Amerikai Magyar Szó, 1979. január-június (33. évfolyam, 1-26. szám)
1979-02-08 / 6. szám
Thursday, Feb. 8. 1979. AMERIKAI MAGYAR SZÓ 7- A REVIEW OF ART; LITERATURE AND HISTORY - A SUPPLEMENT OF THE MAGYAR SZO The Centennial of As iymond Móricz The Zsigmond Móricz Centennial Committee of Budapest appeals to all friends and readers of Hungárián literature all over the world to join in celebrating the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Zsigmond Móricz, the great Hungarian novelist and short story writer. His birthday will be on Tuly 2. of this year. Together with Bartók, the composer, and Ady, the poet, Móricz forms the immortal triumvirate of the Hungarian social and artistic revolutionary spirit of pre-World War I. times. It is in the hearts of these three great men that the hopes and ideas of a better future for the Hungarian people emerged in their clearest and most forceful forms. Together with Ady and Bartók Móricz declared that the Hungarians are part and parcel of mankind’s road to the stars! Together' with Ady he belived in the need and inevitability of democratic transformation of Hungary. Together with Ady and Bartók he was convinced that this transformation can be based only upon the working masses of Hungary and that it must be done, if it is to be done at all, in harmony with neighboring nationalities. The life of peasants formed the center of his tremendous art. IT COULDNT BE OTHERWISE IN A society in which social development was retarded by the residue of feudal social and economic structures. In his portrayal of the toilers of the earth he is in the front ranks of the greatest writers of all times, in his social analysis only Balzac can be compared to him. Zsigmond Móricz (1879—1942) pression and realise what he wanted to say. First he had to get rid of the taste, the ideological trappings of feudal Hungary before he could stand on his own feet. THE LIFE AND WORK OF ZSIGMOND MÓRICZ Zsigmond Móricz was born in an out-of-the way village in the Tisza river district. His father was of peasant stock and his mother a clergyman’s daughter. His childhood - as he describes it in numerous short stories and in his brilliant autobiographical writing, The Romance of my Lifé - was spent amid the ups and downs of privation and financial recovery, of humiliation and happiness. His education was acquired in distinguished Hungarian Calvinist seats of learning, and here his intellectual interest was awakened and his literary vein discovered. On leaving secondary school, he became a divinity student, but he soon gave up the cloth for the bar, only to end up in journalism - a common-run newspaper-man, an anonymous member on the staff of a Budapest daily, alow salaried, conservative-minded square peg of a -country bumpkin in the metropolitan round hole. It took a good deal of experience, fresh impressions, numerous trips through the countryside and contact established with the rising radical literature to make him find his own mode of exHe had turned 30 when his first short story — Seven Pennies — was published in Nyugat, the literary magazin, making him overnight a celebrated writer, one of the leading authors of the new literary movement. (We publish this masterpiece in this issue of Heritage.- Editor.) His intellectual liberation was owed in a great measure to the poet Ady, whose poetry — and, later, friendship — provided for him a stimulus and guidance to the end. In Ady, his stodgy, slowmo- ving temperament hailed the ardent, self-consuming genius, a kindred spirit who fought for the same ideals as himself. He published novels, short stories, plays, newspaper articles, reportages, and essays, producing one of the most voluminous and most impressive oeuvres in Hungarian literature. In the initial phase (1908-1919) of his literary career he attracted notice primarily as a new portrayer of peasant life. The crowded world and stuffy atmosphere of Pure Gold, 1910, evokes the Hungarian village writhing (cont. on p. 8.) Rise up Abraham Lincoln! “0 Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells” WALT WHITMAN: ”0 CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN! Rise up Abraham Lincoln and come back to us, We need you! Come back Abraham Lincoln to the rail-splitters of America, to the mechanics, to the carpenters, to the masons, to the boatmen on the Mississippi! Come back to the working men and women of America! They are waiting, they are searching for you! Ther are thirsty for your words, for your guidance. Come back, Abraham Lincoln and tell them that the Lord loves them. That is why he created so many of them. Remind them again and again that this country with its institutions belongs to them. Not to Wall Street. To them. That Labor is superior to Capital and deserves much the higher consideration. Tell them what is the closest bond that binds working men of different nations. Let your message ring again: the strongest bond of human sympathy outside the family relation should be one uniting all working people of all nations and tongues and kindreds. Come back, Abraham Lincoln. Let your spirit, your memory give us new hope, new inspiration. Help us return this goverment, your goverment to the people to whom it rightfully belongs. ^ D "k TO OUR READERS HERITAGE has just acquired a limited stock of George Lang’s THE CUISINE OF HUNGARY. “Immensely edifying”, Craig Claiborne said of this cookbook, and Gael Green, in New York Magazine commented: “THE CUISINE OF HUNGARY is exactly what a visit to an unexplored kitchen ought to be: history, anthropology, sociology, gossip and a cooking primer." This fascinating cookbook is yours — FREE — if vou act NOW! Renew vour own subscription to HERITAGE for $ 3.00, and send us a new subscription at $ 3.00 (for a total of $ 6.00). HERITAGE, 130 East 16th Street, New York, New York 10003. Please send me a copv of THE CUISINE OF HUNGARY Name:------------------------------------------------Address:--------------------------Zip no:----------I enclose $ 6.00 — (check or money order) for my renewal subcripition to HERITAGE — and a new HERITAGE subscription to be sent Name:-----------------------------------------------Address:------------------------------Zip no:----
