Sunflower (33 page)

“Still, I'll be lonely.”

“If you feel like it, you can come hunt with me later in the fall when it gets drearier. You'll find the afternoons pass more quickly outdoors, in the yawning meadows and sleepy woods, among meditative, wild marshes. Of course you'll have to write letters, and all those dogcarts,
britskas
and antique carriages will gladly set out from all over the neighborhood to bring visiting ladies, young and old, to your house. The Nyírség roads never get too muddy for family visits. You know even the fireplace snaps brighter sparks when there's a guest in the house, the hours pass more quickly, the servants are sprightlier, the days friendlier. In the evenings you play dominoes or a game of hearts, as in old Russia. At times the young folks feel like dancing, so you just take up the carpets. For the old gentlemen, you must have plenty of Tokay wine, you can serve your Szerednyei to the curate, and for the more distant kin, there's the local wine. The hunters will get homemade brandy, the ladies cherry
pálinka
, there'll be rum for the cartomancers, soda water for the young ones, and Parád bitters for myself, thank you. You'll see how quickly the time will pass.”

“But I won't always have guests, and then I'll be rather sad.”

“When you find yourself alone, and feel endless sorrow nearing your soul's gates, melancholy rearing up near the keyhole...well, I'll visit you then, and sit down quietly in a corner. You'll play the piano for me, something new or one of the classics. And I'll read you passages from the books I love. Or else we'll have a calm chat about life, like two people who meet in a cemetery, by a graveside. I would recommend that we raise a memorial in the garden, in memory of our friend Pistoli. A regular funeral mound, complete with a cross and his name on it, so we can meditate about our noble friend's life. No one else thinks of him. If we too were to forget him, his whole life would have been in vain.”

“Pistoli thought very highly of you...”

“He was a man who understood me.”

“And what about me, couldn't I understand you?”

“Let's wait for winter. The first, the second, the third winter...Let's wait for the monotonous evenings of this place, the courses of the moon, the howling-wolf nights. We'll just have to make sure to wind the clocks each day, bury our memories, sit in tranquility by the warm fireside, play enough tric-trac, and never, ever write letters without each other's knowledge, no matter how overcast the twilight.”

“I'll be waiting for you.”

“Let crazy life rush headlong on the highway for others; we shall contemplate the sunflowers, watch them sprout, blossom, fade away. Yesterday they were still giants, but now, in autumn, they are thatch on the roof.”

(Margaret Island, 1918)

when Jacobins lurked in old Pest
:
the Hungarian Jacobins were led by I.J. Martinovics, who was executed, along with several co-conspirators, in 1795.

Berzsenyi
:
Dániel Berzsenyi (1776–1836), poet, often called “the Hungarian Horace.”

the poet Kisfaludy
:
Sándor Kisfaludy (1772–1844) was an early figure of Hungarian Romanticism, famous, among others, for a sequence called
The Sorrows of Love
.

Fanny's Posthumous Papers
:
novel in the form of letters, written by József Kármán (1769–1795).

Mrs. Baradlay in Jókai's novel
:
Mór Jókai (1825–1904) was the leading Hungarian novelist of the nineteenth century; Mrs. Baradlay is a character in his most famous work,
The Sons of the Stone-Hearted Man
(1859).

kuruc
:
late-seventeenth-, early-eighteenth-century freebooter, partisan of Prince Rákóczi's insurrection against Austrian imperial rule.

cimbalom
:
hammer dulcimer.

Louis the Great
:
Louis I (1326–1382), called “the great,” of the House of Anjou, king of Hungary and Poland.

Prince Rákóczi
:
Francis II. Rákóczi, prince of Transylvania (1676–1735), who led an insurrection for Hungarian independence from the Austrian empire, 1703–1711.

Jósika
:
Baron Miklós Jósika (1794–1865), father of the Hungarian historical novel.

aszú
:
fine sweet wine of Tokay made by adding choice grapes dried on the vine to ordinary must, producing a surface scum dubbed “noble rot.”

Mrs. Blaha
:
Lujza Blaha (1850–1910), popular actress and singer.

Queen Elisabeth
:
Elisabeth of Wittelsbach, wife of Francis Joseph: assassinated in 1897.

Kossuth-style
:
à la Lajos Kossuth (1802–1894), leader of the 1848–49 Hungarian revolution, after which he lived in exile in Italy.

kampets dolores
:
(Hungarian Yiddish) no more sorrows; it's all over.

the poet Tompa
:
Mihály Tompa (1817–1868), a popular poet of lyrical subjects.

This is a New York Review Book

Published by The New York Review of Books

435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014

www.nyrb.com

Translation copyright © 1997 by John Bátki

Introduction copyright © 1997 by John Lukacs

Originally published as
Napraforgó
in installments in the Budapest daily
Virradat
during the first half of 1918, and in book form later that year. The present translation is based on the complete, corrected version published by Szépirodalmi Könyvkiadó, Budapest, 1978. It was first published in the English language by Corvina Books, Budapest, 1997.

Translator's acknowledgments: This translation was made possible by a Fellowship from Collegium Budapest Institute for Advanced Study, 1995–96. I thank Rector Lajos Vékás for his friendship and support. I am deeply grateful to Nick Woodin for his friendship, encouragement, and thorough criticism in editing the manuscript.

Cover art: Witkacy,
Jadwiga Jancczewska
, c. 1913
Cover design: Katy Homans

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication

Krúdy, Gyula.

[Napraforgó. English]

Sunflower / by Gyula Krúdy ; introduction by John Lukacs ; translated by John Bátki.

p. cm.—(New York Review Books classics)

Originally published: Budapest : Corvina, 1997.

I. Bátki, John. II. Title.

PH3281.K89N3613 2007

894'.511332—dc22

2007006867

eISBN 978-1-59017-408-1

v1.0

For a complete list of books in the NYRB Classics series, visit
www.nyrb.com
or write to:
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