HUNGARIAN SHORT STORIES (19Th and 20Th Centuries)
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HUNGARIAN SHORT STORIES (19th and 20th Centuries) CONTENTS INTRODUCTION by István Sőtér MÓR JÓKAI - The Two Willows by the Bridge (István Farkas) KÁROLY EÖTVÖS - The Evangelist of the Hermit’s Cave (Éva Rácz) KÁLMÁN MIKSZÁTH - Prakovszky, the Deaf Blacksmith (Sára Karig) SÁNDOR BRÓDY - The Jest (István Farkas) ISTVÁN TÖMÖRKÉNY - Men on the Dam (István Farkas) JENŐ HELTAI - Sisters Three (István Farkas) GYULA KRÚDY - Death and the Journalist (Sára Karig) FERENC MOLNÁR - Coal Thieves (Fabienne Russo) FERENC MÓRA - A September Reminiscence (Mihály J. Pásztor) ZSIGMOND MÓRICZ - Seven Pennies (István Farkas) Barbarians (Gyula Gulyás) MARGIT KAFFKA - Smouldering Crisis (Sára Karig) LAJOS NAGY - An Afternoon with Mr. Grün, Solicitor (István Farkas) ANDOR GÁBOR - Better to Die (József Hatvany) DEZSŐ KOSZTOLÁNYI - A Holiday Swim (Zsuzsa Madarassy-Beck) GÉZA CSÁTH - The Red-Haired Girl (Fabienne Russo) FRIGYES KARINTHY - The Circus (György Welsburg) SÁNDOR HUNYADY-Adventure in Uniform (Zsuzsa Madarassy-Beck) ANDOR ENDRE GELLÉRI - With the Movers (István Farkas) INTRODUCTION Hungarian literature, one of the least known literatures in Europe, has produced works of international literary rank mainly in the realm of poetry. The traditions of Hungarian verse date back to the sixteenth century, to the first great Hungarian lyricist, Bálint Balassi. He voiced not only the exuberance of the Hungarian Renaissance, but his boisterousness and sentimentality, his choice of themes dealing with the warrior’s life, with love and religious fervour, made him a model for subsequent generations of Hungarian poets. From the beginning of the nineteenth century to the present day, Hungarian literature has been a triumphal march of lyric poetry - each generation saw the emergence of great lyricists, who have, however, remained almost completely unknown to people abroad and to international literary opinion. The reason? Perhaps that the language of Hungarian poetry has always been refreshed from folklore and the archaic sources of Hungarian literature, so that the faithful reproduction of the hues of its idiom would have required extraordinary gifts and poetic power on the part of the translators. But the isolation, the unfamiliarity of Hungarian poetry and of Hungarian literature generally, may also be explained by the fact that in the last century, the chief concern of our authors was with the establishment of a national character. This concern overruled another - that of speaking to Europe, to mankind at large, and with it the requirement of contents that would transcend national limitations. While Hungarian poetry was able, by the end of the eighteenth century, to boast of several great poets, narrative prose remained in its naive, archaic state. The novel, this most bourgeois product of European bourgeois development, was even as late as the first half of the nineteenth century only in an incipient stage in this country. Yet there had been quite a few spontaneous and characteristic manifestations of narrative art in earlier Hungarian prose. The parables of mediaeval codices, some of the dramatic passages in seventeenth-century memoirs, portions of the correspondence of Transylvanian princes and aristocrats, and, of course, the treasure trove of Hungarian folk tales - all these were important precursors of later Hungarian narrative writing. In the first half of the nineteenth century it was the imitation of Eugène Sue and Walter Scott that set off the development of the Hungarian novel. The “mysteries” of the former were somewhat alien to the environment of the provincial Hungarian towns into which they were transplanted - the historical atmosphere of the latter was far better suited to the subjects and characters of Hungarian history. It was after such preliminaries that the Hungarian novel was born in the works of Mór (Maurus) Jókai, at the middle of the last century. Jókai established the national form of the Hungarian novel - in his picturesque and romantic manner he portrayed the personalities of the period preceding the revolution of 1848 - of the then recent past - the heroes of the Hungarian independence movements, the morals, customs and scenes of the vanishing feudal-patriarchal Hungary. The charm of Jókai’s works is due to the nostalgic colouring of the recent past and his emotional, melancholic farewell to an old and familiar world. This nostalgia and emotion may also be felt in his short stories. The writers of the second half of the century - particularly Mikszáth, who in many respects followed Jókai and may, next to him, be regarded as the most significant author of the period - sang the swan song of the developing bourgeois Hungary to the old, intimate, patriarchal Hungary. In the short stories and novels of Jókai and Mikszáth the old world is clad in fairy hues; amid the conditions of capitalist Hungary, the epoch whose termination was marked, by 1848 suddenly came to seem humane and pleasant, heroic and interesting, though it had in fact been tainted 2 by Hapsburg tyranny, feudal conditions and semi-colonial subservience to the Austrian empire. In this manner, Jókai and Mikszáth established a lyrical approach to the recent past. They saw heroes and eccentrics in the Hungary of yore, and both types equally require the descriptive art of romanticism and of realism to portray them. With Jókai and Mikszáth the Hungarian towns and country manors became populated with strange and unique characters and personalities. The art of these writers harbours a peculiar confession - that the second half of the century looked with emotion and pain upon the hopes and aims that had preceded 1848. The defeat of the revolution and of the struggle for freedom had thwarted the fulfilment of these aims and the hopes remained unrequited. Jókai and Mikszáth voiced the feelings of the ‘‘better half” of the nation - capitalist Hungary looked back on the Hungary of the pre-1848 period, as upon its own better part. Or, as a mature and disillusioned man, upon the happy, magnanimous, youthful period of great expectations, bold ventures and selfless heroism. It was Jókai and Mikszáth who gave birth to modern Hungarian short-story writing. These short stories were a development of the anecdote, itself the favoured literary form of the old, patriarchal Hungary. These full-flavoured anecdotal short stories, built up round a point, are in many ways different from Maupassant’s type of short story. The characters of these short stories are heroes or eccentrics. The anecdote is suitable for the portrayal of both types. Its kindly, humorous savour deprives heroism of its poignancy, and eccentricity of the painful feeling of backwardness. The faithful heir, tender and cultivator of the anecdotal art of Jókai and Mikszáth was Károly Eötvös. End-of-the-century Hungary awoke from its romanticism. In our country this romanticism had a longer after-life than anywhere else in the world. The cult of the recent past entertained by the period of capitalism, could only be maintained amid the forms of romanticism. But the young generation of writers at the end of the century had no reminiscences of this pre-1848 fairyland. Their experiences were simpler and more bitter. A truly urban Hungary had come into being, which saw even the village differently than the patriarchal mid-century generation. This period turned its attention to the unsolved, unsettled social problems of its day - and the breath of a new revolution may be felt in the passion with which the young generation drew attention to the destitution of the peasantry, the defencelessness of simple people and the depravity of the gentry. One of the leading figures of this new literature - a special kind of littérature engagée that was permeated with a sense of responsibility - was Sándor Bródy. And in his immediate vicinity, István Tömörkény provides an example of the philanthropic, sympathetic view of the people entertained by the urban intelligentsia. Tömörkény made a veritable discovery of the peasant world which the heirs of romanticism had so far only presented on the scenes of bucolic plays and sentimental short stories, in an idealized, syrupy setting. His short stories are sometimes rendered cumbersome by their ethnographic descriptions - inventories of customs, implements and the peculiarities of various trades. Zsigmond Móricz, with his rich knowledge of the peasantry, thought Tömörkény’s short stories were “ethnographic museums.” Yet there was need for this “inventory” to be made, because the world which Tömörkény described was as unknown to the educated classes as the life of an African tribe. More or less contemporaneously with the poor of the farmsteads on the pusztas, this period also discovered the urban poor, the proletarians. Ferenc Molnár was the first, before he undertook his more celebrated but also more superficial ventures in stagecraft, to take note of the urban poor and to discover the bitter-sweet poetry of their life. The generation of short-story writers who emerged at the turn of the century, played only the overture to the great poetic revolution that developed in this country between 1905 and 1919. This was intrinsically a revolutionary period, throughout Europe. The unallayed, defeated Hungarian revolution of 1848-1849 came to life again in the bourgeois revolution of 1918 and 3 the proletarian revolution of 1919, undertaking to complete the work that had been left unfinished in 1849. As in Petőfi’s age, literature at the beginning of the century again became one of the sources of inspiration for this revolutionary fervour. In the lyrical field, the soaring poetry of Endre Ady was a portent of the great storm to come. Ady’s companion in prose was Zsigmond Móricz. The revolutionary forces maturing in the peasantry were so strikingly voiced in the work of Móricz as though his were the words of a belated participant in the Hungarian peasant revolution of the sixteenth century. But Móricz was a belated author in other respects too. It was through his artistic portrayal of reality that Hungarian prose made up for the omissions of the long-lived post-romanticism of the nineteenth century.