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  • De bedrieglijke verlokking van de tropen: Het vreemde in het dagboek van István Radnai
    185-197
    Views:
    23

    István Radnai left his home country in 1914, hoping to achieve a brighter and richer future life. With his cousin, László Székely, he traveled to the then Dutch Indies, to Sumatra in order to become rich as a planter. After five weeks, however, he returned disappointed to Hungary, where he saw the beginning of the First World War. On the basis of his diary it is possible to reconstruct the reasons why he found it necessary to escape from the “self” and why he chose the tempting, unknown world. The binary opposition formed in this way undergoes a change in a different context; it becomes shifted and turned around. The interesting “other” becomes frightful and threatening which makes the “self” more valuable at the same time.

  • “My dearest dreams are of the Netherlands”: Pál Pántzél’s manuscript autobiography and his university years in Leiden from 1782 to 17851
    139-159
    Views:
    18

    Pál Pántzél (1755-1831) was a Hungarian Calvinist pastor and scholar in Transylvania. Following his years in the Reformed College of Kolozsvár (Cluj, present-day Romania), Pántzél was a student of the Staten College at the University of Leiden between 1782 and 1785. He kept a manuscript autobiography, and wrote down his life story in Hungarian. This autobiography is interesting from various perspectives, including regional history, the social and church history of Transylvania, the history of education and so forth. Pántzél wrote extensively about his Leiden university years, which he considers the most beautiful memories of his life, but also includes details of the conditions in which he travelled, as well as the organisation of the trip and the details of the outward journey. In the present study I primarily interpret Pántzél’s notes on his years at the University of Leiden, in the context of early modern travel literature and the history of studying in the Netherlands.