Agria 38. (Az Egri Múzeum Évkönyve - Annales Musei Agriensis, 2002)
Király Júlia: A kultuszteremtő Gárdonyi
Die seit einigen Jahren neu aufgenommenen wissenschaftlichen Forschungen haben sich zum Ziel gesetzt, das Lebenswerk von Géza Gárdonyi zu verarbeiten, seinen Romanen, so auch den „Sternen von Eger", die ihnen gebührende Stelle in der Geschichte der ungarischen Literatur zuzuweisen. In einer Ausstellung wurden die bisher unbekannten Manuskripte des Schriftstellers vorgestellt, und auch ein Studienband erschien, der die neuen Forschungsrichtungen aufzeigt. Júlia Király Gárdonyi the Creator of the Cult In the year Géza Gárdonyi moved to Eger he decided he would write a novel about Gergely Bornemissza, one of the heroes of the 1552 siege. The birth of the book was proceeded by a long period of historical research. The Stars of Eger successfully turned the 16 th century heroes of the siege into household names. In the novel, history was not merely the canvas onto which the characters were painted, it was an organic part of the whole. By doing this Gárdonyi successfully manages to take his readers right into the heat of the action. The book's publication was greeted with an air of great expectation. The daily newspaper, the Pesti Hirlap, published the novel in a series of instalments starting in 1899, and when it transpired that it had been a great success it wasn't long before Gárdonyi found a publisher. By the time Gárdonyi died the book had sold 14,000 copies, by the Second World War this figure had reached 40,000. The novel put the spotlight fairly and squarely on Eger, and on the castle in particular. The success of the book meant that thousands of visitors descended on the castle every year to inspect the scenes where the events of Gárdony' s novel had taken place, and to walk along the very same walls István Dobó, Gergely Bornemissza, Mekcsey and Fügedy had done before them. Gárdonyi's grave became a pilgrimage place, and every year on the anniversary of his death ceremonies were held in his memory. From the 1930s however The Stars of Eger fell from grace. Mentioned as being simply one of Gárdonyi's novels, greater attention was given to his other works which were considered to be of greater literary merit. The situation, however, changed during the 1950s. A new picture emerged of Gárdonyi in which The Stars of Eger was given central prominence. It became a children's novel extolling the virtues of heroic resistance and common endeavour for the cause. The writer's other works were never mentioned, and Gárdonyi was known simply as the man who wrote The Stars of Eger. Unfortunately, the result was that not only were Gárdonyi's other works ignored, but that the book's real strengths, 211
