The Eternal Philistine

by HORVATH, ODON VONAUSLANDER, SHALOM

• ISBN13: 9781935554479
• ISBN10: 1935554476
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 2012-03-27
• Publisher: Melville House

Summary

This important, never-before-translated work by a major yet overlooked mid-20th century writer, is a brutally funny look at the human comedy on the eve of Europers"s descent into Fascism. A classic, prescient work of pre-WWII literature by a major Weimar author about a young man who is a failed used car salesman. In search of another means to live the high life, he decides to travel by train from Berlin to Madrid to see the Worldrs"s Fair-and hopefully meet a beautiful, rich woman who will provide for his every whim. Itrs"s a highly stylized, and at times raucously funny, tale of the almost-absurd: a dark and satiric look at Europeans, and especially Germans, from all levels of society on the brink of cataclysmic Fascism. And as such, it is, perhaps, the most significant work of this important writerrs"s oeuvre. Von Horvathrs"s work fearlessly tried to warn of the dangers of rising fascism and the militarization of Europe (which led to his having to flee Germany and Austria suc- cessively). His characters here are adrift in their acquisitive desires, making them vulnerable to the manipulations and propaganda of the State-and making this novel brilliantly foresightful in its understanding of politics and human nature at a crucial point in modern European history.

Author Biography

ÖDÖN VON HORVÁTH (1901–1939) was born near Trieste, the son of a Hungarian diplomat who moved the family constantly. Horváth would subsequently say of himself, “I am a mélange of Old Austria; Hungarian, Croat, Czech, German; alas, nothing Se- mitic.” Although his first language was Hungarian, he went to high school in Vienna and college in Munich, and began writing plays in German. Leaving school, he settled in Berlin, where in 1931 his play Italian Night debuted to rave reviews—except from the Nazi press, which reviled him. His next play, Tales from the Vienna Woods, starring Peter Lorre, drew an even stronger, equally divided re- sponse. When the Nazis came to power in 1933 he relocated to Vienna, but on the day of the Anschluss—March 13, 1938—he fled to Budapest. From there, he soon moved to Paris, but on June 1, 1938, he was killed in a freak accident when, caught in a rainstorm coming out of a theater on the Champs-Élysées, he took shelter under a tree that was hit by lightning; von Horváth was struck by a falling tree limb and killed instantly. He was 36 years old and had published 21 plays and three novels—The Age of the Fish, A Child of Our Time, and The Eternal Philistine.