The Nameless Castle by Mór Jókai
Produced by Steven desJardins and PG Distributed Proofreaders.
Dr Maurus Jokai]
WORKS OF MAURUS JOKAI
HUNGARIAN EDITION
THE NAMELESS CASTLE
Translated from the HungarianUnder the Author's supervisionBy S. E. BOGGS
NEW YORKDOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY1898
INTRODUCTION
TO THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF MY WORKS
This is not the first occasion upon which it has been my good fortune towin appreciation and approval for my works from the reading public ofthe United States. Up to the present, however, it has often been underdifficulties; for many of my works which have been published in theEnglish tongue were not translated from the original Hungarian text,while others, through want of a final perusal, were introduced to thepublic marred by numerous faults.
In the present edition we have striven to give the English readingpublic a correct translation, for which an authorized text has beenutilized by the Doubleday & McClure Co., who have sole right forpublishing future English translations of my books.
Between the United States and Hungary we discover many common traits:the same state-creative energy in the predominant people, which findsexpression in constitutional forms, relying upon the love of freedom,which unites so many different races in one uniform whole; the sameindependent institutions; the same ideas in religion, in ethics; thesame respect for women, the same esteem of labor, the same mentalculture; a striving after progress, yet side by side with this a highrespect for traditions; the same poetry of agriculture, the same proseof industry; rapid progress of both, and in consequence thereof animpetuous growth of towns.
Yet, while we find so many common traits between America and Hungary inthe great field of theory, those typical figures which here in Hungaryrepresent such theories must make a novel and extraordinary _entree_ inthe New World, that they may deserve to win the interest of the foreignreader.
Hungary still represents a piece and parcel of the Old World; she is notso much Europe as a modern Asia. My novels centre round those peculiarfigures of Hungarian common life; and in every work of mine a bit ofhistory of true common life will be found described. I have had aparticular delight, however, in occupying myself with foreign countries,especially with the East. There have been years when I was compelled tochoose subjects for novel-writing in foreign parts.
In English and in Hungarian literature we find a common trait in thathumor which is discovered also in the tragic; a characteristic of thenation itself.
It is with perfect confidence and in good hope that I present my presentwork (translated so faithfully) before the much-esteemed English readingpublic. May God bless that home of freedom, by whose example we havelearnt how to unite the greatness of the state with the welfare of thepeople.
DR. MAURUS JOKAI.
BUDAPEST, May 11th, 1898.
DR. MAURUS JOKAI
A Sketch
To a man who has earned such titles as "The Shakespeare of Hungary" and"The Glory of Hungarian Literature"; who published in fifty years threehundred and fifty novels, dramas, and miscellaneous works, not tomention innumerable articles for the press that owes its freedom chieflyto him, it seems incredible that there was ever a time of indecision asto what career he was best fitted to follow. The idle life of thenobility into which Maurus Jokay was born in 1825 had no attractions fora strongly intellectual boy, fired with zeal and energy that carried himeasily to the head of each class in school and college; nor did he feelany attraction for the prosaic practice of law, his father's profession,to which Austria's despotism drove many a nobleman in those wretcheddays for Hungary. It was Petofi, the poet, who was his dearest friendduring the student-life at Papa; idealism ever attracted him, and, bynatural gravitation toward the finest minds, he chose the friendship ofyoung men who quickly rose into eminence during the days of revolutionand invasion that tried men's souls.
For a time Jokay, as he then wrote his name, was undecided whether tochoose literature or art as an outlet for the idealism, imagination, anddevotion that overflowed in two directions from this boy of seventeen.With some of the inherited artistic talent, which in his relativeMunkacsy amounted to genius, he felt most inclined toward painting andsculpture, and finally consecrated himself to them. In his library atBudapest there now stands a small, well-executed bust of his wife inivory; and on the walls hang several landscapes and still-lifepaintings, which he showed with a smile to an American visitor, whostood silent before them last winter, hoping for some inspiration ofspeech that would reconcile politeness with veracity and her own idealsof good art. If a "deep love for art and an ardent desire to excel" will"more than compensate for the want of method," to quote Sir JoshuaReynolds, then Jokay would have been a great painter indeed. While henever was that, his chisel and brushes have remained a recreation anddelight to him always.
Apparently he was diverted from art to literature by a trifle; but inthe light of later developments it is simple enough to see which wasreally the greater force working within. The Academy of Arts andSciences, founded by Szecheni, offered a prize for the best drama, andJokay won it. He was then seventeen, for careers began early in oldentimes. When twenty-one his first novel, "Work Days," met with greatapplause; other romances quickly followed, and, as they dealt with thesocial and political tendencies that fanned the revolution into flametwo years later, their success was instantaneous. His truerepresentations of Hungarian life and character, his passionate love ofliberty, his lofty idealism for his crushed and lethargic country,aroused a great wave of patriotism like a call to arms, and consecratedhim to work with his pen for the freedom of the common people.Henceforth paint-brushes were cast aside.
Petofi and Jokay, teeming with great ideas, quickly attracted otherwriters and young men of the university about them, and, each helpingthe other, brought about a bloodless revolution that secured, amongother inestimable boons, the freedom of a censored, degraded press. Andyet the only act of violence these young revolutionists committed was inentering a printing establishment and setting up with their own handsthe type for Petofi's poem, that afterward became the war-song of thenational movement. At that very establishment was soon to be printed aproclamation granting twelve of their dearest wishes to the people. Fromthis time Jokay changed the spelling of his name to Jokai, _y_ being abadge of nobility hateful to disciples of the doctrine of liberty,fraternity, equality.
About this time Jokai married the Rachel of the Hungarian stage, RosaLaborfalvy. The portrait of her that hangs in her husband's famouslibrary shows a beautiful woman of intense sensitiveness, into whoseface some of the sadness of her roles seems to have crept. It was to herpowers of impersonation and disguise that Jokai owed his life many yearslater, when, imprisoned and suffering in a dungeon, he was enabled toescape in her clothes to join Kossuth in the desperate fight against theallied armies of Austria and Russia. Since her death he has lived inretirement.
The bloodless revolution of 1848, which suddenly transformed Hungaryinto a modern state, possessing civil and religious liberty for whichthe young idealists led by Kossuth had labored with such passionatezeal, was not effected without antagonizing the old aristocracy, all ofwhose cherished institutions were suddenly swept away; or thesemi-barbaric people of the peasant class, who could little appreciatethe beneficent reforms. Into the awful civil war that followed, when thehorrors of an Austrian-Russian invasion were added to the alreadydesperate situation, Jokai plunged with magnificent heroism. Side byside with Kossuth, he fought with sword and pen. Those who heard himdeliver an address at the Peace Congress at Brussels two years ago feltthrough his impassioned eloquence that the man had himself drained thebitterest dregs of war.
While Kossuth lived in exile in England and the
Ripe with experience and full of splendid intellectual power, Jokai nowturned his whole attention to literature. The pages of his novels glowwith the warmth of the man's intensity of feeling: his pen had beentouched by a living coal. He knew his country as no other man has knownit; and transferred its types, its manners, its life in high degree andlow, to the pages of his romances and dramas with a brilliancy andmastery of style that captivated the people, whose idol he stillremains. Scenes from Turkish life--in which, next to Hungarian, he isparticularly interested; historical novels, romances of pureimagination, short tales, dramatic works, essays on literature andsocial questions, came pouring from his surcharged brain and heart. Thevery virtues of his work, its intensity, and the boundless scope of itsimagination, sometimes produce a lack of unity and an improbability towhich the hypercritical in the West draw attention with a sense ofsuperior wisdom; but the Hungarians themselves, who know whereof hewrites, can see no faults whatever in his work. It is essentiallyidealistic; the true and the beautiful shine through it with radiantlustre, in sharp distinction from the scenes of famine and carnage thatabound. His Turkish stories have been described as "full of blood androses."
Of his more mature productions, the best known are: "A Magyar Nabob";"The Fools of Love"; "The New Landlord"; "Black Diamonds"; "A Romance ofthe Coming Century"; "Handsome Michael"; "God is One," in which theUnitarians play an important part; "The Nameless Castle," that gives anaccount of the Hungarian army employed against Napoleon in 1809;"Captive Raby," a romance of the times of Joseph II.; and "As We GrowOld," the latter being the author's own favorite and, strangely enough,the people's also. Dr. Jokai greatly deplores that what the critics callhis best work should not have been given to the English-speaking people.
In 1896 Hungary celebrated the completion of his fifty years of literarylabor by issuing a beautiful jubilee edition of his works, for which thepeople of all grades of society subscribed $100,000. Every county in thecountry sent him memorials in the form of albums wrought in gold andprecious stones, two hundred of these souvenirs filling one side of theauthor's large library and reception-room. Low bookcases running aroundthe walls are filled only with his own publications, the variouseditions of his three hundred and fifty books making a large library inthemselves. The cabinets hold sketches and paintings sent by the artistsof Hungary as a jubilee gift; there are cases containing carvings,embroidery, lace, and natural-history specimens sent him by thepeasants, and orders in gold and silver, studded with jewels, withautograph letters from the kings and queens of Europe. In the midst ofall this inspiring display of loving appreciation, Dr. Jokai has hisdesk; a pile of neatly written, even manuscript ever before him, for inhis seventy-fourth year he still feels the old-time passion for workcalling him to it early in the morning and holding him in its spell allthe day long. A small room adjoining his library contains the books ofreference he consults, a narrow bed like a soldier's, and a few windowplants. It might be the room of a monk, so bare is it of what the worldcalls comforts. One devoted man-servant attends to Dr. Jokai's simplewants with abundant leisure to spare.
While in Budapest Dr. Jokai is seldom seen away from home, except inParliament, where he has a seat in the Upper House, or at the theatrewhere his plays are regularly performed, or at the table of a few dearrelatives and old-time friends. His life is exceedingly simple and wellordered.
Just a little way back on the hills that rise beyond Buda, across theDanube and overlooking wide stretches of beautiful, fertile country,stands Dr. Jokai's summer-home. His garden is a paradise. Quantities ofroses climb over the unpretentious house, the paths are lined with them;gay beds of poppies and other familiar favorites in our Western gardens,but many new to American eyes, crowd the fruit that grows in delightfulabundance everywhere, for Dr. Jokai tends his garden with his own hands,and his horticultural wisdom is only second to his knowledge of theTurkish wars. His apples, pears, and roses win prizes at all the shows,and his little book, "Hints on Gardening," propagates a large crop oflike-minded enthusiasts year after year. Now, as ever, any knowledge hehas he shares with the people. After a long life of bitter stress andlabor, abundant peace has come in the latter days.
Hungary boasts four great men: Liszt, Munkacsy, Kossuth, and Jokai, whowas the intimate friend of the other three.
NELTJE BLANCHAN.
NEW YORK, JUNE, 1898.
CONTENTS
I CYTHERA'S BRIGADEII THE HOME OF ANECDOTEIII THE MISTRESS OF THE CATSIV SATAN LACZIV ANGE BARTHELMYVI DEATH AND NEW LIFE IN THE NAMELESS CASTLEVII THE HUNGARIAN MILITIAVIII KATHARINA OR THEMIRE?IX SATAN AND DEMONX CONCLUSION