Danube: A Sentimental Journey from the Source to the Black Sea (FSG Classics)

This is a delightfully translated, rich and ornate, not so much travelogue as intellectual and literary history, of what Magris is pleased to term Mitteleuropa. Indeed, the reader looking for actual descriptions of the Danube will fine them few and far between, whereas the intellectual - capital I - reader will find a Smörgåsbord of poets and writers of all sorts who have dwelt along the banks of the Danube for centuries.Magris, though his prose may come across as dense at times, is actually a bon-vivant with a rather breezy, hedonistic take on life. This is fortunate, for it serves to leaven the sometimes ponderous meditations the reader comes across.This duality of text and attitude is nicely encapsulated in the first two paragraphs of the chapter entitled "Believing In Ulm".On the one hand, in the first paragraph:"But all that is real is being erased each instant, even if luckily not always in the bloodstained theatre of phosphorous bombs. Little by little, however, things are imperceptibly erased, and one cannot do otherwise than believe that they nonetheless exist."On the other hand, in the second:"We are happy in the company of people who make us feel the unquestionable presence of the world, just as the body of the beloved gives us the certainty of those shoulders, that bosom, that curve of the hips, the surge of those as incontestable as the sea."In general, there is a tendency to delve to a greater or lesser extent into the life and works of a writer or thinker, whetting the reader's appetite, and then, quite often, drolly cock a snook at said individual before moving on to a writer who dwelt further down the Danube. This is nowhere more evident than in his treatment of the Hungarian writer Georg Lukács, on whom Magris dwells for some time before jauntily quipping in the penultimate paragraph that: "From his window he could see the great Danube, but he probably had little appreciation of it, insensitive as he was to nature, which in his eyes was blemished by not having read Kant or Hegel."The result of all this? A bit of a mixed bag, I should say. As Magris says of another writer, "The result is that he says too little and too much at the same time." Be this as it may, the author is widely read and the book is quite fun to read for the intellectual traveller who doesn't mind being taken down a Danube of history and ideas, if not the actual river.

Magris is a professor of German literature with a degree in foreign languages in the university of Torino. In 1995 Klagenfurt gave him the honorary doctoral degree. He is also a columnist of Corriere della sera. I firstly saw the blue Danube in February 2011 without never had been a dancer of waltz or of anything good. I went to Vienna where I visited the museum of natural sciences. I particularly appreciated the reconstruction of the Miller-Urey experiment of 1952. "About 3 billion and a half years ago, the atmosphere of the Earth contained ammonium, hydrogen, methane, water. By simulating lightning on these chemical elements, after a day an organic compound was formed which contained the most common 20 amino-acids, which serve to build proteins. Later with a collection technique more accurate the Singhalese Ponnamperuma discovered that also all the elements which make the DNA molecule were present. The same phenomenon which generated life on the Earth may happen in other planets (Roberto Fideli, Il metodo comparativo, cap. 1, Macerata, Simple, 2013). Maybe a cruise on the blue Danube will be wonderful for me in the future as a straight European man. This book by the German philologist Magris published in 1986 may be a guide for the independent traveller who is in touch with natural sciences. But two commentaries of mine to two captions are needed."a naturalist is unlikely to believe in the 'religion of humanity' (p. 161)."I really find that two articles of the universal declaration of human rights have a foundation in nature: the article 16, which recognizes the natural character of human family, and the article 25, which gives every consenting adult the right to heterosexual health -- behaviour which joins us to all other animals with a sexual reproduction" (Roberto Fideli, Saggi di gnoseologia, Macerata, Simple, 2014, 129-130; see my review of Eibl-Eibesfeldt too)."The taxi-driver... takes me to Freud's house and surgery... (he is one of) the... founders of the new science" (p. 203). Despite my lack of driving licence, I notice that the Austrian Freud, graduated in medicine in Vienna, published his essay Über Coca in 1884 and never changed his mind. He never recognized his mistake. But tobacco is still legal everywhere; and tolerance is common.Now Magris is probably the most known scholar of Germanic philology in Italy. As an Italian living in Gallura, in my latest publication Saggi di gnoseologia I mentioned the Florentine Germanist Onesti, who unfortunately died in August. My balanced commentaries about her are in my latest publication and in my reviews in Amazon, in which my lack of knowledge of German is evident, but also my support for the comparative method of philology.Roberto FideliTranslator and writer [...]

The book is an excellent narrative of a great river. The condition of the book could have been better.

Very. Good on the. Danube and interesting

Depth, intelligence and, occasionally, a dry sense of humour. A wide culture is essential to the enjoyment of this book; otherwise many casual references without further explanations will prove frustrating. The author takes deep culture as a given. A superb book.

Libro fondamentale per capire che i Balcani sono Europa

Author's knowledge about Danube's states is remarkable.