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Endre Ady Have Been the Best Teachers I Could Have Company, 2006 me a much more aware, self-reflexive and Works Cited/Referenced flexible instructor. The Social Context of a While it might sound clichéd, I truly Graff, Gerald and Cathy Birkenstein. They Say/I Say: Moves can say that my Hungarian students that Matter for Academic Writing. New York: W.W. Norton and Modernist Poet: Endre Ady have been the best teachers I could have Company, 2006. asked for. Today, nearing the end of my second semester teaching, when I turn Salvatori, Mariolina R. and Patricia A. Donahue. The Elements that beginning question of what do you (and Pleasures) of Difficulty.New York: Longman, 2004. think? to my classroom, I get a much more lively answer — a change that has Georgetown Digital Commons. www.digitalcommons. as much to do with their hard work and georgetown.edu willingness to try new learning styles as my own planning. And, in addition to the Maxwell Staley more formal, professional lessons I am taking away, the wonderful relationships I have formed with Hungarians have also expanded my thinking and opened ............................................................................................... my mind, be that the evenings I spent discussing literature with my Pázmány At-Large Central European University colleagues over wine or the lunches I have San Francisco, CA Nádor u. 9., 1051 Budapest, Hungary shared with the Fulbright Center staff. I [email protected] www.ceu.hu feel I am leaving Hungary having made Adviser: Matthias Riedl progress with many Hungarian students – and having made much personal progress ............................................................................................... as a teacher. The article addresses the social milieu from which the poet and journalist Endre Ady emerged. In doing so, it explores the possibility of applying an interpretation to Hungarian Modernism similar to that of Carl Schorkse and later scholars of fin-de-siécle Vienna. The question is whether the shared historical experience of a Hungarian cultural elite can serve as an interpretive starting point for Ady’s writing. In order to answer the question, the paper first discusses the preponderance of downwardly mobile provincial gentry and Calvinists in the Hungarian intelligentsia. It then explores the work of Ady, who was from a Calvinist, gentry background himself, arguing that Ady’s unique blend of iconoclasm, patriotism, and spirituality may be seen as a result of his social origins. Introduction Endre Ady, the most influential poet of the pre-WWI period, came from an impoverished Protestant gentry family in the East of Hungary. How, then, can this fact be seen to have affected his journalistic and poetic output, which so polarized 240 241 AY 2008-2009 Maxwell Staley: The Social Context of a Modernist Poet: Endre Ady his country? Without a vast array of marginalized progressive sector of that liberal bourgeoisie, whose “triumph” precipitous fall from power--the sons of biographical materials, this is a difficult group. Following that is a discussion in the middle of the nineteenth century the builders of the Ringstrasse rejected question to answer. It is interesting, of Ady’s work, including journalism (fatefully later than in the French and political liberalism and turned inwards however, that Ady was not alone in coming and poetry. The focus is on his political British cases) quickly gave way to crisis, towards their psyche. Thus Freud’s from the gentry, or from a Protestant progressivism, religiosity in his work, when the ascendant group found itself discovery of the ahistorical “psychological background, among his contemporaries as well as his unapologetic (though surrounded by hostile forces. Their man” mirrored the development of arts in the Hungarian cultural elite. In fact, still left-wing) nationalism. Overall, opposition was both social (especially in that explored the subtleties and intensities individuals with this pedigree were rather preliminary research suggests that the the form of Social Democracy) and ethnic of psychic states. His idea of oedipal over-represented in his generation, which enhanced role of the partly Protestant (both Slavic and German); in essence, the revolt3 also mirrored the generational emerged in the early twentieth century as gentry in the Hungarian modernist arts groups which the bourgeoisie wanted to revolt against the liberalism manifested in a powerful voice condemning the status scene (as opposed to the Viennese case, “educate” and turn into good liberals took the Ringstrasse4. Overall, the book places quo. which was dominated by the Jewish power before their education was done1. Viennese culture in a politico-historical It would be interesting, therefore, to bourgeoisie) did affect the manifestation The most shattering result was the rise context, while giving a psychological investigate the the histories of the various of modernism in Hungarian art. This of Karl Lueger’s anti-semitic Christian interpretation to the individual social categories--gentry, Protestant, influence can be seen in Ady’s work--not Social Party, which took power in the manifestations of Modernism. intelligentsia--from which Ady the only because he was the leader of his capital itself, despite imperial resistance. The Schorske thesis was highly individual emerged. To do so, even generation of writers, but also because Schorske argues that the aesthetic influential, not least because of its without finding causal relationships, his works combination of progressivism, phenomenon of Modernism was the attractive internal symmetries. It would could provide insights into both Ady’s religiosity, and nationalism may be Viennese bourgeoisie’s response to that be tempting to simply try to apply it to work and the phenomenon of Hungarian interpreted as an expression of the social crisis. the Hungarian context--perhaps the modernism as a whole, although the latter and political makeup of Hungary’s Perhaps the two most important downwardly mobile gentry provided the obviously involved individuals from many intelligentsia. essays in the volume are the chapters intelligentsia with whatever insecurities other backgrounds. Also, such a project on the Ringstrasse and on Freud. The it needed in order to challenge the would be similar to Carl Schorkse’s in former portrays the city during the aesthetic status quo. Nonetheless, it is Fin-de-Siecle Vienna, a paradigmatic study 2. Theory: height of bourgeois ascendancy, when important to acknowledge the challenges of Central European modernism. In fact, The Schorske Thesis the triumphant liberals rebuilt the city in to the Schorske thesis that have arisen it is that work, as well as later responses and Beyond their image--curiously through the use in more recent scholarship. Much of to Schorkse’s thesis, which provide the of historicist architecture. As Schorske this scholarship is collected by Steven theoretical framework for the project. says, “The practical objectives which Beller in Rethinking Vienna 1900. His Any work dealing with Central This paper, after a preliminary redesigning the city might accomplish introduction to the collection describes European modernism must at some discussion of the Schorske thesis and [i.e. the rationalization of city planning, or a number of criticisms, both theoretical point deal with the Schorske thesis and its possible ramifications for research bringing the city into capitalist modernity] and empirical, that have been made its implications. His book, Fin-de-Siecle on Hungarian modernism, explores were firmly subordinated to the symbolic against the thesis. For one, he says it is Vienna, is actually a collection of essays the social history of the Hungarian function of representation.”2 The “surprisingly clear that Schorske’s idea discussing the different manifestations intelligentsia. It discusses the role of the second essay crystallizes the generational that Austrian liberalism had ‘failed’ was far of Viennese modernism. It is both gentry, and especially their predominance revolt that occurred after the liberals’ too pessimistic.”5 On the theoretical side, a biography of the city itself, and a in middle-class positions after the group biography of the Viennese Compromise of 1867. It also investigates 1 Carl Schorske, Fin-de-Siecle Vienna. New York: Vintage Books, 3 Schorske, 183. the role of Protestants in the gentry and 1981. 117. 4 Schorske, 25. intelligentsia, as well as the relatively 2 Schorkse, 26. 5 Steven Beller, “Introduction,” in Steven Beller, ed., Rethinking 242 243 AY 2008-2009 Maxwell Staley: The Social Context of a Modernist Poet: Endre Ady he challenges Schorske’s “ironic dialectic” than Austrian influence on their art8. Her which produced Bartok, but many of its simply writing a history of the gentry by pointing out that much of the drive central point is that depictions of women sections on topics other than music have in the nineteenth and early twentieth towards modernization came from the in Hungarian art were mainly positive been seriously questioned. The general century would not be sufficient to explain state, which was supposedly the opponent and traditional9--in sharp contrast to the reaction has been that, while a gifted Ady’s background. In short, no analysis of the fin-de-siécle bourgeoisie: “Vienna sexual anxiety revealed by the “demonic” musicologist, Frigyesi makes generalized, of a single “identity” belonging to Ady 1900 becomes thus the beginning of a new women of decadent art and the uncritical, or unsupported assertions would do justice to the complexity of century
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