Voyage to Faremido

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Title Voyage to Faremido. Capillaria.
Image:Karinthy cover 1.png
Cover of the Corvina Press edition
Author Frigyes Karinthy
Original title Utazás Faremidóba. Capillária.
Translator Paul Tabori
Cover artist Lilla Lóránt
Country Hungary
Language English
Publisher Corvina Press
Released Voyage to Faremido (1916), Capillaria (1921)
Released in English 1965

Voyage to Faremido (Hungarian: Utazás Faremidóba, 1916) [1] is a fantastic novel by Frigyes Karinthy. It presents beings who not only understand the secrets of nature, but they are the secret of nature themselves — they are nature personified.

Contents

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These beings consist of inorganic materials (thus having a superficial similarity to robots). The novel describes the adventures of a pilot, who lost his way and came to the world of these beings. They help the protagonist to see the beauty of their world, and help him also to come home.

[edit] Language, and title

Term “Faremido” has a clear motivation: the inhabitants of Faremido use a language consisting purely of musical sounds (thus, their language is harmonic in the most literal sense). Every word is transcribed in the novel using syllabes of solfege: sequences of the syllabes Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So, La, Si. For example: “solasi”, “Midore”, “Faremido” etc. (Such a language has indeed been devised earlier: See Solresol.) In fact, all terms should be sung (or played) instead of pronounced. Thus, in this world a musical language is used. The protagonist remarks that their speech is both wise (in the meaning) and beautiful (as music), thus thought and feeling are blurred to be the same for these beings.

[edit] Related works

Kazohinia (written by Sándor Szathmári) is another example of utopian-satirical literature. Even its main topic is similar: nature, mankind's relatedness to it; rationality versus emotion; intelligent beings as part of a cosmic order.

Voyage to Faremido is sequelled by another novel, Capillaria: both are written by the same author, and they are presented as Gulliver's subsequent travels. But neither their genre nor their topic is similar.

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ The English and Esperanto titles are literal translations of the Hungarian title. The novel is sometimes published together with Capillaria, which recounts Gulliver's sixth journey, in a combined edition. A German edition places the two together under the title: The New Travels of Lemuel Gulliver (German: Die neuen Reisen des Lemuel Gulliver). The two novels are distinct, however, and have little in common.

[edit] References

  • Karinthy, Frigyes (1916). Utazás Faremidóba; Gulliver ötödik útja. Budapest: Athenaeum.  (Hungarian) [1]
  • Karinthy, Frigyes (1921). Capillária, first edition.  (Hungarian)
  • Karinthy, Frigyes (1957). Utazás Faremidóba. Capillária. Budapest: Szépirodalmi Könyvkiadó.  (Hungarian) [2]
  • Karinthy, Frigyes (1965). Voyage to Faremido. Capillaria, Introduced and translated by Paul Tabori, Budapest: Corvina Press.  (English) [3]
  • Karinthy, Frigyes (1966). Voyage to Faremido. Capillaria, Introduced and translated by Paul Tabori, New York: Living Books.  (English) [4]
  • Karinthy, Frigyes (1983). Die neuen Reisen des Lemuel Gulliver, translated by Hans Skirecki, Berlin: Verlag Das Neue Berlin.  (German) [5]

[edit] External links