2013-02-20

Symposium on Sándor Szathmári: videos revisited (2)

The 6 June 2012 book launch of Voyage to Kazohinia included a staged reading, introduced and narrated by publisher and MC Paul Olchvary:

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As the YouTube description puts it: "Actors Adam Boncz and Andrea Sooch read an adaptation from Sándor Szathmári's masterpiece--from chapter 7, in which Gulliver makes the mistake of falling in love with a lovely but emotionless Zolema." And here is part 2:



Aside from Gulliver's conventional and unrealistic notions about romance, the need for a human connection is powerfully expressed. In the 1930s, Zolema's unadorned desire for sex would have been provocative. Note, however, that the impersonal, strictly utilitarian ethic of mechanical efficiency contradicts the motive of a purely pleasurable reaction to natural, physical stimuli which would naturally be embodied in an organic being. For its time this was still a novel scenario. It is a rationalism that is now easily recognizable, but hopefully also readily recognizable as pseudo-rationalism. This scenario can also be seen as positivism translated into the totality of human life, which few positivists who actually lived would have wanted to see taken to such a conclusion.

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