Kalla Zsuzsa: Beszélő tárgyak. A Petőfi család relikviái (Budapest, 2006)
Zsuzsa Kalla: The history of the Petőfi relics
works became blurred. The ‘priests’ of the cult were aware of this, as a speech given by Ferencz Herczeg at the opening of the Petőfi House reveals: ‘If I asked an intelligent Hungarian whether he was familiar with Petőfi, he would probably look at me with an offended or pitying expression. How could anyone ask such a question? Everyone knows Petőfi. Along with the Bible, Petőfi’s works are our favourite reading. ‘Let us pause for a moment at the Bible. We are forced to admit that there is a problem with our knowledge of the Bible. During our school years, our immature minds became familiar with the holy books through sketchy extracts and details taken out of context [...] There is virtually no other book that is talked about so often yet read so little as the Bible, and I am afraid that the same can be said about the works of Petőfi. In our youth and callowness, we all read dozens of his poems. Some we even learned by heart. In addition, we imbibed ready-made Petőfi atmospheres and impressions that filled the Hungarian air. Here, people can know Petőfi without ever having read a single line written by him.’ (Kéry 1911, A 11-12) As far as the growth of the cult was concerned, the most important aspects of Petőfi’s life were his suffering and violent death. He was often portrayed as a poverty-stricken poet charging headlong into the fray and dying on the battlefield, and parallels that were drawn with the Passion served greatly to increase the chances of a cult forming. It is also likely that within the motif of the early, tragic death lies the Christ symbol of redemption Middle room of the Petőfi House with Länderer press and the archetypal young god or hero dying for his people. In actual fact, it was probably the historical situation and not Petőfi as an individual that played the greatest part in the Petőfi cult becoming a movement. As was previously mentioned, the spreading of a national idea led to certain individuals becoming the focus of secular cults. At the beginning, Petőfi symbolised the national community in its opposition to autocracy; decades later he symbolised social unity. This hollow national unity, the lack of a real national consensus and the pretentious self-mythologisation of the revolution generation, prompted opponents of the cult to show Petőfi in a different light. This is what a young journalist from the newspaper Hétfői Posta wrote in an article ‘celebrating’ the 1909 opening of the Petőfi House: ‘Sixty good schools would be worth much more than sixty statues of Kossuth, and a law ensuring freedom of the press from all kinds of control would be a worthier deed than panoramas of Petőfi. We are fed up with statues, pictures and sacrificial shrines. [...] They have taken Petőfi over, they want to justify their outmoded endeavours through him and, since Petőfi is dead, they take advantage of the fact that he cannot reproach them. So they seize him and transform him into their own image, then they can use him like a sign-board against everything and everyone who dares to think about the Hungarian nation in the spirit of Petőfi [...].’ (Bányai 1909, 13) This duality is the reason the cult is still alive today: Petőfi’s lifework suits both the official and the counter cult. However, both sides sometimes lay too much emphasis on certain details of his life, turning them into rigid formulae. THE HISTORY OF THE PETŐFI LEGACY What became of the furniture from the flats in Pest, the actual Petőfi legacy, remains a mystery, though a warrant of distress from 1849 and an auction report from 1850 have survived. Some items may have been removed to the new home of his widow, Júlia Szendrey, but none of the pieces belonging to his descendants is identifiable as being the furniture and household items listed in the catalogue, with the possible exception of a bookcase and a red summer dress. The engravings and paintings, on the other hand, have survived; Júlia Szendrey kept them until her death, after which 191
