Zágon

Kelemen Mikes

his plaque

The old oaks
wait for him...

ZÁGON (Zagon, Rumania today) is a little Székely village in easternmost Székely-land, at the foothills of the Mountains of Háromszék (Hung. Háromszéki havasok). In this village was born Kelemen Mikes, the notary to Hungarian Prince of Transylvania Ferenc Rákóczi II, leader of the anti-Habsburg Rákóczi Liberation Fight 1704-1711. When the Liberation Fight fell, Ferenc Rákóczi II and some of his generals were exiled to Rodos, Turkey. The notary Kelemen Mikes was not exiled; he, dictated by his deep loyalty and devotion for the Prince, voluntarily followed Ferenc Rákóczi II to Rodos. With time passing, and generals dying one by one, Kelemen Mikes was terrified to realize that he could be the last survivor in exile. Indeed he was; when everybody, including Ferenc Rákóczi II, died he remained completely alone in Rodos.
During his life at Rodos, he wrote a steady chain of letters, basically a diary, about the life in exile to his aunt in Zágon, but for some reason, he never sent these letters. If we read these letters we learn about a person suffering from terrible loneliness mixed with never-fading homesickness, a life which he took on himself out of faithfulness.
"I love Rodos too much to forget about Zágon" he writes to his aunt in a letter dated 1761. Earlier, in 1738, he made a journey to Iasi from where he had a perfect view to the Mountains of Háromszék, the mountains hiding his village, Zágon. "Hey, dear auntie, he writes, you can imagine the deep sighs I was taking when I passed by those mountains; I wanted to go there, but somehow God covered the road away from me...". Eventually, he, too, died in Rodos.
The aunt of Kelemen Mikes did not exist. He did not have an aunt anywhere, he made her up. His writing letters to her imaginary figure was probably the escape route for a person, who had a rock-solid faithfulness, love and solidarity for the things he believed in, should it be a leader, country or a voluntary second home. By doing so, he showed that he was a true Székely, and since, he became the role model of self-sacrifice and loyalty, which, after all, was not completely in vain. With his letters from Rodos, Kelemen Mikes laid the foundations of the Hungarian prosaic literature, and he is regarded as the first Hungarian prosaic author.
A plaque was erected on the lot on which the house where he was born once stood, and in the outskirts of Zágon stand the two old oak trees, which, people say, he planted.