Az Egri Ho Si Minh Tanárképző Főiskola Tud. Közleményei. 1984. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 17)

I. TANULMÁNYOK A TÁRSADALOMTUDOMÁNYOK KÖRÉBŐL - Lehel Vadon: The Reception of Upton Sinclair's Works in Hungary

Kassai Munkás played an important role in bringing Jimmie Higgins to the attention of the public. In 1920 they published sections of the novel.

31 In the same year a review was published of the German translation of the novel. The writer of the review recommended the book as "a large and lasting important cultural historical work", the artistic value of which is also of scientific significance because of its faithful reproduction of real life. Kassai Munkás Booksellers advertised the work on further occasions, as "a strong, dramatic, historical novel of the age, which carries socialism in its very womb".

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2 The advertisement was adopted by the sister-journal of Kassai Munkás, Nőmunkás,

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3 In 1921, Kassai Munkás published another review of Jimmie Higgins which article stated the book to be the most up-to-date agitato rial novel of the "socialist propagandist writer". The novel's hero, who, through imprisonment, unemployment, loss of family and the trenches of the war, arrives in Siberia where he dies as a martyr to communism, is the symbol of the masses, "the compressed symbol of the many thousands of workers who drifted into the life of the socialist movement only as passive subjects, without any ideological clearsightedness of their own." The writer of the review drew comparison between Jimmie Higgins and Samuel the Seeker. The theme and the environment are the same, only the author has changed. Samuel the Seeker is a novel of pre-war times, when, mainly in America, socialist agitation was performed with weaker ideological tools, and the socialist movement had a less well-defined outlook. "Jimmie Higgins is the child of the latest age, visualized by Upton Sinclair through perfidy of war, the delirium of nationalism and the first victories of the Russian Revolution."

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4 In the opinion of Zoltán Fábry, in Jimmie Higgins Upton Sinclair created "one of the most durable novels of the Great War, and the most effective piece of bolsevik propaganda in America. "

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5 György Szántó applauded the writer for his ability in portraying characters and creating types. From all of Sinclair's heroes Jimmie Higgins stands closest to the reader; the grey, unpretentious enginefitter, the private in the battle for justice, "who is the most human human being, in spite of the fact that he is a very characterless type ; he is the greatest hero, in spite of all his unpretentious greyness, when he has to fight and die for all that he holds true".

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6 László Szekszárdi, in his essay on Sinclair, quoted the critical appreciation of Romain Rolland, which echoed his own opinion: "If, as I hope, a new, more just and brotherly world comes into being, your Jimmie Higgins, this sincere hero and martyr, will live longer in the memory of humankind than the legendary hero of a violated nation in times of oppression."

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7 Géza Hegedűs considered Jimmie Higgins to be one of the best books of the author, because of its authentic picture of society and portrayal of character, in which work Sinclair came closest to the philosophy of maxism and a truthful, realistic approach to the social novel.

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8 11. 100%: The Story of a Patriot (1920) was published in Hungarian for the first time in Kassa in 1924, serialized by the political daily newspaper Munkás.

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9 It has appeared in book form four times in Hungary. It was edited in the translation by Kornél V. Nagy by Népszava Publishing House in 1927, and by Nova Publishing House in 1944, and in the translation of György Déri by Európa Publishing House in 1964 and 1978. 422