Emil Szittya - I am delighted that I am the act of negation. The first prostitute in Greece. Aretino's unpublished writings. The pills with which de Sade spiced his festivals. I took Lautréamont to the madhouse. I have created Paris, Rome, and the Balkan brothels. I hate the giving that God put in us as a curse. I have created the fairy tale 1001 Nights.

 

Emil Szittya, The Hashish Films of Customs Officer Henri Rousseau and Tatyana Joukof Shuffles the Cards. Translated, with an introduction, by W. C. Bamberger. Wakefield Press, 2025 [1916]

Emil Szittya’s earliest known work of significance, The Hashish Films of Customs Officer Henri Rousseau and Tatyana Joukof Shuffles the Cards, was published in German in Budapest in 1916, yet it portrays the hallucinatory Paris the author had chosen for a temporary home at that time. It is a strange literary work as international and untethered as the author himself had been, a symbolic map of Montparnasse and memory that incorporates the visual world of the painters around him. It is a notational, hashish-infused dream diary in which Szittya plays with childhood legends and gender roles as he restlessly sifts through poverty and the underworld, splicing together and severing apart synesthetic sensations and visions.

Prose poems, for lack of a better word, Szittya’s “hashish films” were almost lost to time but can be recognized as sitting alongside the work of such contemporaries as Blaise Cendrars and Guillaume Apollinaire. They nevertheless read like an anomaly, reflecting the author’s lifelong refusal to ally himself with any literary or artistic movement.

The subtitle -- (A Novel against Psicho-Analise) -- claims this is a novel, but as the title itself -- The Hashish Films of Customs Officer Henri Rousseau and Tatyana Joukof Shuffles the Cards -- suggests, this is anything but a traditional novel. For all its claim of (presumably) presenting 'hashish films' this work from the early era of cinema -- it was first published in 1915 or 1916 -- is not particularly cinematic, either. (Henri Rousseau -- who, yes, was also a douanier in his time ... -- does, however, rate some mentions, as does Szittya-friend Blaise Cendrars (lauded as: "the only poet now living").)

There are seventeen chapters or sections to the 'novel', and most consist of numbered bits -- often just a single paragraph or sentence --, mostly half a dozen or so (though 'The Paintings' does extend for eighteen); a few pieces do without numbering. Many come with dedications and some with descriptions -- or both: 'An Indian Journey Pondered in Summer' is presented, parenthetically, as: "A Song for Emy Henings" (read: Emmy Hennings).

In his Introduction, translator Bamberger suggests: "there is something of the feel of "automatic writing" in Die Haschischfilms" and much here certainly is very free-flowing. At one point Szittya writes: "Now I cavort with visions", which can well be said to sum up his approach in much of this collection -- generally personal (the "I" is prominent throughout) and certainly fantastical, in the broadest sense (and, yes, one might feel much here is drug-induced -- with Szittya addressing at least some of its use in the section titled 'Gabriele's Opinion of my Hashish Hours'). More fundamentally, as Szittya notes in one piece: "I want to disperse boredom in metamorphosing-style formulas"; he certainly seems to give that a good go .....

There is little story here, yet much still is compelling -- from the very first piece, the opening of 'Sometimes':

Around 9 o'clock. An asylum in which, through no fault of my own, I lost Verlaine. A red-letter day. And Cendrars, in a drunken state, recounts tales of Russian monks, of women under bridges, of farmer Gaborwiegh. I just lie far below and look at the noses of Baudelaire and Villon. Some believe that we met out of love.

There is considerable personal reflection -- notably in 'Envy', in which he resignedly already finds: "And I am already so old" (despite not having yet reached thirty ...) and complains that: "Nothing has happened to me that was truly an experience" -- indeed, that: "I have never experienced most of my journey". (Amusingly, too, he notes here: "my big mistake was that I had too many professor friends".)

The reaches in the writing suggest the elusiveness of the 'experience' he seeks

Reestablish slavery ! The world should become a huge field where only poppies grow. Shatter every mirror ! -- In Nirvana the souls of the deceased become black birds. The snake is dead and the clocks and cars have broken down. And the wings of the eagles reek of manure piles.

He writes much of traveling far and wide, but there are no destinations that can deliver what he seeks; as he notes in 'Gabriele's Opinion of my Hashish Hours': "We seek Paris in vain" (even as he writes from and about there several times).

The subtitle suggests also a specific purpose to this work (and, presumably, approach) -- with Bamberger citing Walter Fähnders going so far as to say (in an Afterword to a collection of Szittya's writings) it is: "like a double-insult: not only aimed at psychoanalysis, but at 'the novel' as well". If insult aimed at 'the novel', it is curiously phrased; perhaps instead the focus should be on Szittya's insistence on calling it 'a novel' (and hence that it be read and considered as such). There is some structure here -- notably in the various pieces -- and some sense of a whole, but the form is very much Szittya's own, a far cry from most things novelistic. Self-reflection, in its various shades, dominates the work -- arguably as Szittya's own attempt at understanding and presenting (his) self, in determined opposition (or denial) of a psychoanalytic approach, most obviously in 'The Bordello', with its seven sections, each of which closes with the refrain: "I've already made my mother cry many times". (Elsewhere he admits: "And sometimes the nervous-sad eyes of my mother emerge from my dreams, like the autumnal image of a hospital"; one imagines that (especially) for all his protestations, psychoanalysts would have loved to have him on their couch.....)

Even as he reports here that: "now I have women and flowers and money", 'The Bordello' is a litany of disappointment -- though notably he also writes: "And I still dream poetry" (not least: rather, presumably, than dreaming Freudian dreamscapes). Not yet thirty, his isn't the usual youthful world-weariness, but he is physically worn out: "I am very, very tired", he notes, and: "I already have dull eyes and flabby arms" -- and:

I am already bent over, and I have never been satisfied by love. And my ankles hurt. And I know I am on my way to getting fat and having gout, and sometimes I get so weak that many tear the mask from my face. I still have only the idea of the desire for grass.

And, as he also notes: "And also, I no longer have a personal desire".

There are flights of grand personal fantasy, but even in these he is brought back down to earth and reality, as in the closing piece in 'Portrait of Jacques the Belly Slicer and an Evening in the Boudoir of Frau Dr. Geller':

And I am delighted that I am the act of negation. The first prostitute in Greece. Aretino's unpublished writings. The pills with which de Sade spiced his festivals. I took Lautréamont to the madhouse. I have created Paris, Rome, and the Balkan brothels. I hate the giving that God put in us as a curse. I have created the fairy tale 1001 Nights. It takes only a moment for me to make the women beautiful in love's frenzy. And at daybreak I sit broken in my room and play cards with my servant.

A nice summing-up comes in 'Morning', in the piece that reads:

I have stolen myself from a film. Now I am strolling along the ocean shore. And I still have not spliced my paragraphs into the proper order.

The disorder remains -- but then traditional order would have required and resulted in a very different kind of work.

Szittya returns to the cinematic identification later, as well, writing in 'Symptoms of a Nervous Shock':

I was the films in a suburban cinema somewhere behind the Bastille; sometimes young girls even tell me so in their sentimental and banal poems; and somehow I already must have been in all the charity wards of the world.

The Hashish Films of Customs Officer Henri Rousseau and Tatyana Joukof Shuffles the Cards is a very loose, odd collection(-cum-novel), of reflection and wondering, very much grounded in personal experience yet only so revealing. Szittya suggests: "The world is only beautiful when it has no purpose", and there seems to be a striving for that here. It's not the sort of thing all readers will have the patience for, but at barely more than fifty pages it is an unusual trip worth taking. - M.A.Orthofer

https://www.complete-review.com/reviews/austria/szittyae.htm

Emil Szittya was the most established pseudonym of the Hungarian-born Adolf Schenk (1886–1964). A vagabond in both his writing and his practice, his life intersected with everyone throughout Europe in the years of high modernism, whether he was setting up a publishing house with Blaise Cendrars in Paris, crossing paths with Lenin and Trotsky in Zürich, seeing the birth of Dada in the Cabaret Voltaire with his friends Hugo Ball and Emmy Hennings, or writing the first books on artists such as Chaïm Soutine and Marc Chagall. Szittya settled in Paris later in life, fighting in the Resistance during the war and working at the café Les Deux Magots before dying of tuberculosis. His many works, in Hungarian, German, and French, include novels, essays, art criticism, and a history of suicide.

Max Brod - Schloss Nornepygge, published in 1908, was hailed as "the most modern of modern books" and transports us into the world of Walder Nornepygge, a rich, civilization-weary, and overly refined young man in a desperate search for his identity.

Max Brod, Schloss Nornepygge. 1908

A meteoric rise with a rebelliously decadent key work: In the literary world of Berlin's bohemians, this novel made its young Prague author instantly famous and gave modernism its signature. Finally, the most important of the early, sensational texts by Franz Kafka's friend and estate administrator can be rediscovered.

Schloss Nornepygge, published in 1908, was hailed as "the most modern of modern books" and transports us into the world of Walder Nornepygge, a rich, civilization-weary, and overly refined young man in a desperate search for his identity. With each chapter, he commits himself to a new lifestyle, pursues different ideas, and throws himself into the arms of new loves. He thus traverses the entire spectrum of life plans conceivable at the time, between Eros and Satanism, Romanticism, adventurism, debauchery, and asceticism. In doing so, he not only changes styles like clothes, but also immediately disenchants them as mere illusions. How deeply was Kafka influenced by this early Brod, with his ingenious experiments and all-encompassing ironization of the world? This becomes clear only when reading this critical edition, which is supplemented by contemporary reviews, an afterword, and commentaries.

it probably wouldn’t buy you much, even if you really were the one who possibly wrote the first english review of max brod’s debut novel »schloss nornepygge« on the net. it’s the very same novel that brod published when he wasn’t even twenty five years old. at the same time, »schloss nornepygge« is a novel hardly anyone gives a damn about these days. still, i can tell you: it doesn’t feel half bad to be the first one writing an english language review of a forgotten novel and to clock in as number one from time to time, even though it’s not as cool as one might think, especially when writing in sloppy english. what i won’t be able to answer in the course of this review: why »schloss nornepygge« has not been reissued and could only be purchased as a relatively expensive reproduction or facsimile since it was included in the collected works of max brod, published by kurt wolff around 1918.

speaking of brod … did you know that some whizz-kid made up the term »brodernism« in an article featured in »the los angeles review of books« just days ago? although he didn’t explicitly refer to brod, he does seem to have literature like »schloss nornepygge« in mind, therefore making max brod something like the »godfather of brodernism«.

back to nornepygge: in this very castle, or more precisely in one of its lodges, walder, a noble descendant of the nornepygge line, socializes with the four club members johanna lock (a german poet and thinker), jean d’ormi (a police inspector/police spy), john rocketby (who in bourgeois life plies the trade of an assassin) and guachen (a hunchbacked dwarf and also a theater director who runs a »satanic varieté«). together they make up the »Differenzentierten-Loge«, the club of the differentiated. they are people of refined style, not necessarily in regard to fashion: what is taken for granted should not be done or said amongst them. therein, however, as guachen acknowledges, lies an ideal that they all strive for without ever achieving it. for walder, nonetheless, who has been writing a philosophical treatise on »freedom« for many years, differentiating himself from the ordinary is the only way to be free, as he let’s us know. below nornepygge castle with its parks and below the same hilltop on which schloss nornepygge and a handful of castles stand, lies the »city«, which, like kafka’s village in »the castle«, remains nameless and which walder nornepygge only knows from his elevated vantage point, as there is little reason for him, the nobleman, to enter the sphere of mortals. up to this point, it is almost an inverted version of kafka’s text, in that we experience a story from the perspective of the castle’s owner, who looks down on the village/city and holds rural or ordinary life in low regard. in brod’s as well as in kafka’s text, the city or village are nameless. but these are not the only similarities between the two novels, which were written roughly 15 years apart. guachen, with his dark driving forces, who in walder’s view embodies the completely distinct and ideal person, attracts walder nornepygge’s fascination, which at the same time leaves him in a clinch with his high father, who recognizes in guachen nothing less than a very bad influence. nevertheless, to say that the conflict between father and son is a specifically kafkaesque problem would be a misconception, as it is closer to a generational problem that was vividly reflected in literature at this particular time or epoch.

in the course of the first chapters, walder seems to succumb to the fascination of the hunchback dwarf (who also has to stand trial for an ominous death), while simultaneously expressing a certain contempt for women, at least right before his relatives from stettin appear: uncle alex and his two daughters, one of them the enchanting and gentle natured charlotte. it is only then that the novel quite unexpectedly and abruptly steers in new directions, as it will do over and over again within its 500 pages. walder leaves the club of the differentiated, undergoing his first of at least three transformations. for as the novel makes clear, walder nornepygge struggles with being a differentiated aristocrat and being a differentiated aristocrat only, as he would like to be everything and everyone at the same time, but seldomly a differentiated aristocrat only. at times it almost feels as if a close relative or ancestor of musil’s ulrich, the man without qualities himself, was to emerge right in front of you: walder, despairing on numerous occassions, offers us a glimpse into his fragile soul by telling us that he, in truth, is completely indifferent to everything in life, that everything is therefore of absolutely equal importance to him and that he would like to be everything and everyone at the same time.

it is precisely this arrangement that enables brod to (over the course of 500 pages) lead us through a broad panopticon of early 20th century society, including bon vivants such as polledi, or lovers of the orgiastic, as well as numerous other aristocrats, revolutionaries (such as oironet) or the ascetic friend from walder’s youth, lodolf. or reckleiner, who is presented as a commercial genius in exile. or counts, who gladly leave their wives to walder. in places, the novel can be said to bear resemblance to many nineteenth century novels and their realist or naturalist aesthetics. and indeed: compared to kafka’s novels, which almost completely refuse to be categorized or to be put into context in a literary-historical sense (due to their subject matter or language) and therefore seem to be quite timeless, »schloss nornepygge« shows a strong signature of its time — at least telling from its language. even compared to kafka’s first novel, »der verschollene« / »amerika«, the language at times seems loaded with pathos or interspersed with long monologues and observations that hint at a neurotic protagonist — quite symptomatic of modernist literature around 1900, also called »the literature of fin de siecle« or »decadence«. and yet »schloss nornepygge« is everything but a typical novel of its time, and despite similarity on the surface level is hardly comparable to mann’s »buddenbrooks« or schnitzler’s »der weg ins freie«. it’s due to its many satirical elements that the novel draws more parallels to flaubert’s »bouvard and pecuchet« than to mann’s or schnitzler’s novel, as bouvard and pecuchet tend to reinvent themselves from chapter to chapter, just like walder nornepygge. and it is precisely the humor, the ridiculousness with which the protagonist is portrayed, that gives this novel its peculiarity and its distinctiveness, which in the end make it stand out. even if it doesn’t quite match kafka’s novel in regard of its comedic value, it still is a darkly humorous tale. brod seems to delight in torturing and tormenting his protagonist, throwing him into downright absurd roles and constellations, and it is easy to visualize the author sitting at its nightly table and suffer from one laughing fit after another — just like his close pal kafka.

the ironic and sarcastic references are countless: especially when walder seems to finally find a form of freedom by leaving society, leading an ascetic life in a hermitage by then, at least until his friends pay him a sudden visit and land on his doorstep. they have turned into a handful of revolutionists, promoting walder to the rank of their consul, leader of their revolutionary movement, all against his will.

or when walder has become so indifferent in terms of making decisions that he judges every potential reaction as equally appropriate and thus falls into a state of terrible inaction, a paralysis, even when he is hit in the face, making him nothing less than a sad clown. his path to freedom has led him into a cul de sac, and what he once thought of as self-transformation ends in an anti-metamorphosis.*

there are more examples for the novel’s cruel jokes; i’ll spare you the grotesquely humorous ending.

if you’re more in the mood for nonsensical jokes and mildly comic situations, the novel’s got you covered as well: for example, when vicious guachen keeps insulting his “piano virtuoso” for not playing fast enough. or when differentiated club members argue that they’d have to act in a certain way as they can’t be compared to fictional characters in a novel. or when an acquaintance turns out to be an almost immortal insurgent who claims to have been involved with every major uprising on the entire planet in the last three hundred years, from europe to africa to india to the usa.

by now it should be clear that »schloss nornepygge« by no means takes itself too seriously or important, even if its language shows quite some pathos every once in a while (fear not, it’s not getting anywhere close to goethe-territory; some passages could even be called stream-of-consciousness-ish). this makes for an interesting contrast between histoire and discours, between the things that are portrayed in the text and its linguistic modus operandi (to simplify genette’s narratological categories).

but of course it’s not all nonsense. even in his early twenties brod was simply too clever for that. in fact, he repeatedly tends to add to the philosophical discourse of his time and his predecessors — especially schopenhauer — when he deals with the concept of »freedom«. for brod in his somewhat pessimistic worldview, »indifferentism«, a terminus he made up himself, is the only appropriate way to deal with living in a period that best could be described as »decadence« — which is why being indifferent to all the people and events surrounding you could be considered a way to one’s personal freedom. but it’s not as easy as that. the existentialist category, »freedom«, which brod had explored for years, definitely culminated in an impressive way in »schloss nornepygge«: while some of the novel’s staff unscrupulously celebrate orgies or downright give away their wives and thus indulge in a form of freedom that climaxes in a violent and bloody revolution, walder is the one who is trapped in his idea of freedom, compulsively trying to be a myriad of different walders at once. is this what the majority of us dream about? to be able to do everything at the same time, to see no obstacles in our way, to have no financial restrictions? the novel clearly states its point of view that this does not necessarily lead to freedom, or to progress. because if you want to go everywhere at the same time, you’re not going anywhere. you will tear yourself apart in mid-air like a rumpelstiltskin.

but maybe i wrote forth the novel in my head and it’s only half as brilliant as it seems. after all, there are supposed to be as many interpretations of texts as there are readers, they say. and anyway, the smartest people, people who are way more clever than me, write articles for the »los angeles review of books«, and they claim that novels of the brodernist kind aren’t worth much of your time and are only good for bragging on goodreads and the like. i don’t think people that clever — whizz-kids, whizz-kids — can be all wrong. or can they? - Tom Ghostly

Schloss Nornepygge, der Roman des Indifferenten : Brod, Max, 1884- : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive