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)

Márton Pacsika: Purposeful Player of the New Instrument - Lajos Kassák and the Budapest MA

‘revolutionarily new-form’ poetry is in itself a revolutionary act. In the conditions of the time, we regarded poetry as a tool that had to be subordinated to revolutionary aims".18

Révai was undoubtedly one of the most distinctive representatives of the young left-wing circle. His articles in MA emphasized the political potential of art over its autonomy. He stated that “We need literature that is tendentious rather than merely socially oriented. It must be tendentious, and not spouting into nothingness”.19 These thoughts made clear-or in some respects presaged -the deepening long-term divide between Kassák’s MA and the official communist movement regarding the role and autonomy of art. After these young people (Mátyás György, Aladár Komját, József Lengyel and József Révai) broke from MA, they published an anthology 1918, Szabadulás [1918, Liberation].20 Several of them went to work for the communist journals Internacionálé [International] and Vörös Újság [Red Journal], Most of them chose direct political action over the autonomous art revolution, and moved away from Kassák to seek new mentors - first Ervin Szabó and later György Lukács. [Fig. 8]

After these departures, Kassák was obliged to write the journal almost on his own for a while. He was soon joined, however, by returnees from the front - Mózes Kahána and F. László Boross - and the young Árpád Szélpál, then a banking official. The new authors had similar left-wing ideological positions to those who had departed, but in the delicate relationship between avant-garde art and the socialist movement, the MA circle was, for the moment, united.

INTERNATIONAL MODELS AND RELATIONS

MA maintained the international orientation of A Tett, and a picture by the Czech avant-garde artist Vincenc Benes was chosen for the cover of the first issue. The international subject matter in the journal - rather less than in A Tett21 - was not confined to representing any single ‘ism’ or avant-garde movement, and even extended beyond modern art. Pictures by German Expressionists like Franz Marc and Max Pechstein were to be found on its pages,

18 József Lengyel, Visegrádi utca [Visegrád street], Kossuth, Budapest, 1957,26.

19 József Révai, Ibsen és a monumentális irodalom [Ibsen and monumental literature], MA, 2/8., 1917,126-129.

20 MA published a review of the book by the four former contributors, full of trenchant criticism and personal attacks. Sándor Barta, 1918: Szabadulás [Review of 1918: Liberation], MA, 3/11., 1918,135.

21 Eszter Balázs, Háborúellenesség és avantgárd, Kassák Lajos lapjai [Anti-war sentiment and the avant-garde, Lajos Kassák’s journals], Irodalmi Magazin, 2/2., 2014, 99-102.

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