poems about autumn on one of the web's most beautiful blogs. This poem in particular put me in mind of the many ruined manor houses we visited while in Western Romania this summer.
To reach them we drove along unsealed roads for miles, through villages where no-one seemed to own a car and most of the day, at that particular moment of the year, seemed to be spent sitting on benches outside your cottage shelling peas with your neighbours. Swallows or house martens darted through the air, ducks and geese dawdled along the verges. On one occasion, we saw an object on the road in front of us, which, as we approached, formed itself into the shape of a dead dog. Only when we were inches away from it did it lift its head, revealing itself to be merely sleeping.
The grassland outside the villages was dotted with scattered sheep, often minded by a solitary child. Carts drawn by horses made their unsteady way back in the direction from which we had come. Rounding one bend, we came upon a heaped hay-wagon halted beside a cherry tree. An entire family were there, some on the ground, some in the branches, some balanced on top of the unsteady looking mound it carried, all of them either picking or eating the fruit.
Here are some of the abandoned places we saw. They are all points on the journey that Patrick Leigh Fermor made before the Second World War. The life he portrays that took place within them had a beauty to it, but all that has been swept away:
The "beauty... that has been swept away" may represent Loss of Empire to some but it represents Democratisation to others :-) That's a lovely poem by Wallace Stevens - deceptively simple.
ReplyDeleteYou don't have any kind of feudalism in Austria any more either, but you also don't have ruin and fairly widespread poverty. There are different ways of approaching change and the method of change that came to Romania was not, I would argue, the ideal one.
DeleteNot sure where 'empire' comes into it, by the way, Gadjo. The truth is, the more I think about your comment, the more baffled I am - are you arguing that the Communists were democratisers? Do you really believe that all these places should be rotting and all their owners deserved the treatment they got - if so, why? What good did it do? What did we lose as a result? For my part, this quote from Paul Johnson that appeared on Books Inq. the other day pretty much sums up what I think about Communism:
Delete"The urge to distribute wealth equally, and still more the belief that it can be brought about by political action, is the most dangerous of all popular emotions. It is the legitimation of envy, of all the deadly sins the one which a stable society based on consensus should fear the most. The monster state is a source of many evils; but it is, above all, an engine of envy."
Apologies if I overlooked the significance of the smiley emoticon (I also find emoticons totally baffling) and your comment was ironic or something.
The Austro-Hungarian Empire? Hungary was a very feudal society, with the peasants all taxed up to the hilt and the aristocracy not required to pay any all. This in fact held Hungary back when the rest of Europe was industrialising and allowing its peasants to move from the countryside to the towns to work, and this would have affected Hungarian as well as Romanian peasants. I suspect that most poor people in this part of the world - most Romanians, at least... poor Hungarians might well have an (arguably misplaced) idea of nostalgia about such times, I do understand that - would not look at a ruined manor house and wish to have those days back again. Yes, despite the ugliness of industry, it's still even shittier to work as a peasant. By 'democratisation' I meant the allowing of all of a country's people the chance of decent schooling and of whatever careers their talents might merit. I'm IN NO WAY an apologist for communism - and that was foisted on this country by the Soviets, don't forget, something which Austria just managed to avoid - as my wife and her family could easily have been put in prison for their beliefs. But were we talking about communism? It seems from your comments that you were. Well, I should probably finish reading Leigh Fermor's book - as I recall he was able to portray most things as having a beauty to them.
ReplyDeleteBut there is no either/or - you could have unruined manor houses and universal education existing side by side. And there are still masses of people still working as peasants in Romania. So what was the point of wrecking everything?
DeleteYes, I agree, wrecking things like this is crass, but then one could argue that so was the bombing of Dresden even though one might understand the motivation for it. Everything of course, takes money, simultaneously maintaining beautiful manor houses and providing universal education included, and money is not in very great supply. But I'm an eternal optimist, and I enjoy hearing the (admittedly occasional) stories about manor houses being restored - God bless our Prince Charles - as I also am repeatly impressd by the education and intelligence of my work colleagues, whose parents (both Rom and Hun) were every often first-generation townies.
ReplyDeleteI'm hoping we will never fall out over these issues - I do respect your views and your healthy interest in this part of the world. I really should start my blog up again and have my own soap-box there.
Thinking about it again I realise that of course Ceausescu could easily have maintained manor houses and universal education if he hadn't channeled all the nation's wealth into his meglomaniac building schemes, so it was indeed crass. I think I've become like most of the locals in thinking that the time under communism was a bad dream best forgotten and that now 'the ball should be played from where it lies'. Unfortunately this probably still means that people are going to want to spend what money there is on things other than manor houses.
ReplyDeleteHad 'people' perhaps left the houses in the hands of those who originally owned them and simply asked them to pay tax, those who originally owned them would probably have generated the money for education and found some way to make a go of keeping the houses going as well. It is worth remembering too that, although the Soviets started the pointless destruction, there were quite a few locals who took quite a lot of pleasure in the process of senseless, merciless smashing up of society and people's lives and freedoms. All so futile - and leaving such a mess behind it. And I don't buy the idea that the grandees were all maniac oppressors.
DeleteYes, paying tax is a really great idea, though I suspect you'd need to do more than ask. It wasn't the locals' society, though, was it, and the Hungarians had queered their pitch still further by performing cruel atrocities in any number of Transylvanian villages in WWII. No, I don't buy the idea that all grandees are maniac oppressors either. For what it's worth, I seem to spend a large part of my life trying to be consiliatory and understanding to both Romanians and Hungarians and frankly I'm tired of it. Yes, Romanian politicians (with the exception of Iuliu Maniu and maybe few others) have been shite - sorry. I'd love to discuss Trianon, Horthy, and Hungarian policy towards its ethnic minorities (and majorities) - plus Romanian shite, of course - if you're interested. Meanwhile, regarding property and how it looks, as I said before I look on the bright side - many are being returned to their original owners.
ReplyDeleteI never mentioned - or had in mind - the Hungarian/Romanian question. Re returns, unfortunately what is being returned is rarely in its original condition, which does seem to me to be unfair. And I come back again to my central point which is that nothing has changed for the better as the result of all the destruction and disruption that led to the current position. Futile violence and misery.
DeleteI think the Hun/Rom question underlied much written here - 'people'/grandees? Well, futile misery was the essence of communist experience for the vast majority; but heck it's only property - and largely just the degeneration of it - that we're talking about here, so I think 'violence' is a misleading word. There is so much other beauty to enjoy in this place.
ReplyDeleteDo you not know what was done to the people whose property was taken away? I think violence is not misleading when one considers their stories. Injustice matters and great injustices were done. If your argument is that those injstices were deserved because there were great injustices done in the reverse direction earlier, I don't agree and I don't think that, as a blanket allegation, is even historically accurate. I can't go along with your 'don't worry, be happy', mixed with 'all the grandees were ghastly and Magyars to boot' view of things. I don't think we're ever going to agree.
DeleteNo, I don't think that those injustices perpetrated on individuals who once owned property were necessarily justified, neither because of former Hungarian political policies nor by the fact that the individuals were owners of something. I have every sympathy with these victims of communism, and every sympathy with victims of chauvinism generally. I just prefer it when people understand the full 'back story' to why things have happened. I don't think this discussion is getting us anywhere.
ReplyDeleteI see now that my "I think the Hun/Rom question underlied much written here - 'people'/grandees?" was badly put and could have been misinterpreted - yes, not only Hungarians were grandees, and many property owners of all ethnicities were sent to places like the Danube 'Canal of Death' - but I was in turn confused by your apostrophised 'people', which seemed very strange at the time and up that point you seemed only concerned with property. I am still confused as to why you keep saying that communism did a lot of bad things - I think we all kind of know that already, and sometimes just getting on with life in the present is the only answer. And that is not MY view that 'all the grandees were ghastly and Magyars to boot' that you present there, as I thought I had already made clear - I have been trying to present the other side of the back-story (which maybe you have not heard too often), as is my wont with both Romanian and Magyars here. For a conciliatory statement, please see my 2nd paragraph a few messages ago.
ReplyDeleteThe Hungarians were idiots and bullies toward others. You only have to read one of their own writers, Miklos Banffy, to see that. I still stick by the original remark to which you objected about a way of life that had a beauty to it. My view is that that beauty has been deliberately destroyed but, given there was nothing better put in its place, this was wanton. I was perfectly possible to retain the beauty while making things fair, equitable et cetera - instead we now have ruins and an economic and political mess. As I said, we look at this too differently to agree, which does not mean anything bad. Most of my best friends hold different views about many things to me. It would be quite dull otherwise.
ReplyDelete