Éj országa is the desolate realm of Éj, encountered by Tünde and Ilma as they cross a barren landscape. Tünde identifies it as the domain of hated light; its sovereign’s account of a universe that begins and ends in darkness makes the setting more than a remote destination. It is a world ordered by an immense cycle of existence and return, a stark counter-image to the living, illuminated world from which the travelers have come.

Setting and Arrival

The scene opens on a desolate landscape, with Tünde and Ilma arriving together. Ilma asks where they are, and Tünde tells her not to fear danger, calling her the faithful shadow of her sorrow. The reassurance gives the journey an intimate emotional register: Ilma is both companion and witness as Tünde approaches a place bound to grief.

Tünde names the destination Éj országa. Her description places it in opposition to light, which she calls hated, and links the realm to the clouds of sorrow in her soul. The landscape and the language of grief reinforce one another: this is not presented as a welcoming refuge, but as a bleak territory whose darkness corresponds to Tünde’s burden. Ilma’s response, that she shudders when she looks upon the figure before them, makes the approach feel threatening rather than merely strange.

Éj and the Realm’s Sovereignty

The figure Tünde has sought is Éj, whom she identifies as the mourning lady of night. The encounter therefore gives the realm a personal center: Éj is not simply associated with darkness but is its sovereign presence, and the desolate country is disclosed through her appearance and speech. Tünde’s search has brought her directly to the power that governs this domain.

Éj speaks of her dominion in terms of a beginning before inhabited life. She declares that darkness and nothingness were, and that she was the desolate, quiet night, uninhabited by any being. The words make absence the realm’s defining condition: it is figured as a state preceding life, not merely as a shadow cast over a populated world. Its silence and emptiness give cosmic scale to the travelers’ arrival.

A World That Returns to Darkness

Éj’s account extends from origin to ending. She says that the beautiful world will fade away in dimness and that its end will occur where its beginning was. The movement of the world is thus not toward an entirely new order but back toward its starting point: creation’s apparent fullness is temporary, while darkness endures beyond it.

The declaration that darkness and nothingness will be again, and that Éj will remain, completes the realm’s governing pattern. Her opening claim and final assertion frame existence as a cycle with the same night at either end. The place is consequently defined not only by its present desolation but by the future it embodies: the return of the world to the emptiness from which Éj says it came.

Narrative Significance

The encounter sets personal sorrow beside a vision of universal disappearance. Tünde arrives seeking Éj, while the realm’s ruler speaks not of an individual misfortune but of the fading of the beautiful world itself. The contrast enlarges the scene’s scale: a journey through a barren place becomes an encounter with a power whose speech reaches from the world’s beginning to its end.

The realm also reverses the usual association of darkness with a temporary absence of light. In Éj’s account, darkness is primordial and lasting, whereas the beautiful world is the thing that passes away. The repeated return to the opening image of darkness gives the speech a circular shape, and makes Éj országa the spatial expression of that cycle: a country of desolation in which the end of the world leads back to its first condition.