Colours and Years [antikvár]

INTRODUCTIONMargit Kaffka was born on June 19th, 1880 in the provincial town of Nagykároly (now Carei in Romania). She believed her restless temperament was a result of mixed ancestry, between that of a Hungarian mother, claiming descent from among the few 'oldest and best' famiUes who had come to Hungary with the conqueror Árpád at the end of the ninth century and a Slav father. Gyula Kaffka, whom Margit remembered as sensitive, serious and gentle. He died rather suddenly at the age of thirty-four when Margit was only six years old. His death ended her happy childhood. The young family was left destitute; her grandparents made themselves responsible for the youngest daughter, and not for Margit, the eldest. Her mother^brought up in a high provincial society, where she learned to catch men at dances, and with few other skills beyond running a household and entertaining in the proper mannerfelt bound to marry again; but her second husband turned out to be unsatisfactory financially, and in other ways. Observant and sensitive, young Margit squirrelled away these memories, and years later wrote her best selling novel Colours and Years (Színek és évek) about her mother's hopeless predicament. The widow as object of unkind local tittle-tattle also appears in her novel. Hangyaboly (The Ant Heap).Margit Kaffka was a misfit in her stepfather's household. She was sent to board in a local convent, not unlike those schools where the Bronte sisters were educated in Yorkshire at the beginning of the nineteenth centurya horrifying experience. One of her earliest short stories, 'Letters from the Convent', is the moving account of a little girl who suffers from neglect and lack of affection, harsh punishment, the cold, the damp and the bad food, but is always writing hopeful letters to no avail: there is a new stepfather and she dies! Today this may be read sentimentally, but it was inspired by her own experience.Margit remained in the convent for three years. In an autobiographical short story, 'Triumph', she described her feelings on re-entering normal life: 'I was ten and had only recently returned in bad health from a distant convent school where I had spentj Sit'tiuf