Description
Book SynopsisIn this unique memoir, now in English for the first time, Israel's first Poet Laureate Avigdor Hameiri details a trip to Europe in 1930 from the perspective of a Hungarian Jew who had served in the Habsburg Army. Upon visiting Austria, Hungary, Romania (including parts of ceded Hungarian Transylvania), and Czechoslovakia (including his Carpatho-Ruthenian homeland), he sees Europe in flux on the brink of an unknown disaster. Austria and Hungary are full of youth whose philosophy is "eat, drink and be merry; tomorrow we die." There is fear of Bolshevism from without, but the unfelt danger is German Fascism. Jews (especially in Hungary) are assimilated but cannot escape from their Jewishness: some are Zionists. Romania is corrupt and antisemitic. In Carpatho-Ruthenia, Hameiri has two premonitions warning him to return to Israel, a prediction of the destruction soon to befall Europe. Hameiri also gives accounts of the artistic and cultural scenes of 1930s Europe, as well as the world of Carpatho-Ruthenian Hasidism, which was soon to be destroyed by the Holocaust. From the growing danger and confusion surrounding inter-war Europe, in prose at once compassionate and bitingly sarcastic, comes a sweeping account of Jewish life in 1930 from one of Israel's prolific writers.
Table of Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Translator's Introduction
- Prologue
- Publisher's Introduction
- Chapter 1. Drama
- Chapter 2. A Scattering of Exiles
- Chapter 3. A Telegram on Credit
- Chapter 4. The Dawn of Europe
- Chapter 5. The Viennese Smile
- Chapter 6. The Eye and the Ear
- Chapter 7. The Prisoner
- Chapter 8. Our Two Faces
- Chapter 9. With the Almighty's Help
- Chapter 10. The Dust of Criticism
- Chapter 11. Sicarii
- Chapter 12. Journey to Ruin
- Chapter 13. Blonde is Beautiful
- Chapter 14. The Costume Party
- Chapter 15. A Hebrew Novel
- Chapter 16. Frozen in Time
- Chapter 17. The Baptists
- Chapter 18. Mosaic
- Chapter 19. My Two Souls
- Chapter 20. The Living Scarecrow
- Chapter 21. The Messiah's Entreaty
- Chapter 22. My Birthplace's Agony
- Chapter 23. The Holy Operetta
- Chapter 24. The Canaanite Servant
- Chapter 25. Spain the Healer
- Chapter 26. Charoset
- Chapter 27. The Legend of Alliance
- Chapter 28. The Rear Echelon
- Chapter 29. The Beacon of Light
- Chapter 30. The Intoxicating Darkness
- Chapter 31. Conscience
- Chapter 32. Homeward Bound