The Snows of Yesteryear: Portraits for an Autobiography

The Snows of Yesteryear: Portraits for an Autobiography

Describes growing up amid the privilege of the Austro-Hungarian aristocracy, discussing his childhood, the family and servants who surrounded him, and the formative experiences that shaped his life Von Rezzori, author of the novel Memoirs of an Anti-Semite , focuses on a childhood in Bukovina "spent among mad and dislocated personalities." His nurse, an illiterate peasant called "the savage" by the family, provides him the warmth and love his parents cannot give and symbolizes for him his visceral connection to his homeland. His mother's real tenderness alternates with neurotic anxiety and rage; rather asexual, she is the wrong match for his father's vital, "highly luminous temperament." They separate, and her remarriage is disastrous. Von Rezzori's "astonishingly precocious" sister dies an early death mysteriously linked to a failed business venture of his mother. His governess fosters his drawing talent, but his sister's death and his mother's "need" of him stifle his budding career. These five portraits shed light on the old Europe of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the way of life that passed with it. - Richard Kuczkowski, Dominican Coll., Blauvelt, N.Y. Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.