beauty of parallels. Yet this is how he comes to include so much 
about the Hungarian and European history of the 20th century, about our 
culture and, within that, our most neuralgic regional characteristics, our 
physical, psychological and social compulsions. What he does not offer is an 
overarching ideology, an ideal to grant cohesion. He does not penetrate 
beyond the mimetic surface of fiction which parasitically coats reality, 
only demonstrates its unparalleled richness. For twenty years Péter Nádas 
has followed the tracks of his heroes until eventually the current of 
parallel stories drifted apart into a wide, rocking, waving surface of 
epically rolling sentences which exude the ‘breath of freedom’: a reading 
experience of exceptional linguistic quality. "

http://www.hlo.hu/object.c055d271-7319-4249-b088-9d67dbac20c4.ivy


See also


http://www.hlo.hu/object.addd1684-9692-4276-b64d-2e5598b76433.ivy


http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2006-01-30-csordas1-en.html#footNoteNUM1


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C3%A9ter_N%C3%A1das

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