Sunflower     by Gyula Krúdy, Translated by J.Bákti Original title: Napraforgó Original language: Hungarian Original year: 1918 Published by Corvina: Budapest Pub. Date: 1978 Format: 208 pages Not available for ordering

Krúdy is a prolific, forgotten-and-rediscovered writer whose favourite topic was the country life of another era, a Hungarian Golden Age of the nineteenth century. Although writing about his version of rural tranquillity — a world of lush, romantic young women and eccentric, Quixotic aristocrats — Krúdy himself was a city scapegrace, Bohemian, a night-owl who lived from story to story he published in newspapers eager to distract a post World War One readership with images of a brighter world at a time of territorial partition and economic privation.

Sunflower starts off as an unabashedly lyrical, quite light-headed celebration of rural peace but, like the subtle writer he undoubtedly was, Krúdy simultaneously backs away from a utopian view of the countryside with his tavern-haunter’s barb:

If you are sleepless in the big city you may gain some consolation from street noises that tell you there are others who find no relief in the night. But in the village the midnight hours can drive you to distraction...the insomniac looks on with open eyes, like a cadaver who forgot to die..

Perhaps the greatest pleasures of his books are the rich characters like Mr. Álmos-Dreamer and Krúdy’s amazing fluency and originality in evoking them. Álmos-Dreamer for example lives on a river-island in an old house so old that ‘the lamps gave a tired light’.

Gyula Krúdy in his personal life seems to have been a roué of the most dangerous type: passionate about and appreciative of women in general (‘possession of this exquisite woman meant knowing all of life’s secrets and mysteries’) but heartlessly pragmatic in practice. One lover threatened to throw herself out of the window if he didn’t spend more time with her; Krúdy told her to go right ahead — fortunately she only broke her ankle.

Sunflower fairly drips with local colour as it wends its way with anecdotal tales over a romanticised but somehow still convincing geographical and human landscape, a (briefer) One Thousand and One Nights or Canterbury Tales. Krúdy, like the great Chaucer, manages the difficult game of sympathetic irony, that invites the reader to smile rather than sneer at his over-the-top, rather daft and spoilt characters, the naïve girls, ageing roués and ne’er-do-well Hussars. Krúdy is an unmissable stop on the tramway of really Hungarian writing...

This particular Álmos-Dreamer was a village savant, around forty years of age, a wiry hard-headed bachelor with gentle eyes. He lived in solitude on his island in the meandering river, where a stone wall sheltered his retreat from people and the spring floods. He spoke softly and had not been heard to laugh aloud in years. His aspect was as calm as twilight in the country. He loved the winter silence. In the spring he liked to smoke a cigar and listen to passing raftsmen’s songs. He was neither extravagant nor a maniac. He remained on his island with the utter tenacity of an otter — a scientist whose name had never seen the light of print. He was one of those bygone Hungarian gentlemen who, just to amuse themselves during long winter nights, learned French or English by perusing the tomes in their libraries. As septuagenarians they would take up the study of astronomy. They knew their Horace and Berzsenyi by heart. But they would not speak out at the county assembly because of their disdain of electioneering and politicians. Calfskin-bound, yellowing classics carried their ex-libris. Surely bookmarks still remain at the pages they were reading on their deathbed. And their beloved women were like potted plants. Back in those days the lady of the house was a fair, fragrant and calm being, who went about her days at a leisurely pace, with little noise; her voluptuous curves provided eveningtime pleasures. These were leisurely Rubens-esque, tender romancings, slow and endless like the village hours. They brought peaceful, wholesome dreams... 29-30