Előre - képes folyóirat, 1921. május-június (6. évfolyam, 21-24. szám)
1921-05-29 / 22. szám
1921 junius 18 AZ UJ KOR n Az Uj Kor (THE NEW AGE) Ail American Weekly for American Hungarians EUGENE S. BAGGER, EDITOR Vol. I. NEW YORK, JUNE 18, 1921 No. 7. AT LAST a statue—in fact, two statues—will be erected to Andrew Ady, greatest of Hungarian poets, champion of a Europeanized Magyar culture against the lethargic, semi-Asiatic official literary tradition, fighter of the rights of the downtrodden, socialist and internationalist, Tyrtaeus of the Magyar revolution of 1918-19. By way of forestalling the protestations of those who know that Ady today is on the index expurgatorius at Budapest, we hasten to add that neither of the two statues in question will be put up in the Magyar capital. The supreme guardians of Horthyculture, the terror detachments of Héjjas and Prónay, still tolerate the Petőfi Monument in Petőfi Square, for Petőfi, though himself a revolutionist who today without doubt would side with the Communists, has had the tact to die seventy-two years ago; but Ady’s soul, surviving the death of his body as the great denial of everything that exists and reigns in the Hungary of today, is marching on, and is therefore registered at Budapest police headquarters among the politically undesirable. If Ady, who died in the end of 19.18, were alive today he would be either exiled to Vienna or else interned or imprisoned, perhaps murdered by Horthy’s henchmen. Ady today might get a flogging, or a bayonet thrust, even a bullet, in Budapest, but not a statue. * * NO. The two statues of Andrew Ady will be erected, not at Budapest, but in Nagyvárad, also called Oradea Mare, and in the park of the ancestral Ady homestead, Csúcsa, in the county of Szilágy. Nagyvárad and Csúcsa are today in Roumania, and the two Ady statues are offered by Octavian Goga, Roumanian Minister of Education, himself a poet of rank,—incidentally, the translator of Ady’s masterpieces into Roumanian. * * WHICH reminds us: The biographer of Andrew Ady, his lifelong friend, Mr. Béla Révész, one of the most prominent writers of Young Hungary, today lives at Vienna —not as a matter of choice, but because he, pardonably, prefers exile to the dungeons of Horthy’s terror detachments. Mr. Révész’s only crime, needless to say, consists in being a man of European culture, of extraordinary attainments, and of Social Democratic views. * * SUPPOSE Mr. Goga, Roumanian Minister of Education, should—as he probably will-—invite Mr. Révész to attend the dedication of the Ady statues-—Mr. Révész will have to travel to Roumania by way of Jugoslavia, carefully avoiding Magyar territory. Just think of it: Béla Révész, one of the best spirits of contemporary Magyar literature, will have to go from his Austrian refuge via Serbia to Roumania to attend a festival in honor of the greatest Magyar poet! From Austria via Serbia to Roumania—for in Hungary they do not erect statues of Ady, and Ady’s biographer would be shot or cut to pieces on sight by a drunken lieutenant of Horthy’s Terror army—there in a nutshell you have the terrible tragedy that has befallen the Magyar people and Magyar culture. * * THUS Ady is honored, not by the state he owed allegiance to, but by a foreign government. But such trifles will not mislead the New York Magyar daily which is the chief American exponent of Horthyism. Listen to this: “What a painfully discordant note—the Roumania which has annexed Transylvania from Hungary, hurries now to annex Andrew Ady, native of Transylvania.” The illiterate who has penned these words in the sweat of what passes for his brain does not even know that Ady was born, not in Transylvania, but in Sylvariia—which is the border county of Szilágy. It is not surprising, then, that he does not know that Mr. Octavian Goga, at present Minister of Education in Roumania, was a friend and admirer of Ady when the latter was shouted down as a lunatic and a traitor to his country by official Magyar criticism. The same illiterate who is paid for making a daily mess of our Magyar language in the columns of the New York paper does not, of course, know that Mr. Goga has translated Ady’s masterpieces into Roumanian and thus conducted propaganda for Magyar culture in Roumania at a time when Ady was scorned, silenced, and finally hounded out of the land by the literary standard bearers of official Hungary. According to the New York Magyar daily—noted expert in the ancient art of bamboozling—the only purpose of the Roumanian government in honoring ;Ady is to bamboozle the Western nations into a favorable attitude to itself. The official mouthpiece of Horthyism might add that at present the device with which Hungary is trying to bamboozle the Western nations into a favorable attitude to itself consists in the throng of mutilated corpses which are carried down by the Danube across the Jugoslav frontier—victims of Horthy’s uniformed assassins. The paper also maintains that the Roumanian government is merely playing for the favor of Transylvanian Magyars. Such a contemptible trick is wasted on the sages of the New York Magyar daily, who do not even fall for the despicable stunt, practised by the Roumanian government, of paying to Magyar teachers higher salaries than are paid to such teachers in Hungary itself. * * ANDREW ADY is dead. He cannot appear in person at the office of Horthy’s American house organ to chastise the fellow who dares to despoil his name. But the sacrilege ought to be atoned for; and in our view the most fitting punishment would be to ship the Jewish White Guard who does the diity work of Horthy, murderer of Jews, in America, back to Hungary and yield him to the tender mercies of Lieutenant-Colonel Prónay and Lieutenant Héjjas. We cannot think of a more efficient cure for persons of his kind.
