Baron Bagge
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
This astonishing short novel concerns the unfathomable, otherworldly experiences of an aristocratic young calvary officer in WWI
A novel of love and valor, war and stupidity, life and death (as well as what may lay beyond our mortal coils), Baron Bagge concerns a young Austrian cavalry lieutenant in the Carpathian mountains at the beginning of WWI. The baron leads a desperate charge across a bridge to meet the Russian forces, following the orders of his mentally unstable commander:
“We were soon to have proof of his unreliability… But perhaps it is not right to place the blame on him. Perhaps his foolishness was merely the instrument of fate, and the disaster into which he led his squadron, the slaughter of so many men and horses, took place in order that something which could no longer happen within the realm of the living—because it was too late—could happen after life.” And, swaying in a kind of fugue, the baron wanders off the bridge into unknown realms, where—mesmerized by Lernet-Holenia’s phosphorescent style—the reader joins his waking dream.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Originally published in 1936, this haunting and beautiful novella from Austrian writer Lernet-Holenia (Count Luna) imagines battlefield folly as his country was once again about to be swept into war. The setup is simple: in 1915, a calvary squad with orders to scout for Russian positions west of the Carpathains is driven by their captain, Herr von Semler-Wasserneuburg, on a suicide mission. Along the way, though, things get weird. Semler's fellow officer Baron Bagge recognizes a small village they ride through as a place his mother once visited. He's surprised to see no sign of the enemy, and to be greeted by a woman named Charlotte Szent-Kiraly, who claims to know him and to be in love with him. Everything feels out of time to Bagge—the opulent feasts, the antiquated costumes worn at parties—but he's the only one who notices. The author brings humor and horror to his account of the heavy-drinking Semler's increasingly irrational obsession with finding the enemy, and surprising poignancy to the pull of Charlotte and the Szent-Kiraly household on Bagge. Readers will be transfixed.
