{"id":7437,"date":"2022-08-23T12:00:26","date_gmt":"2022-08-23T12:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/?p=7437"},"modified":"2022-08-29T10:28:10","modified_gmt":"2022-08-29T10:28:10","slug":"borbely5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/borbely5\/","title":{"rendered":"Szil\u00e1rd Borb\u00e9ly in English: Kafka\u2019s Son"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Portrait\"<\/a>
Szil\u00e1rd Borb\u00e9ly (Photo: Lenke Szil\u00e1gyi, courtesy Kalligram Press, Budapest)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Circling back to Kafka shows the long-lasting effect of early experiences and influences continually revisited that is discernible in <\/span>Borb<\/span>\u00e9ly\u2019s works. One<\/span> step forward from the practice of \u201cthe novel writing itself,\u201d<\/span> Kafka\u2019s Son<\/span><\/i> seems to follow another modus operandi, that of the text itself rewriting itself. Borb\u00e9ly turns to Kafka\u2019s texts three times by reflecting or quoting (Valasty\u00e1n, 2018), first in the letters in <\/span>Berlin\u2013Hamlet<\/span><\/i><\/a>, <\/span><\/i>where he borrows from Kafka\u2019s letters and reworks them into his poetry. The second instance is in the short story called <\/span>A bol<\/span><\/i>g\u00e1r kalauz<\/span><\/i> (English: <\/span>The Bulgarian ticket collector), where Borb\u00e9ly inserts Kafka as a traveler in East Europe on a fictitious trip that might have happened but never did.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The novel <\/span>Kafka\u2019s Son<\/span><\/i> can be considered the third and most complex iteration of Borb\u00e9ly turning to Kafka\u2019s works, style, and intellectual stance. On one hand, some of the texts can be traced back to Kafka indeed as citations, focusing on documents, events, and venues related to the author; on the other hand Borb\u00e9ly seems to create what one might call \u201cforward citations\u201d via fictitious documents, especially in the various versions of the <\/span>Letter to My Son<\/span><\/i>, which, at the same time, seems to insert Borb\u00e9ly himself in the book from the perspective of the father-son relationship. This method empowers Borb\u00e9ly to see Kafka not only as an identity the author has created via his writing, but also a medium, which allows Borb\u00e9ly to use the Kafka persona to talk about himself. As a result, writing is detached from life and starts to replace it, which takes him in the words of one his close friend, acclaimed critic and author G\u00e1bor Schein, to a dangerous practice: \u201c <\/span>[writing?]<\/span> as an activity might lift the author up and out of the unbearable realities of life, but the non-human powers of the language will push him back to death with a larger force, thus in the final iteration of the project, life must drown in the passionately created, dark and whirling text-flow.\u201d(Schein, 2021, translated by J. H. Ward)<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Cover<\/a>Experimenting with voices, structures, and the creation of new connections back and forth between his own texts, Borb\u00e9ly also employs the strategy of using statements then withdrawing them. <\/span>Kafka\u2019s Son<\/span><\/i> starts with the statement:\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

“This novel takes place in East Europe. It\u2019s about travelers and travels. About Franz Kafka\u2019s travel, who is not Franz Kafka. And about staying in one place, without what the travel would be meaningless. Then about the walks, whose route always circles back to itself.” (Borb<\/span>\u00e9ly, 2021, p<\/span>. 5, translated by J. H. Ward).<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The same text, not being confusing enough, returns in a few pages later in the following version:<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

“This novel takes place in East Europe. In fact, it\u2019s not a novel, and it doesn\u2019t take place anywhere. It doesn\u2019t relate events as other novels usually relate events, it would only like to resemble to them.” (Borb<\/span>\u00e9ly, 2021, p<\/span>. 11, translated by J. H. Ward)<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Since Borb\u00e9ly is such a great master of the Hungarian language, every single little detail needs a special attention\u2013\u2013especially awkward or grammatically incorrect sentences here and there, as Angyalosi (2016) had pointed out much earlier in his essay on Borb\u00e9ly\u2019s short stories.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Borb\u00e9ly was famous for constantly editing and reworking his text. With its fragments, <\/span>Kafka\u2019s Son<\/span><\/i> continues the line of unfinished business between parents and son with the language he chooses, a true challenge to translate. <\/span>Only the language remains<\/span><\/a>.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

References<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/h4>\n