A Jázminok Illata

''A jázminok illata'' by Ernő Szép is a collection of short stories written in the early 20th century. Lyrical, impressionistic, and deeply humane, it sketches Hungarian small-town and city life through fleeting encounters, secret romances, and sharp portraits of ordinary people. Themes of yearning, transience, and the ache of beauty run through scenes of promenades, church gardens, bridges, bodegas, and shops, seen through sensitive outsiders and restless hearts. The opening of this collection moves from a dissolving evening promenade into a jasmine-scented church garden, where a lanky young man meets the volatile Piroska for a breathless, anxious exchange about escape, dread, and desire before she bolts into the dark. It then shifts to a first-person meditation on a bridge at dusk, observing passersby and spiraling into reflections on anonymity, compassion, memory, and the pull of infinity. Next comes the vignette of Szoboszlai Gábor, a staggering horse-dealer who declares his own name as he haggles and laments on conscription day. A tobacco-shop scene follows, with Nelli humming a wistful tune as she tends the small trade, thinks of a vanished correspondent-soldier, and quietly fights back tears. The section closes with two drunks arriving at a bodega before dawn, their clumsy gallantry and soda-water farce providing a rueful comic coda.