INTRODUCTION

by Maria Szepes

In my introduction I would like to recount for the reader the events that led me to write this book, and how, like a magnet attracts iron filings, the subject drew me into its power. I am especially pleased that the person presenting the book's fourth Hungarian edition so beautifully is not just my publisher but a very old friend: The course he has chosen and that he follows to this day he owes to this very book; and he is fulfilling an important duty.

I most prefer to speak about The Red Lion in the third person, because it has taken on a completely independent and wondrous life. It has a fate of its own now. I will not claim that the fact that I am a born writer was not a prerequisite for its genesis; I have worked with almost every literatry genre since I was eight years of age. I let my mind, my imagination wander, and needed only to have historical and scientific sources of inspiration to come my way. Still, I felt that I was only a tool, a medium for a force greater than myself. Call it inspiration, although I do not know if that is the fitting term. But I know that it does have a name.

If I had guessed what a sea of flames was about to catch fire just as I began writing in 1939, I would have not have had the courage to go through with it. In 1938 my little boy died. I was born into a wonderful family, actors, film makers, musicians and writers whose "Bohemian" liberties never meant libertinism but an open mind and curiosity for art, philosophy and science. We were not petty bourgeois, nor gentries, but we got to know all kinds of people and trends and followed the events taking place in our country and the world. We were aware of the dangers, but we never became attached to any ultra political movement or party.

My husband., Béla Szepes, is an Olympic athlete, graphic artist, charicaturist and journalist who has worked for both Hungarian and major international papers. He made it possible for me to do all the things I am interested in, and to obtain German and English background literature; I have a reading proficiency in both languages. At that point I was into alchemy. I decided to write a short story about one of those fascinating alchemists. I was touched by the tragic fate of these experimenters who had been forced to function in hiding. They were misunderstood by the power-hungry lords just as were all great minds in our bloody history. The real initiates into mental alchemy were never out to "make gold" but to transmute their own being from "human dreams to human gold". They worked to generate the "Philosophers' Stone", or "potable gold" in their very souls and spirits, which was the true Elixir of Eternal Life. When they fell into the hands of omnipotent lords and were unable to fulfill their masters' lust for wealth they were tortured and executed. In the meantime, however, they made countless interesting discoveries as they searched the secrets of nature. Modern science continues to prove that like elements can be changed into other elements through energy by the invention of plastics. We also know that gold and gems, vitamins to unclog our arteries and extend our life spans, medicines, antibiotics and serums to conquer epidemics and infections can be produced.

Chemistry is alchemy's offspring, only it produces "arcanums", deemed useful but often just as damaging, at a much higher financial cost and failure rate than nature's ingenious biomagic which it is trying to immitate.

The Red Lion's fascinating plot spans four centuries, really the history of alchemy, and holds the secret key to eastern philosophy for those who in several readings will realize how many and always new psycho-archeological layers they come upon.

I remember how I was shaken by the fire that ignited within me when I was writing the book. I came to realize that what was engulfing me this time was not a short story but an expanse I was catapulted into by some cosmic vehicle and which made me dizzy. I was unable to end this interstellar journey, it extended ever further the more I proceeded. It raised me over the waves of a sea of flames. While I did know the outline of the plot, my pen produced surprising phrases such as I had not concieved of just seconds before.

It was a sort of schizophrenia. One part of me filled my imagination with pictures, colors, passions, strangely credible characters which my "sound mind" considered alarming and shirked away from. "My God, what is this? What are people going to say?" My internal struggle I always countered with my con-viction that it would never be published anyway. Writing took five years. In Leányfalu, the recluse I called "Noah's Arc", a neighbour who was an experienced typist noticed the manuscript piling up on my desk in our little room. Until then I had no idea I was actually a writer. I was simply interested in the subject. The lady suggested I should go to her place and dictate to her, she could type thirty pages a day. We were living the final horrors of war. Budapest was surrounded. The capital, twenty-five kilometers away, was being razed to rubble.

In the evenings salvos of red tracer shells pierced the sky, and during the day thick black smoke hovered over the horizon. Huge blasts shook also our little house. A nearby hit shattered our windows. Explosions pounded our closed doors. We had no idea which of our friends and relatives trapped in the city cellars were still alive or who was killed. Amidst the commotion of air raids, cannon and machinegun fire, in the apocalyptic blare I dictated and dictated this strange book, thirty pages each day. No one knew it, no one read it until typing was completed.

Not my husband, nor my brother, parents or friends. And what I had not thought of, much less hoped for, came true: in the three years of freedom that followed The Red Lion's first edition was published by Hungária, in 1946. It became a bestseller. In 1947 the publishing houses were nationalized, and like all other books in the shops and libraries whose content digressed from the only official "ideology" The Red Lion was shredded. Which did it a lot of good. The Red Lion is about immortality, and it could not be killed. It rose from its ashes like a Phoenix.

H H H

Conceived amidst the horrors of the Second World War Mária Szepes' book offered a glimpse of hope at a time of conflagration. By giving a broad, cosmic perspective to the events touching the lives of everyone in Europe in those years, she put human existence in a broader scale extending beyond daily life and put forth a reason for existence within the entirety of the universe that may be the purpose of the life of every individual. And with that, the book goes beyond a given point of human history. This is her belief.

In 1984 Kozmosz published the second, abridged edition of The Red Lion, labeling the book a "fantasy", and supplied it with a postscript. The third, full edition was published by Háttér. It, too, sold out. Since then the seventh edition is selling well. In Munich its excellent German translation became in 1984 Book of the Month. Then in 1985 it won fourth place in the presitgious Fritz Lasswitz award as the most interesting novel. Altogether in Europe 300,000 copies of The Red Lion have been sold.

Raising eternal human questions and offering a solution to them The Red Lion thus continues on its own designated course to pass on a never outdated message to the contemplative reader in search of spiritual support in a most disquieting era.