The Nameless Castle

The Nameless Castle

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Nameless Castle, by Maurus
Jókai This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
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Title: The Nameless Castle
Author: Maurus Jókai
Release Date: November 15, 2004 [EBook #14048]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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NAMELESS CASTLE ***

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[Illustration: Dr Maurus Jókai]
WORKS OF MAURUS JÓKAI
HUNGARIAN EDITION
THE NAMELESS CASTLE

Translated from the Hungarian Under the Author's supervision By S. E.
BOGGS
NEW YORK DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 1898

INTRODUCTION
TO THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF MY WORKS
This is not the first occasion upon which it has been my good fortune to
win appreciation and approval for my works from the reading public of
the United States. Up to the present, however, it has often been under
difficulties; for many of my works which have been published in the
English tongue were not translated from the original Hungarian text,
while others, through want of a final perusal, were introduced to the
public marred by numerous faults.
In the present edition we have striven to give the English reading public
a correct translation, for which an authorized text has been utilized by
the Doubleday & McClure Co., who have sole right for publishing
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
finds expression in constitutional forms, relying upon the love of
freedom, which unites so many different races in one uniform whole;
the same independent institutions; the same ideas in religion, in ethics;
the same respect for women, the same esteem of labor, the same mental
culture; a striving after progress, yet side by side with this a high
respect for traditions; the same poetry of agriculture, the same prose of
industry; rapid progress of both, and in consequence thereof an
impetuous growth of towns.
Yet, while we find so many common traits between America and
Hungary in the great field of theory, those typical figures which here in
Hungary represent such theories must make a novel and extraordinary
entrée in the New World, that they may deserve to win the interest of

the foreign reader.
Hungary still represents a piece and parcel of the Old World; she is not
so much Europe as a modern Asia. My novels centre round those
peculiar figures of Hungarian common life; and in every work of mine
a bit of history of true common life will be found described. I have had
a particular delight, however, in occupying myself with foreign
countries, especially with the East. There have been years when I was
compelled to choose subjects for novel-writing in foreign parts.
In English and in Hungarian literature we find a common trait in that
humor which is discovered also in the tragic; a characteristic of the
nation itself.
It is with perfect confidence and in good hope that I present my present
work (translated so faithfully) before the much-esteemed English
reading public. May God bless that home of freedom, by whose
example we have learnt how to unite the greatness of the state with the
welfare of the people.
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
three hundred and fifty novels, dramas, and miscellaneous works, not
to mention innumerable articles for the press that owes its freedom
chiefly to him, it seems incredible that there was ever a time of
indecision as to what career he was best fitted to follow. The idle life of
the nobility into which Maurus Jókay was born in 1825 had no
attractions for a strongly intellectual boy, fired with zeal and energy
that carried him easily to the head of each class in school and college;

nor did he feel any attraction for the prosaic practice of law, his father's
profession, to which Austria's despotism drove many a nobleman in
those wretched days for Hungary. It was Pétofi, the poet, who was his
dearest friend during the student-life at Pápa; idealism ever attracted
him, and, by natural gravitation toward the finest minds, he chose the
friendship of young men who quickly rose into eminence during the
days of revolution and invasion that tried men's souls.
For a time Jókay, as he then wrote his name, was undecided whether to
choose literature or art as an outlet for the