THE RIGHT ΤΟ SANITY / A Victor Hatar Reader / Corvina, 1999 / Paperback

ISBN-10: 9631348199

Printed in Hungary

Pages 400

A VICTOR HATAR READER

If energy, exuberance, ambition, wit, range, boundless knowl- edge and linguistic virtuosity were bankable values, Victor Hatar would be worth a developed nation's ransom. A man who is not only a poet but a playwright, not only a playwright but a novelist, not only a novelist but a philosopher, not only a philosopher but a critic and a walking history, should be known far more widely than he is. Perhaps it is the sheer gargantuan playfulness that makes him a figure almost impossible to conceive, almost immodest in his proportions. A man has no right to be all these things at once. There must be something wrong with him.

But Határ has written himself into the Hungarian language. He has invented, discovered, unearthed and improvised so much that is at once idiomatic, abstract and clear-sightedly human, that even his inventions seem as if they had worked their way up from the deeps of the communal imagination. He is the Jules Verne of popular language, moving twenty thousand leagues beneath, in a contraption that has something fantastic and Victorian about it, but is the product of a mind that has come into abrasive contact with the century and its disasters. He has lived much of his life in exile, in a corner of London, in the house he named Hongriuscule, little Hungary. Hongriuscule has been his Nautilus, hidden under the English waves. It is a world in itself, full of vast compartments and chambers. To translate Határ is a heroic and rewarding enterprise of exploration. He is a most remarkable writer.

George Szirtes