NÉRON, OU LA TOLÉRANCE DE L’HISTOIRE - À PROPOS DU ROMAN DE DEZSÕ KOSZTOLÁNYI
NERO, OR THE TOLERANCE OF HISTORY. ON THE NOVEL BY DEZSÕ KOSZTOLÁNYI

Summary/Abstract: Dezsõ Kosztolányi’s novel Nero, a véres költõ (translated into English from German by Clifton Fadiman as The Bloody Poet: A Novel about Nero and from Hungarian by George Szirtes as Dark Muses, The Poet Nero) was a consequence of a personal experience of the author in Italy. The novel enabled him to reconcile the idea of correspondences between the past and the present with other themes that preoccupied him, such as everyday life, the spirit of language, and the aesthetic. Fundamentally, the influence of Nietzsche, Freud and Thomas Mann prompted him to muse on Nero as poet and emperor, as well as on the condition of a writer who was the perpetrator of bloodthirsty acts. Was he a talentless poet or a talentless emperor? This is the question that was raised by Seneca, whose failure in his role as mentor is presented by Kosztolányi, along with the descent into hell of his distraught pupil.

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