Daily Diary: Tranquility (2)

Ok, I know, I know, it wasn’t a really good idea to take this book with. Actually I didn’t read any lines from the Tranquility during those four days at the Lake Balaton.

(Lake Balaton)

Anyway, we stayed in a nice hotel is Siofok for three nights. This town is known mostly by the beach parties, and the cheap resorts for students, but we could find a really nice place quite far from these things. Although I prefer the eastern part of the lake (the towns like Balatonfured and Badacsony), I must admit, the southern part has its own beauty too, and it’s not just only about students drinking on the beach.

(Siofok)

The hotel has its own little beach, we visited it mornings for cca. two hours , we were usually alone, that was a fantastic feeling, and I took the book Tranquility always with, but never had enough time to read a page or even a sentence.

We visited many place like that one where Attila Jozsef, the famous poet died (Balatonszarszo), or the place where Zoltan Latinovits the great actor died (Balatonszemes). With the mood it was ok, so many tragic story... but when I had some free time, I read rather an another book: a novel by the Croatian writer Nedjeljko Fabrio.

(Szekszard)

We took even a little trip to Szekszard (just one and a half hour from Siofok), visited the museums of Mihaly Babits and Miklos Meszoly.

(The statue of Mihaly Babits )

Well, this year's Holiday was really literary.

But now I’m at home again, and I’m going to continue reading that exciting book of Attila Bartis.

The Sunday Salon: A long post (I hope)

Hello fellow saloners again.

In my last TSS post I mentioned among the book I was reading one about the metaphors. It is a quiet long book, more than 500 pages, and I haven’t finished yet. But it’s very interesting. There is a chapter in the book about the connection between schizophrenia and the usage of metaphors. Sometimes it helps diagnosing the illness, how much importance the patient wants to give to the metaphors.

A bit ironic to say: writers and poets must be a bit schizophrenic.

(Just kidding.)

Reading Hungarian stories:

Fortunately I had enough time to read another books, novels and short stories again.

Among the short stories by female writers (wich is the main theme of my Hungarian blog this month), I re-read one of my favourites story by Miklos Meszoly (you can read about it here>>>), and I started to read one of the most popular historical novel in the last some years by Zsuzsa Rakovszky. (Hungarian title: A kigyo arnyeka)

An old woman looks back on her life in the early 17. century. During reading this story we can learn much about the every day life in this period from the point of view of a woman, a daughter of a pharmacist. It's interesting to read how unsafe was the life those days, how many trouble there were in some parts of Hungary, or how different troubles there were in different parts of Hungary. The plundering of soldiers, the war of the new religions against the Catholic Church (it was an art of fight for freedom), etc. And the heroine of this story, Ursula Bender (neé Lehmann) has also a non-usually life. After 100 pages, I think I’ll love this story, and my main program will be this book this Sunday.

(Unfortunately I could find only a German version - Im Schatten der Schlange - beside of the Hungarian. )

(I'll continue a bit later with the non-Hungarian books I'm currently read)

The questions of simplicity

Have you ever read a story, which’s content, the meaning of the story you couldn’t describe, but you could feel this is a great work?

Miklos Meszoly’ s Forgiveness is such a type of a story, it’s a parabola, but there isn’t any common moral in this story, everyone has his/her own one.

Every time, I’m reading this work, I meet only questions, and no answers. Is is a story about a marriage? About a tragedy of a beautiful, but lonely woman? About a life of a small town? And what is the meaning of the smoke at the beginning and at the end of the text?

It’s full with symbols and metaphors, and still has it’s own simplicity.

And I simply like it.