Sunday Salon: a fantastic Hungarian novel

Last week we went for our annual vacation and I took a Hungarian book - reading in Hungarian still demands much less concentration for me. It was Ondrok gödre by Imre Oravecz, a Hungarian literary man, who is rather known for his excellent prose poetry than his prose prose.

Needless to say it was illusory to think I would have time to finish an almost 400 page long novel (mainly with an over-stimulated 6-year-old jumping up and down on our bed - or sometimes on Mommy's or Daddy's tummy - in the evenings) in spite of the fact that it turned out to be a real page turner for me. So it seemed evident that on the first calm day at home I was trying to bury myself into Oravecz's fabulous writing.

I spent about 3.5 hours (95 pages) reading this book today. (Still haven't finished it - got through approx. two thirds of it; as it happens, at every truly exciting literary adventure I tend to slow down considerably and enjoy a certain word, a wonderful wave of a sentence, an unusually great expression, etc. I also have a habit to go back and re-read some parts - for this reason or another.)

The Ondrok gödre (The Pit of Ondrok - by the way, the name "Ondrok" is a variation of the Hungarian boys' name András - my son's name! -, which is Andrew in English) is a family saga through 3 generations and 30 years of the Árvai family at the end of the 19. century. It takes place in Northern Hungary, in a small village among gentle hills, slow rivers and lush forests. The Árvais are middle-class farmers, having to struggle for survival in the middle of an economic turmoil of the so-called agricultural modernization. But this is just one of the layers of this unbelievably rich text (and honestly not the most important and most interesting for me). At the same time the book is the history of the Hungarian village-life itself, the Hungarian countryside as well as a wonderful coming-of-age novel, a thought provoking piece about the classical conflict between fathers and sons, an erotic love story and so on and so forth.

Although I have never had anything to do with this kind of lifestye, the novel definitely pulled me deeply into itself. I totally become sympathetic with its protagonists in no time, I feel and know their happiness, their pain, their problems, their desires, their emotions, their anger, their joy. This is a real sign of an outstanding writer's outstanding work.

The most intriguing is the novel's style: Oravecz keeps a remarkable distance from his subjects and still this seemingly objective, sometimes dry, non-comittal, cool and still elegant narration is never without deep and gentle empathy - as someone remarked this style was totally unique in the Hungarian literature.

Also very interesting how the writer builds up the structure of his novel: Oravecz uses a bird's eye view both in time and space in the beginning, and he gradually gets closer and closer to his main scene and main characters (not unlike a plane descending into an airport ready to land). For me the most beautiful thing is how Oravecz could combine time and space absolutely perfectly and seamlessly in his approach: we start somewhere in the pre-historic times when the hills and valleys began to take shapes, and slowly get to a point in time and space where we are right inside the protagonists deepest thoughts and feelings crossing geographical and psychological borders at the same time.

Unbelievably beautiful text.

So next week (or probably even tonight) I am finishing Ondrok gödre, and then back to my other adventures in literature: among others to go on with the Special Topics in Calamity Physics...

Have a great literary week everyone - and thanks for visiting.