Milán Füst - This novel maps out the mind and emotions of Captain Storr as he focuses on a crucial question - is his young wife Lizzie unfaithful or not? But for every scenario that suggests infidelity, there are equally deceptive and valid viewpoints refuting such suggestions

Milán Füst, The story of my wife the reminiscences captain Störr .

Vintage Books, 1989.

This novel maps out the mind and emotions of Captain Storr as he focuses on a crucial question - is his young wife Lizzie unfaithful or not? But for every scenario that suggests infidelity, there are equally deceptive and valid viewpoints refuting such suggestions. Milan Fust, a schoolmaster, writer and innovative poet, was born in Hungary in 1888. "The Story of my Wife" has been published in more than half a dozen European languages. In 1967, at the age of 79 he was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature.

 

The Dutch sea captain, Jacob, narrator and protagonist of the late Hungarian poet-novelist Fust's 1957 work, is a man caught in the paralyzing grip of a implacable obsession. "My wife's been unfaithful," he declares in the opening line, "this much I have long suspected." That fixed idea, whether or not founded on truth, haunts him throughout the book-long interior monologue, set mostly in Paris and London. He himself feels free to engage in some dalliances, but his French wife Lizzy remains fixed in his mind as a treacherous, "depraved woman," a hussy of "loose" morals. Attentive readers, meanwhile, are given good reason to believe he is the helpless victim of a delusion. So mesmerized is Jacob that even after Lizzy's death in Barcelona (long after their divorce), he imagines he sees her fleetingly in the street. Her reappearance, he tells himself, gives meaning and purpose to his life"or else why go on living?" As it turns out, the brooding story is not about his wife, as the title ironically promises, but about his own futile life. - Publishers Weekly

"This novel is an enigmatic, bitter and brilliant work (.....) What makes The Story of My Wife utterly absorbing is Füst's ability to impart, through the central motif, the whole of his sea captain's biography (.....) Without any of the burdensome philosophical trappings of, say, Milan Kundera, Füst conveys magnificently the burdens of an unhappy life." - Justin Wintle

"Despite having waited more than 30 years for its American audience, The Story of My Wife has appeared, in some respects, not a minute too soon. Literary fashion has just caught up with it. (...) The novel inexhaustibly details jealousy but never documents love. It's about thwarted possession of a desirable other: small, fine, feminine. (...) Despite the colloquial tone of the narrative, excellently rendered by Ivan Sanders, Fust was a poet and literary scholar who offers us a protagonist as tentative as those of Kafka and as divisible as Dostoyevsky's. (...) The Story of My Wife is an important novel, but its greatness is miasmal. To close it is a relief." - Amy Edith Johnson

"(M)ore damaging is the vagueness misting everything in the story which results in Lizzie's unexplained activities seem usual and not in any way suspicious. (...) Not the least odd aspect of this idiosyncratic study of a tortured, tortuous mentality is the cosy banality of its conclusion." - Peter Kemp

"(T)he problems facing Füst's translator are awesome. (...) But irrespective of the basic Americanness of this translation, there is a strong quasi-British English element, resulting in unsettling inconsistencies of tone and register (...); some sentences have so many diverse sources that they are barely comprehensible (......) More worrying (...) is the randomness of equivalents for key repetitions, and the ad hoc merger of paragraphs, which both impede the search for rhythmic equivalence and threaten the balance of the work as a whole." - Peter Sherwood

The Story of My Wife is narrated by sometime (and then retired) sea-captain Jacob Störr, and while much of his account focuses on his wife Lizzie, this is, above all else, a very personal narrative. Störr is no expert at calm introspection, but Lizzie remains a mystery to him, and his struggles with that are a driving feature to his tortured narrative.
       For a man of action, and of the world, used to plying the high seas, he does have a surprisingly soft, passive side, letting his doubts gnaw at him -- and often dealing with them only by writing (at times in what amounts to a diary, like a schoolboy -- though at one point he actively corresponds with himself, writing fictitious letters to make more of an impression). So, for example, he recalls:
     I still remember how furious I was, how humiliated I felt -- I kept making entries in my notebook all night long.
       The well-travelled Dutch captain was taken by the: "French girl, very much a flirt and very ticklish" and took her as his wife. Away from their home a lot at first, he couldn't get her flirtatious nature out of his mind, and became consumed and obsessed by the thought that she must be cheating on him. How central this is to the novel is clear from the opening sentence, as he puts his overriding worry and concern at the very forefront of his account:
     My wife's been unfaithful, this much I have long suspected.
       The coy mistress has a more realistic outlook, Lizzie even at one point telling her husband:
     Look here, my dear Jacques, I can't tell you everything, you know that. I couldn't even if I wanted to ... You don't either.
       Indeed, while his passion for Lizzie is often near-blinding -- if sometimes of the white-rage jealous fury kind, too -- Störr isn't unrealistic in his outlook, much of the time. Indeed, he admits he doesn't have much need for, or interest in, supposed frankness:
For where does all that frankness get us ? One never really know what to make of one another's version of the truth; each one of us sticks to his own story, and we proceed alongside of each other, towards a dead end.
       Pouring out his heart, Störr admits to a variety of missteps and misinterpretations -- while also continuing to harbor justified doubts. Lizzie's actions and behavior certainly invite them -- yet there's rarely much certainty for Störr (who nevertheless has no problem going off half-cocked, as he repeatedly does).
       In fact, Lizzie is not the only woman in Störr's life, and whatever doubts there might be about her sometimes questionable behavior, there are none about his. The hulking, gregarious figure often takes almost unthinking action -- among the exciting incidental stories is of him captaining a ship on which a fire breaks out, his behavior here arguably reckless, too, and yet ultimately successful -- -- and at other times ties himself into knots trying to do the right thing. Women certainly befuddle him; he expresses his feelings for another woman's sister revealingly:
And do you know how I love her ? Like one loves a daughter, yet not quite the same way. Miserably, in other words, perversely; with the knowledge that this is corruption itself, like everything else I was destined to go through in life. What should he do who is too old for his emotions -- tear out his heart ?
       Störr is too jealous to be happy with Lizzie -- even if she would let him. But then, as he wonders:
But why be happy, anyway ? For all we know, happiness could be our stubbornest obsession.
       Whatever he hoped to find in, and with, Lizzie, he is incapable of realizing it. His account is, ultimately, one of regrets -- yet it's hard to imagine him acting differently if he could do it over; indeed, he fails elsewhere too (even as he eventually comes to enjoy great financial success):
     Oh, I loved her, of that there can be no doubt, loved her deeply, madly even... Yet look where it's got me...
       The Story of My Wife isn't a simple, chronological account of an ultimately failed relationship. Störr revisits both happy and difficult times with Lizzie, their life together complicated by their inability (or unwillingness) to establish a true home -- they are both flighty figures, and travel far and wide, together and separately; they don't have children. Their 'homelessness' is yet another prominent feature of their relationship.
       Störr imagines some of Lizzie's adventures, but can rarely piece them together; she toys with him, too, making it more complicated (and frustrating) for him. But The Story of My Wife is mainly the stories of Störr's life and adventures -- an odd, fascinating mix, much of which is nicely casually related. Several of the incidents are shocking -- including one youthful more-than-indiscretion, as well an actual (more or less justified) homicide -- but Störr's awareness and acknowledgement of his own weaknesses, and of his inability to transcend them, make him a fascinating -- and fascinatingly problematic -- character.
       There's a sometimes odd tone to the book -- likely, one imagines, as some of the reviews suggest, due to the translation -- and it's an oddly turned book too, but it is consistently compelling and does impress. - M.A.Orthofer

 

www.goodreads.com/book/show/1053069.The_Story_Of_My_Wife

excerpt:
My wife’s been unfaithful, this much I have long suspected. But that she should take up with a man like that … I stand over six feet tall, weigh 210 pounds, am a veritable giant, in short, the sort of person who-as they say-only has to spit on someone and the man is finished.
That’s what I first thought I would do to Monsieur Dedin … Ah, but this is not where I should begin … It’s no use; I still get worked up when I think of him.
The truth of the matter is that getting married was a mistake-all the more since up until then I had very little to do with women, I was cold by nature. I look back on my early youth and find that the only story of an erotic nature worth recollecting is the following: I could not have been more than thirteen. The place was a park in the Dutch city of Sneek, in Friesland, where we then lived. A governess sat in the park with a small child, whom she kept admonishing:
„Veux-tu obéir, veux-tu obéir?”
I loved the sound of the words. She also said to the child:
„Vite, vite, dépêche-toi donc.”
And I liked that too. It’s quite possible I decided right then and there that I would marry a French woman. At any rate, I enjoyed listening to that sweet melody. Then, as though by divine inspiration, I walked to the edge of the park, tore out a page from my exercise-book, and wrote two words on it, in Dutch (for I could not yet then write in French, nor did I speak the language, though I did understand it when others spoke it).
„Greppel, greppel,” I wrote, that is, let’s lie in the ditch a little. There was indeed a rather deep, grassy ditch nearby. With the piece of paper I walked back to the governess and stood meekly before her, looking at her sweetly, the way I did when as a little boy I was sent with a list to the corner grocer. Then I held up the little piece of paper in front of her.
Naturally, the governess thought I was crazy.
She understood the word but not the thing I was getting at. True, I was a good-sized lad and could have been taken for a boy of eighteen, but I did wear short pants and knee socks; what is more I had on a nice blue sailor suit top, with a bow my mother herself tied that morning. I still had rosy cheeks then, though I admit my ears were also red, and large-sized ears they were, too. But my teeth were white and my eyes fearless-I was a boy with earnest eyes. And I was not yet corrupted, honestly I wasn’t. Just how I got the courage to put those words down I still can’t say.
The governess simply stared at me, she nearly swallowed me with her eyes.
„Que c’est que to veux?” she asked finally.
But I was not embarrassed even then. I stood there graciously, then ran away. I did the same the following day and the day after.
The governess, as soon as she saw me coming, would start laughing-she laughed so hard she nearly fell over. Arms akimbo, she continued laughing, and the child with her laughed too. But I stood my ground, my gaze remained steadfast; I did not budge.
„Mon pauvre garçon,” she intoned sympathetically, laughing still, though also blushing hotly. „Eh bien, tu ne sais pas ce qu’il te faut.” A woman of the world, I thought. „My poor boy,” she repeated; „you have no idea what’s bothering you, do you?” And she stared into my eyes, wonderstruck, like the hot sun, and even pinched my face. Whereupon I ran away.
Finally, though, she caught on. Why not? she must have asked herself. At least this sort of thing can’t lead to scandal or other problems. The thought of the ditch appealed to her too. There was also a little bridge there with overgrown bushes underneath. After discovering that the park-keeper passed by only twice a day (because of the summer heat, the place was deserted most of the time), she met me by that bridge early in the morning, bringing with her a basket of food or a jug of milk. She was uncombed, sleepy-oh, I was crazy about her. For it should be understood: I was a young lad and I could still feel the warmth of her bed on her.
At home I accounted for my early departure with some lie or other; I tried to avoid my mother anyway and walked about all day in the sunshine as if in a dream… This lasted the entire summer. Then I lost all interest in women.
A year later, one of my uncles, my favorite, my thoroughly depraved uncle, whom I happened to be visiting then, set out a hooked ladder for me so I could climb up to the upper floor of a neighboring house; each night I observed a beautiful lady taking a bath. It was summertime then, too, and in the sweltering heat she kept the windows of her apartment open. One day, while hovering between the ground and the sky, I decided to land on her window sill. So as not to scare her, I whispered to her:
„A little boy is here.”
Rather than getting scared, she turned very somber in her bath. Actually, she knew me already by sight. Then, without saying a word, she motioned me to come closer. I stepped down from the ledge, and she with a hazy look in her eyes embraced me.

And this is just what I am getting at - that she wasn’t at all indifferent then. And it is precisely that scene, that sudden flare-up, that I kept going back to when I felt she might not have any feelings left for me.
Once again I thought of it. And it is the reason why - miserable as she was when she came after me in her robe - I didn’t say anything. I didn’t ask, didn’t look into her eyes, didn’t try to puzzle out her secret. I wouldn’t have, under any circumstances. I never did like showdowns and final pronouncements.
„If you like, I can even be more frank,” a hot-blooded classmate of mine once told me at the academy. And my response even then was: „Don’t bother. Let’s not be that frank with each other.” And I hold to this even today. For where does all that frankness get us? One never really knows what to make of another’s version of the truth; each one of us sticks to his own story, and we proceed alongside of each other, toward a dead end.
Which wouldn’t be half so bad. But certain words may be uttered, fatal words, which may not even be true, or not completely. As soon as she blurts out things like: I don’t love you, I can no longer live with you, the damage is done - she can’t really take it back the next day, can she? It’s those damn conventions again. I hate you, she says. There can be some truth in that. But if those nights we spent in Granada were any indication, the matter was not so simple. And for that reason, it was still better to be cautious.
In any case, where are the people who are perfectly suited for each other? Who will show me these blessed ones? Life, alas, is one long test of endurance.

Milán Füst

A friend of Karinthy and Kosztolányi, Milán Füst, was born in 1888 in Budapest. He was a poet, writer, scholar of aesthetics, doctor of jurisprudence, and teacher of economics, who published his works at his own expense. At the end of his life, when he taught aesthetics at the University of Budapest, Füst became a true legend. Füst is said to have been nominated for the Nobel in 1967; he died in July of that year. Being Jewish he survived World War II in the state so poignantly expressed by George Kongrad in the preface to Füst’s novel—in “inner exile.” He spent these years rarely leaving his house in Budapest. By then he was married to a well-off former student of his. Füst worked on The Story of My Wife: Reminiscences of Captain Störr (Vintage Books, 1989) for seven years, finishing it in 1942.
The Story of My Wife is a monologue of a husband known as the Captain. Has my wife cheated on me? That is the question. He is sure she did, but he is unable to find the proof that would put an end to his doubt in her infidelity. He doesn’t question her fidelity; it is her unfaithfulness that he probes. Or maybe it is his own. But his investigation yields nothing. The deeper his rant plunges us into his mind, the more ethereal his wife Lizzy becomes, and the less we know about her life. Is the Captain mad? Or is it a human mind touching one of love’s edges? What is this edge? The Story of My Wife is often said to be a novel of jealousy, but I would not limit it to this feeling. The Captain’s jealousy is the Ariadne’s thread that lets us not lose ourselves in the labyrinth of his mind. Or of our own? Is his jealousy a reflection of the Captain’s tragic search for himself in another? “Is my wife cheating on me?” asks the Captain while rushing to his next amorous rendezvous.
It took Ivan Sanders three years to complete the translation of The Story of My Wife after Füst’s widow approached him. He notes that it is one of those rare Hungarian novels that has nothing to do with Hungary; the only Hungarian name in it is spelled in an un-Hungarian way. The novel is set in Paris, London and Holland – places the writer never travelled to. Its real location is the human mind. I asked Ivan Sanders what the most difficult part of the translation was. He told me that Füst was a most unusual writer because he invented his own Hungarian: His language is full of archaisms and colloquialisms, tortuous constructions and flippant aphorisms. He goes from lofty to pedestrian, from eloquent to vernacular. It was through this language that Füst brilliantly conveyed the contradictions and ambiguities inherent in the main character. Füst was on the verge of parody, but he never crossed the line into it, which is very hard to recreate in English. Sanders reminded me that Füst grew up in Budapest that was still largely German-speaking, particularly among its assimilated Jewish families. He mentioned that Füst’s critics often said he was “yiddling” (from Yiddish), making fun of his Hungarian. Sanders disagreed, telling me that the writer’s cadences and sentence structure reflected his multi-lingual heritage and presented a riddle to the translator, who too had to invent a whole new language to be able to translate Füst.
What is ultimately gained in translation, especially when writer and translator coincide in one human being? When Nyugat writers slipped on their translator capes, bringing a foreign soul into the native body of their language, they transformed the native soul and body as well. But often the translation of their work into English has a whole other layer. Many of these translations (our gain) are reverberations of one fundamental loss: exile. Three major contemporary translators left Hungary after the Revolution of 1956: John Bátki, a U.S.-based poet and recipient of O. Henry Award (translator of Krúdy); British poet George Szirtes, honored by many prizes both for poetry and translation, inlcuding T.S. Eliot Prize (translator of Krúdy, Kosztolányi, and Márai); and Ivan Sanders, Columbia University professor and cultural critic. Paul Tabori, a Hungarian-born novelist (translator of Krúdy and Karinthy) has resided in England since the 1930s. Even though the translators do not belong to one generation (Tabori was born in 1908, Szirtes in 1948), I wonder if their work is partly about bringing the native soul into a body that is both foreign and native. As a reader of these translations, for whom both Hungarian and English are foreign, I felt the restrained intensity of what I sensed was also a recollection. I wondered if the loneliness of Hungarian, this remote and peculiar language, called for an experience of loneliness to serve as a bridge for translation. Curiously, in the spirit of Kosztolányi’s gentle inversions, reading these novels transported me into a state of tender solitude and made me feel much less alone in this world.
- Leo Kepler