Fighting the third death (dedikált példány)

Fülszöveg

The author, born in 1900 in a small town in Hungary, has spent the last 45 years of his life in America where he became one of the most prominent practitioners, researchers and clinical professors of ophthalmology, as well as the acclaimed author of books on the physiology of the eye, color vision, dyslexia, and art. His autobiography, Fighting the Third Death, deals primarily with the author's first eighteen formative years, which coincided with the last eighteen years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In his memoirs the author captures and recreates the mood of pre-World War I Central Europe, and conjures up vivid images of the socio-economic, cultural, and psychological realities of the period.
At the same time, obeying the irrésistible commands of his memory and association, he also présents, in intriguing oscillations between the remote past and the present, connections of thoughts and feelings which bridge sixty or seventy years. Especially fas-cinating is his préoccupation... Tovább

Fülszöveg

The author, born in 1900 in a small town in Hungary, has spent the last 45 years of his life in America where he became one of the most prominent practitioners, researchers and clinical professors of ophthalmology, as well as the acclaimed author of books on the physiology of the eye, color vision, dyslexia, and art. His autobiography, Fighting the Third Death, deals primarily with the author's first eighteen formative years, which coincided with the last eighteen years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In his memoirs the author captures and recreates the mood of pre-World War I Central Europe, and conjures up vivid images of the socio-economic, cultural, and psychological realities of the period.
At the same time, obeying the irrésistible commands of his memory and association, he also présents, in intriguing oscillations between the remote past and the present, connections of thoughts and feelings which bridge sixty or seventy years. Especially fas-cinating is his préoccupation with the pheno-mena and mechanisms of memory, and with the philosophical problem of individual survi-val in the memory ofothers.
A différent and no less interesting aspect of the book is that of the historical vignettes which bring to life the images and doings of the author's ancestors who lived in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, several of whom were rabbis whose réputations were still alive, and whose life stories could still be retraced through careful study of documents and family traditions.
Most importantly, this book invites the reader to share the events the author recalls from his youth. Although protected, safe and secure, in the bosom of his family, the adolescent Arthur is torn by doubts, and occa-sionally by guilt, as he becomes gradually emancipated from the benevolent but inflex-ible domination of his father. He is exposed to new cultural experiences and influences, and responds to them enthusiastically, de-termined to become a writer. In 1918-19 he becomes involved in a youthful and brief, but traumatic, flirtation with the revolutionary ideas and actions which shook Hungary at the time.
The process of maturation: overcoming inhibitions, striking out on his own, making friends and enemies, choosing a career and finding his way—all this is dealt with in these memoirs with great sensitivity, spon-taneity, and deep psychological insight.
Published in 1977 in the original Hun-garian version, the book aroused great interest. It has now been translated into English and will afford the reader an interesting trip back to the pre-World War I Hungary, part of the moribund Hapsburg Empire. Vissza