Phoenix Land, The [Paperback]

I presume that this book and, thus, this review shall be of interest nearly exclusively to those with a passion for the history of Hungary and/or a devotion to the works and person of Miklós Bánffy. This presumption is due in no small part to the fact that I'm the first to review the book.

The book is really a collection of the pieces of Bánffy's memoirs that have not been lost or destroyed. The collection begins with a description of the coronation ceremony of King Karl I, the last monarch of the Austro-Hungarian empire and has the signature tone of lyrical weltshmerz that so prevails in The Transylvanian Trilogy:

"Later in the evening the rain turned to snow and for a brief moment the white flakes lay on the pavements and glistened in the light of the street lamps. Then all turned to mud and slush, and everything returned to an all-enveloping greyness.

Already, on the very same evening of the coronation, the pageantry and colour seemed no more real than a half-forgotten dream."

The second part of the book, written in 1945 when Bánffy was in his seventies and well-aware of his own approaching demise, concerns his efforts at diplomacy on behalf of Hungary during the early years of the Inter-War period, when the League of Nations was still taken seriously. Not only is one introduced to the innate affability of the non-fictionalised Bánffy here, but his account of his efforts might well serve as a textbook in realpolitik for an aspiring diplomat:

"It is always a mistake to think that one must lie in diplomacy. It is one of the diplomat's fundamental rules that, although there may be things that can remain unsaid, what is said must be the truth. Always tell the truth. Lies are stupid and often harmful, for sooner or later one is found out and then one has lost all credibility forever."

He also treats the reader to much Hungarian and European history, rich in personal and anecdotal detail in which he follows a general rule which modern pop historians with whom the "What-if?" scenarios are all the rage would do well to heed:

"To speculate on what might have been is a futile exercise if the ultimate results of commission and omission are not later made clear....no reason to waste words on what never happened."

Ultimately, it was treachery at home in Hungary, animadversions against him made almost daily in the papers he read from the country he was representing, rather than any diplomatic dust-up, that led to his nervous breakdown and his retirement from the diplomatic corps.

The deep impression left upon the reader is of an affable, deeply-cultured aristocrat who yet excepts with good cheer, for example, being forced to earn a subsistence living as a portrait painter when he runs out of funds in Vienna due to governmental bungling.

But, of course, Bánffy wouldn't be known to us at all were it not for his splendid writing, and what he says about himself as a diplomat is as important as what it says about him as a man:

"I feel that one of the most important aspects of a diplomat is the ability to understand a way of thinking quite alien to one's own. I feel too that maybe it was my experience as a writer that provided me with something of this ability, since all writers must be able to put themselves in the minds of others."

The mind of Bánffy is a lovely, always engaging one to explore in these fragmentary memoirs.