A 100 year old mirror

Recently, I started reading what seems to be widely regarded as "The Great Transylvanian Novel", which is Miklos Banffy's Transylvanian trilogy (or Banffy Miklos's if you prefer). Period literature is not really my thing, usually, and especially period literature which features as its main context the lives of aristocrats and the privileged.  But, so far, (I'm mid way through book 1) it's an absolutely cracking read. I'm - to my surprise, actually - really enjoying it.  And so many things are familiar to me, in a way which I could never have expected. (Which is precisely why everyone tells me that I shouldn't overlook such novels. So, I have been foolish.  As usual.)

So, anyway, I'm guessing I might write again on this subject as I devour the 3 books, but yesterday I came across a passage which was just so perfect I felt I had to share it.

The hero, Balint Abady (I'll just stick with the translated version's ordering of names rather than the original Hungarian), who is a count and a politician (and one assumes not a million miles from Banffy himself), is travelling on a train from Maros-Ludas (Luduș) to Kolozsvar (Cluj) where he meets a Romanian lawyer, Dr Aurel Timisan.  They start talking and...

It was all such nonsense: Romanians were Romanians and would remain so eternally, no matter what new names were invented for them. "Nobody expects anything else," said Balint, "but you must admit that the country in which you live has a right to demand that you learn its language!"

"Naturally, I'm not against that," said Timisan, and once again a barely perceptible mockery lurked in his smile, "That's to everyone's advantage. As you see I've learned it myself, even becoming a Doctor of Law at a Hungarian university and serving in the Hungarian army, both with tolerable success, though I say it myself. [...] "But you must admit, too," he went on, "that it is most unjust that the public notaries, high sheriffs, tax-collectors - indeed all public servants - are not obliged to speak the language of the people they serve. It is really absurd that the people cannot explain themselves in court in their own language, but they have to use an interpreter.  the Nationality Bill was supposed to grant us this...but of course it's been drawn up by Hungarians without us being consulted!"

This passage actually made me laugh out loud because I feel like I've had this conversation over and over, or overheard it time after time.  Except now of course, the roles are reversed, and Romanian and Hungarian have changed places. This part of the novel is set in the early part of he last century, around 1906 I believe.  100 years later and we have exactly the same conversations about more or less exactly the same things, just in reverse.  First time tragedy, second time farce?

Abady changes the subject at this point, and sounds a bit like a more erudite version of me..

"It's my view," he said, "that we should try and find the means to draw closer spiritually and economically.  here in Transylvania we are both at home. It is your country and it is my country. It is common ground to both of us. We could learn a great deal is we paid more attention to what really matters, and did not allow ourselves always to be sucked into the whirlpool of Budapest politics"

(Here you have to replace Budapest with Bucharest, but you knew that)

plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

It's a great book.  I'd really recommend it.

Katalin Varga (film review)

So a couple of weeks ago we watched Katalin Varga, a film made by a British director, set near here and filmed in Hungarian (mostly) and Romanian.

There are actually quite a few similarities between this film and "Along the Enchanted Way" (which I just reviewed here), though they may not be immediately obvious. Essentially both are clearly made (written/produced/directed etc) by Britons who obviously came to Transylvania and fell in love with the whole mediaeval vibe thing here - the scything, the horse carts, the natural beauty, the wildness, all that stuff. This is overt in Blacker's book, and perhaps less so in Strickland's film. However, so lacking in action and events is much of Katalin Varga, that you can only assume that it must have been a vehicle for Strickland to indulge his desire to show long slow shots of Transylvanian landscapes, and storks lazily flapping over remote villages, and men in fields cutting hay, and horsecart journeys across wide open fields with mountain backdrops.

In addition both feature very much a local cast of characters - "Enchanted Way" with your actual real people, though some are pseudonymised, and "Katalin Varga" with local crews and actors (and as I mentioned here, some of whom are actually based in Csikszereda).

There are two major differences though. Firstly that Katalin Varga is fiction (at least I bloody hope it is), and secondly that while life in these pastoral villages in "Enchanted Way" is idyllic and romantic and somehow beautiful, in "Katalin Varga" it's nasty, brutish, and short.

It's difficult to describe the plot of Katalin Varga at all without giving half the film away (primarily because very little actually happens in it), so I won't bother trying. It's mostly filmed in Covasna county (in the town of Kommando/Comandau in case you're interested), and I guess it is somewhat atmospheric. But because the film appears to be actually a showcase for the scenery rather than the scenery forming a backdrop for the film, and because I live here and see all this scenery every day, I have to say it left me feeling a little bit ...well, bored, frankly.

But, I guess this is my problem rather than the film's. I've just started reading another book "Blue River, Black Sea" by Andrew Eames, in which he says, while he's explaining what brought him to this part of the world:

The final catalyst for the book was a trip I made to Transylvania, where I stumbled into an almost medieval landscape that I never dreamed still existed in Europe, of scything farmers and their fruit-collecting children, of horses and carts, of wells in the villages, wolves in the woods and bears in the hills. The storybook detail was captivating. The storks on the chimney stacks, clapping their beaks when their youngsters stood up. The chicks in homemade chicken runs on the roadside verges. the little smoking huts in every yard, breadmaking ovens for summer use. And the daily cow parade, when all the villagers' cattle brought themselves back from the fields punctually at milking time and wandered down the main street until the reached their owners' houses, where the gates would be standing open to welcome them home. Transylvania seemed a mythical place, one where you literally didn't count your chickens until they hatched, and one where you made sure you made hay while the sun shone

And he's right in that very evocative and very real description. That is, more or less, exactly how it is. And it is beautiful. But somehow living here, I have sort of forgotten. I no longer notice any of these things, so utterly normal are they. And that does make me slightly sad I think, that I live in this place which to an outsider seems almost impossibly exotic (in a very retro sense of exotic), but which has ceased to make me swoon on a daily basis as it obviously did Eames, and Blacker, and Strickland.

I haven't really reviewed "Katalin Varga" have I? To sum up, beautiful and evocative and atmospheric if you don't live in Transylvania, with a fairly slight (and very dark) plot.

[By the way, Katalin Varga, is actually the name of a famous Transylvanian woman who led a miners' movement. I presume the choice of her name for the lead character of this film is significant in some way, but I'm not sure what the significance is]

Finally

Over two months after his death, reported by me back at the beginning of October, a British newspaper (The Independent) has finally got around to printing an obituary of Sütő András. Better late than never, though, and it is well worth reading.

Sütő András

Sütő András has died. He was, until last night, one of the most famous living Transylvanian Hungarians. To Hungarians he is a great playwright and novelist, who, through his work, highlighted the cause and charateristics of ethnic Hungarians living outside Hungary. To the outside world he is probably most remembered for being blinded in one eye by the Romanian nationalist peasant mob that was whipped up and bussed in to Targu Mures in 1990 to attack a Hungarian student demo. The mob attacked the offices of the Hungarian politcal association and attempted to kill Sütő - obviously they failed, but did instead manage to poke out one of his eyes. He always remained in Targu Mures/Marosvasarhely, rather than moving to Hungary.

Short biography.

And here is an obituary (the only English language one I can find at the moment using Google News)

Gabriel Lambescu

Just got this link from my Dad, an obituary of Gabriel Lambescu, conservation architect. Have to admit I'd never heard of him up until now (always a shame when you read of someone who seems like a wonderful person - but it's in an obituary). But I have stayed in the Casa cu Cerb in Sighisoara (and it's bloody gorgeous) and have visited the castle at Cris (which despite it being a Saxon area was one of the many homes of one of the seemingly many Bethlens (Gabor, possibly).

Anyway, just thought I'd recycle it here and tip my hat and pay my respects to Mr Lambescu.

The Whisky Robber

So, I was wandering round the Internet, reading stuff here and there, when I came across news of a book launch in the UK this week. The book that is being launched had been published in the USA last year to great critical acclaim, and is apparently a true story about an ice-hockey goalie who was also a bank robber in Budapest. Suitably intrigued I looked further into the story and discovered that this bloke is from here. Right here in Csikszereda. He’s quite possibly our most famous son, and this is the first I’ve heard of him.

So, anyway, more information. The book is called “The Ballad of the Whiskey Robber” and is by a bloke called Julian Rubinstein. The whiskey robber is actually called Attila Ambrus (or more accurately Ambrus Attila, I presume). He ends up playing ice hockey (as a goalie) for a team in Budapest, and supplements his meagre income by holding up banks. Before each hold up, he goes into a nearby bar and drinks a shot of whisky to steel himself. It sounds like the real meat of the story is partly the context in which it takes place: a Hungary in a transition from communism to capitalism. And partly the comical clouseau-esque investigation that takes place to capture him, and subsequently to recapture him as he manages to escape from prison. I have ordered it and can’t wait to read it. A real life celebrity, from right here. (To cap it all Warner Brothers have bought the film rights and Johnny Depp is lined up to play the lead)

Some links in case you’re interested:
The author’s homepage
Very extensive and interesting article on Hungarian website Pestiside