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May 17, 2009

The Sunday Salon: Hot dreams with Brutus


Last time (oops, it was a while ago) I’ve mentioned the novel Castorp by Pawel Huelle.

I’ve finished it, of course, and I liked it. Somehow I had to remember myself constantly, it’s not a Mann’s novel, the atmosphere was so familiar.

The story is quite simple, Hans Castorp (the protagonist of the Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann) spends two years in Danzig (Gdansk, now in Poland), he studies civil engineering at the university, this is the first time, he is alone and far from his family. He is a bourgeois, he is very sophisticated. In every aspects. So it’s not accidental, what happened with him on the magic mountain. (In Mann’s book.)

He is too sophisticated and it’s a bit funny when his German mentality meats with some Central-European grotesque situations. His conclusion: there is no system in the world.

The book of this weekend is a novel by Sandor Marai. [Something has happened in Rome]. It’s about the hours after the assassination of Julius Caesar.

Maybe interesting, that the historical novels of Marai (who spends ca. 50 years in exile after ww2) were published here, in Hungary just some years ago.

During the reading (the book is from a library) a can see notes on the pages, and I’m a bit sad about it. Not because of the notes, but it’s contents. The reader before me has interpreted the story that way, every motive has a connection to Marai’s live.

For me it isn’t important. For me is more important that the structure of this story is not a real novel it’s more like a screenplay. For me is more important, that every character has an opinion about Caesar, but these are quite different.

Well, and why this strange title of my post? Because yesterday, maybe it was the influence of this book’s theme, but I had a quite hot dream a with Brutus (Tobias Menzies, from the HBO series Rome), I don’t know why especially with him.

Caesar was much more sexier.

1 megjegyzés:

Marie Cloutier said...

I agree about Caesar in the HBO series. I have a major crush on the actor who played him, Ciaran Hinds.

 
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