Novel
The Pendragon Legend
A Pendragon legenda
Antal Szerb · 1934
Opening lines
- My way is to begin with the beginning, szokásom a kezdetén kezdeni - mondta Lord Byron, és ő csak tudta, mi illik, ha előkelő angolokról van szó.
“My way is to begin with the beginning,” said Lord Byron, and he surely knew what was proper where distinguished Englishmen were concerned.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from mek.oszk.hu
Synopsis
London, 1933. Bátky János, a Hungarian settled in England, earns his living by helping elderly Englishmen with their learned hobbies and studies for himself the English mystics of the seventeenth century. At a party, he meets the Earl of Gwynedd, a Welsh gentleman who shares his passion for Robert Fludd and invites him to consult the library of his castle of Pendragon, which he does not normally open to anyone. He is told of experiments on animals and of a millionaire named Roscoe; a telephone call warns him not to go there. He goes anyway.
Context
Written largely in Paris in 1932, drawing on the author's stays in England, the novel appeared in 1934 with Franklin; the action, first planned for a Scottish castle, shifted to Wales during the writing. The author called it a philological detective novel: it combines a novel of ideas, a criminal plot and a ghost story, and parodies all three, against a background of authentic knowledge about the Rosicrucians, Paracelsus and Robert Fludd. The second edition, in 1944, was titled Rózsakereszt.
Who it is for
Nearly three hundred funny and learned pages, which play with the Gothic novel and the English detective novel; translated into French and English.
Prizes and reception
Well received by the critics of 1934, adapted for the screen in 1974, and translated into French as early as 1990.