The Novel of the Next Century is a novel by Jókai Mór, which he began to publish in 1872. The novel, set between 1952 and 2000, is an unusual work in terms of both genre and concept; literary history has so far failed to evaluate and analyse it. The post-1945 communist cultural policy explicitly banned the work – the first critical edition was published in 1981.
The plot of the novel begins in 1952, with the Habsburg monarch, Árpád II, portrayed as likable, sitting on the Hungarian throne. In the mid-20th century, the expansionist enemy Nihil, which had replaced Tsarist Russia, clashed with the Hungary-centred Monarchy. The Monarchy is weakened by financial and internal political problems, and the joint Minister of War neglects military developments.
While the European powers opt for neutrality, an anarchist Russian force surrounds and bombards the Austro-Hungarian army in Krakow from balloons, and other Russian troops march into Vienna, where they control the press and demoralise the Hungarian troops by propagandising their defeat. The occupying army, led by Mrs Sasha, appears to be restrained in Vienna, but seizes the Monarchy’s gold reserves and, hearing of the Hungarian counterattack, retreats towards the Carpathians and crumbles there. The ingenious Székely, Tatrangi Dávid, succeeds in defeating the Eastern powers by using his new inventions, the aeroplane and the ichor, but the post-war peace treaty forces Tatrangi and thousands of his fellow soldiers to settle in the Danube Delta for ten years.
In the second part of the novel, “The Home”, established in the Danube Delta, significantly transforms world politics: the appearance of the plane forces the great powers to disarm, and the discovery and return of the Monarchy’s gold reserves bring diplomatic recognition to the state founded by Tatrangi. The leader of the Country of Nihil, Mrs Sasha, prepares another attack by allying herself with the American Mr Severus, the financier of the previous inventions of Tatrangi Dávid, and returns to the monarchical form of government, where she becomes Tsarina. Sasha, by this time, Tsarina Alexandra issued an ultimatum to the leaders of the “Home”: accept Russian rule or emigrate to Hungary.
Tatrangi seeks out the remaining descendants of the Hungarians in the east before the next invasion; with their help and the industrial and technical backing of the „Home”, the enemy, who had 20,000 aircraft (aerodromes), is finally defeated in an aerial battle. Russian ground troops and their Balkan allies were forced to surrender by diverting the Danube tributaries. We then witness the post-war worldwide peace, consolidation, and scientific boom: the dystopia of the first half of the novel is contrasted with the utopia of ‘Home’ (the chapter title reveals that the author was influenced by Kant’s Eternal Peace), which is also the more uneven and artistically controversial part of the work.
Characters:
Tatrangi Dávid: the romantic character of the novel, an inventor with a rational world view, a Székely Sabbatian by origin. He has a child with his wife Rozália. He is hindered in many ways during his life: for example, he covers his first inventions not from domestic but from American sources, and despite his successes in battle, the Austro-Hungarian leadership makes a deal with the enemy behind his back. Throughout the novel, he also demonstrates his military and community organizing skills. During the clashes, he tries to avoid blood sacrifices, both his own and the enemy army’s.
“There is a God! But know that He is not only in the wonders of heaven, but also in the hearts of men. Don’t tremble! I will not kill you. The Hungarian is not an assassin. You are the head of a great state: I am the head of a future state. ” – Dárday to Mrs. Sasha.
Árpád Habsburg: a ruler with a distinctly Hungarian affinity. It is a serious problem that his private affairs and love life have to take a back seat to public affairs, and as a constitutional monarch, he has to be considerate of parliament and public opinion.
Dárday: fights in the Hungarian army in the first half of the novel. Although he disarms and corners Sasha together with Tatrangi, he lets him go. He is Tatrangi’s and Severus’s fellow director at the Home and is also in charge of military affairs.
Mr. Severus: Jókai described before his time Mr. Severus as a black millionaire and banker living in the United States, who supported Tatrangi’s inventions financially and went with him to the Danube Delta. Mr. Severus falls in love with Ms. Sasha in the second half of the novel, so he goes with her on her second attack.
Mrs. Sasha: the leader of the revolution in Russia, a small, blonde woman. Afterwards, she has a bloody showdown with her former allies, the anarchist lodge known as the “Devils”, and then consolidates her power and proclaims herself Tsarina. She is the negative figure in the novel, described by Jókai as a Babylonian whore.
Mazrur: one of the negative characters in the work, a Serbian merchant from Bácska. He was expelled from Hungary for running a women’s trading company. He later becomes an envoy of the State of Nihil, and in the second invasion of Mrs. Sasha, he attacks the Délvidék (Southern Hungary) with his marauding troops.
Key concepts in the novel
Aerodromon: a machine capable of flying, manoeuvring in the air, and carrying large objects. It is powered by electricity. In the first half of the novel, it outstrips both ground forces and air warfare based on balloons.
Ichor: The author borrows the term from Greek mythology. Ichor is a rare material of volcanic origin, long found only in Székely Land (described as a forerunner of plastic). Its geographic occurrence allowed the political, military, and economic strengthening of the Home, as Tatrangi chose ichor as the building material for his aircraft. When ichor is discovered on the island of Unalaska (part of the Aleutian Islands), the Russians break Tatrangi’s monopoly and set up an air fleet.
Sabina: a public limited company established in 1947. The company deals with the marriage of Hungarian women abroad, i.e., it is a disguised form of trafficking in girls. The banning of the company, which transports Hungarian girls from poor families educated in Pest to Russia, becomes the casus belli of the Russian invasion. Jókai himself addressed the phenomenon of the trade in girls in his newspaper articles, and in writing this element of the novel, he drew a picture of a repulsive phenomenon of his own time.
Jókai writes:
„The situation is clear, we are preparing against Russia. The ever-haunting spectre, with its big, furry hat, its bruised beard, its gnarled staff, is in all our heavy dreams. And now even from the middle of the furry hat, the red Frígian frog is peeping out. What in the last century Hertzen only dreamt of, what Bakunin is just dreaming of, what the author of ‘Sta Djelat?’ described in fiction, has now been realised, and 20th-century Russia is no longer as fearful of Europe as it was in the last century – it is more fearful. Even the Napoleonic alternative of the 19th century was this: in 50 years, Europe would either become a republic or a Cossack; now the question is united: ‘both Cossack and republic’. … A third of the European press is devoted to praising the Russian republic. Besides, there is a whole league of honest, bona fide doctrinaire socialists toiling away at their propaganda for free, on their banner. They do not expect subjugation, they expect liberation from the wastelands of the Volga. … The hired pen paints the state of affairs in Russia with deliberate exaggeration, and the enthusiast, following his imagination, paints it in heavenly colours. And its interior is more than ever sealed off from foreign eyes.” (- The Russian Phantom)
The political situation sketched in the novel of the next century grew out of Jókai’s readings and the real power relations of the 19th century, just think of the Prussian-French War, the bureaucracy and military leadership of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, the public law problems that divided Hungary, Russian domestic and foreign policy, or the emergence of the United States as a major economic power after the Civil War. Although the plot of the novel covers a large part of the globe, we can highlight clear hubs and political figures that play a major role in the novel.
The Kingdom of Hungary/ Hungarian part of the Monarchy:
In Jókai’s vision, the centre of gravity of the dualist monarchy shifted in favour of Hungary in the 1950s – the latter’s prestige being enhanced by the fact that the common ruler, Árpád Habsburg, made Buda his seat, rather than Austria, which was dependent on Hungary. The Kingdom of Hungary is also significant for other reasons: as secularisation progressed in most of Europe, the Pope was forced to move to Hungary ( in particular to Pozsony / Pressburg / Presporok / Bratislava). One of the most important demands of the dualist era was fulfilled: the Kingdom of Hungary could mobilise 600,000 soldiers in the event of war. The nationality question still existed in the middle of the 20th century, providing Hungary’s enemies with a large attack surface.
Kincső: The female name Kincső is the Hungarian form of the name of the imaginary ancestral homeland, the Chinese version of which, according to Jókai, is Kin-Tseu, although it is used as a place name in Jókai Mór’s The Novel of the Next Century. The source of this name is the ancient Chinese provincial name of Jingzhou (Pinjin transliteration: Jīngzhōu; popular Hungarian transliteration: Csingcsou; Chinese: 荆州). (The place name became a feminine name in the 20th century.) In the work, the isolated but highly moral Hungarians who migrated from Magna Hungaria to the Pamirs play a major role in defeating the Russians. After the victory, the Hungarians from Kincső are resettled in Bessarabia.
The Land of Nihil: In Russia, the post-revolutionary anarchist regime continues to pursue the same expansionist, empire-building policies as its predecessor. The new state is overshadowed on the one hand by its authoritarianism and its crackdown on enemies (including former chief officers and Poles), and on the other by the attraction of its leaders to power. One such example is that Mrs Sasha, breaking with the revolution, proclaims herself Tsarina Alexandra, while her rule consists of a denial of all moral norms.
The State of Home: In the Danube Delta, Tatrangi Dávid envisions the creation of a state with a population of one million. The new state is primarily an economic partnership, and the newcomers must also be shareholders. It is important to note that the State of Home is based on free association, in stark contrast to the tyrannical State of Nihil.
The world’s major powers – Britain, France, and Germany – continue to play an important role in Europe in the second half of the 20th century, partly as traditional great powers and partly as Russia’s pay creditors. The US is the only one to maintain diplomatic relations with the Nihil State, and the two powers will eventually ally.
Jókai writes: „Europe was approaching the state called the ‘Universal State”. The disputes between countries were settled by an international peace court, to which the princes submitted themselves just as any other mortal man would submit to his judge, since they no longer had the “ultima ratio regum”: the cannon fuse! The other effect was that, with the cessation of military preparations, two billion in annual expenditure was wiped out from the budgets of the European states alone, which cost them a year’s armaments.”
Jókai’s novel is considered by many to be an early work of science fiction, a utopian work, or, more recently, a proto-steampunk work, which attaches great importance to scientific and technological progress, increasingly mechanised warfare, and the industrialisation of the opposing sides. The novel can be compared to the works of Jules Verne, but some of the ideas are also found in Jókai’s non-fiction novels, such as his novel Black Diamonds, in which he stressed the importance of industrialisation. At the same time, the Novel of the Next Century, in addition to technical changes, places great emphasis on social and political transformations, the strengthening of the entrepreneurial and bourgeois class, and the role of the press and public opinion.
The work can also be considered as a thesis novel: the novel and his political views suggest that Jókai Mór was a supporter of the 1867 Compromise, as is indicated by the inclusion of Árpád Habsburg, on the one hand, and the alignment of liberal nationalism, loyalty to the Catholic dynasty and the Hungarian conquest-era pagan heritage, which is already apparent in the first chapter. The name of the enemy of the Monarchy also reflects the writer’s view: the suppression of the Polish uprising in 1830, the bloodshed of the Hungarian War of Independence, and the Eastern Question made the Hungarian political elite anxious about pan-Slavism and Russian ambitions. In 1895, the author made a speech against chauvinism and warmongering at the Congress of the Inter-Parliamentary Union in Brussels, and the title of the second part of the novel (Eternal Peace) promoted his political ideas. Jókai also reflected early and sensitively on the rise of anarchism and socialist ideas. It has been suggested that by including Tatrangi David and Mózes, the author wove his philosemitic, pro-Jewish emancipationist ideas into the work.
The Novel of the Next Century is not one of Jókai’s most artistically successful works, but it is an interesting and valuable document of how the outstanding Hungarian writer of the time imagined the coming century in the 1870s. Despite its exaggerations, limitations, and illusions, the work faithfully reflects the fears and hopes of a difficult time. The author’s visions of future society are often naive and contrived, but even if the predicted events are not realistic, the author’s boundless humanity and faith in the world peace to be created are admirable. The pursuit of peaceful creation, of continuous progress based on science, and of an even more perfect knowledge of the universe are still goals to be achieved today.
