Jokai is one of the most popular of the Hungarian prose writers of
fiction that sprang up a few years before the late war. His wit,
flowing style, and vivid descriptions of Hungarian life as it is,
joined to a rich fancy and great intensity of feeling, soon made him a
favourite with Hungarian readers.
Among the earlier of his productions, those best known are a novel
entitled, "The Common Days," and a collection of minor tales,
published under the title of "Wild Flowers."
The present volume has been written for the most part since the late
memorable national movement, and embodies descriptions of several of
the direst scenes in the civil war which devastated Hungary from the
year 1848 to 1850.
Most of the Hungarian literati were, at the close of the war, either
roaming in foreign countries, or wandering in disguise through their
native land; and the field of literature for a long time threatened to
remain neglected and barren--a monument of national grief and
desolation! Those patriotic writers who had for years wielded the pen
with the noblest impulses thought to do their duty best by letting
their highest faculties lie dormant; and laid aside the lyre rather
than bring unacceptable offerings to a fatherland laid low, and at
the mercy of foreign swords. And who will deny that there is sometimes
great virtue in silence, and that the tongue that speaks not is often
more eloquent and heroic than that which dares to utter sublime truths
even at the foot of the gibbet? Many of the noble-hearted of Hungary
resigned themselves to such a martyr-like silence, and persevere in it
to the present day; while the great bulk of the people, unwilling to
enhance the triumph of their victorious enemies by a show of
unavailing lamentation, followed their example. Pesth, which had been
the scene of literary activity, was at once deserted; the bards of
Hungary, abandoning their homes to the wantonness of a foreign
soldiery, went back to the districts whence they had come, there to
mingle with those peasants whose chivalry and patriotism afforded
constant themes to their lyres. Their renewed intercourse with their
rustic countrymen served again to revive their hopes, quenched as in
the grave.
In the sketches of Jokai, the reader will find many original
delineations of Hungarian life among the middle-class nobility--a race
of men whose manner of life and thought cannot fail to be interesting,
however cursorily described. But the Hungarian peasant is in his way
no less attractive. Nothing can be wilder than his dress, consisting
of a sheepskin cloak (bunda), or a similar habit of the coarsest
cloth, a shirt, scarcely reaching below the waist, and wide linen
drawers, to which boots do not often form the necessary complement;
yet his easy demeanour, delicate feelings, and especially his
language, are such as to put him on a level with the educated
classes. In conversation he will often use a more dignified style
than a noble, who, by his exclusive privileges, has had ample scope
for oratory in the county assemblies--select with astonishing tact the
best lyrical productions of the day, and immortalize the lay by a tune
of his own composition. These qualities of the Hungarian rustic--an
insight into whose character will be given to the reader by a few camp
scenes contained in this volume--must appear the more striking if we
remember that the class to which he belongs was for centuries in a
state of serfdom, from which it was only liberated by the late
Revolution.
Independently of the various other calamities which prevented the
development of the physical and mental resources of Hungary during the
last three hundred years, the feudal system alone was an
insurmountable barrier in the way of progress. The privileged classes
were for the most part devising how to kill the time, while the labour
of the peasant provided them with the means of gratifying their
propensities, rarely disquieted by the backward state of the country,
which in their eyes seemed all perfection. Properly speaking, it was
only since the year 1825 that matters had begun to exhibit a material
change in this respect. Many of the most conceited and thoughtless
among the nobles had gradually allowed themselves to be convinced that
arts and sciences might add to the charms of an easy life; and that
national greatness demanded something more than hospitable roofs,
fertile plains, and vast herds of cattle. The political and literary
activity displayed by Counts Szecheny and Kolcsey found noble
followers, and produced unexpected and astonishing results during the
last twenty-five years. Still, compared with other countries, the
progress of literature was slow; and the works of the most popular
authors, though thrown off in comparatively small impressions, were
long of reaching second editions. The cause of this result must be
sought in the fact that reading is by no means universal among the
Hungarians. Among the nobles, who had the means of buying books, only
a few cared to do so, while the condition of the peasants prevented
them from becoming in any way the patrons of literature. This apathy
was undoubtedly owing in great part to the absence of a central
national government; the effect of Hapsburg rule had always been to
crush the political institutions of the country, and repress its
noblest efforts, regarded as the sure forerunners of revolution. The
Court of Vienna, besides excluding from public office and emolument
such as were known for their independent principles and national
feelings, now began gradually to arrogate to itself the right of
censorship--an institution which alone would have sufficed to cripple
the intellectual progress of the country.
Such, however, was the mental activity of the present generation, that
Hungarian literature, despite the numerous obstacles it had to
encounter, made rapid progress, and created in the minds of the people
a spirit of inquiry and a desire after intellectual pursuits hitherto
unknown. Never before had the cultivated tongues of the West been so
much studied, or so many valuable translations made from the German,
French, and English literatures. That the influence of the first was
originally the strongest, and that several of the leading writers in
philosophy and history took for their model the German school, will
appear no matter of surprise. The rising writers of a more recent
date, however, insensibly turned their attention to the more lively
literature of France, and afterwards to that of Britain; and while
some read with rapture the fictions of Scott, Bulwer, and Dickens,
politicians learned to admire the doctrines of Adam Smith and Jeremy
Bentham. Of poets, none were more extensively read and more generally
admired than Byron and Moore. Thus did the merely literary progress
march on boldly and combine with the new political movement to further
a change which had already made itself felt in every grade of society,
and which was the more remarkable and satisfactory from having
followed a too long period of stagnation.
A few words will suffice, and perhaps not be superfluous, to bring to
the English reader's mind the deplorable causes of this long neglect.
The fifteenth century, which illumined the sky of Italy, and thence
reacted on the rest of Europe, brought for Hungary nothing but an
endless series of wars, distinguished by dazzling military
achievements, against the hosts of the Sultans, and turning out in the
end but useless victories, productive of most ruinous effects and
general exhaustion. The next age proved still more disastrous. The
race of the Hunyadis, who in the preceding century had struck terror
into the hearts of the Ottomans, had disappeared; the weak princes
that ruled after them perished among the carnage of battle, to leave
the crown of St. Stephen vacant, and to open a way for the Hapsburgs
to the Hungarian throne. At this juncture, coinciding with the great
religious movement in Germany, which was rapidly spreading to the
banks of the Theiss, the position of Hungary became more desperate
than ever, although the events that followed far surpassed the
gloomiest anticipations. While the majority of the people chose a
native for their king, a part of the aristocracy declared for
Ferdinand of Austria. The rival kings, unable to vanquish each other,
called in to their aid the two most powerful monarchs of Europe. The
former invoked the assistance of Solyman the Great; Ferdinand found a
willing ally in his brother, Charles V. Thus it happened that, till
the beginning of the eighteenth century, Hungary presented the aspect
of a vast camp, exposed to the insolence of foreign mercenaries and
the tyranny of the Hapsburg emperors, and at once protected and laid
waste by its allies the Turks. Unfortunately, the Mussulman military
colonies, which subsisted in Hungary from the time of Solyman to
Achmet III., while adding to the distress of the people continually
menaced by famine even during the years of temporary peace, were more
ignorant than those whom they affected to protect, and therefore
failed to produce on the Hungarians those effects which the Moors, in
circumstances somewhat similar, had wrought upon the Spaniards. Nor is
anything now left to call to mind the presence of the Turks in
Hungary, except a few words that slipped into the Hungarian language.
The state of the country in the eighteenth century, somewhat relieved
by the reign of Maria Theresa, was, after such a long series of
calamities, not much calculated to foster the cultivation of science
and poetry; nor did any fresh symptoms of the national life spring
clearly into view before the beginning of the present century. True,
that even amid the storms of the past generations, there appeared from
time to time writers, whose names survive to the present day. But,
with a few exceptions, chiefly in the department of poetry, all the
works of that time were but insipid imitations which aspired to be
thought original, but were little fitted either to please or to
instruct.
After such a gloomy past as has been here shortly described, it will
seem very natural, that with the awakening of the national mind the
career of literature, suddenly interrupted by the late war, should be
bold, steadily progressive, and triumphant, despite the narrow and
contemptible canons of censors. As to prose fiction, it must be
observed that it is of quite recent growth. The beginning of this
species of composition was made about fifteen years ago by Baron
Nicholaus Josika, who soon found successful rivals in Kuthy and Baron
Eötvös. Jokai, who is now the favourite of the public, belongs, as has
been already observed, to the younger staff of writers.
It would be a mistake to imagine, from the Eastern origin of the
Magyars, that the tales and romances to be found in the Hungarian
language bear any resemblance to the _Arabian Nights_, or the familiar
poetry of the East in general. None of the writers above mentioned
carries the reader to fairy realms, and superhuman characters. In
plot, tendency, and execution, Hungarian prose fiction is identified
with the modern novel of the rest of Europe--deriving, withal, its
most pleasing characteristics from the peculiar features of Hungarian
life and history, as well as from the native idiom, which differs
entirely in its figures, and many of its expressions, from the other
cultivated languages. It must, however, here be added, that the more
the time approached to the great catastrophe, the more the general
literature partook of a political character--a circumstance
attributable to the censorship, which did not allow political
questions to be discussed in their proper place. The novel or romance
writer, not being so suspicious to the censor as the politician, often
intermingled his love scenes and adventures with single touches,
unfinished periods, and marks of exclamation, which escaped the
vigilance and attention of the scissors-holder, but were only too well
understood by those to whom they were addressed. Even the literary
journals, sternly interdicted from meddling with politics, swarmed
with allusions to the questions of the day; and while tending to
cultivate the taste of the public, their usefulness was greater than
might have been expected in rearing new labourers for the field of
literature. In the presence of a public eminently conservative as
regards book buying, not a tenth part of the more highly gifted youth
would have gone farther than the composing of some slight specimens
while at college, had it not been for the encouragement given by three
weekly journals. The first of these periodicals, entitled the
_Honderu_, was started by Lazarus Horvath, a gentleman who had
travelled much in Europe, and was familiar with high life, and who is
known as the unsuccessful translator of _Childe Harold_. The two other
journals, started afterwards, were conducted by Frankenburg and
Vachot. It was through the medium of these latter papers that the
young bard Petöfi sent forth his wild, touching strains, and that
Jokai, his intimate friend, became gradually known, when the
unexpected events of 1848 changed the face of the whole country.
Disastrous civil feuds, commenced on the one hand by the Slavonic
population in the south of Hungary, and on the other by the
Wallachians or Roumins in Transylvania, were followed by a desolating
general war; and for nearly two years nothing was heard but the din of
arms. Two or three daily papers alone testified that literary life was
not yet extinct in the nation. As almost every one did who felt in any
way capable of serving his country, Jokai followed the Government
(obliged to abandon the capital to the Austrians in the beginning of
1849) to the town of Debreczin, on the other side of the Theiss, where
he conducted for a short time a small political Journal. The rapid
progress of the Hungarian arms in the same year, followed by the
Russian invasion, was, as the reader may be aware, suddenly converted
into a most disastrous defeat. The subjugated country was handed over
to General Haynau; the nationality of its people was destroyed, and
its noblest defenders fled into other lands, or awaited certain death
in their own. The country people, struck with fear and amazement,
confined themselves in sombre silence to their homes, which were
filled with disguised literati, and other classes of delinquents; the
different races of the population, their hands yet wet with blood,
gazed confusedly on the ruins of their own working; the streets of
Pesth, the gay capital, were deserted, and the single voice that broke
the deep silence was that which pronounced in its official organ
sentences of death, imprisonment, and confiscation. In such a state
the country continued for several months, when even Haynau, a few days
before being removed from his post, began to loathe his work, and to
sign pardons as carelessly as he had hitherto subscribed sentences of
death. It was at that juncture that a few straggling literati,
gradually assembling at Pesth, commenced to issue a literary
periodical, to which Jokai largely contributed. The press, it must be
observed, was placed under the control of the police, established on
an Austrian model. The head and chief members of the police belonging
to the other parts of the Austrian empire, and totally ignorant of the
Hungarian language, were naturally obliged to employ some natives to
peruse the literary productions and translate their contents; after
due consideration of these, the verdict was passed. The consequence of
such a state of things was, that very frequently a single seemingly
portentous phrase, or even the mere title, doomed to oblivion the most
innocent work of the brain, while more substantial writing was allowed
to make its way into the country, and frequently to be again
prohibited, after having become familiar to thousands.
Most of the sketches contained in this volume, and which Jokai wrote
under the name of Sajo, underwent this fate. The latest production of
Jokai's pen is a novel entitled _The Magyar Nabob_, which is highly
praised. His strictly historical pieces, depicting scenes of the civil
war, though recalling the more vividly to mind the dreary and not yet
forgotten past, were most eagerly read in Hungary; nor will the
English reader peruse without deep emotion the fate of the Bardy
family, contained in this volume.
Within the last two years, the state of literature in Hungary, if
judged by the number of new books published, appears astonishingly
progressive. The chief reason of this phenomenon may be found in the
denationalizing measures of the Government, attempting to suppress the
national idiom by excluding it from the public schools, and
substituting in its place the German--a policy attempted without
success by Joseph II. about the end of the last century.
That the people--though now perhaps more willing than ever to give
their full support to literature--are inclined to look with some
suspicion at the productions of a press in the hands of foreign
authorities, and that many branches of a more serious nature than
novel-writing must remain excluded from the sphere of literary
activity in a country subjected to martial law, need hardly be
remarked.
Besides, some of the more prominent and elder authors still persevere
in their sad mournful silence, while others have sunk from a state of
patriotic gloom into mental imbecility. But whatever shape Hungarian
literature may henceforth assume, it is undoubtedly true that much
that has issued within the last few years from the Hungarian press is
worth translating; and I believe that the present volume, presented in
a faithful and easy translation, and likely to be soon followed by
several others of a similar class, will be found to introduce the
English reader to scenes hitherto undescribed, and to characters as
interesting as unusual.