The Eternal Philistine, the 1930 debut novel of the long since
forgotten Hungarian author Odon Von Horvath, is in three sections. The first
section is about a car salesman on the make called Kobler; the second section
is about an unemployed seamstress called Anna (who makes brief appearance in
the first section), who, in the depressing years of the Weimer Republic
Germany, turns to prostitution; and the third and final section is about one
Herr Reithofer, an impoverished Austrian living in Germany who passes on a good
job lead to Anna.
In the first section is the longest (and also the funniest)
we meet Alfons Kobler. A failed car salesman, Kobler wants to be rich, and his
mind is singularly devoted to relieving people of their money by various
machinations. As the novel opens Kobler had sold off his dud of a car to the
fat, enthusiastic (and very gullible) Portschinger, for six hundred marks.
Kobler has never earned so much money at once. Egged on by his bitter and
xenophobic landlady, Kobler embarks on a picaresque journey from Munich, his
home town, to Barcelona, where a world fair is going to be hosted. Kobler is
hoping to meet a rich Egyptian ‘lady’, who, he is further hopeful, will keep
him in luxury after he has debauched During his train journey from Munich to
Barcelona that requires frequent changing of trains and going through different
countries, including Mussolini’s Fascist Italy, Kobler meets a series of
characters, who, amongst them share the unappealing characteristics of
dyspepsia, xenophobia, unscrupulousness, and holding sweeping, inaccurate and
one-sided opinions. These men—they are all men—like Kobler, are philistines. And
they are madder than a stadium full of boxes of frogs. Like the man who
immediately identified Kobler (correctly) as a German (Horvath’s humour is at
its satirical best, here) by the thickness of his skull. ‘You see,’ the man
informs Kobler, ‘Germans all have thick skulls, but only in the true sense of
the word.’ The train conductor of the carriage speaks to Kobler about a very
nice accommodating German family he has met, adding that the family was of
course not ‘pure German’ but ‘Russian German’. Another companion, a pompous
alcoholic named Schmitz who has a special talent for eloquently quoting Goethe
and who obviously fancies himself as a ‘Renaissance Man’ with a keen eye for
architecture, advises Kobler to watch the splendidly traditional Spanish
bull-fight. The omnipresent narrator’s description of the bull-fight depicts it
as a grotesque murder-lust.
In the brief second section we meet Anna Pollinger. Anna is
a young woman who has no parents (she is not shading any tears for them, as her
father left the family when she was very young and she never got along with her
mother who ‘had become very embittered about the lousy world’). Anna lives with
her aunt, and, in the post-First World War Germany, having lost lost several
jobs through no fault of her own, she loses yet another job. While Anna is not
unduly perturbed by this, her aunt reacts to the news as though the Armageddon
has arrived and seizes the opportunity to rant about the post-war period in
Germany. Then a paying guest by the name of Herr Kastenr, who boasts of having
connections in the film industry on the basis that he once played an extra in a
film that was never released (and from the cast of which he was thrown out
after he was caught taking naked photographs of an underage extra) offers Anna
the role of a model with an artist friend of his named Achner. Achner, who is
an etcher, of course, etches nude models, and is enthused to learn from Kastenr
(who has rushed to him as soon as he heard that Anna had lost her job) that Kastenr
could provide him with a dirty blonde model of medium built’ who could also
take a joke.’ As Anna is undressing behind the screen, an acquaintance of
Achner, called Harry Priegler, turns up in Achner’s atelier. Harry, a rich
pig’s farmer, has no appreciation of arts, but abundant appreciation of young
blondes. The etching is interrupted, and the next day Anna is in Harry
Priegler’s car. When Harry pulls the car into a bypass in a park Anna knows
what is coming, and she is ready for it. When Harry makes his intentions of
making free with her loins makes clear, Anna informs him coolly that it does
not work like that. Negotiations ensue and Anna receives her payment. In the
post-war Germany, where unemployment has reached record high Anna Pollinger has
turned practical, and has embarked on a new career .
In the third and the briefest section of the novel we meet
Anna again; she has been kicked out by her aunt once the aunt came to know
Anna’s new occupation. Anna meets an unemployed Austrian named Herr Reithofer.
The impoverished Reithofer is also very naïve and mistakes Anna for the romantic
love of his life. Anna, by now hardened in her attitude, makes him spend money
he can’t afford taking her to a movie, and, when she realises that Reithofer
really does not have any money sends him marching off. Later, Reithfoer meets
an elderly man in a café who tells him about a possible job in Ulm on the
Danube in the tailor shop of a rich pre-war Councillor of Commerce, except that
the job is for a young woman. Reithfoer traces Anna and passes on the
information about this employment opportunity which would be a ‘life-aver for
her.’ As this short novel ends Anna is learning that the world is not full of
evil and there are instances, admittedly small, which indicate ‘the possibility
of human culture and civilisation.’
The Eternal Philistine is a satirical look at the middle
classes in the Germany between the two World Wars. In its spirit the novel is
not dissimilar to some of the novels of Hans Fallada (A Small Circus, Fallada’s
satirical take on the politics in a provincial German town in the 1920s, has
been reviewed on this blog earlier) and Stefan Zweig. Kobler, the protagonist
of the first section of the novel is, as the title suggests, is a philistine.
He has no time for architecture or literature, and he admits with bracing
directness that he does not have much time for revolutions because the
revolutionary leaders are by and large not good businessmen. When Kobler
arrives in Italy on his way to Barcelona, he discovers that Fascism has arrived
in Italy before him. Kobler has no trouble identifying with Fascism and,
cheerfully and unhesitatingly introduces himself as a German Fascist. Many of
his companions, despite their pretensions and airs are also philistines and
bigots. While the reader may laugh at the philistinism of Kobler and his
fellow-travellers, the reader feels little sympathy for them. By contrast, for
Anna Pollinger who makes a practical and unsentimental decision to turn to
prostitution (and once she makes the transition, goes about her business in a
matter-of-fact, almost ruthless, manner), the reader feels a smidgen of
sympathy. Anna has become a philistine by circumstances whereas Kobler is a
philistine by choice, by nature if you will. The novel ends on a somewhat
optimistic, if tentative, note, with a slimmer of hope being offered to Anna by
her unexpected benefactor.
The Eternal Philistine is a sublimely comic novel, jam-packed
with quiet energy. Horvath is at his best when he is a droll and wry observer
of the human pretensions and inconsistencies, for example, the ‘cultivated
gentleman’ Kobler meets on the train, after waxing eloquent about his
preferences for eating (salmon canapes)
and holidaying (Southern Italy) shouts an order for ‘steak with tartar’. Horvath
brilliantly lampoons Mussolini’s penchant for Italianization of all German
names (one of the many unfortunate consequences of the First World War), and
that too in a literal sense. However, ‘should a name lack a literally
translatable sense, Mussolini would merely stick an ‘o’ at the end of it.’
I loved Eternal Philistine despite its
drawbacks (in the main the three sections of the novel don’t gel together as a
story, although they are thematically connected; also the unexpected upbeat
ending of the novel which, until then is full of dark humour and pessimistic
observations, is a tad unconvincing). It is quirky, Rabelaisian, suggestive,
and very funny.
Odon (the author preferred the Hungarian version of his
first name, Edmund), a son of a Hungarian diplomat, moved to Berlin in the
1920s where he lived for the next decade. He left Germany for Austria with
Hitler’s ascent to power. Horvath left Austria for France in 1938 after the Anschluss. Within months of moving to
Paris Horvath was dead, following a freak accident. Caught in a thunderstorm on
the Champs-Elysees, while returning from a play, Horvath took shelter under a
tree, and was killed when the branch broke and fell on him. He was thirty-six.
An equal credit of the enjoyment of The Eternal Philistine
must go to the brilliant translation by Benjamin Dorvel. Melville House
Publishing deserves kudos for bringing out this entertaining novel for the
English language readers.
