Opium and Other Stories

Géza Csáth (the pen name of József Brenner) was a Hungarian writer, musician, music critic and physician working with the mentally ill who lived from 1887 to 1919. Csáth’s tragic personal history has often been recounted. While in his teens, and showing great promise as a writer and musician (to the point that his father wanted him to become a professional violinist), he chose instead to pursue a career in medicine and graduated with his degree in 1909. His main interest was in the effect of narcotics on the mind, and he started experimenting with morphine in 1910 and quickly became addicted. He married in 1913 and was drafted in 1914. During his time in the army and following his discharge in 1917 his drug dependency worsened, show more though he continued working as a doctor. By 1919 his addiction had taken over his life and he was showing signs of paranoia, and that summer he shot and killed his wife and later killed himself with poison. The stories collected in The Magician’s Garden are heavily influenced by the author’s clinical interest in the workings of the mind. They are sometimes structured like a dreamt adventure, with a single protagonist being led or wandering in pursuit of something through a bizarre or grotesque landscape. Other stories ruthlessly explore various perversities of human nature. In “Trepov on the Dissecting Table” a corpse is beaten and ridiculed by an orderly with a grudge against the dead man. In “Festal Slaughter” the butcher who comes to kill the pig exacts extra payment by raping Rosie the scullery maid. Most disconcerting, however, are the stories that feature children. “Matricide” is the tale of two brothers who kill their mother while stealing some of her jewellery to give to a girl they’ve fallen in love with. And in “Little Emma” an unusually pretty girl is murdered by her playmates, her body left hanging in the attic. Csáth was a writer of great originality who, had he lived, could very well have produced a body of work as impressive as Kafka. However, we must content ourselves with the works left to us, which are as compelling and disturbing as fiction gets. show less