WORKS OF MAURUS JÓKAI
HUNGARIAN EDITION
THE NAMELESS CASTLE
S. E. BOGGS
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 entrée 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 th