the Tabán district: The Tabán, now mostly demolished for reasons of hygiene, was one of the oldest districts on the Buda side of the Danube, full of inns and restaurants.
Aranykéz Street: Aranykéz utca, means literally ‘Goldenhand Street’. A street in Budapest.
Petőfi: Sándor Petőfi (1823–49) is Hungary’s national Romantic poet in much the same way as Burns is Scotland’s and was born at Kiskőrös in the Hungarian Lowlands. His songs, ballads, sketches of village life and revolutionary lyrics are central to the Hungarian consciousness. It was his recitation of the Nemzeti Dal (National Song) from the steps of the National Museum that is thought to have sparked the 1848 revolution. He is traditionally supposed to have been killed in battle against the Russians at Segesvár (now Sighisoara, Romania), but his body was never found and some think that he might have been captured by the Russians and died in exile in Siberia.
Aladár Benedek: poet and editor, born in 1843, made his name in the 1860s and 1870s. An oppositional figure, he was the subject of official criticism which eventually silenced him. He died in 1915.
Carthusian Meditations: Baron József Eötvös’s novel A Karthauzi (1839) (`The Carthusian’) is set in France. The disappointed hero joins the Carthusian order.