Letters from Iceland by W.H.Auden and Louis MacNeice

Letters from Iceland by W.H.Auden and Louis MacNeice

English travel writing /poetry

Source Library book.

I said I had looked at the list of books on GoodReads for this year, and I had planned another book rather than this one. I had intended to try and read World Light by Halldor Laxness. But I felt I would be pushing to finish it by today. So last Sunday, I looked at the list of books, and my eyes fell on this. I just hoped my library had a copy they did, and it had arrived on Tuesday to be picked up. The book follows the two poets Auden I know slightly better than Macneice although I feel I should know more from Macneice as he came from Northern Ireland like my family does. The book also saw them going to Iceland, which is very different to the modern country, with a much smaller population than now. Also, it is not so easy to get to. They have to take a boat from Hull to get there. Anyway, this is my final choice for this week, Club 1937, waiting to find out what year we will pull up Next year. We need to read later this year

Food

In the larger hotels in Reykjavik you will of course get ordinary European food, but in the farms you will only get what there is, which is on the whole rather peculiar.

Breakfast: (9.0 a.m.). If you stay in a farm this will be brought to you in bed. Coffee, bread and cheese, and small cakes. Coffee, which is drunk all through the day – I must have drunk about 1,500 cups in three months – is generally good.

There is white bread, brown bread, rock-hard but quite edible, and unleavened rye bread like cake. The ordinary cheese is like a strong Dutch and good. There is also a brown sweet cheese, like the Norwegian. I don’t like cakes so I never ate any, but other people say they are good.

Lunch and Dinner: (12 noon and 7 p.m.). If you are staying anywhere, lunch is the chief meal, but farmers are always willing to give you a chief meal at any time of the day or night that you care. (I once had supper at II p.m.)

I love the very english descriptions of the meals they could get.

The book follows the two poets’ travels and a summer trip to Iceland. They have been hired to write a travel guide to Iceland. We get a mix of Poetry, letters, porse pieces and insight into other travellers to Iceland. Alongside this is a darker underbelly that, when it was written, maybe didn’t seem as dark, but they meet some Germans that describe the Iceland locals as perfect Germans, an undercurrent of the Aryan race that would follow in the war years. Anyway, Auden’s main piece is a five-part letter to Byron that is in the style of Byron that takes snippets to the trip and other things. I had to check Byron never went to Iceland but did write a lot of Travel Poetry. Alongside this are some prose pieces around a trip on horseback they made into the countryside with some young woman, around the hotel and the food served there. Also, The last poems from Macneice are in the spirit of the time and about the world they have been to but also the country they have left behind, and are called W. H. Auden and Louis MacNeice: Their Last Will and Testament”. I have said I was less aware of MacNeice. I read a vol of his poetry maybe thirty years ago, as he is mentioned on an album by the Blue Aeroplanes.

The book belongs to a German lady who married an Icelander, solely, as far as I can see, in order to have a child, as she left him immediately after, and now won’t go back to Germany. She had a magazine from the Race Bureau of the N.S.D.P. which was very funny. Boy-scout young Aryans striding along with arms swinging past fairy-story negroes and Jews.

In the afternoon we rode over the lake to Brekka, where the local doctor lives, and had tea. A romantic evening sky over the lake but unfortunately no romance.

The dark undercurrent of Nazis being there as well

I am not a poetry reviewer; I don’t know much about meter and context, but the Byron letter looks and feels in a tone similar to the pieces from Byrion I have read in his complete works, which I own. Macneice is a poet I would like to know and read more from over time. The book is a book of its time; it captures a far more rural and less touristic Iceland than it is now. I loved the way they described the food. Most hotels had European food, which was good as the description of the local food sounded as though neither poet was keen on it . There is also more adventure than was said when riding with the girls. The locals are captured in prose, and in pictures, the book has a selection of pictures from the trip. This is a gem of a book it is what I love about the club year I may have never picked this up. Not that I dislike POoetry I have a small collection of poetry books and often feel I should read a little more from bu[=oth the UK and around the world. Have you read this book or have a favourite book that isn’t just poetry written by a poet?

 

 

Winstons score – A little gem of travel writing poetry and Prose.

Weights and Measures by Joseph Roth

Weights and Measures by Joesph Roth

Austrian fiction

Original title – Das falsche Gewicht 

Translator – David Le Vay

Source – Personal copy

I looked at the Goodreads list of books for 1937. I’m unsure if I missed this or if it wasn’t on the list of books for the year. I looked on my shelves to see if any writers I liked had missed the list, and I found this one. I am a fan of Joseph Roth, who is most well-known for The Radetzky March. In a way, all his books are around the Austro-Hungarian empire. Here is a perfect example of that: we follow a marriage falling apart, and in that, it seemed an ideal bookend to the last book I reviewed, The Start of a Marriage Going Wrong by another short lived writer. Because Roth, like Szerb, died in World War Two, he was a more problematic drinker and had just heard of the death of Ernst Toller when he died a few days later.

Once upon a time in the District of Zlotogrod there lived an Inspector of Weights and Measures whose name was Anselm Eibenschütz. His duty consisted of checking the weights and measures of the tradesmen in the entire district. So, at specified intervals, Eibenschütz went from shop to shop and investigated the yardsticks and the scales and the weights. He was accompanied by a sergeant of gendarmerie in full panoply. Thus the State made manifest its intention to use arms, if necessary, to punish cheats, in accordance with the commandment proclaimed in the Holy Scrip-tures, which considers a cheat to be the same as a thief…

The introduction to the weights and measure officer of the title in the first page.

The book follows an Artillery officer, Anselm Elbenshchutz. He has taken a job in a small town near the Russian border, working for the government as a weights and measures officer, checking that everyone is doing it right.. But what happens when this man, a gentleman and officer with his principles, tries to lay the line of the law in this place where all he sees is people bending the rules and those near him taking bribes. He makes enemies, but when his wife, who made him move, has an affair with one of his clerks and becomes pregnant, he is drawn to a beautiful, mysterious Gypsy, Euphemia. She lives with one of the men he has most upset, Jadlowker, a profiteer. He tries to make money here and there. And as his world falls apart, we see how a good man ends up in a border area as people escape Russia. His wife then gets Caught up in the cholera outbreak in the area and dies with the Baby she has conceived with Anselm’s clerk. We see the spirit of the man broken. A motif and character that Roth has done well in the other books I have read over the years by Roth.

Eibenschütz looked at her constantly. He tried to catch her eye at least once, but he did not succeed. Her eyes were wandering somewhere in the distance. God alone knew what she was thinking about!

They resumed their game and Eibenschütz won a number of hands. He was a little shamefaced as he pocketed the money. And still Euphemia sat at the table, a silent flower. She glowed and remained silent.

All around there was the usual noise, caused by the deserters.

They crouched on the floor and played cards and threw dice. As soon as they had gambled everything away they began to sing. As usual, they sang the song Ja lubyl tibia’, out of tune and with croaking voices.

The Russian deserters that come across the border to his area and the Gpysy girl he falls for

Anselm, as a person who took the weights and measures job, was what would have at one time in the UK been called a Jobsworth. He’d been on the TV show That’s Life as someone who followed the line of the law to the point. But what follows is what happens to be hidden closed doors, those little bribes that, if unchecked, like here, where he lives, grow over time and what, when he arrives, seems an easy job. It isn’t, and as his world falls apart, as I say, this is a character Robert wrote well the fallen man as a character wife having an affair enemies everywhere. A love that is with his enemies this is a man in freefall as we see all around him turn bad and his world falls apart. All this is a short novella, a lesser-known book by Roth. The place he evokes is like an Austrian Cornwall of those smugglers and people trying to make a living on the other side of the law. Borders often have this dark side, even if a few things are cheaper over the border or the world seems better over the border. Well this is my third book for club1937 and a book that isn’t as well known as his other books. Have you read Roth?

Winstons score –A solid little novella from one of the great Austrian writers

Journey by Moonlight by Antal Szerb

Journey by Moonlight by Antal Szerb

Hungarian fiction

Original title –Utas és holdvilág

Translator – Peter V. Czipott

Source – Personal copy

I thought I had reviewed this book. I had read it a few years ago, well, 12 years ago, and Hadn’t reviewed it. That was the Len Rix translation that was from Pushkin Press. This new translation came out a few years ago from ALMA CLASSICS. This is one that caught the zeitgeist back in the day. After a review from  Nicholas Lezard, he said he finished and restarted. I think I didn’t review it as it felt like one that everyone loved, and this review maybe couldn’t tackle it. I know, but now is a different matter. Antal Szerb was a writer, scholar, and literary historian. He was well received in this day, but due to being a Jew, he ended up in a concentration camp and died only in his mid-forties. One of the best voices of his generation was lost.

The letter really got under Mihaly’s skin. He was revolted by Pataki’s unmanly “goodness”, which in any case was not even goodness, just lack of masculinity; but would hardly have been more praiseworthy if it had been goodness, since Mihaly didn’t have a very high opinion of goodness. And all that obsequiousness! In spite of it all, Pataki remained a mere shop assistant, no matter how rich he’d become.

But all this was Zoltán Pataki’s business, and it was his problem if he was still in love with Erzsi, who had behaved truly scandalously towards him. That wasn’t what upset Mihaly, but the parts of the letter referring to him and Erzsi.

A letter he gets from her first Husband gets under his skin just before they end up losing one another.

 

This is what Evelyn Waugh would have written had he been Hungarian. This is a pair of Bright your things. But two different people. Mihaly is on his honeymoon with his wife, Erzi. But as they are heading to Italy . Mihaly is haunted by his own ghost of a broken relationship from his teen years. He eventually tells his new wife about the events and loses love from his teen years and a tragedy. As they are heading on the train. He talks about all the little places they could visit, but his wife just wants to move on and get to Austria and forget his revelations. But when he says I’m going jump off at this station, grab something to eat, and come back, she says ok happy for a break from him. But when he comes back and sees a train going, he thinks it is his train, but it isn’t and is on an express to Perugia  So the rest of the narrative follows both of them as we find out more about his wife. As she heads to Paris and looks at her own ghosts, they both meet ghosts from their past. He gets the chance to go back and be like he was in his teens as he makes his way across Europe. Will they get back together?

When he’d got hold of the cheque and his passport that night, he thought – of course, not entirely seriously – that happenstance might separate them during the journey. When he got off in Terontola, it again crossed his mind that he might leave Erzsi to travel on with the train. But now that it had indeed happened, he was surprised and at a loss. But in any case – it had happened!

“And what will you do now?” the Italian pressed him.

“I’ll get off at the next station.”

“But this is an express. It won’t stop until Perugia.”

“Well then, I’ll get off at Perugia.”

“See, I told you right away that you’re travelling to Perugia. Don’t worry: it’s worth it. A very ancient city. And take a look at the surrounding area too.”

When Mihaly gets on the wrong Train

I said this reminds me of Waugh. At times, there is the feeling of Charles Ryder or Tony Last in Mihaly as a character with wanderlust, and the sense of never feeling quite part of your world is strong. Also, the places they visit are places where. Waugh wrote about the paths of the bright young things of the 30s just before the war changed the world for them. This novel has it all love, loss, death, and regrets, all in beautiful places and on trains evoking a bygone era of travel and life when getting to a place led to chat and often people’s minds wandering as they travelled. This is also a couple haunted both in their ways around their pasts. As they head around Europe, they meet those ghosts as friends or memories of those now gone. I loved this. I have read it again. Unlike Lezard, it has had a gap of 12 years and a different Translation. Unfortunately. I can’t see my copy of the Rix Translation either I sold it when I moved as I had to get rid of a lot of books as I downsized shelf space, or it is hidden at the back of some other books and I just missed it when I had a good look earlier this week. Anyway, this is my second stop for this week’s 1937 club. What stops have you picked this week? I have a couple more to review at the weekend.

Winston score – A Love, Marriage, Regrets Secrets and Italy in the 30s. What more could you ask for?

 

ALI and Nino by Kurban Said

Ali and Nino by Kurban Said

Azerbaijan fiction

Original title -Ali un Nino

Translator Jenia Gaman

Source – Personal copy

I love it when Simon and Karen announce the year of the club every six months. For me, it is an excuse to go down a rabbit hole and find interesting and exciting books to read for the year. Anyway thuis was the first choice for 1937. It has a great story. First, Kurban said it was a Non de plume. But over time, who it was isn’t known for sure. There is a whole wiki page about this on my edition that points towards Lev Nussimbaum, a writer who escaped Azerbaijan and a friend of someone else, the Austrian countess Elfriede nEherfenfels, also thought to be the writer of this book at some point. Another writer put forward by his son is Yusif Mirbaba oghlu Vazirov, a writer also connected to Baku, where the book is mainly set. The book came out i n1937 uin Austria given its timing would been contirversal. The book saw the light of day for a second time when it was found and translated into English by the translator in the fifties. Since then, it has been translated into thirty languages. It is a classic take on the forbidden love story.

My father went for advice to the Mullah at the mosque, who declared that all this Latin was just vain delusion.

So my father put on all his Turkish, Persian and Russian decorations, went to see the headmaster, donated some chemical equipment or other and I passed. A notice had been put up in the school stating that pupils were strictly forbidden to enter school premises with loaded revolvers, telephones were installed in town, and Nino Kipiani was still the most beautiful girl in the world.

His view on his girlfriend Nino the most Beautiful girl in the world.

The story follows a couple of the titles from when. They are at a Western school in Baku as kids. The struggle this leads to as Ali, although he goes to the school, is from an Azerbaijani family of Persian descent and is Muslim. Where as Nino is from a Georgian family and is Christian. So what follows is their love and wanting to marry. Getting first his family and then her family to agree to the wedding. All this is against the backdrop of the Cosmopolitan Baku of the time. It was full of Oil money, and many different people lived together there then, but the oil meant it was eyed by the Soviets to the north. The book is told from Ali’s perspective and what I loved is how he captured the feel of the city at that time. The twenties near the world is destined for war, but in this desert city, this leads to the people wanting their own freedom to escape the fear of the hammer and sickle to the North and the Soviet forces. Add to this the families want the best for their sons and daughters. Ali’s family is well known, and her family are royal in their way, as some call her a princess. What price is happiness as they have to escape their world of wealth? This is a story of deep love between two people and how it can win out.

When the first excitement was over I sneaked to the tele-phone. I had not spoken to Nino for two weeks. A wise rule demands that a man should keep away from women when he stands at life’s crossroads. Now I lifted the grip of the unwieldy apparatus, turned the bell and shouted into the mouth-piece: ‘3381!’ Nino’s voice replied: ‘Passed, Ali?’

‘Yes, Nino.’

“Congratulations, Ali!’

‘When and where, Nino?’

‘Five o’clock at the lake in the Governor’s Garden, Ali.’ I could not go on talking. Behind my back lurked the curious ears of my relations, servants and eunuchs. Behind Nino’s— her aristocratic mother. Better to stop. Anyway, a bodiless voice is so strange that one cannot really enjoy

I love the way the love affair goes so old fashioned to these days.

This has it all an exotic setting a world on the bring of madness of the war. A pair torn by family, religion and race, he is Asian and Muslim, and she is European and Christian, but at the heart of this all is the love between them. One mind turns to incredible stories of love, Romeo and Juliet, or something like The English Patient, with its exotic setting, a cosmopolitan time in Baku before the Soviets took over the country. Or even Florentino and Fernina come to mind in Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera of how love sees through everything. I also loved the place, the Baku of the time, which reminded me of how someone like Pamuk Captures Istanbul in his fiction. There is an eye for the details of daily life that makes the prose in this book leap off the page. It also reminds me why I always read books for the club year week, and that is the voyage of discovery of books like this that would have passed me by. Have you read this book or any other book from Azerbaijan?

Winston’s score – A – the hidden gem of a book about a love affair, the power of love, set in the wonderfully cosmopolitan Baku before Soviet rule.