The
abandoned place of Queen Elizabeth
This
ghost drawing depicts me, when I was three-and-a-half in Eskü (Vow) Square,
which was the name of the playground that existed in the place of the carpark
sprawling around the foot of today’s Elizabeth Bridge, if I am not mistaken:
the pathetic remains of a decorative park, pompous before the war, in the
vicinity of the abutment blown up into the Danube, which nevertheless in the
autumn of 1952, when I was three-and-a-half, was merely a ruined vacant lot and
playground.
In
the background was the gigantic stump of the corroded abutment.
I
am visible in the picture at that eternal moment when I discovered that the
enormous seated statue carved of black marble of Queen Elizabeth, the idol of
my grandfather’s generation, the wife of Emperor Franz Joseph I, was missing in
a dreadful way from the centre of the diminutive marble colonnade standing in
the middle of the square, which was the reason that my grandfather and I had
wanted to come to this square to play.
I
sat on Sissy’s knee quite often, sobbing, or happily.
I
look like Hermes in the picture, because that’s who I am. Such things come out
clearly in a ghost drawing. I am disturbed because I cannot understand how the
goddess, Queen Elizabeth, could vanish from here from one day to the next. I
stamp my feet on the place of her throne. Until today, I am standing there.
From one day to the next, she disappeared. Then they set to destroying the
stone baldachin, most probably during the night, when I was unsuspectingly
sleeping in my railed cot. And then after lunch, we came out and I dashed into
her place. And ever since, I scamper around in it, petrified in its loss,
tramping its empty place in the mourning that I feel. Waving farewell, in all
probability to any sort of order and dignity, for a lifetime.
(Mihály
Kornis)
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