Yesterday I finished reading The King of the Two Sicilies, a novel from 1980 by the acclaimed Polish author Andrzej Kuśniewicz (1904 – 1993).
In essence, the narrative focuses on the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s mobilization in 1914 following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by the Black Hand in Sarajevo, and the start of the monarchy’s war against Serbia (leading, of course, to the general European conflict known as The Great War, or World War I).
Kuśniewicz’s points, masterfully conveyed, include these:
- Enduring differences between the empire’s many nationalities (in the novel, Germans, Croats, Hungarians and Roma) ultimately were a source of fatal fissures
- Dating to the battle of Solferino and the subsequent establishment of Italy, Austria-Hungary generally lost any war it entered, perhaps because the hidebound royal apparatus made modernization almost impossible
- Austria-Hungary’s officer corps was an effete and toxic personification of the preceding issues
I won’t bother my readers with the subplot of Emil R. and his sister, although it is important in conveying the obliviousness of the upper classes in Austria.
The novel, which I found moving, reminded me of a walk I took almost 39 years ago while traveling through Hungary, at the time still very much communist.
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In 1987, I found myself in Sopron, Hungary, choosing a gorgeous early summer’s day to go for a hike in the surrounding hills. I came upon a large, older cemetery, and decided to walk through it, ascending a gentle, wooded slope past contemporary gravestones of the still-extant Communist era.
Like rings on a tree stump, history’s reverse chronology unspooled as I continued uphill. Nearing the top, rows of Great War graves finally commenced. These were the soldiers who fought and died for the ruling family of the Austro-Hungarian Empire – the war’s losers from the Central Powers, who died just as often as the “winners” of the Triple Entente.
The first wave of war deaths I encountered bore more recent dates: 1918, and then a greater number from 1917. As I scanned their names, the majority Hungarian, but also some Germanic, Slavic and Muslim owing to the multi-ethnic, polyglot nature of the Habsburg domain. I contemplated how ridiculously, stupidly youthful almost all of them were.
It was heavy mental lifting for an aimless 27-year-old Hoosier hick from somewhere near French Lick, albeit one with enough of an academic background in history to understand the implications.
I reached the lip of the hill, puzzled that there seemed to be no graves from the earlier war years. The answer to my befuddlement lay on the other side, where it soon became clear that the graves actually began.
Now walking downhill, into an expansive hollow studded with older, larger hardwoods, row after row of markers told the inexorable, lethal tale: died in 1916, 1915 and 1914; dozens and dozens of markers, maybe hundreds.
Most things I did 39 years ago are hard to recall. Some, like my walk that day, are impossible to forget, especially as old men continue to start wars that kill the youth of their nations.
The cemetery walk that day in Sopron helped cement a few personal themes in my life that have stood the test of time: religion usually is harmful, patriotism most often senseless, and at the end of the day, accumulated wealth and capital always will expend as many ordinary lives as necessary to maintain their privileges.
Thanks to the writer Kuśniewicz for reminding me of reality, as opposed to the bilge that most of us internalize without a thought.
As soon as you’ve finished that beer, might you pass me my pitchfork?
