Gregor von Rezzori, the Balkan soldier who told Hitler to enter Vienna

But the experience of it was ruined Gregor von Rezzori (1914-1998) on that day, the day of the Anschluss, when Germany accomplished what the whole world knew would be accomplished, he derived the “so-called front” that separated him from his self-confident brother and led him away. In both books, Rezzori describes Hitler’s trip to Vienna and his speech at the Plaza de los Héroes. But leave out the essential detail: where it was.

It is surprising to find that, as in many other historical occasions, the writer walked among the crowdwithin a few meters of the scary speaker.

Without an ounce of grandeur, Rezzori shatters the vision of his memories with a seemingly banal comment that captures the very banality of the character: “The only thing that comes to mind that I can’t say to this day is that The appearance was exactly the same as in the photos“.

The same month, today, an arrodillado with the same religious fervor in front of a photo of the Führer: “Magic does not reside in a man until it is in his image”.

Los editores españoles de I’m shakingMemoirs of Rezzori, compare the book with The world of ayerde Stefan Zweigalthough there are clear similarities between one and the other. De Rezzori would happen to be de Zweig’s ironic opposite and partly his desencant (“I am a melancholic choler”says the author) recorded earlier Joseph Roth nobler, caricatures.

Nevertheless, yes, several scenarios, even though Rezzori’s notes are much longer, are still in time: he wrote the last pages in 1997, a year before his death, although in fact he ended all the years before with the death of the Berlin Wall, or even three years ago, when Rezzori settled in Tuscany and left, living happily and for a long time without it mattering so much.

More on the anecdote – unlikely cases: our author lived the life of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in his birthplace of Czernowitz, participated, as he said, in the Anschluss, but also in the Night of Round Crystals in Berlin and Juicios in Nuremberg as a journalist–, these memories suggest a return with a unique real writer, able to convey the fear of a small boy from Bukovina through the description of his little girl’s dark hands fastening buttons to hide the soldiers who are coming to occupy their home.

I also recognize the return of irony in terms of its own protection: I don’t have an easy life, but when you read this you will realize that you had a very good time. In your work, as in your attitude towards life, by your own admission, be guided by this phrase from Chesterton: “Angels can fly because they return to the lighthouse”.

I don’t have an easy life, but I spent it very well. Carrère and Javier Marías recognized their teachings

In this way, in all seriousness, analyze your days, from the familiar trauma of prison to being separated from her children. The story of his school years, with furious attacks on small criminal authorities that opened his arms to “roaring Germany”, brought great moments of arbitrariness and Bernhardian bilis: “The only intelligence deployed in the Austrian schools was that which contributed to their arrest fosas comunes a toda mi generación”.

In another moment he cites Austria’s contribution to the millennial empire purging the Jews “with exemplary enthusiasm, bajeza and sadism”. Other white critics of yours are primarily your own Germany (which moved it in its own way irony, “irritates the average German reader”but the only means, he asked them not to fall into “evil satire”), is the West in general with its civilized arrogance, its inability to educate its colonized people more than “odorless or electric trams.”

Parody of cursilería (“which prevents me from mojar now pluma with what I write in the blood of my heart…”), mentioned with ironic distance, a mixture of sophistication and exhausting pleasureirreverence emphasizes themes of German culture: everything that enriches the narrative is here, in the first person.

Mujeriego, dandy, cheeky, Rezzori was a friend of Brigitte Bardot, husband of the actress Hanna Axmann, and spent his life riding with attractive women, some housesto the one who never managed to handle everything well (and to the one who just lived). The other day it ended with the gallerist Beatrice Monti, with whom she raised a “cultural refuge” in full Tuscany.

To his first wife, the mother of his three sons, he made vitriolic comments and accusations, which today we call parental alienation. But there is no hidden moment about the state of the situation “terrible husband”. It’s not for nothing that my younger son was born – he tells me the same thing – just one day after the hiji I had with my lover.

De Carrère on Javier Mariasmany recognized his teachings. In the light with us, after publication The Great Trilogy in 2009 it appeared to be successful and recovered only slightly in the following decade, with the release of The death of my brother Abel y Cainthanks to the work of his translator José Aníbal Campos, who has in these memories a wonderful work of poetry with free prose, full of grace, of this “pícaro de los Balcanes”.

at the beginning Rezzori was never absolutely destined to be one of the leading writers of the European twentieth century. As a child, in her hometown of Czernowitz (played by Paul Celan), she enjoyed more discussion and understanding of what she read or wrote about.

And to literature – for which it will always be preserved the habilidad of a great retreatist– came only by accident and necessity, and in the beginning I paid attention to the “trivialities” that magazines and novels demanded. But, as you say in the book, “an interview speaks to one and for the first time”; This means that little can be done except dejar and “be alive”.