Between Generosity and Greed: Hungarian Peasants in Kalman Mikszath

Even if hardly anyone in the German-speaking world still knows the name Kalman Mikszath, he was in the 19th century one of the most internationally renowned writers in Hungary. His most beloved work 'St. Peter's Umbrella' was not only translated into numerous languages but also filmed during the silent film era. Theodore Roosevelt, namesake of the teddy bear and American president from 1901 to 1909, counted Mikszath among his favourite authors.

He belonged, in doing so, to the many readers who appreciated that Mikszath did not formulate his stories as indictments of an ever more brutal capitalism, but instead lovingly and ironically shaped tales in which the good are rewarded and the wicked punished. The author by no means blanked out the dark sides of his epoch. He came from the minor nobility, had grown up in the countryside, and had observed that it was precisely the most loveable people who could not adjust to the new egotism that the money economy was forcing upon them. Their economic failure Mikszath disguised as enchanting fairy tales, whose wonderful endings glorified economic failure as a victory of humanity.

This may be illustrated with two examples. They come from the collection of short stories published in 1968 in the Manesse Library of World Literature. The two stories -- the first and the last of the collection -- ultimately address the same theme: the extent to which the handling of and relationship to money influences family cohesion.

First there is this loveable grandfather in the title story 'The Black Rooster' -- a minor nobleman who appears to be suffering from consumption. That was at the time a fashionable diagnosis, applied also to all those who were a little too thin, a little too passive, and far too pale. The pampered grandfather suffers from these symptoms, and so his family doctor advises him to take a long, expensive cure. This cure, the doctor explains, is his only chance of survival. The whole family therefore pools its money to finance it. They reckon this way and that, but it simply is not enough. There is only one option: to hope for the next harvest. The entire profit, they resolve, shall be used for the life-saving cure. Everyone works like mad so that there will be a rich harvest. Yes, more than that -- secretly, more than one person buys an extra sack of grain with their own money and empties it at harvest time, so that enough is earned to finance the cure. At last the decisive day arrives. The grain is loaded. The grandfather drives to the city as head of the household, to convert his grain into cash. Someone else should have been sent! For when the good grandfather finds a sick girl at the roadside, all economic thinking is forgotten. As a good Samaritan he stops, prepares a bed for her on his wagon, pays for her lodging and care, the doctor, the expensive medicines, and when she dies regardless, takes on the funeral costs as well. The grain? He sells it at a giveaway price because he needs cash quickly to pay for the girl's care.

After the funeral comes the great reckoning. The grandfather is ashamed of having squandered the money that the others earned for his own recovery on this complete stranger.

Quite different is the money-lender in the story 'Prakovsky, the Deaf Smith.' Nothing like that could ever happen to him! Greed has him in its grip, and envy too. He grudges everyone anything good. He makes a transaction out of everything and everyone. Those who need his help find in him a hard negotiating partner who makes available money even to his closest friends only at high usurious rates. His greatest pleasure is to cheat them and to extract for himself every last small advantage, because his counterpart is forced to accept his conditions. Only thus does he feel superior, can he experience something resembling brief satisfaction. Therefore he is nearly torn apart by resentment when he discovers that beneath the useless fields he has sold to a German at an extortionate price there lies a rich seam of coal. There is only one thing to be done: his daughter must marry the man, so that through the bride price he can siphon off some of the wealth for himself. Yes, the money-lender even dreams of the German dying first and then his daughter, which would bring the beautiful coal seam and its revenues back into his possession. What does it matter that his daughter loves another and is loved in return? He beats her bloody with an ox-whip so that she writes the farewell letter to her beloved.

Mikszath presents in these two stories two extremes of the peasant world: the economically highly successful money-lender, who knows and applies every trick and dodge, and the helpless grandfather who, following the biblical commandment, does everything possible to help his neighbour. Which of the two would in reality have had better chances of success? A sobering thought, which Mikszath spares the reader by means of a magical ending.

For the commitment to this helpless girl tears the grandfather out of his lethargy. He does everything to repair the financial damage. The hard labour in the fresh air is better for him than any expensive cure. And Mikszath even allows the spirit of the dead girl to save the old man's beloved grandson. A genuine happy ending, then, that rewards the merciful Samaritan.

The heartless money-lender, by contrast, loses the love of his daughter and his wife. Only his money remains -- and it makes him not one bit happier.

What a comforting ending! It conceals the fact that in reality, even in the 19th century, the heartless money-lenders were more successful than the merciful Samaritans. It is at least consoling to imagine that greed may make one rich but not happy.