Mór Jókai ˈmoːr ˈjoːkɒi, born Móric Jókay de Ásva (19 February 1825 – 5 May 1904), outside Hungary

Hungary

Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...

 also known as Maurus Jokai, was a Hungarian dramatist and novelist.

Early life

He was born in Komárom

Komárom

Komárom is a city in Hungary on the right bank of the Danube in Komárom-Esztergom county.The city of Komárom was formerly a separate suburban village called...

, Hungary. His father, József, was a member of the Ásva

Asva

Asva is a village in Laimjala Parish, Saare County, on the eastern part of Saaremaa Island, Estonia....

 branch of the ancient Jókay family; his mother was a scion of the noble Pulays. The lad was timid and delicate, and therefore educated at home till his tenth year, when he was sent to Pozsony

Bratislava

Bratislava is the capital of Slovakia and, with a population of about 431,000, also the country's largest city. Bratislava is in southwestern Slovakia on both banks of the Danube River. Bordering Austria and Hungary, it is the only national capital that borders two independent countries.Bratislava...

 (today Bratislava), subsequently completing his education at the Calvinist college at Pápa

Pápa

Pápa is a historical city in Veszprém county, Hungary, located close to the northern edge of the Bakony Hills, and noted for its baroque architecture. With its 33,000 inhabitants, it is the cultural, economic and tourism centre of the region....

, where he first met Sándor Petőfi

Sándor Petofi

Sándor Petőfi , was a Hungarian poet and liberal revolutionary. He is considered as Hungary's national poet and he was one of the key figures of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848...

, Sándor Kozma, and several other brilliant young men who subsequently became famous.

After his father's death when Jókai was 12, his family had meant him to follow the law, his father's profession, and accordingly the youth, always singularly assiduous, plodded conscientiously through the usual curriculum at Kecskemét

Kecskemét

Kecskemét is a city in the central part of Hungary. It is the 8th largest city of the country, and the county seat of Bács-Kiskun.Kecskemét lies halfway between the capital Budapest and the country's third-largest city, Szeged, 86 kilometres from both of them and almost equal distance from the two...

 and Pest (part of what is now Budapest

Budapest

Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...

), and as a full-blown advocate actually succeeded in winning his first case.

Career

The drudgery of a lawyer's office was uncongenial to the ardently poetical youth, and, encouraged by the encomiums pronounced by the Hungarian Academy

Hungarian Academy of Sciences

The Hungarian Academy of Sciences is the most important and prestigious learned society of Hungary. Its seat is at the bank of the Danube in Budapest.-History:...

 upon his first play, Zsidó fiú (The Jewish Boy), he flitted, when barely twenty, to Pest in 1845 with an MS. romance in his pocket; he was introduced by Petőfi to the literary notabilities of the Hungarian capital, and the same year his first notable romance Hétköznapok (Working Days), appeared, first in the columns of the Pesti Divatlap, and subsequently, in 1846, in book form. Hétköznapok, despite its manifest crudities and extravagances, was instantly recognized by all the leading critics as a work of original genius, and in the following year Jókai was appointed the editor of Életképek, the leading Hungarian literary journal, and gathered round him all the rising talent of the country.

He married the great tragic actress, Róza Benke Laborfalvi, on 29 August 1848. On the outbreak of the revolution of 1848

Revolutions of 1848

The European Revolutions of 1848, known in some countries as the Spring of Nations, Springtime of the Peoples or the Year of Revolution, were a series of political upheavals throughout Europe in 1848. It was the first Europe-wide collapse of traditional authority, but within a year reactionary...

, the young editor enthusiastically adopted the national cause, and served it with both pen and sword. Now, as ever, he was a moderate Liberal, setting his face steadily against all excesses; but, carried away by the Hungarian triumphs of April and May 1849, he supported Kossuth

Lajos Kossuth

Lajos Kossuth de Udvard et Kossuthfalva was a Hungarian lawyer, journalist, politician and Regent-President of Hungary in 1849. He was widely honored during his lifetime, including in the United Kingdom and the United States, as a freedom fighter and bellwether of democracy in Europe.-Family:Lajos...

's fatal blunder of deposing the Habsburg

Habsburg

The House of Habsburg , also found as Hapsburg, and also known as House of Austria is one of the most important royal houses of Europe and is best known for being an origin of all of the formally elected Holy Roman Emperors between 1438 and 1740, as well as rulers of the Austrian Empire and...

 dynasty. He was present at the surrender at Világos

Surrender at Világos

The Surrender at Világos took place on 13 August 1849 at Világos, and formally ended the Hungarian Revolution of 1848. After it, Julius Jacob von Haynau became the regent of Hungary and took bloody reprisals against Hungary...

 (now Şiria, Romania) in August, 1849. He intended to commit suicide to avoid imprisonment, but was spared by the arrival of his wife, with whom he made a difficult journey on foot through Russian lines to Pest.

Jókai lived for the next fourteen years the life of a political suspect. Yet this was perhaps the most glorious period of his existence, for during it he devoted himself to the rehabilitation of the proscribed and humiliated Magyar language

Hungarian language

Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....

, composing in it no fewer than thirty great romances, besides innumerable volumes of tales, essays, criticism and faceti. This was the period of such masterpieces as Erdély aranykora (The Golden Age of Transylvania

Transylvania

Transylvania is a historical region in the central part of Romania. Bounded on the east and south by the Carpathian mountain range, historical Transylvania extended in the west to the Apuseni Mountains; however, the term sometimes encompasses not only Transylvania proper, but also the historical...

), with its sequel Török világ Magyarországon (The Turks in Hungary), Egy magyar nábob (A Hungarian Nabob), with its sequel Kárpáthy Zoltán, Janicsárok végnapjai (The Last Days of the Janissaries

Janissary

The Janissaries were infantry units that formed the Ottoman sultan's household troops and bodyguards...

), Szomorú napok (Sad Days).

On the re-establishment of the Hungarian constitution by the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, Jókai took an active part in politics. As a constant supporter of the Tisza

Tisza

The Tisza or Tisa is one of the main rivers of Central Europe. It rises in Ukraine, and is formed near Rakhiv by the junction of headwaters White Tisa, whose source is in the Chornohora mountains and Black Tisa, which springs in the Gorgany range...

 administration, not only in parliament, where he sat continuously for more than twenty years, but also as the editor of the government organ, Hon, founded by him in 1863, he became a power in the state, and, though he never took office himself, frequently extricated the government from difficult places. In 1897 the king appointed him a member of the upper house. In 1899 he created a country-wide scandal by contracting a marriage with Bella Nagy, a young actress.

Jókai died in Budapest

Budapest

Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...

 on 5 May 1904, his first wife having predeceased him on 20 November 1886. Both were buried at the Kerepesi Cemetery

Kerepesi Cemetery

Kerepesi Cemetery is the most famous cemetery in Budapest...

.

His writings

Jókai was an arch-romantic, with an almost Oriental imagination, and humour of the purest, rarest description. If one can imagine a combination, in almost equal parts, of Walter Scott

Walter Scott

Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet was a Scottish historical novelist, playwright, and poet, popular throughout much of the world during his time....

, William Beckford

William Beckford

William Beckford may refer to:* William Beckford , English businessman, often called "Alderman Beckford", father of William Thomas* William Beckford of Somerley , Jamaican slave-owner and writer...

, Dumas père

Alexandre Dumas, père

Alexandre Dumas, , born Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie was a French writer, best known for his historical novels of high adventure which have made him one of the most widely read French authors in the world...

, and Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens

Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...

, together with a strong hint of Hungarian patriotism

Patriotism

Patriotism is a devotion to one's country, excluding differences caused by the dependencies of the term's meaning upon context, geography and philosophy...

, one may perhaps form a fair idea of the character of the work of this great Hungarian romancer.

Jókai was extremely prolific. It was to literature that he continued to devote most of his time, and his productiveness after 1870 was stupendous, amounting to some hundreds of volumes. Stranger still, none of this work is slipshod, and the best of it deserves to endure. Amongst the finest of his later works may be mentioned the unique and incomparable Az arany ember

The Man with the Golden Touch

The Man with the Golden Touch is an 1872 novel by Hungarian novelist Mór Jókai. As Jókai states in the afterword of the novel, The Man with the Golden Touch was based on a true story he had heard from his grand-aunt as a child.-Part I – The St...

(A Man of Gold, translated into English, among others, under the title The Man with the Golden Touch), the most popular A kőszívű ember fiai (The Heartless Man's Sons), the heroic chronicle of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848

Hungarian Revolution of 1848

The Hungarian Revolution of 1848 was one of many of the European Revolutions of 1848 and closely linked to other revolutions of 1848 in the Habsburg areas...

, and A tengerszemű hölgy (Eyes like the Sea), the latter of which won the Academy's prize in 1890. He was also an amateur chess player (see: Mór Jókai Museum in Balatonfüred).

His jövő század regénye (The novel of the next century - 1872) is accounted an important early work of Science Fiction

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

 though the term did not yet exist at the time (see). In spite of its romantic trappings, this monumental two-volume novel includes some acute observations and almost prophetic visions, such as the prediction of a revolution in Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

 and the establishment of a totalitarian state there, or the arrival of aviation

Aviation

Aviation is the design, development, production, operation, and use of aircraft, especially heavier-than-air aircraft. Aviation is derived from avis, the Latin word for bird.-History:...

. Because it could be read as a satirical allegory on Leninism

Leninism

In Marxist philosophy, Leninism is the body of political theory for the democratic organisation of a revolutionary vanguard party, and the achievement of a direct-democracy dictatorship of the proletariat, as political prelude to the establishment of socialism...

 and Stalinism

Stalinism

Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...

 in the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

, the book was banned in Hungary in the decades of the Communist

Communism

Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...

 régime. (Its "Critical Edition" was delayed until 1981.)

Collected editions

The greatest collections of his works:

• Összes művei. Nemzeti (Jubileumi) Kiadás. (Complete Works, "National Edition") 1894-1898, 100 vols.
• Hátrahagyott művei. (Late and Uncollected Works; the Sequel of the "National Edition") 1912, 10 vols.
• Összes művei. Centenáriumi kiadás. (Complete Works, "Centenary Edition") 1925-1932, 100 vols.
• Összes művei. Kritikai kiadás. (Complete Works, "Critical Edition") 1962-, in advance.

Works

• "Hétköznapok" (Weekdays), 1846
• "Vadon virágai" (Flowers of the Wild) 1848 - short stories
• "Forradalmi és csataképek" (Pictures of Revolution and Fight), 1850 (in English: Hungarian Sketches in Peace and War - a selection by Imre Szabad, 1854) (**)
• "Erdély aranykora" (The Golden Age of Transylvania), 1852 (in English: Midst the Wild Carpathians - translated by R. Nisbet Bain, 1894) (**)
• "Török világ Magyarországon" (Turkish World in Hungary), 1852 (in English: The Slaves of the Padishah - translated by R. Nisbet Bain, 1902) (**)
• "A kalózkirály" (The King of the Pirates), 1852-53 (in English: The Corsair King - translated by Mary J. Safford, 1901) (***)
• "Egy magyar nábob" (A Hungarian Nabob), 1853 (in English: An Hungarian Nabob - translated by R. Nisbet Bain, 1898) (**)
• "A fehér rózsa" (The White Rose), 1854 (in English: Halil the Pedlar - translated by R. Nisbet Bain, 1901) (**)
• "Janicsárok végnapjai" (The Last Days of the Janissaries), 1854 (in English: The Lion of Janina - translated by R. Nisbet Bain, 1897) (**)
• "Kárpáthy Zoltán" (Zoltán Kárpáthy), 1854
• "Szomorú napok" (Sad Days), 1848-56 (in English: The Day of Wrath - translated by R. Nisbet Bain, 1900) (**)
• "A régi jó táblabírák" (The Good Old Justices), 1856
• "Az elátkozott család" (Doomed Family), 1858
• "Szegény gazdagok" (Poor Rich), 1860 (in English: Poor Plutocrats - translated by R. Nisbet Bain, 1899) (**)
• "Politikai divatok" (Political Fashions), 1862
• "Az új földesúr" (The New Squire), 1863 (in English: The New Landlord - Translated by Arthur J. Patterson, 1868) (**)
• "Felfordult világ" (An Upturned World), 1863
• "Mire megvénülünk" (By the Time We Grow Old), 1865 (in English: Debts of Honor http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/22757 - translated by Arthur B. Yolland, 1900)
• "Szerelem bolondjai" (Maniacs of Love), 1868
• "A kőszívű ember fiai" (The Heartless Man's Sons), 1869 (in English: The Baron's Sons - translated by Percy Favor Bicknell, 1900) (**)
• "Fekete gyémántok" (Black Diamonds), 1870 (in English: Black Diamonds - translated by Frances Gerard [Geraldine Fitzgerald], 1896) (**)
• "Eppur si muove - És mégis mozog a Föld" (And Yet It Moves), 1872
• "Az arany ember" (The Golden Man), 1872
  • English translations published: Timar's Two Worlds - translated by Hegan Kennard, USA, 1888; Modern Midas; The Man with the Golden Touch
• "A jövő század regénye" (The Novel of the Next Century), 1872-74 (A Novel of the Coming Century) *
• "Enyim, tied, övé" (It's Mine, It's Yours, It's His), 1875
• "Egész az északi pólusig!" (Up to the North Pole!), 1875
• "Az élet komédiásai" (Comedians of the Life), 1876
• "Egy az Isten" (God is One), 1876 (in English: Manasseh - translated by Percy Favor Bicknell, 1901) (**)
• "Névtelen vár" (Nameless Castle), 1877 (in English: The Nameless Castle - translated by Sarah Elisabeth Boggs, 1898) (**)
• "Szép Mikhál" (Pretty Mikhál), 1877 (in English: Pretty Michal - translated by R. Nisbet Bain, 1891) (**)
• "Görögtűz" (Greek Fire), 1877
• "Rab Ráby" (Ráby the Prisoner), 1879 (in English: The Strange Story of Ráby - anonymous, 1909) (**)
• "Egy hirhedett kalandor a 17. századból" (An Infamous Scoundrel from the 17th Century), 1879 (in English: Told by the Death's Head - translated by Sarah Elisabeth Boggs, 1903) (**)
• "Szabadság a hó alatt vagy a Zöld könyv" (Freedom under the Snow; or, The Green Book), 1879 (in English: The Green Book - translated by Mrs. Waugh [Ellis Wright], 1897) (**)
• "Páter Péter" (Friar Péter), 1881 (in English: Peter the Priest - translated by S. L. Waite & A. L. Waite, 1897) (***)
• "Akik kétszer halnak meg" (Those Who Will Die Two Times), 1881-2
• "Szeretve mind a vérpadig" (Loved up until the Scaffold), 1882
• "Egy játékos, aki nyer" (A Player Who Wins), 1882
• "Bálványosvár" (The Castle of the Idols), 1883
• "Minden poklokon keresztül" (Through All the Hells), 1883
• "A lőcsei fehér asszony" (The White Woman from Lőcse), 1884
• "A cigánybáró" (The Gipsy Baron), 1885
• "Életemből" (From my Life), 1886
• "A kiskirályok" (The Viceroys), 1886
• "A három márvány fej" (The Three Marble Heads), 1887
• "A lélekidomár" (The Trainer of the Souls), 1888-9
• "Gróf Benyovszky Móricz életrajza", (The Biography of Count Móricz Benyovszky) 1888–1891
• "A tengerszemű hölgy" (The Lady with the Eyes like the Sea), 1890 (in English: Eyes Like the Sea - translated by R. Nisbet Bain, 1893) (**)
• "Gazdag szegények" (Rich Poor), 1890
• "Nincsen ördög" (The Devil does not Exist), 1891 (in English: Dr. Dumány's Wife - translated by Frances Steinitz, 1891) (**)
• "Rákóczy fia" (Rákóczy's Son), 1891
• "A fekete vér" (The Black Blood), 1892
• "A két Trenk - Trenk Frigyes" (The Two Trenks - Friedrich Trenk), 1892-3
• "Fráter György" (Brother George), 1893
• "Sárga rózsa" ([Yellow Rose), 1893 (in English: The Yellow Rose - translated by Beatrice Danford, 1909) (**)
• "De kár megvénülni!" (What a Pity to Grow Old!), 1896
• "Öreg ember nem vén ember" (An Old Man is not a Tottery Man), 1899
• "Egetvívó asszonyszív" (A Woman's Heart Wins the Heaven) 1902
• "A mi lengyelünk" (Our Man from Poland), 1903
• "Ahol a pénz nem isten" (The Place Where Money is not a God), 1904
• "Párbaj Istennel" (A duel with God)

Other English Editions (**):

• "Life in a Cave" - a short novel for children, translated by Linda Villari, 1884
• "In Love with the Czarina" - short stories, translated by Lewis Felberman, 1893
• "The Tower of Dago" - a short novel, anonymous, 1899
• "Tales from Jókai" - selected and translated by R. Nisbet Bain, 1904

Source (*): http://www.globusz.com/ebooks/HunShort/00000012.htm

Source (**): Lóránt Czigány: A magyar irodalom fogadtatása a viktoriánus Angliában 1830-1914 (Budapest, Akadémiai, 1976)

Source (***): www.gutenberg.org

External links

• Mór Jókai: The baron's sons
• Mór Jókai: Black diamonds
• Mór Jókai: The day of wrath
• Mór Jókai: Debts of honor
• Mór Jókai: Dr. Dumany's wife
• Mór Jókai: Halil the pedlar
• Mór Jókai: A Hungarian nabob
• Mór Jókai: Manasseh
• Mór Jókai: The nameless castle
• Mór Jókai: The poor plutocrats
• Mór Jókai: The lion of Janina or The last days of the janissaries
• The Two Willows by the Bridge (short story)
• Mór Jókai at Find-A-Grave
• Mór Jókai's works: text, concordances and frequency lists