Kertész Imre

[Stewart]

Kert?sz Imre(born November 9, 1929, Budapest) is a Hungarian Jewish author, Holocaust concentration camp survivor, and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2002 "for writing that upholds the fragile experience of the individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history".

He was born on November 9, 1929 in Budapest, Hungary. At age 14 he was deported with other Hungarian Jews during World War II to the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Kert?sz' best-known work, Fatelessness (Sorstalans?g), describes the experience of fifteen-year-old Gy?rgy (George) K?ves in the concentration camps of Auschwitz, Buchenwald and Zeitz. Some have interpreted the book as quasi-autobiographical, but the author disavows a strong biographical connection.

His writings translated into English include Kaddish for a Child Not Born (Kaddis a meg nem sz?letett gyermek?rt) and Liquidation (Felsz?mol?s). Kert?sz initially found little appreciation for his writing in Hungary and moved to Germany. Mr. Kert?sz started translating German works into Hungarian and did not publish another novel until the late 1980s. He continues to write in Hungarian and submits his works to publishers in Hungary.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Sorstalans?g (1975) [Eng: Fatelessness]
A nyomkereső (1977)
Detekt?vt?rt?net (1977)
A kudarc (1988)
Kaddis a meg nem sz?letett gyermek?rt (1990) [Eng: Kaddish for an Unborn Child]
Az angol lobog? (1991)
G?lyanapl? (1992)
A holocaust mint kult?ra : h?rom előad?s (1993)
Jegyzők?nyv / Imre Kert?sz (1993)
Valaki m?s : a v?ltoz?s kr?nik?ja (1997)
A gondolatnyi csend, am?g a kiv?gzőosztag ?jrat?lt (1998)
A sz?műz?tt nyelv (2001)
Felsz?mol?s (2003) [Eng: Liquidation]RELATED LINKS

Kert?sz Imre on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imre_Kertesz)
Nobel Lecture (http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/2002/kertesz-lecture.html)
(All text in this post is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/).)

[John Self]

Have just begun reading Kert?sz's The Pathseeker, published in the fine Contemporary Art of the Novella series by Melville House Publishing. Seems to be an allegorical Holocaust story, with vague Kafkaesque overtones or - from the blurb only - an air of Ishiguro's The Unconsoled. Promises to be interesting.

[Eric]

To match up the Hungarian name in Stewart's list with the English one, The Pathseeker is A nyomkereső from 1977. My two terms of Hungarian at Uppsala University in the mid-1980s taught me relatively little, but I did cotton onto the fact that the kereső was the seeker bit, and used a dictionary to find nyom.

I have not yet read any Kert?sz, but would trust his descriptions more, as he was there himself in the concentration camp.

[Mirabell]

I have not yet read any Kert?sz, but would trust his descriptions more, as he was there himself in the concentration camp.

More? More than...?

I am lucky insofar as there are many translated novels of his in German. I am currently reading Fiasko (A kudarc). We do translate quite a lot of Hungarian authors, although a friend told me Hungarian is a bitch to translate and Laszlo Krasznahorkai told me he's never found a translator who did him justice. Imre Kertesz's first translation into English is also famously bad.

[Daniel del Real]

I'm currently reading Fiasko and frankly I still don't know what to think about it. The first part where Koves is trying to write his novels can be a very slow start but at the same time has excellent phrases to think about. Also the use of this narrative structure where from one phrase comes another and from that one, another, seems like playing with Russian dolls unveiling thoughts layer by layer. Because of that and the constant repetition of phrases in this part of the novel it appears as an Eastern Saramago, very similar in their narrative techniques not in the content.
When Koves start to write the novel, then it turns into the most pure Kafkaesque tradition.
I'll keep on going and check what it is all about.

[Eric]

I agree with Mirabell that there appear to be a lot of Hungarian books translated into German. Why so few appear in English has complex reasons that have been discussed endlessly on these threads. But it is nice that translations into at least one "big" language means that Hungarian literature has a route out of isolation - because no other language closely resembles Hungarian. But it is surely not so untranslatable as people suggest.

[Mirabell]

because no other language closely resembles Hungarian.

finnish, no? i thought.

[Mirabell]

I'm currently reading Fiasko and frankly I still don't know what to think about it. The first part where Koves is trying to write his novels can be a very slow start but at the same time has excellent phrases to think about. Also the use of this narrative structure where from one phrase comes another and from that one, another, seems like playing with Russian dolls unveiling thoughts layer by layer. Because of that and the constant repetition of phrases in this part of the novel it appears as an Eastern Saramago, very similar in their narrative techniques not in the content.
When Koves start to write the novel, then it turns into the most pure Kafkaesque tradition.
I'll keep on going and check what it is all about.

http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/european-literature/4629-kertesz-imre-kudarc-fiasko.html

and wow that may well be the translation because in German the first part is playful and reads very very fast.

[Rumpelstilzchen]

Speaking of bad translations. If you are reading his books in English, make sure to check out the translations of Tim Wilkinson. Here is a short article of Wilkinson about the old English translation of Kaddish for an Unborn Child http://www.hungarianquarterly.com/no168/4.html

(reading this article I really get sick thinking about how much damage is regularly done to literary works in bad translations and how often books receive bad reviews just on basis of such crap translations)

And if you have not read the author yet, now is the chance to read all of his novels dealing with holocaust related topics in the right order. Fiasco just came out in English translation last year:
Fatelessness, Fiasco, Kaddish, Liquidation

He is a major writer.

[Stevie B]

I admired Fatelessness when I read it several years ago. The film adaptation, which was true to the book, was also quite good (imho).

[kpjayan]

I agree. However, film had better appeal , may be due to the visuals, than the book. I read the book first.

[Eric]

I haven't read Kertész (roughly pronounced "care-tace" for British readers). I will do so one day. Nor have I seen the film.

But Tim Wilkinson's points are valuable ones. For instance, why was the Celan quote omitted when the translation into English by Michael Hamburger was originally published in 1962, reprinted in Penguin, 1972? The "Fugue of Death" poem is just about Celan's most famous one.

It must have been the usual post-Nobel-announcement hysteria to get the book out quick, ignoring things such as quality and accuracy. And the Celan poems should, ideally, have been translated directly from the German version.

People can only be tricked into reading dud translations because no one appears to check, and Hungarian is regarded as a language where, in theory at least, no Brit or American would have the ability to check. Not true, of course. I demonstrated on another thread that even with my very limited knowledge of Hungarian, some of the translations of Hungarian poetry by the top names are way off the mark. The translator can get away with blue murder. That is not being conscientious though.

[Rumpelstilzchen]

I admired Fatelessness when I read it several years ago. The film adaptation, which was true to the book, was also quite good (imho).

I did not even know about the film until quite recently. I will try to find a copy!

[Eric]

I just happened to find this on the internet when, as usual, looking for something entirely different. It is interesting to read this article as a counterpoint in the light of semi-fictionalised versions of the Holocaust (e.g. Kertész). Hannah Arendt once talked about the banality of evil. I think there are glimpses of that in this article about a Warsaw ghetto survivor:

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4184933,00.html

[Heteronym]

Liquidation bored me to death, but it was so long ago I believe it deserves another try. I loved Detective Story for its dryness in describing the workings of a group of secret agents in a dictatorship. Because of this novel I haven't given up on him yet. In fact I'm anxious to read Fiasco.

[Rumpelstilzchen]

Liquidation bored me to death, but it was so long ago I believe it deserves another try. I loved Detective Story for its dryness in describing the workings of a group of secret agents in a dictatorship. Because of this novel I haven't given up on him yet. In fact I'm anxious to read Fiasco.

One reason might have been that Liquidation basically cannot be understood without having read Kaddish before (and to a lesser extend also the first two books of the tetralogy), the whole basis for the plot of Liquidation is given in Kaddish. So I can only recommend to give it another try and read the four books in the order he wrote them. In particular the first part of Fiasco and also Kaddish are very strong, though as mentioned above apparently difficult to translate, so make sure to find a decent translation.

[Daniel del Real]

One reason might have been that Liquidation basically cannot be understood without having read Kaddish before (and to a lesser extend also the first two books of the tetralogy), the whole basis for the plot of Liquidation is given in Kaddish. So I can only recommend to give it another try and read the four books in the order he wrote them. In particular the first part of Fiasco and also Kaddish are very strong, though as mentioned above apparently difficult to translate, so make sure to find a decent translation.

So what's the right order to read? I've only read Fiasco and left me very disappointed. Is it because I needed a previous read to have a decent background about the novel?

[Rumpelstilzchen]

Well, he wrote them in this order:
Fatelessness (first published 1975)
Fiasco (pub. 1988)
Kaddish for an Unborn Child (pub. 1990)
Liquidation (pub. 2003)

You can read them in any order if you want, all I am saying is that you will miss a lot of the allusions, motivations, references etc. because one typically just does not have the background about his life and worldview (at least if you have not read other books from him like the autobiographical ones or secondary literature). So for example, Fiasco deals basically with the trouble he had writing Fatelessness (and with its initial rejection) and living his life (as a writer) under a dictatorship after having survived the holocaust (the latter is detailed in Fatelessness). It can be read without having read Fatelessness before, but the experience won't be as rich because you just do not know anything about the particulars of the book he has written (and as you might have heard, Fatelessness is very peculiar with respect to other holocaust literature, so it is important to know this). But Fiasco is still ok, it is much worse for Kaddish and in particular for Liquidation. The latter two are so rich in allusions and references to his life that knowing the basics is essential. I read Liquidation directly after Kaddish and I was so amazed in how many ways it is a direct response (of sorts) to Kaddish and a variation of it and the issues dealt with there.

I do not know anything about the quality of the Spanish translation of his books, so maybe also those can be blamed to some extend, dunno. If you read the article linked above about the old crap translation of Kaddish, man, I tell you, it is incredible how much can be destroyed in a bad translation.

Btw, if you asked me to rate those books, I would admit to put Liquidation at the lower end as the least important of the four. So Heteronym has something to look forward to, I hope :)

[Rumpelstilzchen]

As far as I understand it and as he also puts it in the mentioned books, writing for him is not a job, it has a strong existential (or maybe one could call it therapeutic) aspect. He writes to survive his life. He writes to be able to cope with what had happened to him during the holocaust and under a communist dictatorship. His whole life and worldview is totally shaped by his experiences in the concentration camp. With those four novels he tries to deal with it in various ways. All of them have a very strong autobiographical touch.

[Daniel del Real]

I do not know anything about the quality of the Spanish translation of his books, so maybe also those can be blamed to some extend, dunno. If you read the article linked above about the old crap translation of Kaddish, man, I tell you, it is incredible how much can be destroyed in a bad translation.


I don't think the translation is the problem in this case. Fiasco was translated by the same translator who brought War & War to Spanish language, Adan Kovacsis. He has been recognized with many prizes for his role as a translator from Hungarian texts.
We have a very good translator from Hungarian in Kovacsis and also from Albanian in Ramón Sánchez Lizarralde, sadly deceased last year.

[Rumpelstilzchen]

I don't think the translation is the problem in this case. Fiasco was translated by the same translator who brought War & War to Spanish language, Adan Kovacsis. He has been recognized with many prizes for his role as a translator from Hungarian texts.
We have a very good translator from Hungarian in Kovacsis and also from Albanian in Ramón Sánchez Lizarralde, sadly deceased last year.

Ah, ok, it was also translated by him, I did not know. Yes, I read about him, he is doing really a lot to bring Hungarian literature to the Spanish. Good to have such a translator.