The Last Movement by Robert Seethaler (transl. Charlotte Collins): ‘Everything is either work or destiny’  

I’m not a Mahler fan but put up my hand as soon as I spotted Robert Seethaler’s brief novella, The Last Movement, which sees the composer on his last transatlantic voyage to Europe, a few months before his death. I’ve read all four of Seethaler’s translated novels, beginning with A Whole Life over a decade ago, and have been impressed by each of them.

Not yet fifty, he was already a legend: the greatest orchestra director of his age, perhaps of any age. But he paid for this fame with the calamity of a body that was consuming itself.

Despite the chill sea wind, Gustav Mahler sits on the sundeck of the Amerika trying to stave off the fever that’s dogged him for some time. He thinks of his wife and young daughter enjoying their breakfast although he knows he’s long outstayed the time that would have taken to eat. He’s attended by the ship’s boy, solicitous and concerned, who knows that this man’s famous and that he’s dying. As Mahler sits, sometimes shivering, sometimes sweating, he recalls his career: a decade as director of the Vienna Court Opera and its much gossiped about shakeup; the Munich premiere, just six months ago, of his Eighth Symphony; the concerts he gave on his St Petersburg honeymoon; always driven, often neglecting his beloved wife until her love for him wore thin. Months later, the ship’s boy – now a hardened deckhand – learns that Mahler has died, wishing he could hear the music for which this man he remembers so well was famous.

People wanted in on it. They wanted to be a part of the conversation. Above all, though, they wanted to see the fidgety little Jew who had inexplicably contrived to discipline the best and most intractable orchestra in the world.

Written in characteristically plain yet evocative prose, translated beautifully by Charlotte Collins, Seethaler’s novella is a one-sitting read, an internal monologue for the most part, as Mahler reflects on his life and career. It captures the obsessive creative passion of a man so driven it consumes him, exacerbating the frailty that began early in life, leaving him with little energy to pay attention to his wife even though he’s besotted with her. Not much longer than a short story, it’s another immersive and impressive piece of fiction by Seethaler, and kudos to Canongate for publishing this one straight into paperback.

Canongate: Edinburgh 9781837265213 128 pages Paperback (Read via NetGalley)