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)

Gábor Dobó: Generation Change, Synthesis and a Programme for a New Society - Dokumentum in Budapest (1926-1927)

mostly in the aesthetic sense that Nyugat, which always wanted to be the forum for the most modern initiatives, perceived the challenge from the avant-garde. As we have seen, its response was an attempt at integration. Nyugat gave space to avant-garde authors (publishing nearly all contributors to Dokumentum in the same period) and addressed the same subjects as appeared in Dokumentum (from Russian film to movement art and atonal music). Even some of the poetic techniques of the avant-garde were taken up by its main poets (including Mihály Babits, Dezső Kosztolányi and Lőrinc Szabó). Nonetheless, it attempted to build these endeavours into its programme of tradition-preserving modernity. [Fig. 20]

THE FINANCIAL BASE OF MODERNIST AND AVANT-GARDE JOURNALS

The direct reason for Dokumentum’s closure was, according to recollections of those involved, the low circulation, indicating the isolation of avant-garde art. The avant-garde and modernist journals were always dependent on their public and the demands of their sponsors. They were either financed by the government (such as Napkelet) or survived from the support of a committed patron of the arts (this was true for Nyugat, although it also relied on subscribers and its affiliated businesses, such as its publishing house), or the support of a publisher (such as Literatura [Literature], a literary and cultural review edited by Géza Supka); there were also journals maintained by political parties (such as the Communist cultural review 100%), and even some that survived from subscriptions and - a few - from advertising, or a combination of the two. Dokumentum wanted to be independent, and was confident in its marketability, thus assuming real demand from readers, intellectual consumers. Distribution on newspaper stands, however, was probably not permitted, and the few potential subscribers39 were split among competing journals. Judging from Kassák’s correspondence concerning his previous journals, we can infer that Dokumentum was maintained by the editorial staff themselves, but tensions arising from points of principle and editorial policy soon caused them to discontinue their financial support.

39 An anecdotal account of this, but largely consistent with the available sources, Zoltán Zelk, Egyember-látta matiné [One man’s matinee], Élet és Irodalom, 31 January 1970, 4.

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