BRENNER, Jozef 1887-1919

(Géza Csáth)

PERSONAL: Born 1887, in Hungary; died of suicide committed by ingesting poison, 1919; married, 1913. Education: Budapest Medical School, earned degree in general medicine.

CAREER: Neurologist and fiction writer. Worked in a research clinic, Budapest, Hungary, 1910–13; in private practice, 1913. Military service: Served during World War I.

WRITINGS:

UNDER NAME GÉZA CSÁTH

Apa és fiú, Szépirodalmi Könyvkiadó (Budapest, Hungary), 1973.

Hamvazószerda, Szépirodalmi Könyvkiado (Budapest, Hungary), 1974.

Ismeretlen házban, Forum (Újvidék, Hungary), 1977.

Egy elmebeteg no naplója, Magveto (Budapest, Hungary), 1978.

The Magician's Garden and Other Stories, edited by Marianna D. Birnbaum, translations by Jascha Kessler and Charlotte Rogers, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1980, published as Opium and Other Stories, Penguin Books (New York, NY), 1983.

A repülö Vucsidol, Magveto (Budapest, Hungary), 1980.

Napló, 1912–1913, Babits (Szekszárd, Hungary), 1989.

Mesek, amelyek rosszul vegzödnek: osszegyujtot novellak, Magveto (Budapest, Hungary), 1994.

Rejtelmek labirintusában: összegyujtött esszék, tanulmányok, újságcikkek, Magveto (Budapest, Hungary), 1995.

Az életet nem lehet becsapni: összegyujtött színpadi muvek, Magveto (Budapest, Hungary), 1996.

Fej a pohárban: napló és levelek, 1914–1916 (correspondence), Magveto (Budapest, Hungary), 1997.

Az ámodás lélektana: ismeretlen elmeorvosi tamulmányok (dream interpretation) Lazi (Szeged, Hungary), 2001.

The Diary of Géza Csáth, preface by Arthur Phillips, Angelusz & Gold, 2004.

OTHER

Contributor to medical and literary journals.

SIDELIGHTS: Jozef Brenner, who wrote fiction under the pseudonym Géza Csáth, is known for the tales of the fantastic and bizarre published in posthumous collections such as Apa és fiú, Egy elmebeteg no naplója. Some of his works were translated and collected as The Magician's Garden and Other Stories, which was reprinted as Opium and Other Stories. Stories such as "Little Emma," in which schoolboys respond to their teacher's cruelty by hanging a stray dog and, eventually, a female classmate; and "Matricide," in which young boys murder their mother before presenting her jewels to a prostitute; have been cited for their detached, clinical narratives and for their profoundly pessimistic depictions of turn-of-the-twentieth-century Hungary.

In reviewing The Magician's Garden and Other Stories in the New Republic, Joyce Carol Oates noted that the author "wrote his best work between 1908 and 1912; his depiction of the collapse of Central Europe, by way of a magnification of the collapse of the individual—the magician in particular—is uncannily prophetic." Oates felt that the volume's "whole far exceeds the sum of its parts both because of the excellent introduction by Marianna D. Birnbaum and because the reader, knowing beforehand the tragic pattern of Csáth's personal life, is privileged to read the heterogeneous collection as if it were an autobiographical novel." Brenner's more fantastic tales, centering on dreams and hallucinatory states, are considered less impressive because of their forced sense of mystery and Csáth's mania for description.

While contributing stories and music criticism to Hungarian publications, Brenner also worked as a neurologist and published articles on mental illness in medical journals. In 1910 he developed an addiction to opium and morphine, later lapsing into insanity. He eventually shot his wife and bolted from his asylum, only to be detained by Serbian troops while fleeing to Yugoslavia. Held captive, he swallowed poison and died.

Arthur Phillips, who wrote the preface for The Diary of Géza Csáth, called the writer a man "apparently without redeeming virtues, unless brutal candor and persistently unsuccessful self-inquiry count. Misogynistic and misanthropic, faithless, vain, manic-depressive, arrogant, self-consciously self-loathing and self-admiring, doctor and quack, he is also very entertaining, especially when hypocritical to hilarious extremes." Phillips added that, "of course, this cad, this hypocrite, is something far more…. This 'villain' is a man of vast gifts. He is a neurologist, painter, composer and music critic, pianist and violinist, playwright, journalist, short-story writer, and a man of superhuman ambition and energy. He is a bastard, of course, but so are a lot of people with nothing else to be said for them."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Csáth, Géza, The Diary of Géza Csáth, preface by Arthur Phillips, Angelusz & Gold, 2004.

Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, Volume 13, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1984, pp. 145-155.

PERIODICALS

New Republic, May 17, 1980, Joyce Carol Oates, review of The Magician's Garden and Other Stories, p. 36.

New York Review of Books, June 16, 1983, Philip Roth, review of Opium and Other Stories, p. 18.

Times Literary Supplement, October 3, 1980, Timothy McFarland, review of The Magician's Garden and Other Stories, p. 112.

World Literature Today, autumn, 1980, Ivan Sanders, review of The Magician's Garden and Other Stories, pp. 673-674.