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

pacity as censor, Kassák banned the appearance of a poster by the Social Democratic artist Mihály Bíró, which rightly enraged the author of the iconic hammer-wielding figure on the banner of the newspaper Népszava [People’s Voice],31 Kassák then worked in the Writers’ Directorate,32 where his main achievement was to compile the “cadastral list’’. This was produced as part of a plan to abolish the commodity status of artworks by providing a permanent state stipend to certain writers and artists - the ones included on the list. A dispute broke out, however, concerning the amount of money to be paid and - an even more contentious point - the names to be included on the list. Major figures were absent from Kassák’s first version, among them writers connected with the Social Democratic Party, and even the poet Mihály Babits, from the modernist journal Nyugat. An article by the Social Democrat journalist Pál Kéri entitled Maca! (a reference to MA contributor János Mácza),33 fervently attacking the avant-garde orientation of MA, was thus not without provocation. The mood and content of the March pamphlet, the censoring of Biro’s poster and the deficiencies of the cadastral list caused great irritation among Social Democratic intellectual circles.34 [Fig. 22]

Although that article by Kéri and a subsequent piece taking up the same theme by the journalist Ferenc Göndör35 36 were mainly directed at MA, they included secondary - if highly personal - criticism of Béla Balázs and the philosopher György Lukács, the number one cultural affairs leader in the system.

31 Lajos Kassák, Egy ember élete, voi. II., op. cit. 516-517. For more details see, Oliver Botár, Lajos Kassák, Hungarian “Activism,” and Political Power, Canadian-American Slavic Studies, 36/4., 2002, 391-404.

32 The bodies responsible for the administration of various areas of culture in the Hungarian Soviet Republic were the “Directorates”, whose members were mostly, if not exclusively, left- wing artists and intellectuals. Kassák had a place in the Literary Directorate alongside Mihály Babits, Béla Balázs and others.

33 "Máca! Does anyone know this name? [...] They are here. They are starting to appear: Máca, Kassák, Balázs, Lukács - hired judges of literature and theatre. [...] Today, they stand at the forefront of an authority that should dictate revolutionary literature to the workers. They, who perhaps imagine proletarian dictatorship as their opportunity to dictate the simultanist movement to the workers, on pain of indictment before the revolutionary court. [...] We call on Zsigmond Kunfi not to give his name to cover endorse this lunatic cell, this comically sad stain on soviet rule, the literature and theatre department of the people's commission for public education." Pál Kéri, Máca!, Az Ember, 15 April 1919, 5-6.

34 On this see Farkas József, írók, eszmék, forradalmak [Writers, ideals, revolutions], Szépirodalmi, Budapest, 1979, 249-251.

35 Ferenc Göndör, Kik akarják diktálni a proletárirodalmat? [Who wants to dictate proletarian literature?], Népszava, 16 April 1919, 7.

36 Although Zsigmond Kunfi was the People’s Commissioner for Public Education of the Hungarian Soviet Republic, real power was held by his deputy in political affairs, György Lukács. Megélt gondolkodás, op. cit., 156.

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