Preface

"Szomorú napok" was written in the darkest days of Maurus Jókai's life, and reflects the depression of a naturally generous and sanguine nature bowed down, for a time, beneath an almost unendurable load of unmerited misfortune. The story was written shortly after the collapse of the Magyar Revolution of 1848-49, when Hungary lay crushed and bleeding under the heel of triumphant Austria and her Russian ally; when, deprived of all her ancient political rights and liberties, she had been handed over to the domination of the stranger, and saw her best and noblest sons either voluntary exiles, or suspected rebels under police surveillance. Jókai also was in the category of the proscribed. He had played a conspicuous part in the Revolution; he had served his country with both pen and sword; and, now that the bloody struggle was over, and the last Honvéd army had surrendered to the Russians, Jókai, disillusioned and broken-hearted, was left to piece together again as best he might, the shattered fragments of a ruined career.

No wonder, then, if to the author of "Szomorú Napok," the whole world seemed out of joint. The book itself is, primarily, a tale of suffering, crime, and punishment; but it is also a bitter satire on the crying abuses and anomalies due to the semi-feudal condition of things which had prevailed in Hungary for centuries, the reformation and correction of which had been the chief mission of the Liberal Party in Hungary to which Jókai belonged. The brutal ignorance of the common people, the criminal neglect of the gentry which made such ignorance possible, the imbecility of mere mob-rule, and the mischievousness of demagogic pedantry these are the objects of the author's satiric lash.

As literature, despite the occasional crudities and extravagances of a too exuberant genius that has yet to learn self-restraint, "Szomorú Napok" stands very high. It is animated by a fine, contagious indignation, and its vividly terrible episodes, which appal while they fascinate the reader, seem to be written in characters of blood and fire. The descriptions of the plague-stricken land and the conflagration of the headsman's house must be numbered among the finest passages that have ever flowed from Jókai's pen. But the mild, idyllic strain, so characteristic of Jókai, who is nothing if not romantic, runs through the sombre and lurid tableau like a bright silver thread, and the dénouement, in which all enmities are reconciled, all evil-doers are punished, and Gentleness and Heroism receive their retributive crowns, is a singularly happy one.

Moreover, in "Szomorú Napok" will be found some of Jókai's most original characters, notably, the ludicrous, if infinitely mischievous, political crotcheteer, "Numa Pompilius;" the drunken cantor, Michael Kordé, whose grotesque adventure in the dog-kennel is a true Fantasiestück à la Callot; the infra-human Mekipiros; the half-crazy Leatherbell; and that fine, soldierly type, General Vértessy.

R. Nisbet Bain.
October, 1900.