Csaplár Ferenc szerk.: Lajos Kassák / The Advertisement and Modern Typography (1999)

"Beautiful" and "Ugly" Books

"BEAUTIFUL" AND "UGLY" BOOKS The cult of "beautiful books" is said to be a characteristic obsession, if not a main one, of young artists. Strict party people, who unconditionally deem new artistic aspirations as "decadent outgrowths" of a decaying society, define it as another antisocial characteristic of new art. They, like bad tradesmen with their vision mechanically focused on one point, are of the opinion that the how of publishing a book is only a side issue, what really matters is its content and the size of the public it reaches by being cheap. For, in the eyes of those that want to spread "mass-culture" at all costs, a book remains a book even though it is printed on rag paper and stitched together with horrid wires; in other words, the only function a book has is to instruct the people. So, when these party men talk of books as objects, they only stress their cheapness as goods, and forget that their cheapness does not necessarily imply their anti-aesthetic and antihygienic quality. They also forget that we live in a capitalist society, and therefore cheap and "ugly" books, typically more shabby than garter-belts and tram-tickets, are slapdashed not only because they can be bought by larger and larger masses, but because the publisher can thus make larger and larger profits as a result of investing the least amount of capital and time. A "beautiful" book therefore cannot be "antisocial" for its beauty, and an "ugly" book is not necessarily a phenomenon of social responsibility in any age, nor is it a reliable measure of the cultural voracity of the masses. On the contrary, the ugly book is a necessary outcome of ethically and aesthetically decaying ages, and it is therefore an antisocial phenomenon, just as mass-housing is antisocial. True enough, even in an "ugly" book, we can read the most serious literature without losing its intellectual content, and it is also true that one lacking normal housing can rest after his daily labours in a warren; but we also know that a night's rest means not only a relaxation of our muscles, but also a gathering of new strength, and we also know that we read not only to broaden our intellectual horizons, but also to gain experiences, to enrich ourselves emotionally, to become more sensitive and determined. And a warren, like an "ugly" book, does not only have an invigorating and instructing effect, but also a demoralising one. A book appears as an external form, a mediating vessel of certain meaning, of a "theme" determined by certain experiences and will. If we acknowledge that certain meanings can only appear without fault in certain genres (poems, plays, short-stories, etc.), we also have to acknowledge that certain genres can only achieve their full effect in certain forms, in vessels, in book forms, fashioned in line with their character. Simply put, a book should not be fancily "beautiful" or cheaply "ugly", it should be characteristic in its outward appearance, as all things that attempt to affect us are. For a thing can only affect us, people instinctively averse to newspapers (and this is even more true of the large masses), if it constitutes an indivisible unity of its internal and external aspects. And a book, as a mediating form of a literary work, can only achieve its full effect, if its outward appearance technically and aesthetically covers and supports the emphasis on the inner content. Would it have been a mere coincidence that all ages up to now, in fact, all literary movements, had created their own particular type of book in order to emphasise themselves? We very well know that, as a rule, different types of books were developed for scholarly works and different ones for belletristic works in the course of time; we very well know how different the book and typographical forms of classicism, the Baroque and the Biedermeier were. As a group of men with a clarified world-view leave the marks of their creative will on economic and political life, so they also re-create the inherited artistic values of their age, and thus also shape the book forms that are in line with their age, ideas and feelings. All products of an age are characteristic of that age. Our age is a transitory one; man has lost his civic perceptivity, but has not yet found his social balance. We are living the moment in politics, science, technology, and the arts. We have overthrown the truths of science, which were thought to have been absolute, but have not yet laid down new laws. We have nothing "positive", for the opposite of what we conceive of today will be taken for granted and will be obvious tomorrow. We have no ready programme for anything, nor have we any coherent tactic for anything, and this is why we have nothing but daring attempts. But we should at least take care not to be one-sided in these, our, attempts. The world is constructed of millions of parts, and if one wishes to improve on this jarring machinery, he has to complete his task to the full: the politician in politics, the technician in technology, the artist in art. The mediating form of a writer artist is a book, and, in order to fully present himself, he has to create the new book as his instrument. There has hardly been any attempt at this on today's Hungarian market. The book, as an organiser of our cultural and aesthetic life (we do have such a life, even though we might profess ever so loudly that we are collective beings), has completely lost its character in our likeness. Today, even those professionals who had once conceived of a book as a characteristic social product speak of it as something "beautiful" or "ugly" in itself. Our only publisher and printer, Kner of Gyoma, who had been brought up on German and English book making technology, has lost his conscious and purposeful way that he had set out on during the war. His library editions of the works of Béla Balázs, which typographically modulated the mood of these writings, were the sensation on the new Hungarian market. These, together with the "book-designs" by Falus for Nyugat editions, were the tokens of future possibilities. But, alas, even Kner did not fulfil his promise on the fate of Hungarian book producers. Then came the counter-revolution, the "new Hungarian Renaissance", and instead of creating a book-type that represents our will to live, our age, Kner began to stylise books. His recent work, the Hungarian Classics series, does not even come close to his first books in force and pioneering will. The new style has become mere stylisation. Some might take these books as beautiful l'art pour l'art things, but they will never be characteristic and type creating products of our progressive age. It is in this sense that the "beautiful" book and this search for the beautiful has brought about, on the one hand, vest-pocket editions of the Bible, and, on the 7