The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-06-07
JoKAI, SCOTT AND DUMAS.

| The papers speak of Jokai the Hun garian novelist, as the Dumas of Hun
 gary. I never read his novels in the original, but the translations that ap- lDeared as feuiletons in leading French papers seemed to have little common with Dumas, now beyond extreme facility. Dumas has tripping ease, in- lvention, quick, light spirit of dialogue, land not much color. He enters a
 palace as he might his own home, gives
 without familiarity the Queen in her peignoir and the maids of honor in their slippers and negliges. He juggles with
 the famous as if they were so many marionettes, keeps them going with
 dextrous sleight-of-hand, makes them
 converse in terms that just suit their characters and situations, whip them loff the stage to replace them by an-
 other set of puppets, and carries it on with unfiagging spirit, and amuses from beginning to end; but amuses merely Jokai's novels. as it seems to
 me. have color stronger movement,
 and the striking testifies and often ex-
 aggeration required in operatic libretto, In these qualities Jokai comes nearer to Scott, Victor Hugo, and Jules Verne than to the elder Dumas. He might have written Michel Strogoff.' In a
 French translation he is under some serious disadvantages. Hungarian names are to western readers non-con- ductors of sympathy, and to feel right fly Hungarian incidents and events one
 should first have lived some time in Hungary Jokai was scarcely in toucf. with the scenic Magyar class, and the
 no less theatrical churchmen of his na- tive land. about whom we know most
 in this part of the world. He belonged, las did Kossuth, to Calvanistic family with a religious tradition, and dating almost back to the time of Calvin The minor nobility and the upper middle class of Hungary contain, perhaps, more Calvinists than Catholics Jokai
 received the severe mental and moral ttraining in favor in Calvfnistic commu-
 mites, and never ceased to be man of law and order in the revolutionary re-
 riod of his career. In spite of his stage associations and romantic fancies and imaginations, he ever retained some- l jltiAhiS Ol LtlC tOllSClSitCC.
 I dare say that all that is extreme in
 his novels could be traced to reaction
 against the severity of his education.
 Scott reacted against Calvin in plung- l ing into childish mediaevalisin entire | Ily of his own invention. Like his CO., religionist Kossuth, Jokai was brought | to for the judicature, which is organ lized in Hungary pretty much as In
 France. But he entered that branch of the civil service at time of great men 1 tai fermentation, and cast aside his
 magistrates robe to live by his pen and to air the ideas that fevered his brain. He thought of writing national
 drama, in verse. and became an assid-
 uous habitue of the theater to study stage effects and perspective. There 1 he saw and fell in love with the star l of Budapest, Rosa Laborfalvi, the ac- tress whom he married. I never saw
 her, but Pulzky assured me that she did not "voler sa grande reputation" :" and that he ranked her above every other tragedienne of her time. The
 marriage, Pulzky also said, had the
 best effect on Jokais genius and placed him in the best possible soil for it's growth. I saw the second wife, also an
 actress, and a pretty and gifted being. He strove to rejuvenate himself to
 bridge over the difference of age-fifty- four years-that lay between them, and he never sought to hide that he felt in | a perpetual honeymoon. His pen had
 brought him wealth and honor. The Empress Elizabeth, when staying at Godollo, used to ride over to his charm ling place at Schwabenberg to ask him
 to read to her his early poems and to converse with him in Hungarian. One lof the strangers rooms of his villa was set apart for her use. It is not too