The second great novelist in that period was Eötvös. Born in 1813, he
received a careful education, and after extensive travels in western
Europe, embraced the judicial career for a time. When still a young
man, at the age of six-and-twenty, he published his first great novel,
“The Carthusian” (“_A Karthauzi_,” 1839-40). This remarkable work had
an immense effect. It was read with equal delight in the palaces of the
magnates, and in the closets of the middle-class people. It charmed the
young and moved the old. It seemed to express the very innermost cravings
and mental propensities of the then Hungarian public. More than that.
It expressed a state of feeling then almost universal on the continent
of Europe. Like Goethe’s “_Werther_,” it lent expression to what lay
dormant and unexpressed in the hearts of millions of Europeans. The
sultry atmosphere then weighing on continental Europe had engendered a
morbid melancholy in many a high-strung man and woman. Life seemed to
be full of unsolved and unsolvable problems; full of forces disruptive
and disintegrating, causing unease uncertainty and distress. All the
nobler efforts of men in building up their private or public fortunes
appeared to be blighted and marred by the demoniac perverseness of the
political and social powers of the time. A brooding meditativeness
seized people, and fresh and vigorous deeds being impossible, pale
and despondent reflections embroiled men in a dumb struggle against
destiny. Such was the mental temper of a very large class of men and
women in France, Germany, Austria, Hungary and Italy. Eötvös himself
had, from early youth, been given to that morbid meditativeness and
self-destructive sensitiveness of the age; and the sorrowful condition
of his country only increased his pathetic melancholy. Hungarian young
men and women, then and now, are naturally very much more pathetic and
grave than the youth of any other country. They have neither the virile
alacrity of the British youth so agreeably manifested in the games and
muscular amusements of young England; nor the precocious polish and
gaiety of French youths. Theirs is a heavy mood, similar to that of the
_Largos_ of Hungarian music, but followed by no _Friss_ or _Vivace_.
To souls tuned in such minor keys, the “_Karthauzi_” came as the very
revelation of their deepest secrets. Hitherto the epics and novels
written in Hungary had been retrospective work. They narrated the woes
and joys, the troubles and glories of past ages. In Eötvös’ novel there
was, practically for the first time, a work of introspective _actualité_;
a work appealing to the reader himself, and not only to his historic
imagination. The queries tormenting the young men and women of that age
were here subjected to an analysis full of psychological inquisitiveness,
enveloped in the gloaming of poetic descriptions of Nature. The plot
of the novel is of the simplest. Gustavus, a French nobleman, in whose
agitated soul are accumulated all the tempest-laden clouds of his age,
seeks in vain to find peace and consolation in Love, Pleasure and
Ambition. Julia, his first love, deserts him for an unworthy “other one;”
Betti, his second love, he rejects himself. And so, tossed from one rock
of discord to the other, he finally enters the order of the Carthusians,
and there, amidst steady work and in firm faith, finds the only solution
that can await characters like his: Death. Goethe, with the terrible
serenity of judgment so peculiar to him, once remarked, that there are,
as he called them, “problematic characters, who can do justice to no
situation in which they may be placed.” Such a character is Gustavus. But
such was also the general and typical character of his time; and hence
the immense effect of the novel. Even the chief and serious deficiency of
the novel, being as it was, the deficiency of numerous Hungarian minds
of that time, only helped to increase its popularity. Eötvös could never
quite overcome the inner contrast between his Franco-German education and
the Magyar character of his works. Of all the great Hungarian writers,
his language is the least Magyar in form and savour. The European
and the Magyar were constantly battling in him and frequently to the
detriment of the latter. His was not that power of blending European and
national culture into a new and harmonious composition. That power is
distinctively the characteristics of the classical writers of nations.
It belongs only to the highest form of genius. But the reading public of
the “_Karthauzi_” was largely recruited from amongst people in whom that
conflict between western and Magyar culture had likewise not been brought
to a harmonious issue. They thus found in the great novel that very
failing of their own class, without which, according to Grillparzer’s
profound remark, success is hardly obtainable in any profession.
In 1845, Eötvös published another great novel: “The Village Notary”
(“_A falu jegyzője_”). It was meant to be a scathing satire on the
corruption, backwardness and general administrative misery of public
county life in Hungary. Eötvös, whose conceptions of the state and its
organs were formed largely after the models of German, Austrian and
French organizations, was deeply convinced of the utter insufficiency
of that local selfgovernment, which in Hungary had nearly always been
one of greater independence than that even of England. In Hungary all
the leading and influential officials in the counties were elective, and
from among the noble class of the county only. Being more than underpaid,
they frequently abused their power, and contrived to secure a relatively
large income by means of exactions and terrorizations of all kinds. The
typical figure of these squires was the _szolgabiró_, or under-sheriff,
as he may be termed, if with inaccuracy, who presided over nearly all the
public affairs of one of the districts into which counties are divided.
His administration was frequently carried on pasha fashion indeed; and
the poorer classes were much at his mercy. Eötvös, who thought that the
strongly centralized and systematized organization of French or German
local governments was undoubtedly much superior to the system obtaining
in Hungary, published his novel with the intention of bringing about a
change in public opinion, and so finally a change in the county-system
itself. To the immense benefits accruing to the Hungarians as a nation
through the very system of local selfgovernment which Eötvös so cruelly
exposed, he was insensible. That county-life, in spite of all its crying
abuses, was the only and indispensable preliminary schooling for the
functions of government in council or parliament; that these rough
and uncultured county-gentry in Hungary, as well as their brethren in
England, were far better fitted for some of the most important tasks of
government and politics than the most methodic and punctual official
in French or German local offices, to all that Eötvös paid no serious
attention. His warm-hearted love of Equality and Right made him boil over
at the sight of many an injustice—at the hands of men whose inferiority
in point of knowledge and western culture rendered them easy objects
of contempt to one who gauged all political greatness by the standard
of France or Germany. Eötvös, the politician, entertained of course
the same ideas about the value of the old Hungarian county-system, as
did Eötvös the novelist. He was a “centralist”; and the number of his
followers has been very great to the present day. They still maintain
that even the present remnants of the old county-system in Hungary are
very injurious to the Magyar state; and that nothing short of a total
overhauling, or—to talk plainly—abolition of that system, and the
introduction of French centralization in its lieu can save the kingdom
of St. Stephen. In more recent times the historic work of Béla Grünwald
on the social and political condition of Hungary from 1711 to 1825 (“_A
régi Magyarország_”) has elaborated the ideas of Eötvös with the armoury
of learned footnotes and systematic chapters. The novel of Eötvös is
still the text of all the loud centralists in Hungary, to whom the county
selfgovernment is an absurd anachronism. As a matter of fact, on the
continent, Hungary is the only country where local selfgovernment is
still extant. Nor can there be any doubt, that that local selfgovernment
alone enabled the Magyars to hold their supremacy over the numerically
stronger nations in their country. Taking the British constitution as the
model of all representative government, we cannot go astray in claiming
for such government three absolutely indispensable elements. First, a
parliament proper, consisting of two Chambers or Houses; secondly, a
cabinet proper; and thirdly, two or three real and energetic political
parties, the numerous members of which take an intense interest in every
one of the political issues of the day. Applying this standard to the
United States, for instance, we find, that the Americans while having a
federal, two-chambered parliament and also two or more genuine parties,
yet have no Cabinet proper; and hence many of the features of political
corruption that were rampant in England in the times from Charles II.
to George III., when the Cabinet was still forming, and not yet formed,
may be noticed in the United States at the present day. In the same way
France has a Cabinet indeed, and also a two-chambered parliament; but
genuine political parties, with members intensely interested in politics,
are wanting. Hence the instability and irregularity of the French
representative government. In Hungary, and there alone, the student of
politics will find a perfect replica of the British constitution, in
that the fine superstructure of Parliament and Cabinet is based on the
broad pedestal of genuine political parties. The members of these parties
take a real, passionate and untiring interest in political questions of
any kind, and hence there is a real public opinion, a real nation. This
basis of the political life in Hungary, where has it been quarried from
but in the local selfgovernment of the counties? Interest in the mostly
arid questions of politics can be acquired only by early and constant
contact with men who make it almost the chief interest of their lives. It
is in the county halls, and in the social reunions of the county-gentry,
that the young Magyars learn the great lesson of dispensing authority,
commanding respect and discussing public business with tact and prudence.
It is there that men were formed who could at all times find resources
to withstand the anti-national policy of the Habsburgs or the occasional
rebellions of the Slav or Roumanian peasantry. Of the country-gentlemen
in Hungary indeed may be said, what Macaulay wrote of the English esquire
of the seventeenth century: that “his ignorance and uncouthness, his low
tastes and gross phrases, would, in our time, be considered as indicating
a nature and a breeding thoroughly plebeian. Yet he was essentially a
patrician, and had, in large measure, both the virtues and vices which
flourish among men set from their birth in high place, and accustomed to
authority, to observance and to self-respect.” (_History of England_,
Ch. III.) It was amongst these rough squires that the two great parties
of England were formed. It was likewise amongst the much derided
_táblabirók_ and _szolgabirók_ (squires and justices) of Hungary, that
the men of 1825 and 1848 were formed; and in our time they have given
Hungary one of the indispensable elements of representative government:
real political parties.
It appears necessary to dwell at some length on the great historic and
political questions underlying the famous novel of Eötvös. No doubt,
every Hungarian cannot but wish to see that novel in the hands of all who
take an interest in Hungary. For, “The Village Notary” contains capital
portraits of many a quaint, wild or pathetic type of inner Hungary.
The down-trodden notary (Tengelyi); the tyrannical _szolgabiró_ (or
squire) Paul Nyúzó (meaning: flayer); Viola, the honest peasant, who
being shamefully wronged betakes himself to the forest and _pusztas_
(prairies) to lead the life of a robber; Mrs. Réty, the wife of the chief
magistrate of the county, who is entangled in a fearful domestic tragedy,
etc., etc. Moreover, the novel contains excellent pieces of irony and
satire; and being reared on the broad idea of social reform never sinks
to mere pamphleteering. Yet, with all that, we cannot but protest against
the misstatement of the political importance of county-life in Hungary
as advanced in that novel. Fully acknowledging, as we do, its literary
value, which is diminished only by the heavy and un-Magyar diction, we
deprecate its judgment on an institution without which Hungary would have
long been reduced to the level of a mere province of Austria. Eötvös,
like most idealists bred in the school of German idealism, could not
endure rough Reality. He forgot, that for the making of history, as for
that of bread, unclean matter is, at certain stages, an indispensable
element.
We have two more novels by Eötvös: “Hungary in 1514” (“_Magyarország
1514 ben_,” 1847), which is a fair picture of the time of the
peasant-rebellion in Hungary, under George Dózsa; and “The Sisters” (“_A
nővérek_,” 1857), a feeble story with many ideas on Education.
On Eötvös, as a writer on politics, and the Philosophy of History, see
page 251. It may here be mentioned that Eötvös, who was President of the
Academy, was frequently called upon to deliver commemorative discourses
on the lives and merits of deceased members of the Academy and the
Kisfaludy Society (see page 113). His speeches are, as a rule, of great
oratorical power, and illuminated with grand conceptions of Life and
Literature. He was eminently an orator, not a rhetor; and although he
seldom reached the magnificence of Kölcsey (see page 107), he is no
unworthy follower of him.