Earlier this year, the Daily Telegraph published a
division by Charles Moore on MiklA3s BA!nffy’s Transylvanian Trilogy, or, as the originator referred to it, “The Chirography on the Wall.” Remaining the despatch of the matrix ten years, mostly through word-of-mouth recommendations, these three novels–They Were Counted, They Were Set Deficient, and They Were Divided–from day one published in Hungary between 1934 and 1940, be subjected to become recognized through a teeny but keen bunch of readers as entire of the finest works of the 20th century.
BA!nffy, or, to use his
busty title, Upon MiklA3s BA!nffy de Losoncz, was a member of the Hungarian rank and a lenient administrator, influential in the mould days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and an early outlandish churchman of Hungary after the ouster of Bela Kun’s communist management in 1920. After retiring from that office in excess of differences with the Regent, MiklA3s Horthy and the ruling conservatives, BA!nffy retired to his ancestral home, BonALida BA!nffy Fortress, in Transylvania–in an compass with it part of Romania.
Not but did BA!nffy’s political science run disc to most of the Hungarian firm, but directly after his trilogy was start published, his country had the infelicity of falling supervised the restraint of the Nazis and then the Soviets. That BA!nffy’s last hazard into adroitness was an attempt to urge Romania and Hungary to violate with Germany and steal sides with the Allies did not help. As reader Malcolm G. Hill wrote in a fascinating opinion on Moore’s article in the Telegraph,
More a year after having decipher them I travelled beside motorhome through all the areas in Transylvania mentioned in the trilogy,
second renounce of Romania, with the abet of a map giving the actual Transylvanian names of the towns and villages which had been changed into Romanian. The saddest cut down to size to smite of all locations at once connected with the words was the BA!nffy Hall at Bonchida, Bontida in Romanian, some 30k to the north of KolozsvA!r(now Cluj Napoca) the one-time home of the BA!nffy dynasty and which doubles as Balint’s
realm wealth institution of Denestornya in the trilogy. The ruination of this at intervals splendorous country race which BA!nffy under no circumstances tires of lovingly describing in so innumerable parts of his epic unfamiliar is a terrible calamity, brought nearby solely appropriate to its promiscuous and deliberate slaughter as an work of spiteful vengeance nearby the retreating German forces in WWII owing to BA!nffy’s element in negotiating Hungary’s withdrawal of second for Germany road to the death of the war. The Germans not
only left the citadel a smoking degradation but destroyed all its furniture and paintings as in fine as BA!nffy’s priceless library and family archives. The present Romanian control is endeavouring to stimulate some parts of the chteau complex that were least damaged but it seems a neglected reprehend to me.
Even within his own homeland, his books were viewed unfavorably close to both regimes and fell not at home of print for over thirty years. It was not until 1982 that the books returned to print. Patrick Thursfield commencement brought the it to the concentration of English-speaking readers in the Stylish Cavalcade in 1995. As he summarized the myth then, “The three books of the trilogy account for ten years in the lifeblood of one Count Balint Abady, like the architect, a Transylvanian aristocrat, landowner and high-profile congressman and, homologue to his story, the
miserable falsehood of the wasted survival and abasement of Abady’s head cousin, the good but
forlorn Reckon Laszlo Gyeroffy.”
BA!nffy took his titles from Demigod’s condemnation of Belshazzar, the matrix prince of Babylon. As written in the Book of Daniel,
But hast lifted up thyself against the God almighty of elysium; and they secure brought the vessels of his edifice before thee, and thou, and thy lords, thy wives, and thy concubines, from ecstatic wine in them; and thou hast praised the gods of shining, and gold, of effrontery, iron, wood, and stone, which consult with not, nor hark to, nor cognizant of: and the Power in whose helping hand thy stirring is, and whose are all thy ways, hast thou not high-sounding: Then was the character of the leg up sent from him; and this leader was written.
And this is the critique that was written, MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN. This is the interpretation of the fashion: MENE; Genius hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it. TEKEL; Thou knack weighed in the balances, and art inaugurate wanting. PERES; Thy
province is divided, and affirmed to the Medes and Persians.
As the Late-model Statesman reassess of They Were Counted put it, “The ‘they’ in cast doubt upon is Hungary’s ruling order, who wee deoch an doris, trip the light fantastic toe, quarrel and lay their distance into the disasters of this century as caught napping as Belshazzar himself.” Or, as Banffy himself wrote in They Were Counted,
As clearly as most of the wealthy classes were worried, manipulation were of crumb account, in behalf of there were abundance of other things that interested them more. There were, on the side of instance, the vault racing ripen, partridge shooting in the current summer, deer-culling in September and pheasant shoots as winter approached. It was, of course, necessary to discern when Parliament was to assemble, when outstanding saturnalia meetings were to rob position or which period had been set aside as a remedy for the annual general meeting of the Casino, for the benefit of these days would not be elbow for such essential events as race-meetings or
magnificent popular receptions.
Thursfield located BA!nffy’s daughter, Katalin BA!nffy-Jelen, and together they worked representing several years in the up to the minute 1990s to
metaphrase the mammoth livelihood–over 1500 pages protracted–into English. The books were then published at near a small U. K. publisher, Arcadia Books, between 1999 and 2001.
Mało fajnie za jakiś czas bedziemy szukać orginałów. 
