Balázs Eszter: Art in action. Lajos Kassák's Avant-Garde Journals from A Tett to Dokumentum, 1915-1927 - The avant-garde and its journals 3. (Budapest, 2017)

Merse Pál Szeredi: Kassákism - MA in Vienna (1920-1925)

experimenting with the fine arts. MA's Hungarian interests during this period focused on Kassák’s numbered verse and “picture architecture".

“FIRST DASH TOWARDS THE NEW KASSÁK”-THE NUMBERED VERSES

Kassák summarised the events and lessons of the Soviet Republic in his epos entitled Máglyák énekelnek [Bonfires Sing], in which he evoked the revolutions and proletarian dictatorship in a tone that was both analytical and heroic, thus bringing an end to this phase of his earlier activism. This work, together with what in many respects can be viewed as its predecessor, the Hiráetőoszloppal [With Advertising Pillar] volume of poetry published in 1919 (and then pulped after the collapse of the Soviet Republic), opened the way for the construction of the “new Kassák". Between 1920 and 1929, Kassák gave his poems serial numbers rather than titles. The full series contains 100 poems, many of which were written during his Viennese émigré years. These numbered verses completely ignored the usual characteristic forms and content of poetry, striking a diametrically different tone from Kassák’s earlier expressionist free verse. The linguistic terrain of Kassák’s numbered poems contain Dadaist elements inherited mostly from Schwitters, as well as humour, irony, and self-irony. Free association, absurd metaphorical images and commentary-style colloquial text excerpts succeed one another in these poems without subject matter, and which deconstructed poetic devices and grammatical structure.

Despite MA’s international success, the Hungarian public did not accept the “Dadaist Kassák”. His critics, and even his close colleagues who respected his political activism, accused him of being autotelic. "Words are not there to drag their contents about like sacks”, wrote Kassák in one of his poems.28 His first significant - and still to this day his best-known - work was the autobiographically inspired Dadaist long poem A ló meghal és a madarak kiröpülnek [The Horse Dies the Birds Fly Away], in which he reworked the story of his 1909 vagrant period in Western Europe, and how he thus became an artist as a result.

“TO MOVE BEYOND DADA”-THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF “PICTURE ARCHITECTURE"

International developments in the avant-garde art of the 1920s inspired Kassák to start his own fine arts experimentation. He wanted to create an iden28 Lajos Kassák, Poem 13, MA, 6/7., 1921, 86. Cf. Lajos Kassák, Levél a művészetről II. [Letter on art II.], Bécsi Magyar Újság, 12 September 1920,3.

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