Love by Péter Nádas
Hungarian fiction
Original title: Love
Translator: Imre Goldstein
Source – Personal copy
I was sad to hear of the passing of Péter Nádas late last month. I first became aware of him when I was offered the chance to review his Magnum opus, Parallel Stories, a book that covered post-war Hungary in a labyrinthine, dark way. I have since reviewed another of his books and have a few on my TBR. So I decided to pick this, a shorter book by him, and an earlier book in his canon. He still has a couple of books he has written and i was talking online about this and found one had been brought and another was still awaiting a publisher if anyone would consider that be great it is his account of his relatiohnship with three other hungarian writers including Peter Esterhazy whom I will be reviewing later this month.
oh my, your body is full of little bits of
compressed air! oh my, my body is full oh boy got it made
I’ve
got it made
I’m dropping and rising to the rhythm of her voice,
up and down; it’s sliding, like the sled, in and out; when it’s out, it brings on the desire to penetrate; when it’s in, the desire to get out; up and down; rising and falling, like the elevator; but now I know what I’ve seen, it was me, the symbol of my own movements in the sled and the elevator; and that means 1 am inside her body. But then I should be feeling it! In the rhythm of my movements I hear her approaching voice oh boy
I’ve got itmade
The book is typeset with gaps almost like he is thinking or drifting at times
As I said, Love is so different from the other two books I have read by him; the main character is going to visit his girlfriend to break up with her. But when he rolls a joint, the book becomes like a fever dream, a trip where the narrator questions his existence, that of his girlfriend and what love is the book has an almost recurring feel at time of that state of being stoned of being slightly paranoid in a place where there is just him and the girlfriend the state isn’t there but the paranoia is still there. We feel an almost slow-motion at times, where things take pages and pages to happen, almost as though we are in the state of being stoned, as the reader with him, a man in a relationship he wants to be out of but can’t get out of. You almost get the sickly grass-smoke scent of the pages as you read.
I can see. I can see her face, too. She is
looking. Looking at something. If she is above me, then she must be bending over me. If she is bending over me, then I must be lying here in bed. The place where I lay down, on my back. Then the pillow must be under my head.
“Don’t you feel
well? Are you unwell, dear?”
I can see the soft movements of
the mouth, I can hear what I see, and what I see and hear are wrapped around me as a palpable body, though it’s not palpable, it’s only something I see and hear
“I should be doing some-
thing, I must feel!”
“Are you unwell? Don’t you feel well,
dear?”
unwell? from her voice, from the look in her eyes I can feel that something has happened to me, and whatever it is, it makes her worry. But I don’t know why, after all I feel very good.
“Are you feeling bad, dear?”
The recurrent thoughts at times like her as he looks unwell to her at times
Nadas said he was trying to get in those spaces where the state couldn’t; he did something similar with a lot of the sexual scenes in Parallel stories. He was trying to break the realist, communist-approved style of writing with this book. It captures how it feels to be stoned well. I was reminded of the way Cărtărescu used a similar style, if a little more surreal, in Solenoid to almost break the state censorship of writing and get into those spaces the state can’t be. For me, it reminds me of those hazy days of my late teens, where I would be sat with friends listening to Pink Floyd whilst stoned; there is a sense of the paranoia you can have, but also the way time bends in those moments where seconds seem like hours, which he captures very well in this book. It captures a broken relationship in a broken country at the time, as the narrator hunts for purpose in life and love in a broader sense. Have you read Nádas, or do you have a favourite Hungarian writer?
