Y GEORG LUKACS RECORD OF A LIFE v Georg Lukacs Verso Record of a Life An Autobiographical Sketch Edited by Istvan Eorsi Translated by Rodney Livingstone Photos on front cover, clockwise from top, centre: Lukacs in 1917 (Lukacs Archives of the Institute of Philosophy of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences); decree on the working conditions of apprentices, Budapest 1919; Commissar Lukacs thanks the proletariat for its help in overcoming the counter-revolution (from a newsreel in the Hungarian Film Institute); Lukacs's membership card of the Soviet Writers' Union (Lukacs Archives); Commissar Lukacs ninth from the left, second row, among the troops of the Hungarian Commune, July 1919; drawing of Lukacs from Friss Ujsag, April 1919 (Lukacs Archives); Lukas with Bela Balasz and friends, April 1909; Lukacs at the age of 11 (Lukacs Archives). Photos on back cover, clockwise from top right: Hungarian Communist Party poster of 1946 'Intellectuals! You should join us!' (Institute of Party History); stills from the film Our People Want Peace (1951), showing Lukacs addressing the Third World Peace Congress in Budapest (Film Archives of the Hungarian Film Institute); Lukacs, on the left, welcoming Pablo Neruda at Ferihegy airport, Budapest, in 1951 (Photo Service of the Hungarian Telegraph Agency); Hungar­ ian CP poster, 1946, proclaiming 'We are building the country for the people, not the capitalists' (Institute of Party History); Georg Lukacs in 1971, very shortly before his death. Grateful acknowledgement is made to Corvina Kiad6, Budapest, whose Gyorgy Lukacs: his lifein pictures and documents, edited by Fekete and Karadi, is the source for all the photos listed above. This edition of Record of a Life is a translation of the German edition, incorporating corrections, additional footnotes, and emendations and further entries to the Biographical Notes prepared by the editor. The interview with NewLeft Review, published here as an appendix, originally appeared in NLR 68, july-August 1971. Translated from the German edition. This translation first published by Verso Editions,'15 Greek Street, London W1 © Verso Editions 1983 Interview with NewLeft Review @ NLR 1971 Filmset in Bern by Comset Graphic Designs Printed by The Thetford Press Ltd Thetford, Norfolk ISBN 0 86091 071 7 86091 771 1 Pbk CONTENTS Editorial Note 6 Translator's Note 8 Istvan Eorsi: The Right to the Last Word 9 Record of a Life: Georg Lukacs in Conversation About his Life 1. Childhood and Early Career 26 2. War and Revolution 44 3. In Exile 70 4. Back in Hungary 112 Georg Lukacs: Gelebtes Denken: Notes towards an Autobiography 143 Appendix: Interview with New Left Review 171 Biographical Notes 183 Notes 202 Editorial Note When Georg Lukacs was told that he was suffering from an incurable disease, he made extraordinary efforts to speed up his work on the corrections to The Ontology of Social Being so as to complete them. However, the rapid deteriora­ tion of his condition prevented him fr om attending to this task, which was of such overriding importance to him, with his customary intensity . It was at this time that he embarked on a sketch of his life, partly because of the relative fr eedom fr om theoretical effort which it entailed, and partly to fulfilthe wish of his late wife. But once the sketch was finished, it became obvious that he lacked the strength to elaborate it fu rther. The sheer exertion of writing was something to which his physical powers proved increasingly unequal. Since he could not endure the idea of a life without work, however, he followed the advice of pupils close to him and, with his strength rapidly fading, he recorded the events of his life on tape in 1971 by answering questions put to him by Erzsebet Vezers and myself which we had based on the sketch Lived Thought (Gelebtes Denken). We had fr equently made such taped interviews with Georg Lukacs, particularly in 1969. In assembling and editing these materials I had two aims in view. In the first place I wished to give a complete account of the contents of the interviews, to record everything Georg Lukacs fe lt to be of value about himself and his age . Secondly, I was at pains to produce a readable and coherent text. For this reason, in addition to the usual stylistic corrections, I also made a series of structural changes. As far as possible I have ordered the material chronologic­ ally. Where passages are repeated I have opted for the more trenchant and complete version. In a number of places I have preferred earlier phrases and fo rmulations to those of the 1971 interviews , chiefly because in 1969 Georg Lukacs was still in fu ll possession of his powers of expression. In places I have modified the questions to fit the answers and have treated the questions of the two interviewers as though they were one. I have also woven a number of theoretical statements into the biographical narrative where I fe lt that these convey better than any others an accurate picture of Georg Lukacs as he was on the threshold of death. It follows that in strict philological terms the present text is not 'authentic'. However, it is authentic in the sense that every utterance recorded is guaranteed by the statements on tape. I have resisted the temptation to publish anything I cannot actually document, even where my recollection of what was said is accurate in every detail. A fu rther aspect of the authenticity of the text is that I have not made any 'selective' use of the material . Neither political nor any other considerations have induced me to censor Lukacs's words in any way. During my work on the text I fe lt encouraged partly by the fact that I had performed similar tasks fo r Georg Lukacs during his lifetime, and partly by my belief that I was proceeding very much in his spirit. Throughout his en­ tire life he had fe lt a greater esteem fo r the sort of fidelity that is concerned with an accurate reproduction of the essentials of a fo rm or a process than with �iteral fidelity and philological pedantry. Istvan EOrsi Translator's Note Istvan Eorsi' s introduction, 'The Right to the Last Word', has already ap­ peared in English, in New German Critique, Number 23, Spring/Summer 1981. The present translation is new, although I have consulted the version by Geoffrey Davis and am grateful to New German Critique for permission to use the occasional turn of phrase. Most of Lukacs's own books referred to in the text are available in English translation. I have added some references where appropriate. I have also added some fo otnotes to the text where clarification seemed neccessary. These are marked: (Trans.); other footnotes are the editor's. I wish to express my thanks to Professor Peter Evans of Southampton University, for providing me with useful information about Bart6k; to Mrs Ilona Bellos, for help with some Hungarian words used in the original; to Andrea Reiter of Southampton University, for resolving some of the am­ biguities of the German text; and to Alison Hamlin, fo r having typed the manuscript so efficiently at short notice. Rodney Livingstone Southampton Istvan Eorsi The Right to the Last Word After Georg Lukacs was given his party card back in 1967 after ten years in the wilderness, he had the feeling that this new turn of events in his life made it desirable fo r him to make a statement. After all, he had been Minister of Culture at the time of the popular uprising in 1956 and he had not publicly dissociated himself subsequently from the Communists who had been ab­ ducted to Romania along with him. Despite official promises of good treat­ ment, some of those men had not managed to survive their period of intern­ ment-to put it tactfully. Lukacs himself was permitted to return to Budapest in 1957, but fo und himself type-cast fo r the role of 'chief ideological risk'. His writings could not be published in Hungary and everything was done to en­ sure that they would not appear abroad. This was how matters remained until preparations began fo r a reform of the Hungarian economy. In a new climate of destalinization it evidently became impossible to continue treating Georg Lukacs as the carrier of a contagious ideological disease. In addition the convic­ tion appears to have gained ground in leading party circles that it would be prudent to bring about a reconciliation before his death in order to avoid a repetition of the case of that other outstanding Hungarian Communist, Attila j6zsef, 1 who had been expelled from the party in the early thirties and with whom the reconciliation had been brought about after his death by means of all sorts of lies and falsifications. 'I don't know whether you have already heard that I have become a party member again?', Lukacs said to me with that sly sidelong glance he used to have. I nodded, whereupon he began to list the reasons for his decision to join. First, there was the economic reform, which made a rapprochement objective­ ly possible, even though he viewed the planned reforms, which the party con­ sidered extremely radical, as merely the first step on the road towards a ge­ nuine socialist transformation. And as a Marxist, he added he thought the economic infrastructure could not be modified significantly unless there were 10 accompanying reforms on the political plane. For its part, the party wished to confinethe changes to the economic sphere. Yet Lukacs thought that the pro­ posed reforms would provide some scope fo r dialogue.