Antal Szerb - The Queen's Necklace

Antal Szerb - The Queen's Necklace

There are, on rare occasions, literary discoveries that are so unexpected, and so pleasing, that one wonders why the author in question isn’t better known. But fashion dictates availability, even in literature, and the Hungarian has never been a major European literary language alongside the giants of French, German, Russian and English. Thus Antal Szerb, a Hungarian Jewish writer who was murdered in a concentration camp during World War II – an author well-known, and admired, in Hungary, but his work has seen limited availability in English. Pushkin Press have recently begun reissuing his work, all of which have been translated by the talented Len Rix. The Queen’s Necklace is a history of the time immediately before the French Revolution, and is Pushkin Press’ most recent publication of Szerb’s work. It is an utterly original work, a panorama in the truest and fullest sense, and is, marvelously, one of those strange blends of fiction and non-fiction which defy easy categorization, and are all the richer for it.

The book is concerned with the Queen’s necklace, the Queen being Marie Antoinette, and the necklace being the most expensive (at the time) piece of diamond jewelry ever created. Charles August Boehmer and Paul Bassenge, two important and prominent jewelers, were commissioned by Louis XV to create an exceptional piece of jewelry for his mistress, Madame du Barry. Unfortunately the King died, which left the jeweler’s with an expensive white elephant on their hands. Their solution was to engage in a series of schemes to encourage Marie-Antoinette to purchase it. The Queen, they reasoned, even if she didn’t particularly want the jewelry, would be forced to buy it if only because a Queen should own the world’s most expensive necklace, and not just any old member of the nobility. That was the plan. But plans don’t always work, and so the tale begins.

Well, sort of. Szerb employs an interesting technique for his story. To begin with, the chapters each introduce a key player in the story – the necklace, the Comtesse de la Motte, the Duc Louis de Rohan, cardinal and one of the forty Immortals of the Académie française (and an exceptionally rich man to boot), Cagliostro, prophet and magician, and so on. These chapters function, in a strange way, as an extended introduction, both to the topic of the book (the necklace), and the topics of each chapter (Rohan, Cagliostro, etc). It seems, at times, as though the entire work is an introduction, with the casual, almost chatty air that goes along with it. This is not to the detriment of the piece, and is in fact to its advantage. From the beginning, Szerb makes it clear that, while his piece is a history, it is not a history in the ordinary sense. He has no desire to create a dry, dusty tome readable and interesting only to those equally dry. No, he is writing a history to be read.

Szerb’s justification for using the French Revolution as his subject, rather than his own Hungarian history, is given in a preface written by the author:

…there are two particular periods, the Italian Rennaisance and the French Revolution, which are so universally important and seminal that they can be thought of as part of the common inheritance of the entire European race.

And later he explains his reasoning behind choosing to write a history, as opposed to a fiction, of the time:

And so I arrived at a genre for which at the time I had no name: I have called it a ‘real history’, because it eschews every kind of novelistic embellishment and amplification, and because it treats a well-known episode (from the time of Louis XVI) which historical scholarship has explored in great detail.

Repeatedly, Szerb refers (even defers, at times) to other scholars – Funck-Brentano, Carlyle, Talleyrand – as well as other authors such as Stefan Zweig and Dumas. He acknowledges that their histories and commentaries are important to the period, and that his own exercise is an addition, not a replacement. His relationship with these authors is one of an equal but an other, an author who realizes his own work is different, markedly so, and that there is a place at the table for all.

The story of the necklace itself comes later in the work. It is mentioned, certainly, and the primary characters all revolve around it (before they revolve, much more unfortunately, around the French Revolution, which looms distant and ever-present), but Szerb takes a leisurely approach to his subject, diverting himself amongst (then) contemporary paintings, the plight of the commoner, gardening, food, the political system, the excesses of the rich and the ignorance of the powerful, the city of Paris itself and its architecture, and so on. His reasoning for this is simple – to understand the reason why the affair of the necklace was so important, and to understand the encroaching Revolution, you must understand more than just the King and the Queen. You must understand the people and the places, and the mores and philosophies of the time. Szerb ranges widely, a true panoramic view.

There is the sense, always and throughout, of Szerb’s immense erudition. It is clear that he has read all the books, and more importantly, has thought on them long and in depth. Yet this weight of information never weighs down the text itself. Rather, Szerb’s wit comes through, his charm. He tells the story the way a highly educated and well-spoken grandfather would tell of his youth to a grandchild – calmly, lovingly, passionately and, yes, with an eye to pedagogy – but just an eye.

Anyway, to the necklace. The Comtesse proves a schemer, and she takes advantage of Rohan, a man shown to be educated, powerful, rich and, well, far too credulous. She convinces him that he has a secret relationship with the Queen, a relationship so secret, in fact, that the Queen remains unaware of it. Nonetheless, the ‘Queen’s’ requests for money are always speedily granted, and the Comtesse grows fat on Rohan’s largesse. In between Szerb’s weavings on Parisian and French life, Rohan as a character depends and thickens until he becomes emblematic of the Ancien Régime, a class deep in the twilight of its rule. The intricacies of the Comtesse’s duplicity are easy to follow thanks to Szerb’s omniscient eye and his willingness to switch from one perspective to another. It is easy to understand, however, how Rohan, and everyone else, could have been so caught up in the secrecy of it all. The age was, as Szerb says, a credulous one, and the nobility were incredibly tone deaf to the shattering events rapidly approaching.

Though the events of the novel come close to the French Revolution, it never really appears except as part of the Epilogue, and in various offhand remarks throughout. It is, however, always there, and its inevitability and the ignorance of the characters plays an important part. Szerb is commenting here on the ability (and inability) of the ruling class to perceive threats to itself, and to read the true mood of the time. It is important, as always, to remember that he was writing this during the Second World War when, as a Jew, his life was in danger (and indeed, he was beaten to death in 1945).

The effect of the novel is to create a world far larger than the small circle of those engaged in the necklace’s travels. Szerb’s gaze attempts to take in no less a target than the epoch of the Ancien Régime, and in this he is no doubt successful. His novel works where a straight and dry history would not, thanks to his proclivity for ranging widely and deeply as the subject requires and as his desires dictate, and also to his incredible ability to explain the essence of a thing without ever needing to explicitly state his intent. As an example – by the end of the novel, after all the diversions into history, art, culture, politics, people, the nobility, the rich, the poor, into food and wine and clothes and money and bathings, into childbirth and fatherhood, into mysticism and contraceptives, we step back from Szerb’s work and realize, in fact, that what we have learned are not individual pieces as curiosities, but fragments of a whole that has been meticulously recreated for us. This novel is, as much as possible, the last gasp of a strange and wonderful and horrible and beautiful world.

The Queen’s Necklace is an excellent representation of what small presses are able to achieve when compared with the larger publishing houses. The publication of Szerb’s work is a great achievement, and Len Rix’ translation should be wholly commended. He accurately conveys Szerb’s playfulness and wit, and the history, even when it delves deep into obscure topics, remains relevant and interesting to read. Rix' included afterword sheds further light on Szerb's writing process, and attempts (rather successfully) to offer further interpretations into why he chose the French Revolution, and his methods for writing. Antal Szerb’s The Queen’s Necklace is a triumph, a wholly unique work showing a well-known period in an utterly new light.

Author	Antal Szerb
Title	The Queen's Necklace Original title: A királyné nyaklánca
Translator	Len Rix
Nationality	Hungarian
Publisher	The Pushkin Press
Pages	308
Availability: ---Amazon (US) ---Fishpond (AU)

See Also

List of Hungarian authors under review

Links

Guardian (UK) - Review
The Independent (UK) - Review