Forthcoming: Black Renaissance by Miklós Szentkuthy

Contra Mundum Press has made available some excerpts from the forthcoming book Black Renaissance by Miklós Szentkuthy, the second volume in his St. Orpheus Breviary series. The samples can be found at this link. Needless to say, I'm excited and looking forward to the release.

The sample contains the beginning of the introductory essay by Nicholas Birns, "Startling Dryness: Szentkuthy's Black Renaissance." An earlier version of Birns' essay can be found in the July 2013 special issue of Contra Mundum's journal Hyperion. The journal also contains more of the second section on Brunulleschi than the sample does.
Note: I initially assumed Birns' essay in the book was the same as the earlier online version. Contra Mundum kindly let me know the essay has been updated and revised and I have corrected my comment. Thanks for the correction!

A few excerpts from back cover of the book (the last page of the sample), parts of which were also used on the cover for Marginalia on Casanova:

Black Renaissance, the second volume of the St. Orpheus Breviary, is the continuation of Miklós Szentkuthy's synthesis of 2,000 of European culture. St. Orpheus is Szentkuthy's Virgil, an omniscient poet who guides us not through hell, but through all of recorded history, myth, religion, and literature, albeit reimagines as St. Orpheus metamorphosizes himself into kings, popes, saints, tyrants, and artists. ... "Orpheus wandering in the infernal regions," says Szentkuthy, "is the perennial symbol of the mind lost amid the enigmas of reality. The aim of the work is, on the one hand, to represent the reality of history with the utmost possible precision, and on the other, to show, through the mutations of the European spirit, all the uncertainties of contemplative man, the transiency of emotions and the sterility of philosophical systems."

There's more on the back cover of the three characters dominating the book, and the introductory essay goes into detail about why St. Dunstan was chosen as the opening/guiding saint chosen for Black Renaissance. I'll close with some comments from Szentkuthy’s prospectus for the first volume, which provides a guide to the series:

The name “Orpheus” expresses the underlying conceptual tone: Orpheus wandering in the underworld is an eternal symbol of the brain straying among the dark secrets of reality. The aim of the work is, firstly, to portray the reality of nature and history with ever more extreme precision, and secondly, to display through variations in the history of the European mind an observer’s every uncertainty, the fickleness of emotions, the tragic sterility of thoughts & philosophical systems. The reason for placing the epithet “Saint” before “Orpheus” is because the work seeks to portray both European history and the vegetative world of nature from an essentially religious, supernatural viewpoint. Although both the lives of the saints, as well as the other figures, famous books, and cultural manifestations of history are, in point of fact, nothing more than different features of a lyrical self-portrait, the various roles and masks of the author as it were, the work is in essence “religious,” because form love to politics the emphasis throughout is on the battle of the body-politic of God and the body-politic of the world.

Marginalia on Casanova by Miklós Szentkuthy: introductory notes and links

Marginalia on Casanova by Miklós Szentkuthy
St. Orpheus Breviary, Vol. 1
Translation by Tim Wilkinson
Introduction by Zéno Bianu (Translation by Rainer J. Hanshe)
Afterword by Mária Tompa
(New York: Contra Mundum Press, 2012)
ISBN 9780983697244

This is one of the strangest and most enjoyable books I’ve read in quite a while. I have hesitated to write about it but I think I'm ready to give it a try. At first the book appears to be Szentkuthy’s comments on Casanova’s History of My Life, but the scope quickly expands to include a study in the underlying philosophy of Casanova’s works in addition to a commentary of his time (and a comparison with the 20th century).

So what is the St. Orpheus Breviary? From the Afterword by Mária Tompa (ellipsis in original):

In his [Szentkuthy’s] 1976 memoir Recollection of My Career, this is how he refers to it: “Among the huge amount that I learned from Antal Szerb I ought to list my real acquaintance with the eighteenth century. It was he who inspired the Casanova commentaries of Orpheus… The structure of my commentaries was determined by the structure of the 1919 magnum opus of the Protestant theologian Karl Barth to the Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans

Zéno Bianu’s introduction augments that inspiration:

In 1938, Szentkuthy read the Römebrief of the famous Protestant exegete Karl Barth, a commentary that is based on an analysis, phrase by phrase, even word by word, of the Epistle to the Romans. Literally enchanted by the effectiveness of this method—“where, in his words, every epithet puts imagination in motion”—he decided to apply it on the spot to Casanova, whose memoirs (a German edition in six large volumes) he had just annotated with gusto.

There are ten books in the St. Orpheus Breviary, the last volume (or is that the last two volumes?) unfinished. By the way, a translation of the second volume, Towards the One and Only Metaphor is scheduled to be released later this year by Contra Mundum (and more from this author is scheduled). [Thanks to reader JC Buckley for the correction] Why Orpheus in the title? From Szentkuthy’s prospectus for the first volume:

The name “Orpheus” expresses the underlying conceptual tone: Orpheus wandering in the underworld is an eternal symbol of the brain straying among the dark secrets of reality. The aim of the work is, firstly, to portray the reality of nature and history with ever more extreme precision, and secondly, to display through variations in the history of the European mind an observer’s every uncertainty, the fickleness of emotions, the tragic sterility of thoughts & philosophical systems. The reason for placing the epithet “Saint” before “Orpheus” is because the work seeks to portray both European history and the vegetative world of nature from an essentially religious, supernatural viewpoint. Although both the lives of the saints, as well as the other figures, famous books, and cultural manifestations of history are, in point of fact, nothing more than different features of a lyrical self-portrait, the various roles and masks of the author as it were, the work is in essence “religious,” because form love to politics the emphasis throughout is on the battle of the body-politic of God and the body-politic of the world.

I’m not sure I got all of that while reading the book but several points shine through in this volume. Mária Tompa’s Afterword provides a good overview of Marganalia on Casanova, highlighting the emphasis on that ‘battle’:

In reality it is a reader’s diary divided into 123 numbered sections which provides a picture of Casanova’s personality extending to highly comprehensive, balance, and minute psychological details. Szentkuthy gives an extremely detailed analysis not only with regard to his accomplishments in seducing women, but his intellectual and mental endeavors, his psychological and emotional stumbling blocks—much of it with great subjective vehemence.

I have to mention the structure of the Breviary: a Vita (Life of a Saint) and Lectio (Saintly Reading). Szentkuthy had written the first six volumes in the series without including “Life of a Saint” sections but decades after their initial writing he added them. The saint included in Marganalia on Casanova is Alfonso Maria di Liguori (1696 – 1787).

OK, more on the actual marginalia in a separate post.

Links:
Wikipedia bio on Miklós Szentkuthy
Contra Mundum’s page for the book
Review and links at the complete review
A review at the Guardian
Links at Hungarian Literature Online:
          Boudoir & Theology (used as the book’s Introduction, by Zéno Bianu)
          Excerpt (the first 12 sections)
          Review, notes