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

writer's aesthetic principles and the propaganda view of literature. He objected against the irrelevant statements of Sinclair "which are explained often forcefully and with hostile feeling, and with the reporter's zealous desire to expose at any cost". Nagy, "out of the many hundreds of blunders", pointed to a few logical and moral lapses in an ironic wording.

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5 György Bözödi, in Erdélyi Helikon wrote that Sinclair's book cannot be regarded as a literary history and that his aesthetic evaluation is not acceptable.

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6 It is worth quoting some eminent Hungarian literary historians' opinions of Sinclair's literary history, who — though not devoting an analytical study to his book — referred to it in their writings, and undertook concise evaluations of the work. According to Antal Szerb Sinclair had written the popular literary historical point of view of historical materialism in "a grandiose, foolish book", following the whole course of development of literature, and pointing to the financial factors as the only determiner of its route.

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7 In the opinion of László Szekszárdi this literary history was an unsuccessful experiment in the creation of a socialist art history: "one of the worst experiments of this kind. He falls into the same mistakes as his bourgeois predecessors have fallen

; he states without proof, he evaluates without outlining socio-economic background".

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8 In the article written by Géza Hegedűs on the occassion of the news of Sinclair's death, he remarked that Mammonart was "very nearly the parody of the vulgarisation of historical materialism".

59 The opinion of Tamás Ungvári was similar: "his literary history is the most vulgar written in centuries. He reduced all art to direct economic interests; rarely was an artist so anti-artistic".

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1 István Vass described the book as "famous and disreputable", trampling down world literature with a thoroughly Americanized marxism.

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1 Charlotte Kretzoi considered that Sinclair had adopted the point of view of historical materialism in his literary history, but the classification of writers was contradictory to the real mentality of historical materialism. Sinclair viewed literature in a very one-sided way, the measure of value depended almost solely on the class-position, ideology and the choice of theme of the given writer.

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2 16. Sinclair adopted the same methods as in Mammonart in his literary history Money Writes! (1927) when writing about American literature at the turn of and in the twentieth century. Due to administrative measures, the book was forbidden to be published in Hungary and consequently did not become known. On the 29th July 1933, an order from the Hungarian Minister of Commerce was published in the Official Regulations for the Royal Post, decreed that the German translation of the book Das Geld schreibt, published by Malik Verlag, was pronounced to be prohibited printed matter, and the right of its transportation was withdrawn.

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3 Pursuant to the decree of Nyomozati Értesítő, which was an archival document of the Ministry of the Interior, another publication for the Royal Hungarian Police put the German publication of the book on the list of confiscatory and prohibited printed matter.

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4 17. Both American and Hungarian critics placed Oil! (1927) among Sinclair's most important novels. It was a bestseller not only in the United States, but all over the world; it was translated into twenty-nine languages. 425