Celestial Harmonies by Peter Esterhazy (2004) HC NEW

Book Description

Princes, counts, commanders, diplomats, bishops, and patrons of the arts, revered, respected, and occasionally feared by their contemporaries, the Esterházy family was among the greatest and most powerful aristocrats in Hungarian history. Celestial Harmonies is the intricate chronicle of this remarkable family, a story spanning seven centuries of epic conquest, tragedy, triumph, and near annihilation.

Told by Péter Esterházy, a scion of this populous family, Celestial Harmonies unfolds in two parts, revealing two versions of the Esterházy story. Book One is a compilation of short passages about the Esterházy men, sons reflecting on their fathers, from the earliest days of the Hapsburg Empire to its demise in the early twentieth century and beyond. At one point, the father is seen fighting the Turks and writing psalms, at another he is described as herding geese and feathering his already well-feathered nest. In the nineteenth century, he is caught cavorting with his mistress while looking after matters of state; in the 1940s and 1950s, he is seen helping to organize a number of conspiracies, then reporting them (and himself) to the secret police. Conversely, he is also seen apprehended and tortured by the authorities. The father is a monster and he is an angel, but, above all, he is a man in search of his God.

Book Two chronicles the final chapter in the life of the Esterházy family, from the short Communist take over of 1919 to World War Two and its aftermath, when Hungary fell to Soviet rule and the Esterházys succumbed to dispossession, resettlement, and impoverishment. Here, Péter Esterházy reveals the story of his immediate family, especially his father, Mátyás Esterházy, who was born into great wealth and privilege in 1919. He worked as a field hand and parquet floor layer under the hard-line Communists, then, later on, as a translator making a meager living. It is a biography of a man who, despite the brutal tides of history, never relinquished the humanist values that were his birthright, and that were as inseparable from him as his illustrious name and heritage.

On the first page of Celestial Harmonies, the father is seen as a baroque grand seigneur; on the last, he is seated by his typewriter, bereft of everything except for the one word, "homeland." The individual stories of these "fathers" -- separated by centuries -- are as complex as the history of Hungary itself. Dazzling in scope and profound in implication, Celestial Harmonies is fiction at its richest and most awe-inspiring.

From the Publisher

The Esterházys, one of Europe's most prominent aristocratic families, are closely linked to the rise and fall of the Hapsburg Empire. Princes, counts, commanders, diplomats, bishops, and patrons of the arts, revered, respected, and occasionally feared by their contemporaries, their story is as complex as the history of Hungary itself. Celestial Harmonies is the intricate chronicle of this remarkable family, a saga spanning seven centuries of epic conquest, tragedy, triumph, and near annihilation. Told by Péter Esterházy, a scion of this populous clan, Celestial Harmonies is dazzling in scope and profound in implication. It is fiction at its most awe-inspiring.

This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.

Reviews

The Washington Post

In a recent interview, Peter Esterhazy joked that the number of palaces he owns "can be most accurately approximated by the number 0." Not true. Celestial Harmonies is a multi-winged palace of a book, inhabited by Esterhazys but open to all. — Dennis Drabelle

The New Yorker

Esterházy is best known for playful, intricate experiments that bounce jauntily along to rules of their own devising. Here he presents a Hungarian family saga, albeit an intricate and playful one. The novel is divided into two books, the first containing fragmented glimpses of five centuries of the aristocratic Esterházy family, the second a somewhat more conventional narrative of the family’s fortunes under Communism. Animating the book are a number of father figures—among them Esterházy’s actual father—that owe much to the Central European literary tradition of the foolish, magical paterfamilias, and perhaps even more to Donald Barthelme’s (dead) version. Ultimately, Esterházy’s attempt to explode epic until it resembles the shards and mirrors of his own style doesn’t quite live up to its ambition, though it yields many extraordinary moments.

Publishers Weekly

Splicing the fine-grained nostalgia of Nabokov's Speak, Memory with the anarchic spirit of Looney Toons, Esterhazy has created a vast anti-epic. The writer, whose family name holds a place in Hungarian history equivalent to that of the Churchills in British history, takes advantage of his genealogy by making numerous references to his many distinguished ancestors-the very title refers to a Haydn piece commissioned by one of the author's forefathers. Divided into two sections, the novel circles its mark with cunning and humor, lighting on strange outcroppings of family and national lore. The first section contains 371 "sentences," which are really micro to mid-range narratives, all of them about a "father," a term that constantly shifts in meaning: "It goes without saying. My father had many faces, one with a moustache, one with a double chin, one like a Cumanian, et cetera." Sometimes there is a direct reference to Esterhazy's real father ("My father lost all he had, not to mention the estates, the fish ponds, the forests stretching up to Mor, the houses, the palaces, the stocks and bonds..."); sometimes the father is mythological; sometimes he is extracted from another literary text. The novel's second section relates more conventionally the struggle of the Esterhazy family after 1945, when the Communists expropriated their property. Peter's father drinks, gets a job as an agricultural laborer and endures by withdrawing into an inner exile. The patient reader who perseveres through the sometimes knotty Magyar references and nods to writers like Witold Gombrowicz, James Joyce and Donald Barthelme will be rewarded with a sense of having submitted to an astonishing if exhausting outburst of creativity. This is a belated 20th-century masterpiece. (Mar. 12) Forecast: With a little luck, Esterhazy's novel might find the same kind of success as Peter N das's Book of Memories (1997), another big book from a modern-day Eastern European master. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

As anyone reasonably familiar with Continental history knows, the Esterhazys of Hungary are one of the great families of Europe. Scion of the family, the author is a prominent novelist publishing in English for the first time. This chef-d'oeuvre reconstructs his family history in most unusual terms; anyone expecting a costume drama will be sorely disappointed. Instead, Esterhazy sets up his father as a kind of archetype ("The-here my father's name follows-name is legendary") and follows him throughout history, where he appears as any number of Esterhazy ancestors at key points, from the Turkish storming of Budapest to the tragedy of World War II and the postwar era. One senses throughout what a weight such an illustrious heritage can be and how much it has heightened typical father-son tensions for the author. The result is not exactly a novel but more like an extended prose poem on family, nation, and history, and though it can be exasperating at times one has to concede that, yeah, it's brilliant. Perhaps a hard sell in public libraries, except where literary fiction is read, but essential for academic libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 9/15/03]. - Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal" Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Heir to a famous name, Esterhazy (She Loves Me, 1997, etc.), drawing on his family's history, creates a lightly fictionalized portrait vividly illustrating the clan's survival through turbulent times. The story is told in two parts: the first is a fast-paced, allusive take on Esterhazy's paternal ancestors, who received their name from the Evening Star in the first centuries of the second millennium; the second, more personal and less allusive, is Esterhazy's telling of his father's particular story. Book One, rich in quotes from writers ranging from Bellow to Beckett, is a long, quick riff, in short paragraphs, on fatherhood all the way back ("My father is metaphorical"). Esterhazy recalls a range of ancestors: one was a patron of Josef Haydn's, another was running the Vatican in 1621, yet another concluded peace too early with Napoleon. In Book Two, the author recalls the changes in his father's life that were inevitable results of changes in Hungary itself as the country briefly became Communist, in 1919, then a reactionary republic tied to Nazi Germany, then Communist again until 1989. Esterhazy's father, born in 1919, began life as a count, with numerous castles and a great fortune, but when the Communists came to power after WWII and the family was forcibly removed to a small country town, he had to work as a fieldhand, a floor layer, and finally a translator. Despite the privations-little money, bad food, police surveillance-the family was close and often happy, perhaps because both parents were adaptable and uncomplaining. So, rather than a lament about how the mighty have fallen, the story is a more rueful tale of how the mighty coped: Esterhazy's father was arrested and beatenup during the 1956 uprising against the Russians, and, at school, the young Esterhazy himself was picked on by a rabid Communist teacher, though his peers didn't mind that he was a former count. Daunting at first, then richly rewarding. A major achievement.

About the Author

Péter Esterházy, a member of one of Europe's most prominent aristocratic families, was born in Budapest in 1950. His books, published mostly in Europe, are considered to be significant contributions to postwar literature.

Table of Contents