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)
Eszter Balázs: Avant-Garde and Radical Anti-War Dissent in Hungary-A Tett (1915-1916)
conformism. The Expressionist painter Béla Uitz rejected the revision of Hungarian painting to meet war-party demands.21 Kassák reproached the Fiatalok [the Young Ones] artists’ group for being apolitical and for displaying a conformism that was incongruent with their chosen name.22 At the Spring Exhibition of 1916, Uitz attacked the same group for dilettantism and shallowness.23 The journal also put much effort into exposing war patriotism that exploited the cult of Shakespeare. As in Germany, “official” writers and intellectuals used the widespread appreciation of Shakespeare, which had a long history in Hungary, to argue against accusations of barbarism.24 All of the warring countries set themselves up as the defenders of European values, but particularly after the German invasion of Belgium, the Central Powers were regularly described in the press of Entente and neutral countries as being “barbaric", prompting attempts to rid themselves of this label. Scholarly bodies in Hungary took an enthusiastic part in devising and deploying a strategy by which Shakespeare was commandeered for purposes of the war. The primary message was that, because England had sunk into barbarism, the countries worthy of representing the great figure of world literature were the Central Powers. In A Tett, the critic Imre Wirkmann scorned the anniversary celebrations planned by the academic Kisfaludy Society’s Shakespeare Committee as an "extravaganza” and “fireworks”. Instead of “nauseating glorification", he urged a scholarly approach.25 26 A Tett articles were silent on war-party authors, whose propagandist output was probably regarded as beneath comment. The aestheticist writers whom Kassák and his fellow writers labelled “the Impressionists", such as Tamás Ernőd, Ákos Dutka and Ernő Szép,!6 were denounced as “conformist” for their war-related work, and Béla Balázs, who had formerly been close to Nyugat, 21 Béla Uitz, A Fiatalok két tárlaton [The “Young ones” at two exhibitions], A Tett, 1/4., 1915, 68. 22 Kassák Lajos, Politika? Művészet? [Politics? Art?], A Tett, 2/12., 1916,185-187. 23 Béla Uitz, Czigány és Csaba a tavaszi tárlaton [Czigány and Csaba at the spring exhibition], Ibid, 200. 24 On the wartime cult of Shakespeare, see Eszter Balázs, “War Stars at Us like an Ominous Sphynx”, Hungarian Intellectuals, Literature and the Image of the Other (1914-1915), in Lawrence Rosenthal-Vesna Rodie (eds.), The New Nationalism and the First World War, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2015, 99-102. 25 Imre Wirkmann, A Kisfaludysták Shakespeare-cécójához [To the Kisfaludyists’ Shake- speare-extravaganza], A Tett, 2/14., 1916, 225-227. 26 Imre Wirkmann, Ernőd Tamás: Dicséret, dicsőség és Dutka Ákos: Az yperni Krisztus előtt [Review of Tamás Ernőd: Praise, glory and Ákos Dutka: Before the Christ of Ypres], A Tett, 2/11., 1916,184. Imre Wirkmann, Szép Ernő: Élet, halál [Review of Ernő Szép: Life, death], A Tett, 2/13., 1916, 224. 40
