6/29/2023 0 Comments Antal szerb booksHe keeps bumping into old friends like a boat against a dock. But while Szerb strolled the city streets alone, disconcerted by the ripples of fascism, Mihály always has plenty of company. They travel to all the places the author had just been: Venice, Ravenna, San Marino, Guiddo, Verona. Young lovers Mihály and Erszi are honeymooning in Italy. When Szerb returned to Budapest, he sat down to write his masterpiece Journey by Moonlight. Travel promised romance, new landscapes, hotels, cafés. The railway that delivered Szerb to this land of miracles was a beautiful thing, connecting all of Europe. There was no way to expand: you can’t improve on perfection. And Venice was the city where, Szerb could see, ‘the Faustian rush to infinite expansion came to a halt’. In Mussolini’s Italy only wonderful things were happening. In 1936, the Hungarian writer Antal Szerb arrived in the centre of the world.
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