An outlaw's diary: the Commune

There followed a moment’s silence, the awful silence of the executioner’s sword suspended in the air. Humanity in bondage draws its head between its shoulders, and, like the swe...

One gets the impression that things have been like this for ever so long, though it all started only the day before yesterday. Good Friday was just two days ago. To-day is Sunda...

Communists from Aszód have arrived in the village. The glass screen between myself and reality has suddenly cracked. The agitators dragged a table in front of the town hall, cli...

The woman for whom we were asked for wine yesterday was buried to-day. The coffin was placed on the ground in the clean-swept little farmyard, and her mother arranged the corpse...

My last day in Berczel. It seems to me as if a mischievous hand had passed over the pleasant picture and had effaced it. Here and there a tinge remained. This morning the sun wa...

I thought my excitements had come to an end, but ill-fortune has looked me in the face again. It has just glanced at me, but has not seized me yet. And now, how long shall I be...

Alarming news had been spreading over the town during the day: bands of terrorists are going about arresting people. The Cabinet is issuing open threats, becoming reckless in it...

A wild night, like a witches’ Sabbath. The nightingale did not sing, the only sound was the roar of the guns. The shells are still stacked on the other side of the wall of my ro...

Since I left Szügy the almond trees have blossomed; so beauty came to meet me, and my heart lost some of its wildness and I felt less lonely and sad.

I had hurried in vain. The Directorate has come back, so I have to remain in my Red prison. The battle last night caused many casualties, and the towns near the front are bewail...

I’ve got a fever of some kind and it frightens me—it would be terrible to be ill at such a time and in a strange house. I must try to keep going, but oh! how I long to go to bed.

I like to listen to the children when they talk about the banks of the Ipoly. The dragonflies have made their appearance over the slow, warm water. The golden maple has withered...

The Counter-revolution has been beaten everywhere. The power of the Dictators seems never to have been greater. When they first came they had to share their power with the trade...

People call revolutions ‘youth’ and ‘dawn’. But revolutions are not daybreaks, nor are they the chaos out of which comes the beginning of all things. They are not the first hour...

The shepherd’s flute sounded slowly through the breaking morning. I felt disappointed; my elation had passed; my mind was still racked with anxiety. Everything seemed the same i...

Francis Rákoczi, the leader of the Kuruc rising against the Hapsburgs, in the early years of the 18th Century, a national hero, is buried in the Cathedral of Kassa. His body was...