| julie
brock
Celestial Harmonies.
Péter Esterházy. Translated by Judith
Sollosy. HarperCollins, New York. 2004. 846 pp.
Truth is, on the surface, an absolute concept. But its subterranean
depths are often murkier than we like to admit. Many times
we indulge our beliefs by promoting them to Truth no questions
asked. Then we continue marching to the beat of this perfectly-timed,
handsome, and largely imaginary drummer even when a clarifying
light reveals his translucence. When the light is extinguished,
the drummer is once again real, and his drum beat taps the
rhythm for our obedient beliefs to follow.
The Hungarian writer Péter Esterházy explores
this theme in his latest novel translated into English, Celestial
Harmonies. In this large, and largely autobiographical, novel,
Esterházy explores the labyrinth of truths, legends,
and lies that emerges within aristocratic families over centuries
of palatial living and absolute political control, and he
also shares his first-hand knowledge of what happens to that
family when a change in political fortune strips it of its
centuries-old prestige.
Readers are primed for conjecture by the first line of the
book: “It is deucedly difficult to tell a lie when you
don’t know the truth.” One page later the thought
is clarified with a seeming contradiction: “It seems
to me, my father said wracking his brain long and in vain,
that nothing is as sacred as that which we do not remember.”
These first lines graciously give readers a key for deciphering
the rest of the book. That is, though deception and truth
are quite similar, what lies between trumps them both. In
the end, what we believe is all that matters.
Some writers save the central insight for the end of the novel,
but Esterházy does well to start with his theme for
several reasons. It keeps the theme foremost in the reader’s
mind, and this is no small matter for an 846-page novel. Writer
and reader both have plenty of room to get lost in that expanse
of pages. But if either should falter, the first lines act
as a beacon back to the heart of the story. The early placement
of the theme also acts as an expression of faith from writer
to reader. The heft of the novel could scare away all but
the most intrepid readers. Esterházy tells us early
that we need not memorize the facts and figures and historical
plot twists; he wants to loosen up our need for one truth,
for he has many different versions to tell us.
Harmonies is crowded with names, dates, various locales, and
historical events ranging from trifling to pivotal in the
course of world history. Esterházy traces his family’s
lineage back to Attila the Hun, and he touches on so many
scenes over the tumultuous centuries that one expects he required
a small army of research assistants to finish the book. Remarkably,
this factual abundance does not weigh down the prose. Esterházy
repeatedly plays the language of aristocracy against his own
snide wit to great effect. He largely restricts his commentary
to good-natured, if sarcastic, jabs at human foibles. Describing
the battlefield death of his ancestor László,
he writes:
His saddle harness, round
shield, mace and sword with Damascus blade were adorned
with inlays of turquoise and pearls. Atop his black helmet
encased with an aigrette of precious stones there flew a
bouquet of crane feathers divided in three to suit his rank
as captain general and a pair of exquisitely wrought French
guns, carefully loaded with powder, were tied to his saddlebow.
None of which helped him…
Acerbic and often racy humor
provides frequent punch lines throughout the novel, often
highlighting the absurdity of aristocratic life, such as the
ambassadors of France and Germany competing to take credit
for Queen Victoria’s farting spell. But not everything
is funny, and Esterházy’s observations can sear.
When Communists have taken Hungary, Esterházy’s
father (the Count) watches his possessions being stripped
from their rightful places in the castle and piled in the
middle of the floor to be liquidated:
…as I stood in front
of those objects, hoarded together so callously and flung
into a pile like a ton of bricks, fused, ceasing to be individual
objects because their history had ceased, because they had
been torn out of their own time and context, and having
been regurgitated… were now made to lie in their new
place—in short, for the first time I saw what could
be repugnant about abundance when abundance is not dazzling
riches but this nauseating puke pile in the middle of my
palace. For a moment I thought I understood these Reds:
they must have always seen it this way, taken out of its
context, always, because they were not familiar with the
context to begin with.
The Count is incensed
by the sight of his own belongings because “out of context,”
they no longer connect him to the legends on which he was
reared and which he has done his part to propagate. Now, in
an inglorious pile on the floor, the paintings and porcelain
and antique clocks are no longer regal. This greatly distresses
the Count, and he blames the Communists for being ignorant
of the importance of context; however, quite an opposite criticism
seems to be Esterházy’s point here. Perhaps the
Esterházy legacy is possible only because the family
itself has become blind to anything but context. The Count
lived in a day before what in the U.S. is called “celebrity
guilt” — guilt inspired by the inequity of riches.
But Esterházy can reflect on his family’s legacy
and surmise that it might not have been possible without the
conceit of “context,” which did not account for
the misery outside the castle walls.
Divided into two parts, Book One of the novel may prove challenging
for some readers because it lacks a consistent narrator and
continually shifts between centuries and scenes. Aptly titled
“Numbered Sentences of the Esterházy Family,”
Book One features different speakers from the clan in a series
of numbered sections. Some sections are a few pages long;
others are one line, but each is marked by the central relationship
and theme of the novel.
Book Two adopts a more familiar narrative style, offering
young Péter’s perspective of growing up an Esterházy
behind the Iron Curtain. Readers who are put off by the sometimes
allegorical style of Book One may benefit by looking ahead
to Book Two. It is a mark of his skill as a writer that Esterházy
repeats similar tales throughout the novel and still does
not exhaust the thought-provoking possibilities they contain.
In this novel of epic length and epic subject matter, Esterházy
manages not to tell an epic tale, but to give readers many
peepholes into a tale already captured in history books. Beneath
its entertaining word play and complicated historical premise,
Harmonies is a story about a son who watches his father’s
legacy crumble and learns to comb the rubble for his own riches.
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