Budapest [antikvár]

í'fir " I, ¦ H tv»;; I .'I ¦ I ' ¦ ¦ . '''-ni; the bridge Just as Nelson's column, the Tower, or Westminster Abbey could stand as symbols of London, the Notre-Dame, the Eiffel Tower, or even the windmill of the Moulin Rouge could characterize the spirit of Paris, so the Parliament, the Matthias Church, the Statue of Liberty on Gellért Hill, and the Millennial Monument on Heroes' Square could easily be considered the symbols of Budapest. Were it up to me, however, it would be the Bridge. Yes, the Bridge, the first and foremost, of which Antal Szerb (the writer murdered in 1944) wrote: "How much beauty there is in the Chain Bridge, what elegant silence, haughty humility, charming lightness, and archaic melancholy! Somehow definitive, as every great creation is: one feels that yes, this is it, this is what a bridge should be!. . ." The story began in 1820. On the left bank of the Danube: Pest, burst out of its medieval walls, a fast-growing industrial and commercial city. Narrow streets, tiny marketplaces, noblemen's palaces here and there. Baroque public buildings, taverns, inns and one or two cafés for the University youth. On the riverbank the tanners' and dyers' houses. Swirling dustclouds and the pervasive odour of raw leather And beyond the city, toward the east: wasteland ravaged by invading armies of Turks and Tartars and Austrian mercenary forces, and occupied by animal herds and dilapidated taverns standing along unpaved backroads, followed by marshlands, serfs' villages, noblemen's mansions and peasant towns with sprawling fields, and still beyond: the Hungarian and Saxon cities of Transylvania, the borderland of the European countryside—Balkan, Slavic, and Romanian minor principalities, a crumbling Ottoman Empire • On the right bank: Buda. On Castle Hill once inhabit-