The days were counted

They were counted, Miklós Bánffy, Barcelona, Books of Asteroid, 2009 (1934)
Reading the first volume of the original writer’s Transylvanian Trilogy of the area wants you, immediately, the urge to read the next two volumes, Judged Souls (1937) and The Divided Kingdom (1940). With a thorough and balanced drafting the reader comes to know the parallel story of two cousins of the nobility, the Earl Bálint Abady which has left a foreign diplomatic occupation to become a deputy in the Parliament in Budapest, and László Gyeróffy, pianist after the breakup with cousin Klara will be doomed to alcohol and gambling. The contrasting stories of two young Bánffy serves to build the most valuable element of the novel, the political crisis of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy at the beginning of the twentieth century and the decline of social class, the nobility, to the new challenges the world .

A world that just remember, no doubt, the Gattopardo Lampedusa or Bearn de Villalonga, as seen on page 378, a scathing criticism of the lack of interest of the wealthy nobility of the country.
However, more immediate references are found in the moral and political disquisitions The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil, although in that case, described from an Austrian perspective. This is the book Bánffy interest, the view from the Hungarian perspective, a nation which depends so far Transylvanian land which he originates; sociolinguistic reflections on the use of German, Hungarian and Romanian are a good example. The novel makes you smell the forests and mountains of the Carpathians as the palaces of the nobility Hungarian or Transylvanian. There is also a great recreation of the stormy history of Romanticism, with Bálint Miloth Adrienne Abady love, married without love and subjected to psychological abuse from her husband. All this makes the novel an excellent example of the evolution of European narratives of the nineteenth century to the twentieth passage, with elements of Realism, Romanticism, but also with a piece of psychologist focusing especially on the inner construction of the deputy and his beloved Abady Miloth. Regarding the construction of the characters is a common element to highlight the approach of the dislocation in each. A lack of safety of themselves, lack of perspectives, need to find a past for a present in a position yet.

This was recommended by the young pianist Gyeróffy: “This sentiment was with him wherever he went: I felt the same in Budapest, staying with their relatives. As if I had inside of her childhood orphanage continue adult lives in your soul. He was not in house anywhere, always treated him like an outsider, like a stranger that was not theirs. “(p. 46).