"Triple Fugue" revisited : Patrick Leigh Fermor, "Istvan" and "Angela"

Abstract

“Triple Fugue” is one of the most famous chapters in Patrick Leigh Fermor’s classic travel book, Between the Woods and the Water. Researched and written in the 1970s and 1980s, more than forty years after his “Great Trudge” across pre-war Europe, this account of a whistle-stop tour of the heart of Transylvania in the company of two Hungarian aristocrats, “István” and “Angéla,” has since been revealed to be a virtuoso work of autofiction. In this article, we explore the relationship between Patrick Leigh Fermor and the real characters of this adventure, Elemér von Klobusiczky and Xénia Csernovits, through the study of their correspondence, held in the National Library of Scotland. Their letters offer insights into the fate of this Anglophile and Francophile elite after the Second World War, the crises of late communism in Hungary and Romania, the life and work of Patrick Leigh Fermor, as well as the classless ravages of old age.