“He gave a swish of his arm” – and in German? – Thoughts on the German Translation of They Were Counted
“He gave a swish of his arm” – and in German? – Thoughts on the German Translation of They Were Counted

Summary/Abstract: I should perhaps begin where the story itself began for me. It is worth a line or two, not so much for my sake as for the sake of Miklós Bánffy. Or to be more precise, for the sake of his novel and its reception, past and future, which is a modest testimony to the wisdom and truth of the late Roman saying according to which every book has its own destiny. We know the fate of the author. He met his tragic end in 1950 in Budapest, impoverished, far from his Transylvanian homeland, stripped of his properties, his treasures of art, and his reputation. For decades his literary work was suppressed by the system, for a count with a name well-known in the history of the region clearly had no place in the brave new world of “socialist culture” (as if descent were a decisive criterion in the arts).

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