Stephen Sisa : The Spirit of Hungary

Endre Ady

Endre Ady (1877-1919), was the most unreal of Hungarian poets. His age set him in the center of intellectual and political struggles; Ady's poems either scandalized people or were revered as standards of the revolution. No other Hungarian poet has been the subject of such fervent disputes as he. Ady seemed to belong to those great, popular poets whose work disappears with the passing of their age. But it did not, and his stature in Hungarian literature has been growing since his death.

He is one of the most solitary figures in Magyar literature, without ancestors or successors. Ady was a philosophical poet, a wild and barbaric thinker, a Hungarian kinsman of Nietzsche. He stood on the boundary line of superstition and myth, creating visions instead of thoughts. His starting point was his own personality, the primeval experiences of life and death, fall and expiation. Ady was tormented by Dostoyevski's God-fever, the eternal mystery which escapes the meshes of culture. He broke with the bashful, idyllic tradition, regarded love as a gloomy strife, and expressed himself in naked and harsh words.

Ady became the prophet and revealer of the tragic fate of his nation; but he saw his subject in the light of eternity, raising it above everyday matters of politics and social problems. This conception was new and revolutionary, as was his language. His style is far from artistic; its forms are not the results of conscious calculation, but flow like outpouring lava. Ady's language is not generally comprehensible, his poems point beyond themselves, full of secret meaning like a magic sign or rune. Of all Hungarian poets, his poems are the most untranslatable. It took time before the Hungarian public realized that behind the seemingly meaningless symbolism in his poems there lay a rich "Ady-world."

His view of Hungary's history is one of continuous misfortune and oppression. The Magyar fate is a tragic "must" which Hungarians have to face fully knowing the impossibility of the task. It is a curse to be Hungarian, although a blessed curse: "A thousand times are Messiahs the Magyar Messiahs" is a characteristic line from one of his poems.

Stanzas from Ady's poems

"I am not a Magyar?"

The ancient Orient dreamed him

as I am

heroic, sombre, proudly extreme,

ruthless, but one who bleeds

pale at a thought.

The ancient Orient dreamed him

bold and youthful,

a noble, eternally big child;

sun-spirited, thirsty, melancholy,

a restless warrior; the pain - wrought tested masterpiece

of a true unhappy god,

the child of the sun, a Magyar.

The Unchosen

Because we are unloved

no shambling kings and sages go

around our sombre brown berceau.

We faulted at the start.

The seven fat years we have not seen

and all our seasons have been lean...

We sought for western Goods,

we fell, grayed out in fearsome fight

and now we bleed into the night.

But still we give ourselves

because a finer tragic plan

does not exist by God or man.

While others rush ahead

where is a more poetic face

than this chained and sleepy race?

A Literature of Solitary Character

The great writers of Hungary are known in Europe only by name; they are solitary even in their own age and country.

One of the chief reasons why their literature is practically unknown is the difficulty of the language. The other European languages are branches of the same tree: Hungarian stands without relatives among them.

Translating Hungarian writings, therefore, is a hard task, and its prose is likely to lose the full impact of its images, color and personality in the process. Lyric poetry, the chief asset of Hungarian literature, is almost untranslatable. This is all the more distressing, because the composite character of Hungarian literature found its real expression in a multicolored lyric poetry. But it is not only the language that attained its summit in lyric poetry. Whatever new and characteristic has been said by the Hungarian people to mankind, has been expressed in lyric form. It is primarily this branch of poetry which can boast of a living, valuable tradition of unbroken continuity. Dramatic literature has produced only two genuine masterpieces: József Katona's Bánk Bán, and Imre Madách's The Tragedy of Man.

Even more important than the obstacles of the language is perhaps the solitude of the spirit. The Hungarian writer is much more sequestered in the world of his people than his Western colleague. There are periods when the national destiny suppresses every personal note, historical moments when the unity of the Hungarian nation, the meaning of its existence, the sense of its vocation, survive only in literature.

And who is interested in a small nation? Nations are inclined, no doubt, to make virtue of necessity; the Hungarians, too, like to regard their derelict state as proud independence. Nationalism has often resulted in a seclusion of the spirit. The patriotism even of our greatest is bitter, fraught with destiny, torn by passions. Only the lightning of the passions can bridge the gulf between Hungarian ideals and realities.

In conclusion, it may be said that the discipline, reason, and culture of Hungary is Christian and humanistic, but its blood, memory, and desires yearn for an alliance with forces living before or beneath the surface of European culture. But whether in Europe or outside it, the truly great Hungarians always fix their nation for all mankind. The most painful feature of Hungarian literature is its solitary character. Its deepest value is the unceasing struggle for a pure, elevated humanity.

Rumania's annexation of Transylvania struck the Magyars living there a staggering blow. Suddenly, they had become aliens and second class citizens in their native land.

There was a tragic discrepancy between the glorious past and the hopeless present. If they meant to survive, they had to start afresh under entirely new conditions. The first steps in this direction were taken in the field of literature.

To find comfort and strength to endure their hardships, the Magyars turned to the past. But the Transylvanian writers who began devoting their works to historical themes aimed at something more than this; they hoped to glean from the lessons of the past that guidance which was needed for building up a new life on the ancient soil. A new concept was developed in their writings, something which now goes by the name of Transylvanism, although the roots of this idea stretch far back into past centuries.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, Transylvania became the theatre in which the main events of Hungarian history were enacted, and the memory of this time is still alive in the heart of every Transylvanian Magyar.

The contest between Magyars and Rumanians for the possession of Transylvania heightens the interest and significance of the centuries that are gone. The epic quality in the history of Hungary has always been supplied by Transylvania. Miklós Jósika and Zsigmond Kemény, the two greatest Hungarian historical novelists, were both Transylvanians. Yet it is not only in fiction that this vivid and colorful past speaks to the present generations; it may be said to haunt every line that a Transylvanian author writes, whether in prose or verse. A contemporary writer, Károly Kós, has traced this separateness of the Transylvanian spirit from the time of Saint István, through the Hussite struggles and social movements of the 15th century down to Transylvania's "Shakespearean epoch" in the 17th century. According to Kós, this country's destiny is as unchangeable as though it were graven in stone. Despite political changes, Transylvania will remain forever unconquerable, a mysterious, self-contained entity which neither the East nor the West will ever make completely its own; never fully understood except by her own children, never fully manifesting herself except to them.

Another Transylvanian writer, Sándor Makkai, has shown in his historical novels and essays the role which Transylvanian spirit and mentality have played in the life of the Hungarian nation as a whole. He has revived in his pages those heroes who, in the shadow of national catastrophes, have found themselves and built up a new life on the ruins of the old; St. István, King Béla IV, Gábor Bethlen, Prince of Transylvania, István Széchenyi, the great reformer of the 19th century, Endre Ady, the poet-prophet, are made to live again in order that they may show a generation which has lost all, that the weak and vanquished can rise again on the wings of the spirit.

Miklós Bánffy's powerful trilogy A Transylvanian Tale is a documentary history in fiction form, a woven tapestry of hundreds of minute motifs, personalities and life stories. It gives a staggering picture of the inexorable unfolding of external and internal forces which brought the Magyar people to the verge of the abyss.

That longing for reconciliation which their present lot leaves unassuaged has driven the Transylvanian Magyars back into the past in which the Magyar, Wallachian (Rumanian) and German inhabitants of the country were not merely Magyars, Rumanians and Germans, but also Transylvanians. More than once, the recognition of their common interests had made the various peoples of this region unite in common action, especially in defending their country against the Turks. In 1557, the independent Principality of Transylvania solved the religious problem, voluntarily and by common consent, a century before the rest of Europe, by enacting freedom of conscience.

Another source from which the Transylvanian idea draws nourishment and inspiration is the Transylvanian landscape, which is a wonderful microcosm of hill and valley, field and forest, mountains with lakes and cascading waters. Of our modern writers, it is Lajos Áprily who has felt most deeply the mystic, powerful, history-forming quality of this landscape. In his poems the mountains, streams and forests come to life, and the little country which three nations call their native land is transformed from a mere geographical entity into a vital personality with the power to shape men's ends.

The variety of the landscape has had its counterpart in the differentiation of political life. The post-Trianon Magyar writers in Transylvania have taken to heart the teaching of history and of Nature, deriving from them an ideal transcending racial differences. Prouder and more jealous of his racial integrity than his brothers in Hungary, because he lives in close proximity with peoples of another race, the Transylvanian Magyar feels that his peculiar situation imposes an obligation on him. This consciousness of a spiritual mission rises to philosophic heights in Sándor Reményik (Végvári), Transylvania's "poet prophet." His people's pain became his own, magnified a thousandfold, and he shouldered its struggle with an austere and passionate ardor. His poetry has ennobled and made endurable the suffering and bitterness that are the inevitable lot of a newly subjected minority people.

Transylvania's population is as varied and colorful as its history and landscape. Within the three separate civilizations of Magyar, German and Rumanian there are tribal peculiarities, cultural and ethnical differences. This little land is a veritable ethnographic paradise. Picturesque costumes, characteristic architectural motifs, interesting

folklore and a store of popular wisdom and song, brought from who knows what distant regions and deposited here, await the collector and explorer. This is the land where Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály began their "treasure hunt" for Hungarian folk-songs - and with what spectacular success!

The Székely writers were the first to respond to the appeal of this peasant culture. The Székely people, close to a million of whom live in a block in the eastern part of the country, represent what is strongest and most original in the Magyar stock of Transylvania. They preserved far longer than the rest of the Magyars (theoretically until 1871) their ancestral tribal organization, in which there were no class differences, all being freemen and in that sense nobles; and in which the tribes owned their ancestral lands in common. Every Székely, however poverty-stricken, was proudly conscious of being a freeman and a noble, even if the economic situation prevented him from making use of his rights. The memory of these ancient liberties never allows the Székely to forget that he was born to better things. The wish to escape from his lowly lot is ever with him, and the greater the obstacles to freedom, the more ardent the ambition which drives him towards a higher standard of life. There could be no better school for the development of talent and character than this constant struggle. It is a generally accepted fact that the Székelys are a peculiarly gifted and versatile people. The Székely dialect and manner of speech are characteristic to a point which almost raises them to a form of art. The Székely is eternally at war with himself no less than with the world, and this fact is reflected in his language. None but he can combine in a single flashing phrase the most staggering contradictions - love and hate, ribald jest and consummate pain, deceptive cunning and profoundest self-revelation. It is this expressive brevity which lends the Székely ballads, songs and folk tales their peculiar stirring charm.

The first to interpret this curious Székely world was the novelist József Nyir. His descriptions of the life of the Székely hill-dwellers and of their natural surroundings form the best and most enduring portion of his work. There is something of the primitive savage in these Székely wood-cutters with their gruff, curt speech behind which lie emotions as deep as mountain lakes. Passion wastes few words in these regions, and the knife is ever at hand. Life is of little account; a man dies with no more ado than a felled tree. To this poetry of death and the great forests which Nyir has made his own, he had added a masterly presentation of the Székely peasant's religion, so full of primordial heathen reminiscences. Nyir's work is interwoven with a sort of barbarian mysticism with flashes of a delicate and tender beauty.

Áron Tamási approaches the life of his Székely people from a different angle. Instead of the silent and grim world of the high hills, he gives us the rich and teeming social life of the Székely village. The world he portrays is irradiated by the sunshine of eternal youth; his heroes are for the most part youth and spring incarnate, revelling in their own strength and vigor.

Tamási's other racial inheritance is the Székely folk tale. The dream world existing in fairy stories becomes living reality in his pages. These rainbow-tinted frolics of fantasy are clothed in a style that, for all its scholarly distinction and variety, never for a moment loses the pungent savor of peasant speech.

Among Székely poets, the foremost is László Tompa, the singer of the desolate solitude of the Transylvanian winter, in whose poems the yearning after freedom of a soul confined to the narrow limits of a provincial town is fused with the wider issues of his people's pain.

When Transylvania passed to Rumanian rule, the young post-war writers had to make new paths for themselves, and create both a new literature and a new setting for it.

In 1927, Baron János Kemény, the young patron of Transylvanian literature and a writer himself, invited the entire circle to a friendly literary gathering. Such gatherings became an annual institution, called the Transylvanian Helikon, which soon began publishing a monthly literary periodical under the same name.

The same literary association started another publishing enterprise called the Transylvanian Guild of Belles Lettres (Erdélyi Szépmves Céh) which, between the wars, issued about 130 volumes of novels, poetry and essays. Their authors have gained recognition beyond the present frontiers of their native land, not a few of their works having been translated into foreign tongues. Altogether the richness, versatility and high level of the general output is, to say the least, uncommon in a little people numbering about two and a half million.

They have created a new life on the ruins of a shattered world, and have added their own special color to the great canvas of human culture.

However. in the last two decades a dramatic change for the worse has occurred, driving much of Hungarian literature in Transylvania underground. An intolerant Rumanian chauvinism introduced by the Ceausescu regime seems determined to wither non-Rumanian cultural life. Only writers with explosive talent are able to keep themselves on the surface. These writers include András Süt, the writer-poet who was awarded the inter-nationally prestigious Herder Prize, Sándor Kányádi, a poet and educator whose allegoric poems strive to strengthen the Magyar spirit, the writer Tibor Bálint and Árpád Farkas, a young poet of explosive talent.

Abroad the spirit of Transylvanian literature is kept alive by Albert Wass, the best known Transylvanian writer in the Diaspora. His books include such outstanding samples of contemporary Transylvanian literature as Give Back My Mountains! (Adjátok vissza a hegyeimet!); Thirteen Apple Trees (Tizenhárom almafa) and The Trail Fades Away (Elvész a nyom).

In addition to his literary work, Wass played a leading role in the world-wide campaign to arouse public opinion over the fate of suppressed Hungarian minorities in his native land.

Tibor Flórián, died in exile in 1987, was a poet-publicist who had spent his early childhood in Upper Hungary but grew up in Transylvania. He was a soft-spoken poet whose poems exude humanism. They speak of love and tenderness, peace, and the loss of homeland.

The period between World Wars I and II saw not only the extraordinary flowering of Hungarian literature that the foregoing essay only briefly touched on, but also a profound change on the literary scene.

The precursor and initiator of this change was the review Nyugat, (West), which from 1903 to 1940 served as a springboard for many talented young poets and writers of the age, who. in Ady's words, "sang the new songs of a new epoch" using literature as a vehicle for social liberation. As a result, about forty stars of varying magnitude appeared on the firmament of Hungarian literature. There were others. of course, who rose to fame without the aid of Nyugat.

The writers who became the leading representatives of Hungarian spirit were concerned mostly with the dominant trend of the interwar years - a preoccupation with the life and problems of the peasantry, the eternal source of Magyar survival. Those who delved into this investigation of every facet of village life called themselves "falukutatók" (village explorers). This same fascination with folkways also appeared in other arts - in the music of Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály, for example, and in the paintings and sculptures of men like József Koszta and Ferenc Medgyessy.

The spiritual godfather of the literary "falukutatók" was Dezs Szabó (1879-1945) whose prose is regarded as being the equivalent of Ady's poetry. Born in Kolozsvár (now Cluj-Napoca), as was Ady, Szabó at the outset of his literary life was one of those associated with Nyugat. Later he withdrew from this publication to become a "lone eagle" among the populist writers over whom he wielded tremendous influence for many years.

Szabó's first and most acclaimed novel. Az elsodort falu (The Abandoned Village), which he wrote when he was 40, caused a literary sensation and catapulted him into the forefront of contemporary writers. Like Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, The Abandoned Village drew a complete picture of Hungarian society at the time. The hundreds of well-drawn characters in the novel are grouped around two central couples. One couple, Miklós Farkas, a great poet of decadence, and beautiful Judit Farcády, the ambitious daughter of a Transylvanian village priest caught up in the whirl of high society in Budapest, represent the self-destructive forces of the old society, as did Anna Karenina and Vronsky in Tolstoy's book. The other pair, János Böjthe and Mária Barabás, represent the new Hungary. Together, they rebuild the village life destroyed by war and are a practical example for transforming war-torn Hungary into a prosperous, new country like Denmark.

Dezs Szabó himself divided his works into three main groups, Group I includes those works which deal with the individual's relationship to the universe. (Toward Damascus, Don Quixote Penitent, Open Sesame, and No Escape.)

Group II deals with the relationship of the Hungarian nation to the world and its history as a whole. In creating these works, Szabó drew on his knowledge of six languages which enabled him to study in their original form the works of Balzac, Zola and Tolstoy. In some of the books belonging to this group he wrote of the approaching danger of the new totalitarianisms. He was obsessed with the growing "German peril," and urged the friendly union of Magyars,. Rumanians and Slovaks. (The Abandoned Village, The Rain Begins, Help, Why?).

In Group III Szabó examines existence and death, the present and eternity, love, power, science, suffering and redemption. (Wonderful Life, Woe, Ocean and Cemetery, The Knapsack).

Since Szabó's writings, which advocated a free peasantry on the Danish model, opposed Communist doctrine, his works were blacklisted by Hungary's post-war regime. Szabó died shortly after the siege of Budapest in 1945,. leaving 2000 pages of manuscripts behind which were published only twenty years later.

In his will he asked to be buried at the top of Saint Gellért hill overlooking the capital and the Danube, but Communist authorities refused. Shortly afterwards, a huge war memorial honoring the "soviet liberators" was erected on that spot.

Mihály Babits (1883-1941), who assumed the editorship of Nyugat after the first World War, was another prominent writer of those interwar years. Known as "poeta doctus" ("the learned poet"). Babits was also a novelist, short story writer, poetic dramatist. essayist, critic, literary historian. and translator of ancient and

modern poetry. Uniquely in Hungarian literature, Babits depicted the humanistic traits of the Magyars that transcend politics and nationalism. His sense of form and his artistry with word is unsurpassed to this very day. While some termed him a "cold poet" who expressed some pacifist views in splendid isolation from politics, Babits called himself "the priest of the Muses."

Perhaps no other Hungarian knew world literature as well as did Babits. A man who spoke many languages and who moved with ease in Greek, Latin, French, English, German, Italian and American literature, he translated Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus, Dante's Divine Comedy, Shakespeare's Tempest, Goethe's Iphigenia and published a poetic anthology of foreign poets entitled Pávatollak (Peacock Feathers).

In addition, Babits wrote eight novels and many short stories, some being original fables incorporating the ideas of modern psychology. Others contain poignant pictures of the decaying middle class e.g. Halálfiai (The Children of Death). Babits further wrote three volumes of literary essays, a history of European literature, and nine volumes of poetry, of which the last volume, The Book of Jonah is the most moving, for it contains poems he wrote on his death bed.

Matching the beauty of the originals, Babits also translated Wordsworth, Tennyson, Meredith, Wilde, Swinburne, Rossetti, Baudelaire, Verlaine, Carducci, Vogelweide, Lenau, Heine and Liliencron.

A shy, reticent man, Babits left his "splendid isolation" only in his later years to deal with the pains and problems of his fellows.

There is a certain similarity between Babits and Dezs Kosztolányi (1885-1936), another writer of the Nyugat circle. Kosztolányi was the greatest impressionist in Hungarian literature with his novels, short stories and translations bringing him international fame.

Born in Szabadka (now Subotica in Yugoslavia), Kosztolányi was a sensitive poet, but it is his superior prose for which he is most remembered. No other Hungarian before or since has written as precisely elegantly and lucidly as he. Although Kosztolányi was an advocate of "art for art's sake," a notion that denies links between literature and society, he sometimes overstepped his own boundaries to project with shattering strength the world of the underprivileged in Hungarian society. One such novel is Édes Anna (Wonder Maid). He won general recognition in 1910 with a series of poems titled The Laments of a Small Child, a small boy's moving impressions of his surroundings.

As a translator of poetry he was outstanding. In an anthology titled Modern Poets he published poems from poets of ten European nations; he also translated Chinese and Japanese poetry. In his later years Kosztolányi was preoccupied with the preservation of the purity of the Hungarian language.

The dismemberment of Hungary which caused the loss of Kosztolányi's hometown, Szabadka, to Yugoslavia shook him deeply. "Where is my face? Where is my past? Where is my bed? Where is my grave?" he asked desperately in his poem On Hungarian Ruins. The wretchedness of his spirit found moving expression in his poem The Cry of Hungarian Poets to the Poets of Europe in 1919.

No Hungarian poet more touchingly expressed Weltschmerz (világfájdalom) than did Gyula Juhász (1883-1937). Born in Szeged in the southern edge of the Hungarian Plain, Juhász, known as the poet of suffering and grief, could never comfortable find a niche among Budapest's intellectuals.

Although he desperately wanted to become a successful man of the world, his innate lack of self-confidence blocked fulfillment of his dreams. Against his own will, so to speak, Juhász became a loner, who would walk with bowed head and withdraw to a backroom when at a party. "My soul," he wrote "is like a clock that ticks without showing the time." In one poem he complained. "Ah, grayness that's what I am-living without hope, because I came too late." The word "hopelessness" appears in his writings often, and given Juhász's gloomy state of mind, it was no wonder that the poet's yearning for love remained just that.

Still. this self-confessed and self-tormenting failure, as if to recompense himself, displayed a furious literary activity both as a journalist and as a poet. While Juhász wrote more than 3000 articles and essays venting his anger against the shortcomings of Hungarian society, it was through his poems that he gained immortality. Juhász's poems to his unrequited, unfulfilled love, Anna, as well as his poems singing the beauty of the Hungarian countryside are veiled in a melancholic language, unique of their genre.

Frustrations, chronic depression and melancholy finally drove Juhász to a mental institute, where he spent his last years. His last lines were: "I was an instrument in the hand of God, who played a few songs on me."

In contrast to the sophisticated writings of Babits and Kosztolányi, who often drew their material from the world at large the works of Zsigmond Móricz (1879-1942) burst onto the literary scene directly from the Hungarian Plains, that intensely Magyar region of which Móricz was a robust

son both physically and mentally. Móricz, who became the most celebrated Hungarian novelist of this century, spoke no foreign language and. seldom left his homeland, feeling that his own nation provided sufficient material for his novels, short stories and reports. Considering literature to be not merely storytelling but the conscience of a nation, he depicted with merciless realism the problems of the peasantry, little bourgeoisie, middle class and gentry. Departing from the idyllic and innocent representations of previous writers such as Jókai and Mikszáth, Móricz was the first to portray the Hungarian village in its full, harsh reality. Fearlessly, he diagnosed the chronic ailments of the entire society.

When his first short story, Hét krajcár (Seven Pennies) appeared in Nyugat, Ady exclaimed: "Móricz alone is worth a battalion of social revolutionaries!" Móricz went on to portray the peasants' fight for emancipation in Sárarany (Gold in the Mire, 1910) and A boldog ember (The Happy Man, 1935) and the gentry's collapsing way of life in ri muri (Gentry Spree, 1927) and Rokonok (Relatives, 1930).

Móricz also wrote a children's book regarded as the finest in Hungarian literature, Légy jó mindhalálig (Be Good until Death), and a monumental historical novel with Gábor Bethlen, Prince of Transylvania, as its hero: Erdély trilógiája (Transylvania, a Trilogy, 1922-35).

Móricz soon became the leader of the progressive writers associated with Nyugat of which he was the editor for several years. From 1940 until his death in Budapest in September of 1942, he also edited Kelet Népe (People of the East), a peasant writers' review which bore on its masthead the motto: "Hagyd a politikát, építkezz!" (Leave politics alone - build!)

Although Móricz never could warm up to the Marxist-tinged labor movement, the communist regime in today's Hungary reveres him as a pioneer of the social revolution.

Still another giant of Hungarian spirit brought to prominence by the pages of Nyugat as László Németh (1901 - 1975) who placed first among 272 contestants in a short story contest organized by the Nyugat. In receiving the award Németh, who was born in Nagybánya, Transylvania (now a part of Rumania), declared that his aim was not to be a writer but to be an "organizer of Hungarian spirit."

Actually, Németh became both. As novelist, essayist, playwright, and the greatest critic and literary historian of Hungary he combined in himself the deep Hungarianism of Móricz and Szabó with the humanistic, intellectual Europeanism of Babits and Kosztolányi. He was able to read a dozen languages, including Norwegian and ancient Greek, and became thoroughly familiar with the writings of Plato, Aristotle, Tolstoy, Dostojevsky, Ibsen, Iacobsen, Pirandello, Gide, Freud, Spengler and Ortega, writing essays about most of them. His extensive travels in the East and West caused him to see Hungary not as a lone island but in its relationship to the rest of the world and especially to the rest of Europe. He concluded that it is not enough to see the world, but one must also form an overall image (világkép) of it for himself. The idea of "brotherhood" among the Danubian peoples held for him particular appeal.

Reaching out to the rest of the world, he sought to introduce Hungarian literature into the body of world literature, and to elevate the populist movement in Hungary to a more general European level. It was justly said of him that "he put before us the musical notes we have to play in the polyphony of peoples." Also deeply concerned about matters within truncated Hungary itself, he advocated "The Revolution of Quality" (the title of one of his most famous essays) and searched for a third way, a middle road between capitalism and Marxist socialism. Németh visualized building from the ruins a "garden Hungary;" he emphasized the importance of "deep Hungarianism" (Mély Magyarság) and developed so many ideas that ultimately his activity assumed utopian traits.

While Németh's essays "Magyarság és Európa" ("The Hungarians and Europe") and "Kisebbségben" ("In the Minority") display the optimism of a dreamer, his dramas are pessimistic and usually centered on powerful personalities involved in a struggle for justice. His passionate sense of justice pervades all his dramas and novels. While it was his novel Iszony (Horror) that gained international fame, it is another novel, Emberi színjáték (The Human Comedy), that is considered to be Németh's best work, a work which in parts reflect his own personality. Many of his novels have heavy, gloomy titles such as Bn (Sin), and Gyász (Mourning), showing the influence of Sophocles, Németh's idol. The biography, Esther Éget, united the great line of his descriptive novels with his astonishing portrayal of women who in Németh's works are on a par with those in Electra, Anna Karenina and Norah.

Németh was a compassionate writer, who called himself a "truthful instrument" for gauging the past, present and the future with the sensitivity of a seismograph. When speaking of Hungary's relation to Europe he pointed his

finger to a bizarre paradox: the Hungarians had more luck with European ideas than with European history. While the country profited much from Western thinking, European history treated Hungary in a malevolent way, ultimately causing its dismemberment.

The Catholic bishop, Ottokar Prohászka (1858-1927) occupies a special place in Hungarian literature. He advocated "Christian socialism" with revolutionary zeal as a counterforce to both reactionary capitalism and godless Marxism. Even his own Church was criticized by Prohászka for which some of his works were placed on index. He fought for a Hungary where the intelligentsia, revitalized by religious belief, would be able to lift the downtrodden classes from their misery in the spirit of the Gospel. By calling for a christianized society he built up a tremendous following and was regarded by many as the greatest Hungarian of this century. The author of 24 books and innumerable articles, Prohászka's writings were likened to "a radiating meadow of lilies" (fényben úszó csillagmez), his speeches dubbed a "rain of stars in the dark" (csillag es a sötétségben). The bishop himself was called a "revolutionary clad in sunshine" (napbaöltözött forradalmár).

Prohászka's statue in Budapest was toppled by a communist mob in 1947 and all of his works are banned in today's Hungary.

Next to the literary giants Szabó, Babits, Kosztolányi, Móricz and Németh stand other figures of the interwar period almost as tall. In poetry Attila József (1905-1937) has no peer in his intimate pictures of proletarian life, which are drawn with melancholy realism. From the age of seven he had to support himself with physical labor and his life was spent in great poverty. Still, he managed by sheer will power to get a university education. "A pauper who read Hegel," József even visited France where he spent some time studying French literature.

Although his works were known and loved by a small circle of devotees, real fame came only after his suicide.

Attracted by Marxist ideology, in 1928 he became a member of the then illegal Communist party but was soon expelled. Later, he was rehabilitated to become one of the literary heroes of Communist Hungary.

The Catholic priests László Mécs and Sándor Sík brought new life to religious poetry in the interwar years. Mécs achieved distinction not only with his poems of fraternal love and compassion, but also for his voice raised courageously for the Hungarian minority in Slovakia, formerly Upper Hungary, his native land.

Other important poets were Oszkár Gellért and Milán Füst, the most talented urban poets nurtured by Nyugat. The poetry of Miklós Radnóti (1909-1944) reached a tragic climax with his splendid poems written in a German concentration camp and during a death march in which he himself was to perish.

Much more fortunate was Ferenc Molnár (1878-1952), who became the most successful Hungarian writer abroad. Molnár's plays were skillfully adapted to the tastes of international theatre audiences. The Devil, The Swan, and Lily (Carousel) were all successful and entertaining plays, but more "boulevard" literature than serious literary works. However, his short stories such as "Muzsika" are of higher literary quality. Molnár wrote only one really good novel, The Boys of Paul Street (1909) which deservedly received wide acclaim both in Hungary and abroad.

Less prolific than Molnár was Menyhért Lengyel whose Typhoon became an international success. Jen Heltai, whose Csárdás has been translated into English, is in the same group with Molnár and Lengyel; they are urban writers striving for entertainment "Broadway style," rich in witticism but lacking depth. In contrast, Frigyes Karinthy was a philosopher-humorist whose writings abound in tragicomic elements. Utazás a koponyám körül (A Journey Round My Skull) is Karinthy's only book that has appeared in English.

In contrast to the rather cosmopolitan character of Molnár, Lengyel and Heltay, Ferenc Herczeg (1863-1954)

was more successful both as a novelist and a playwright in Hungary itself. The favorite writer of conservative Hungarian circles, he had little social concern for the underprivileged. Writing of the haut monde, of dashing officers, light-hearted gentry, snobs and frivolous women, Herczeg displayed a remarkable talent in his novels and considerable theatrical skill in his plays, which served as models for Molnár and others. Blue Fox is his best known social comedy while Bizánc and The Bridge are his most successful historical dramas. Of his numerous novels the best are those written with a historical setting such as Pogányok (The Pagans) and Az Élet Kapuja (The Gate of Life), the latter about the life of Cardinal Tamás Bakócz, who almost succeeded in getting elected as Pope in the 16th century.

Lajos Zilahy (1891 - 1965), novelist and playwright, was another writer whose works are known internationally. Born in Nagyszalonta (now ceded to Rumania), Zilahy was a man of troubled spirit, unable to find himself and even less able to find his place in society. Zilahy's works combine romanticism, realism and humanitarianism tinged with pacifism. Best known among his books is Két fogoly (Two Prisoners) which was translated into English, as were two others, The Dukays and The Angry Angel, both of which paint a distorted picture of the Hungarian nobility. The novels that are perhaps closest to the hearts of Hungarian readers are Valamit visz a víz (Borne by the River) and A lélek kialszik (The Soul Extinguished), a bittersweet story about the Americanization of a Hungarian immigrant who, with the passing of years, forgets his mother tongue.

Gyula Krúdy (1878-1933) was a gentry storyteller whose stories are valued more for their special charm of a dreamer than for their plots. Many of his characters are lovable or droll rascals described in a style which successfully blends emotion, humor and imagination. Krúdy's best works are Youth and Sorrow of Sindbad, The Red Mailcoach, Races in Autumn.

The largest literary group of the interwar era was the falukutatók, whose goal was to awaken the social conscience of the nation over the sorry fate of the peasantry and the need for agrarian reform.

Géza Féja (1900-1979), born in Léva, Upper Hungary (now Levice in Slovakia), served as their point man. His main work, Viharsarok (Stormy Corner) stirred up a tempest in Hungarian society, inspiring the young generation which yearned for reform, but at the same time evoking the displeasure of the Horthy regime. Harassed by the authorities, Féja went into inner exile as a teacher in a little Hungarian town from which he emerged only after 1956. His second greatest book Visegrádi esték (Evenings in Visegrád), published in 1974, deals with the life of General Arthur Görgey and his running conflict with Lajos Kossuth, with the premise that a compromise between the two could have saved Hungary in 1849.

János Kodolányi's Földindulás (Landslide), written in the same spirit as Viharsarok, condemned the big landowners, the rural middle class, the one-child family system (egyke) and even his own relatives. Kodolányi later turned to writing historical novels, his Julianus barát (Brother Julian) becoming one of the greatest Hungarian novels. Péter Veres, a writer dubbed the "peasant apostle," took his themes from the lives of the lower peasantry, as in Szegények szerelme (Love among the Poor), his best book. Peter Veres also played a political role in postwar Hungary, although his strong patriotism did not lay well with the Marxist regime. His political partner was Imre Kovács who acquired sudden fame with his book Néma forradalom (Silent Revolution). A leader of the National Peasant Party after 1945, he went into exile in 1947 and died in New York in 1980. His best known book written in exile is Magyarország megszállása (The Russian Occupation of Hungary).

Of the falukutató poets József Erdélyi (1896-1978), the son of an agrarian laborer, achieved the highest literary level. After reaching middle class status as an army officer, Erdélyi followed the calling of his peasant past to become "the people's poet." The spirit that breathes from his poems is reminiscent of Petfi as is his style, a refreshing change from the urban trend. A strong anti-Communist, after World War II Erdélyi was imprisoned for his extremist political views. His "crime," more than anything else, was a poem he wrote under the title Magyar út (Hungarian Way), a devastating condemnation of Muscovite imperialism. After nine years, he left prison a broken man.

Among Erdélyi's followers was István Sinka, a shepherd whose robust poems and ballads could only have come from the depths of his peasant soul. Lured by the intellectual life of the capital, he moved to Budapest only to fall into misery, and in addition, be silenced by the Rákosi regime. Kálmán Sért, another peasant genius who shared Erdélyi's political views, rose suddenly from the soil of Transdanubia but disappeared as abruptly after a short period of intense creation, suffering an early death.

Ferenc Móra (1879-1934) had much in common with the political and social outlook of the falukutatók, but his works also exhibit an optimism and cheerfulness that reminds one of Mikszáth's works. His book Parasztjaim

(My Peasants) is typical in this respect. Children occupy an important place in most of Móra's books, with the locales centered in the Szeged region where he lived. Móra's most celebrated novel, Ének a búzamezkrl (Song of the Wheat-fields) has been translated into several languages, as was his historical novel Aranykoporsó (Golden Coffin).

The works of István Fekete were inspired by the Hungarian countryside. Fekete's descriptions of its flavor and its atmosphere have a special charm and artistry unmatched by other writers.

The social upheaval which brought the Communist system into power and thus caused the destruction of traditional village life put an end to the mission of the falukutatók. New writers and poets with new ideas emerged from the Hungarian soil after World War II: their voices, however, were more or less muted by taboos imposed by the regime.

László Nagy and Ferenc Fáy were two outstanding lyric poets of this era.

László Nagy focused on father, mother and homeland. Although dark scenes abound in his poems. he is not a pessimist; his life and poetry suggest that one should never give up and surrender to hopelessness. A peculiar rhythm pulsates in his verses which are rich in surprising and stunning metaphors drawn from the deep treasury of the Magyar language. His last volume, titled Jönnek a harangok értem (The Bells are Coming for Me), was prophetic, for he died soon afterwards in Budapest, in 1978.

The poems of Ferenc Fáy are dark pearls produced in exile. A former army officer, Fáy left Hungary after the second World War, never to return to his homeland. Many of his verses are like tear drops from his soul, crying over the fate of Hungary. Assuming the role of Hungarian Jeremiah burdened with the past and present suffering of his nation. Fáy's poems implore the Lord to grant the Magyars a chance to live in true brotherhood. The father of six children, Fáy spent most of his exile years in physical labor. He died at the age of sixty on June 10, 1981, in Toronto.

All the writers and poets surveyed in this chapter so far are dead; only their creations have survived for posterity.

It would be inappropriate to mike appraisals about their younger, though brilliant, colleagues who still live either in Hungary or abroad. This group includes Sándor Csoóri, the poet-writer,. who has inherited the mantle of the nation's poet-laureate, Gyula Illyés. Abroad, György Faludy has already acquired international fame, while Tibor Tollas is keeping the spirit of October 1956, alive in the Magyar Diaspora through his poems,. lectures and the monthly, Nemzetr (National Guardian) published in Munich.

Fate willed that the two most prominent figures of modern Hungarian literature, Gyula Illyés and Sándor Márai, both octogenarians,. died in the recent past.

Sándor Márai (1900-1989) was born in Kassa (now Kosice in Slovakia), the son of a cultured and well-to-do middle class family, (a polgár in Hungarian terminology). His writings reflect the mentality of an erudite patrician who watched the world from the ivory tower of his superintellect. Márai's main interests were not social problems or politics,. but man's inner life, with his themes picked from both the modern and ancient world. Abhorrence of "isms" and regimes is clearly evident in his works.

A prolific writer, Márai's most successful works include the drama Kassai Polgárok (The Polgars' of Kassa) and the novels Vendégjáték Bolzanoban (Guest Performance in Bolzano), Béke Ithakában, (Peace in Ithaka) and Egy polgár vallomásai (The Confessions of a Polgár).

A successful and much honored writer in the interwar years in Hungary, Márai chose exile after the Communist takeover. His book Föld, Föld! (Land, Land!), written in Italy,. reflects the atmosphere of Hungarian society in the early years of the Russian occupation.

Márai's greatest artistry lies not so much in storytelling but in the matchless imagination and exquisite style with which he blends dreams and substance in his fictional world. In reading his works one senses that Márai was a European "Bel esprit" (európai széplélek) whose work reflects the influence of various cultures, transcending his Hungarian background. Márai is often compared to Thomas Mann, who also spent much of his life in exile.

Márai's political message to the Magyars was; "Always go westward - but never forget that you come from the East."

Living most of his life in solitude, Márai once wrote: "Solitude is a great venture in character building. But it is worth something only if it is absolute. Solitude is like virginity; you cannot suspend it for a while."

While Márai watched Hungary from his solitude abroad, .his counterpart, the greatest living Hungarian poet-novelist-essayist,. Gyula Illyés (1902-1983), has remained in Hungary and continued to be involved in its affairs. Over his long lifespan he witnessed the rise and demise of the Nyugat generation, served as a guiding light for the falukutatók, and finally became the embodiment of Hungarian spirit in Hungary.

The guiding star of Illyés' life had been the struggle for his people, most of all for the peasantry. His childhood as a laborers son on a large estate left a deep mark on his work, a mark that could not be erased by his long stay in Paris, where he studied French literature at the Sorbonne. He learned French so thoroughly that he could have made a career as a French writer, and indeed, could count Aragon, Malraux and Cocteau as his personal friends. Nevertheless, he returned to Hungary ''to wear the fiery crown of a nation on a burning forehead."

Gyula Illyés was the foremost protagonist of folk realism in Hungarian literature. His emphasis upon political and personal freedom shows a kinship with Sándor Petfi, though Illyés was more versatile, being a poet, dramatist, novelist, publicist and sociologist all at the same time. Illyés' best known work is Puszták népe (People of the Plains) in which he vividly describes the daily life of farm workers. Magyarok (Hungarians) was an attempt ''to justify the existence of a people." His novel Hunok Párizsban (Huns in

Paris) is a fictional autobiography of the writer's youth in the French capital. Although he wrote touching love poems, Illyés was at his best at writing political poems and novels, taking themes from Hungary's history as in Ozorai példa (The Lesson of Ozora), Fáklyaláng (Torchlight), and Dózsa, about the leader of a peasant uprising in 1514.

Illyés joined the revolt in 1956 wholeheartedly and published the ode One Sentence on Tyranny as a powerful testimony to his feelings' at the time. Because of his popularity, the regime dared not to touch him. His outspokenness in favor of the Hungarian minorities suppressed in Rumania and Slovakia added a new dimension to his activities. His book written in this cause, Szellem és erszak (Spirit and Violence) was confiscated by the regime. presumably on directives from Moscow that regard minority grievances against socialist countries as "Taboo."

Although Illyés had mild leftist leanings, he continued to demonstrate that his Magyar spirit transcends any ideology, dogma, regime or system. He became a symbol of spiritual resistance and a rallying point for those writers who were concerned with the future of the Hungarian nation, including the ethnic survival of Hungarian minorities.

Illyés died in 1983.

Illyés was a frequent candidate for the Nobel Prize in literature but a major factor hindering his success was the very nature of language, and in particular, the Hungarian language.

As Paul Valéry, a great French poet wrote:

"Every poet has the misfortune to be a man of only one language. His voice is heard only in a limited area to which not everyone has access. His chances to be heard, enjoyed, admired, to move or to charm, are limited by frontiers beyond which, however great he may be, he is hardly known except by name...

"One kind of inequity results, therefore, from where one is born, here or there; to the one is assigned a province, to the other an immense empire, with heritage and lineage allotted to it. And further, there are languages very different from all those spoken in neighboring countries. They have neither sisters nor cousins around them who would make them more accessible to more people.

"Such is the case of the Hungarian language... Herein is posed very clearly the thorny problem of translating poetic works."

Thus, it is quite true that the only real way to enjoy and appreciate the true greatness of Hungarian verse and literature is to be able to read them in the original...

Where there's tyranny

there's tyranny;

not only in the gun-barrel,

not only in the prison cell,

not only in the torture rooms,

not only in the nights,

in the voice of the shouting guard;

there's tyranny,

not only in the speech of the

prosecutor, pouring like dark smoke,

in the confessions,

in the wall-tappings of prisoners,

not only in the judge's passionless

sentence: "guilty!"

there's tyranny

not only in the martial

curt's "Attention!" and

"Fire!" and in the drum rolls,

and in the way the corpse

is thrust into a hole,

not only in the secretly

half-opened door,

in fearfully

whispered news,

in the finger, dropping

in front of the lips, cautioning "Hush";

there is tyranny

not only in the facial expression

firmly set like iron bars,

and in the stillborn

tormented cry of pain within these

bars,

in the shower

of silent tears

adding to this silence

in a glazed eyeball;

there is tyranny

not only in the cheers

of men upstanding

who cry "Hurrah!" and sing;

where there's tyranny

there's tyranny

not only in the tirelessly

clapping palms,

in orchestras in operas

in the braggart statues of tyrants

just as mendaciously loud,

in colours, in picture galleries,

in each embracing frame,

even in the painters' brush,

not only in the sound of the car

gliding softly in the night

and in the way

it stops at the doorway;

where there's tyranny, it's there

in actual presence

in everything,

in the way not even your God was

in old times;

there's tyranny

in the nursery school,

in paternal advise

in the mother's smile,

not only in the barbed wire,

not only in the booksellers' stand,

more than barbed wire

in the hypnotic slogans;

it is there

in the goodbye kiss,

in the way the wife says:

"when will you be home, dear?"

in the "how are you's"?

repeated so automatically in the street,

in the loosing of the grip

to give a nonchalant handshake,

in the way suddenly

your lover's face becomes frozen,

because tyranny is there

in the amorous trysts,

not only in the questioning,

it is there in the declaration of love,

in the sweet drunkenness of words,

like a fly in the wine;

for not even in your dreams

are you alone,

it is there in the bridal bed,

and before in the dawning desire,

like a river in its bed

you follow it and you create it;

you spy out of this circle?

it looks at you from the mirror,

where there's tyranny

everyone is a link in the chain:

it stinks and pours out of you,

you are tyranny yourself;

like moles in the sunshine,

we walk in the dark,

we fidget in our chamber

as if it were the Sahara;

because where there's tyranny

all is in vain,

even the song, however faithful

whatever the work you achieve,

for its stands

in advance at your grove

and it tells you who you have been,

even your dust serves tyranny.

Eötvös József: Falu jegyzője, 1845*

(The Village Notary)

Kemény Zsigmond: Zord idő, 1862

(Stormy Times)

Jókai Mór: Az új földesúr, 1863

(The New Landowner)

Jókai Mór: A kszív ember fiai, 1869

(Sons of the Coldhearted Man)

Jókai Mór: Az aranyember, 1873*

(Timar's Two Worlds)

Mikszáth Kálmán: Szent Péter esernyője, 1895*

(St. Peter's Umbrella)

Gárdonyi Géza: A láthatatlan ember, 1902

(The Invisible Man)

Gárdonyi Géza: Egri csillagok, 1901

(The Stars of Eger)

Herczeg Ferenc: Pogányok, I 902

(The Heathen)

Molnár Ferenc: Pál utcai fiúk, 1907*

(The Boys of Paul Street)

Mikszáth Kálmán: A fekete város, 1911

(The Black City)

Krúdy Gyula: A vörös postakocsi, 1913

(The Red Post Chaise)

Szabó Dezső: Az elsodort falu, 1919

(The Abandoned Village)

Herczeg Ferenc: Az élet kapuja, 1919

(The Gate of Life)

Makkai Sándor: Az ördögszekér, 1925

(The Devil's Wagon)

Kosztolányi Dezső: Édes Anna, 1926*

(Wonder Maid)

Babits Mihály: Halálfiai, 1927

(Sons of Death)

Zilahy Lajos: Két fogoly, 1927*

(Two Prisoners)

Móra Ferenc: Ének a búzamezkrl, 1927*

(Songs of the Wheatfields)

Gulácsy Irén: Fekete vlegények, 1927*

(The Black Bridegrooms)

Tamási Áron: Abel a rengetegben, 1932

(Abel in the Wilderness)

Móra Ferenc: Az aranykoporsó, 1932

(The Golden Coffin)

Nyirő József: őz Bence, 1933

Kós Károly: Országépítő, 1933

(Nationbuilder)

Kassák Lajos: Egy ember élete, 1934

(One Man's Life)

Móricz Zsigmond: Erdély, 1935

(Transylvania)

Móricz Zsigmond: A boldog ember, 1935

(A Happy Man)

Surányi Miklós: Egyedül vagyunk, 1936

(We are Alone)

Karinthy Frigyes: Utazás a koponyám körül, 1937*

(A Journey Round my Skull)

Márai Sándor: Vendégjáték Bolzanoban, 1940

(Guest Performance in Bolzano)

Kodolányi János: Julianus barát, 1940

(Brother Julian)

Móricz Zsigmond: Rózsa Sándor, I 942

Illyés Gyula: Hunok Párizsban, 1946

(Huns in Paris)

Németh László: Iszony, 1947

(Horror)

Wass Albert: Adjátok vissza a hegyeimet! 1948*

(Give Back My Mountains!)

Déry Tibor: Felelet, 1950

(Response)

Márai Sándor: Béke Ithakában, 1952

(Peace in Ithaca)

Wass Albert: Elvész a nyom, 1952

(The Trail Fades)

Veres Péter: Szegények szerelme, I 952

(Love of the Poor)

Tamási Áron: Bölcs és bagoly, 1953

(Cradle and Owl)

Stephen Sisa : The Spirit of Hungary