In Transylvania the neglected tarmac roads disappear into the plants growing along the ditch. The cold tar blends into the weeds so unobtrusively and eccentrically that the night driver has to strain his bloodshot eyes to find the way as he comes into a corner. No wonder that in the steaming morning dew corpses of cats and dogs litter the road. The Eastern European made Dacias, Ladas, Skodas and Trabants squash these animals just as indifferently as the dream cars and dream wrecks imported from the West in the last two years. If we accept a commonly-held belief then I hazard to suggest that there is a basic difference between the stray dogs and stray cats in Transylvania. The dog is said to be faithul to its master; the cat to the house where a tin dish of milk is set in front of it every day. The corpses of dogs accuse the disappeared masters, while the cats denounce the demolished houses. Today Transylvania is the mythical region of want. It is the home of abandoned domestic animals which dash or sneak across the road, or simply aimlessly loiter there. Mysterious eyes of cats gleam in the bushes along the road, and no-one can tell which will be the next to make a suicidal attempt in front of the lost driver. Lost, for so far we have only succeeded in creating the appearance of purposefulness – ever since the time of Endre Ady every horseman is a lost horseman, and every driver a lost driver. For the stray dogs, Transylvania is full of the scent of their departed masters, and for the stray cats it is full of the tin dishes rolling here and there in the wind. In the night I chase the beam of my motor-car which disappears into darkness, and sometimes I glimpse the eyes of the Eastern European wolves and tigers slowly turning wild again – and I say to myself: good hunting! Good hunting, you ownerless hounds, homeless tabbies! Good hunting you humiliated and saddened, deceived faithful ones!

For Transylvania is the country of overflowing faithfulness, and the country of unfaithfulness resulting in superfluous pangs of conscience. I have never been fond of cats. I have never liked the Transylvanian cats either. Lurking behind the domestic tabby the glimpses of his predatory nature have always put me off. That, and his faithfulness to a place, to a lifeless and spiritless place. His clinging to the sunkissed stone, to the worm-eaten beams, to the whitewashed earthenware oven, and to the soothingly unchanging woods. We never had a cat. Nor a dog for that matter; but their friendliness towards living people has always made them more congenial to me. What is the solution? I have the feeling that the Transylvanian shepherd dogs would give a completely different answer than the Transylvanian cats. Should we be faithful to the owner or to the house? And now I see, as I travel here and there throughout the world that I begin to understand the cats much better, those which, stubbornly hang around the damp house, and who in the mating season cry so unbearably like new-born infants. Up till the present moment I would have advised them thus: Follow your owner, from one side of the river bank to the other, from mountain top to mountain top, for after all, only man has a soul – the places do not have even a spirit to offer – or at best only an evil spirit. But today I cannot say that. This region is a damnably beautiful country, at once both damned and beautiful; a place where the rain washes, and the wind burnishes the empty valleys, making them smooth and shiny like tin plates.

My opinion: It is a metaphor. For what, I was asked – Transylvania – it is itself a metaphor. We live in that metaphor. I am not really convinced that the metaphor should be unwrapped. Let us consider:

Take for example the abundance of variety. On the day before Maundy Thursday everybody is waiting for a different connection in the waiting room of Jenô Dsida. From this we can surmise that there will be some people left behind. And so I think setting aside my emotions, my moods, my line of philoposhy – that we will have to make a home for ourselves in the waiting room. The all Romanian versus all Hungarian tug-of-war, sack-races and pancake-eating competitions won't get us anywhere. They cannot get us anywhere. Being Transylvanian involves co-existence and separation. The co-existence of separate entities. In terms of culture that is the case today. In terms of politics, economics, law and administration, however, this is not the case. Yet this is the way it should be! Very hopefully and yet with some pain I say this, because there is some doubt in the poll of Korunk: being separated as entities has not only advantages but also some drawbacks. That separation which, within the all Hungarian tradition, makes independent the Transylvanian Hungarian spirit. It forces the perpetuation of a separate value system which I look on with intense dislike even now, because it was imposed upon us by external forces. The Transylvanian ideology was actually created as an ideology substitute in an ideological state of emergency. Can this contradiction be resolved, can this dislike be removed, which turns me, the literary scholar, against me, the politician. Can this split personality be resolved? For if we weigh it up reasonably, the Hungarian culture is not so large, its weeping and laughter is not so loud, it is not such a great geographical and historical area that it would make it possible for the regional differences to be completely separated within it. This would not be healthy; thus in no way desirable. To put it in another way:

I am a Hungarian writer. Actually I am a Transylvanian Hungarian. To zoom in closer, I am a Székely. I still have enough sense of identity to make me ponder the issue. I do not consider it important to deal with what I would like. Rather, I am interested in what is possible, and how: how can the bad which we have today be changed into something good? Obviously it would be possible. There is no other alternative than the coexistence of separate entities. I know, that this is still only a metaphor. But please consider that in reality it is also a political programme, even if it may be interpreted in different ways. The Romanian schoolmaster, the Hungarian cantor, the European Council, those dozing in waiting room of Székelykocsárd, the embibers of the mineral water of Borszék, the stray dogs and cats of Transylvania have to understand and interpret this.

But until that time, night drivers, please reduce your speed on the roads of Transylvania!