The Resurrection of Maltravers
By Alexander Lernet-Holenia
Eridanos, 223 pages, $23; $14, paper
Baron Bagge/Count Luna
By Alexander Lernet-Holenia
Eridanos, 240 pages, $23; $14, paper
Kafka, Rilke, Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Karl Kraus are just a few of the major creative figures who emerged from the ruins of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. And now, somewhat belatedly, the name of Alexander Lernet-Holenia
(1897-1976) must be added to the list, given the re-emergence in print of two previously translated Lernet-Holenia novellas, ”Baron Bagge” (1936) and ”Count Luna” (1955), and the first appearance in English of his novel
”The Resurrection of Maltravers” (1936).
Born into a military family, Lernet-Holenia underwent grim experiences while serving as a cavalry cadet in World War I-clearly a crucial period for him, because in all three of these works he not only evokes the end of an old order but also, as the narrator of ”Baron Bagge” puts it, the interval of
”time and space . . . between dying and death itself.” If the latter suggests the vagueness of a seance, be advised that making that interval utterly concrete is one of Lernet-Holenia`s chief goals-not because he wants to make the reader`s flesh creep but because he seems to believe, perhaps even knows, that the interval is fact.
Plot plays a peculiar, privileged role in Lernet-Holenia`s fiction, so a summary of what happens in these works may help to convey their flavor. In
”Maltravers” the aged title figure, an aristocratic con-man and rogue who has been briefly entombed after his apparent death, comes to his senses, adopts a new identity and proceeds to make his mischievous way through the world once more. The eponymous narrator of ”Baron Bagge” speaks of a World War I cavalry expedition into Hungary, where, after a reckless assault on a Russian detachment, the Baron and his comrades can find no further enemy forces and are welcomed by the populace with lavish hospitality-in the midst of which the Baron comes upon the love of his life. And in ”Count Luna” an industrialist inadvertently responsible for sending a man to a concentration camp feels certain that the fellow has survived the war and is mounting a shadowy campaign of revenge.
What no summary can convey, though, is that plot is where the lyrical or poetic element of Lernet-Holenia`s fiction resides; like Kafka, whom he otherwise does not resemble, Lernet-Holenia weaves his most intimate hopes and dreams into the texture of what happens next.
That is especially true of ”Baron Bagge,” in which, as one might expect, the cavalry charge marks the beginning of the interval ”between dying and death”-a fact that the reader quickly grasps yet almost refuses to accept, given the exquisitely imagined detail of this borderland of the afterlife. And in some ways ”Maltravers” is even more remarkable, a book that begins as a crystalline farce and then modulates downward toward resignation and release-the whole so prescient of what will emerge from the decaying, mid-1930s world the novel portrays that one can hardly believe it was written just then and not many years later.
Is Lernet-Holenia a minor or a major master, a Boccherini or a Mozart?
Lacking further evidence-these works are a fraction of his output-one cannot be sure. But certainly no one else could have written this self-elegy, spoken by the hero of ”Maltravers”: ”The meadows and the forest of the netherworld, the valley of shadows, the bridges, plated with chased gold foil, spanning the `noisy river,` the rails and ruts and defiles that sink down-I know where they are. They begin on the dark side of every village and city, and they lead further down and ever further toward midnight.”
