Aston, Paul - Crimson Coach - Vörös postakocsi

PAUL ASTON

„I think I ought to bid adieu to my friends with the same solemnity, as if I was going to mount a breach, at least, if I am to believe the information of the people here [in Vienna], who denounce all sorts of terrors to me.” (Lady Mary Wortley Montagu writing to Alexander Pope in 1717, prior to setting off for Hungary.) The German tribes of the ninth century had full reason to look with alarm on the predatory activities of the Hungarian marauders in their territory; and the humanists of the Renaissance might justly have held that the Hungarian concept of culture was suspect (despite the splendid library assembled by the enlightened King Matthias Hunyadi) when a Hungarian engineer named Orbán in 1453 succeeded in producing a monster cannon which enabled Mehmet the Conqueror to flatten the walls of Constantinople and so break down the eastern bastion of European culture. But there can hardly be a country today that has more respect than Hungary for the concept of world literature, and does as much to further a knowledge of foreign literatures among its own citizens, among whom a fashion for Villon, Dostoevsky or Shakespeare (in translation) may be just as potent as the cult of national poets like Endre Ady or Attila József. Hungarian writers, meanwhile, may justly feel aggrieved that they know more about the outside world than the outside world knows of them.

Happily, a latter-day reverse trend is becoming more and more apparent as a number of Hungarian works are translated into other languages, in the case of poetry by noted foreign poets; while in the field of prose, the Corvina Press continues to publish novels and short stories in English and other European languages. Thus for a modern traveller the exploration of these works, some of which, like a good travel agent, I propose to serve up here in brochure form, need hold none of the terrors foretold by Lady Montagu’s jeremiah friends in Vienna. I hope the noble lady’s elegant scorn will prove applicable here, too: „I can hardly forbear laughing, when I recollect all the frightful ideas that were given me of this journey.”

As another English traveller (Miss Pardoe) remarked in 1839, „Pest is decidedly one of the most cheerful-looking cities in Europe.” And in the Crimson Coach* by Gyula Krúdy, we are presented with a remarkably rich portrait of the city’s „gaiety” and sophistication and how it draws and misleads would-be Bohemians from the provinces. The story itself is slight. A pair of personable but not very brilliant provincial actresses come to the capital, attracted not by the offer of a job, but in search of the bright lights. Being out of work, they are supported largely by a tempestuous, middle- aged aunt, likewise from the provinces, who also comes to Pest every so often in search of the bright lights and lovers. One day the sight of a splendid crimson coach sweeping down Andrássy Avenue at dusk focusses the dreams and ambitions of the two young ladies on the person of its owner, a legendary figure in Pest life—the millionaire baron Edward Alvinczi. Hereafter the efforts of one of the actresses, Clara, concentrate on finding access to the world symbolized by this splendid figure, who for her is „the gate of the great world.” A series of tableaux follow as Clara’s guide, a gloomy and perpetually frustrated Mephisto-figure known as Casimir Rezeda, who is by profession an unsuccessful newspaper editor, shows her scenes from the Bohemian life of actors, journalists, courtesans and poets. Clara’s meetings with Alvinczi are brief and embarrassing. Rezeda’s affair with Clara is even more brief and unsatisfactory, and the actress leaves to take up a job in the provinces.

Time matters in the story only inasmuch as it is nearly always May. The end of the story comes when Clara has run the whole gauntlet of temptations and not succeeded in catching hold of any of them. In the words of the other actress, Sylvia: „When we came to Pest, we thought that this was the start of the wonderful, amusing society life. I... always believed that something extraordinary was going to happen if I settled in Budapest. But nothing happens at all.” While for Clara and her love for the great Alvinczi: „Let me be always as happy in my life as I am now. Let me never have any other love than the one whom I hardly ever see. Let me never be his... I am like the women who knit stockings all their lives and knit into the purls all their thoughts, longings, dreams.”

For Rezeda, the situation is even more unhappy: „Rezeda is a scented flower. The flower of provincial girls.” „Thus Mr. Rezeda lived for his loves—and did not even get as far as the bedroom of the merchant’s widow.” He buries his frustration in the world of poetry, and outwardly in lethargy and an assumed cynicism.

It is not by chance that the story is set in the behind the scenes stage of the theatre, journalism and poetry. All the unsuccessful figures occupying this stage are delightfully real, while the one really successful wordly figure, that of Alvinczi, is really an inflated caricature of all the other characters’ dreams and hardly has any substance at all. It is the gentle wit with which Krúdy passes his pantheon of dreamers before our eyes which brings his impressions of Pest to life. It is almost as if Vanity Fair were recreated in impressionistic stage terms—as the scenes change we catch the smells of the city, or the strains of music from a nearby music palace. The characters treat their rooms like stage settings and their clothes as theatrical props as befitting the make-believe of their existences. And throughout the book a thin vapour of sensuality lingers, linked to everyday objects in a way which makes Krúdy’s impressionism wholly sensuous. The book’s great popularity ever since its first appearance in serial form in 1912 is no doubt due to the precision with which Krúdy catches the nostalgia for the Pest of the turn of the century and the great vigour and humour with which he expresses it. The translator,

Paul Tabori, has done a service in making it available to English readers.

Krudy's style is essentially literary and full of delightful apercus which can be quoted out of context—photographic details, as it were, for the literary traveller. […]