The Transylvanian Trilogy by Miklos Banffy (Bánffy Miklós) vols. 1-2-3
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Overview: Count Miklós Bánffy de Losoncz (1873-1950) was a Hungarian nobleman, liberal politician, and historical novelist.
Beginning his political career at the time when Hungary was a constituent of Austria-Hungary, Bánffy was elected a Member of Parliament in 1901 and became Director of the Hungarian State Theatres (1913–1918). Both a traditionalist and a member of the avant-garde, he wrote five plays, two books of short stories, and a distinguished novel. Overcoming fierce opposition, his intervention made it possible for Béla Bartók’s works to have their first performance in Budapest.
Bánffy became Foreign Minister of Hungary in his cousin Count István Bethlen’s government of 1921. Although he detested the politics of the Regent, Admiral Miklós Horthy, he worked to review the boundary revisions confirmed by the Treaty of Trianon after World War I through which Transylvania had been transferred to Romania. Little progress was made, and he retired from office.
His trilogy, A Transylvanian Tale (Erdélyi történet), also called The Writing on the Wall, and known in English as The Transylvanian Trilogy (They Were Counted, They Were Found Wanting and They Were Divided), was published between 1934 and 1940. Bánffy portrayed pre-war Hungary as a nation in decline, failed by a shortsighted aristocracy. A stunning historical epic written in the 1930s, but set in the lost world of the Hungarian aristocracy just before World War I, it was first discovered by the English-speaking world after the fall of communism in Hungary.
Vol. 1: They Were Counted
The first novel in the trilogy introduces us to a decadent, frivolous, and corrupt society unwittingly bent on its own destruction during the last years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Bánffy’s lush depiction of an opulent lost paradise focuses on two upper-class cousins who couldn’t be more different: Count Balint Abády, a liberal politician who compassionately defends his homeland’s downtrodden Romanian peasants, and his dissipated cousin László, whose life is a whirl of parties, balls, hunting, and gambling. They Were Counted launches a story that brims with intrigues, love affairs, duels, murder, comedy, and tragedy, set against the rugged and ravishing scenery of Transylvania. Along with the other two novels in the trilogy—They Were Found Wanting and They Were Divided—it combines a Proustian nostalgia for the past, insight into a collapsing empire reminiscent of the work of Joseph Roth, and the drama and epic sweep of Tolstoy.
Vol. 2: They Were Found Wanting
In the sequel to They Were Counted Balint Abady is forced to part from the beautiful and unhappily married Adrienne Uzdy. László Gyeroffy is rapidly heading for self-destruction through drink and his own fecklessness. The politicians, quarrelling among themselves and stubbornly ignoring their countrymen’s real needs, are still pursuing their vendetta with the Habsburg rule from Vienna. Set in picturesque Translvania, Bánffy paints a rich and fascinating portrait of the aristocratic world oblivious to its impending demise.
Vol. 3: They Were Divided
The third novel in the trilogy continues the story of the two aristocratic cousins introduced in They Were Counted as they navigate a dissolute society teetering on the brink of catastrophe. Count Balint Abády, a liberal politician who defends his homeland’s downtrodden Romanian peasants, loses his beautiful lover, Adrienne, who is married to a sinister and dangerously insane man, while his cousin László loses himself in reckless and self-destructive addictions. Meanwhile, no one seems to notice the gathering clouds that are threatening the Austro-Hungarian Empire and that will soon lead to the brutal dismemberment of their country. Set between the modernity and intellectual ferment of Budapest, and the magnificent scenery of wild forests, snowcapped mountains, and ancient castles, the last volume completes the portrait of an irresistibly enticing world while chronicling its destruction.
Genre: Fiction > General Fiction/Classics History, Politics, Hungary, Central Europe, Great Novels
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