Half-Understood Things Antal Szerb · essays in translation

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Books and Youth: An Elegy

Nyugat, vol. 10 · 1938

At the time I understood the foreign poets only very imperfectly, but that only heightened their enchantment. Of youth one ought to say with a sigh: ‘O, to read Baudelaire once more as I did at eighteen!’ It meant more than first love.