Novel
The Village Notary
A falu jegyzője
József Eötvös · 1845
Opening lines
A ki tiszai alföldünknek egy részét bejárta, vagy annak bármely táján csak pár napig tartózkodott, bátran mondhatja, hogy az egészet ismeri.
Whoever has travelled through part of our Tisza plain, or has stayed only a few days in any corner of it, may boldly say that he knows the whole of it.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
In the imaginary county of Taksony, on the eve of an election, the ambitious wife of Vice-Count Réty wants to secure new honours for her husband and brilliant marriages for her stepchildren. With the lawyer Macskaházy, she has the papers proving his nobility, and with them his right to vote, stolen from Jónás Tengelyi, the notary of the village of Tiszarét. But Viola, a peasant turned outlaw after rebelling against a judge's abuses, overhears the plot and takes the papers back from the thief.
Context
The novel, essentially completed in 1844, appeared in 1845. The author paints a county of the reform era, with its officials, its poor, its prisons and its elections, and sees in it the main obstacle to the country's progress; the narrative, with several strands, is often interrupted by his reflections. Translated into English as early as 1850 by Otto von Wenckstern, it is the first Hungarian literary work to achieve international recognition; Eötvös published in 1865 an edition lightened of its digressions.
Who it is for
A long novel with several plots, made of long sentences; it can be read in English in the translation of 1850, and no French translation has been located.
Prizes and reception
A bitter satire of old Hungary, according to the Britannica, and the first great portrait of an entire society in the Hungarian novel.
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