Apró bűnök : Elbeszélések

"Apró bűnök" by Cécile Tormay is a collection of short stories written in the early 20th century. The pieces sketch intimate, ironic scenes of love, vanity, jealousy, and social performance, often set in salons, trains, and Italian streets, following figures like a witty hostess, a wavering gallant, and a ruined street painter. The opening of the collection spans several vignettes: in Apró bűnök, a salon talk turns into a cautionary tale about a coquette who sheds her “small faults” to please a jealous lover, only to become dull to him. Egy útitárs follows a narrator on a hot train ride as he watches a newly one‑armed man race home in mounting hope, and arrive to no welcome. A gyűrű shows a capricious beauty rattled when a cast‑off lover formally asks back his late mother’s ring; when he comes to claim it, passion flares. A maestro paints a wry Venetian scene in which an old beggar‑painter’s perpetually unfinished sketch is breezily completed by a passing French artist, ruining the old man’s “art” (and income). At the start of Eltévedt csók, an aging charmer recalls his first love for a dazzling foreign woman, his jealousy and humiliation, and the moment he overhears her painful parting from an American suitor. (This is an automatically generated summary.)