Mario scenessy

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Mario scenessy

Mario Szenessy (born September 14, 1930 in Petrovgrad, today: Zrenjanin , † October 11, 1976 in Pinneberg ) was a Hungarian - German writer and literary critic .

Life

Mario Szenessy grew up in Vojvodina in a multilingual environment and moved to Szeged in Hungary in 1942 , where he studied Slavic and German studies, where he mainly discovered Kafka and Thomas Mann . He became a middle school teacher and taught Russian at the Medical School (today: University of Sciences Szeged ). Because of his Thomas Mann publications, he received a grant from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and came to Tübingen in 1963, where he worked on Thomas Mann's most recently completed novella Die Betrogene . He later lived in Berlin. Encouraged by Inge and Walter Jens , he began to write German prose and had been working as a freelance writer since 1967 with the publication of his first book Verandlungskünste . After his first publication, Marcel Reich-Ranicki wrote about him: "He, who is not German, writes a much better German than almost everyone who writes books in this country ... bitter, sarcastic and spirited, sharp, springy and succinct." There Szenessy's books but in order to be able to support his family, he wrote reviews and translations as well, and finally decided to start training as a qualified librarian. In 1971 he received the Hermann Hesse Prize for his novel Lauter False Passports or The Memories of the Roman Skorzeny .

Mario Szenessy died of bronchial carcinoma in his Pinneberg apartment in 1976 .

About his literary work

Scenessy wrote in the epic tradition of Thomas Mann, whom he had chosen as his model, and his first books were highly praised by the critics, the Süddeutsche Zeitung called him a "new, wonderful storyteller". But when he made concessions to the public taste in his last works for financial reasons, this was criticized accordingly. But “scenessy's art of immersing himself so completely in the German language, which after all others had become his homeland, remains remarkable.” He was constantly trying to make Eastern European literature known in Germany; He particularly drew attention to the Hungarian writers György Konrád and Tibor Déry with translations and a monograph.

In his novel Lauter False Passports (1971), for which he was awarded the Hermann Hesse Prize, Szenessy stylizes the pre-formed image of the typical entertainment novel by exaggerating the genre and thus turning it into an art product. A manuscript was played into the author's hands in which Roman Skorzeny, the first-person narrator and protagonist of the book, who forged postage stamps for a while, makes a kind of life confession. He had not only forged stamps, but also the corresponding letters, which is why, for the sake of correctness, he carried out cultural-historical studies and at the same time invented the relevant résumés. “The text demonstrates the patterns of tense narration, with the first name of the fictional author pointing out that this book deals with the novel per se. The political thriller, the espionage and detective novel as well as exotic seaman's yarn and Anglo-Saxon mail robber romance are discussed. The introduction parodies the classic Bildungsroman and cites existing travesties . The genre of the trivial novel presents itself as a novel in all its facets, as if it were to be proven once again that the novel does not represent a genre of art of low rank. "

Works

Translations

  • György Konrád: The visitor. Novel. From the Hungarian. Luchterhand, Darmstadt / Neuwied 1973, ISBN 3-472-86333-1
  • György Konrád: The city founder. Novel. From the Hungarian. List, Munich 1975, ISBN 3-471-77938-8

Secondary literature

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Marcel Reich-Ranicki : As imaginative as it is factual. Mario Szenessy's novel Metamorphosis . In: The time . No. 47/1967
  2. ↑ Barbara Bondy in the SZ from 14./15. October 1967
  3. ↑ Dieter E. Zimmer : On the death of Mario Szenessy . In: The time . No. 44/1976
  4. ^ Critical lexicon for contemporary German-language literature
  5. ^ Willi Winkler: Mario Szenessy. In: Critical lexicon for contemporary German literature
personal data
SURNAME Scenessy, Mario
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Hungarian-German writer and literary critic
DATE OF BIRTH September 14, 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH Zrenjanin
DATE OF DEATH October 11, 1976
Place of death Pinneberg