Petőfi gyüjtemény - A sorozat / 17-es doboz

DETROIT SATURDAY NIGHT

Personal and Confidential

George Kémény

By Charles D. Cameron

A4 ANY a Detroiter of European birth left his native land as a poor steerage passenger, and has lived to return in wealth and ease for a visit to his old home. Many an exile, during the years that followed the World War, went back to the old land to rule with power where he once suffered from oppression. But of all the Americans of European birth who have revisited their native country, no other has had an experience like that of George Kemeny, of Detroit, for 30 years an Hungarian-American journalist and poet, who this year has received in Hungary the highest national recognition in literature, with honors such as France shows to members of the French Academy.

The story of George Kemeny, of Detroit, now assured of a permanent place in the literature of Europe, is in itself a romance of poetry and art. The sudden blaze of recognition given him abroad is a new proof of how little America knows of the gifts and the genius which may exist among residents of European birth. President Masaryk, of . Czecho-Slovakia was known chiefly to the Bohemians in this country. Leon Trotzky was a forceful Russian journalist in New York, ignored outside the Russian colony. In earlier years Count Zeppelin, after a stay in the United States, went back to Europe for his work of air conquest. A few years ago the Nobel prize went to a man of European birth who had worked in America as a street car conductor.

Yet every one of these men, however little known he was to the great American public, gained here some distinction and recognition among people of his own blood and his own school of thought. George Kemeny, during his 30 years of residence in America, where all his 10 children have been born, has been recognized by other Americans as a representative citizen of Hungarian blood, and by all Hungarian-Americans as a brilliant writer and orator, as poet, novelist, and dramatist. He chose to give most of his time and work to Hungarian-American journalism, and finds his literary expression in the Magyar language. One characteristic which has won him many eulogies from critics in Hungary, is the fact that he writes the Magyar language in its native and classic purity, without any admixture of English words and phrases, or constructions used by many Hungarians in America based on the English syntax. This absolute purity of idiom is seldom found among Hungarian-Americans or members of any other racial element.

'THOUGH Mr. Kemeny’s writings 1 have been in the Hungarian language, his entire literary career developed in America. The writings which won him the greatest literary honors in Hungary have their settings in the life of Hungarians in the United State--. While he has been the guest of the city of Budapest because of the quality of his Hungarian poetry, that poetry was written in America, was published in America, was first recognized in America. It creates, one might say, an American literature in the Magyar language.

Mr. Kemeny’s family were pioneers of the Hungarian migration of the last two decades of the nineteenth century. George Kemeny and _ his brothers and sisters were born in a little village in the old Hungarian kingdom, a portion which is now included in the republic of Czechoslovakia. From this village the father and mother and others of the family went out to America, while George was still continuing his college studies, with some thought of entering the priesthood. As he advanced in his literary studies, he felt a strong vocation to a life of authorship. He finally crossed the ocean and joined his family in Cleveland. In Cleveland his father still lives, at a great age, and several other members of the family reside in that city.

After his arrival in this country, Mr. Kemeny’s marriage took place. Mrs. Kemeny, who is now in Europe with her husband, was a native of Hungary, who came to America at the same time. They entered immediately on their life as Americans, though Mr. Kemeny’s gifts and his mastery of the resources of the Magyar language, made the field of Hungarian journalism his natural life

work. In that field he won early distinction. One of his unique enterprises was the founding of an Hungarian humorous paper, Dongo, which has appeared bi-weekly for 25 years. He was also the founder of the Magyar Hírlap, the Detroit Hungarian daily.

While Mr. Kemeny was thus holding his place in Hungarian-language journalism in America, his children grew like other native Americans. Since Mr. Kemeny removed from Cleveland to Detroit, four of his daughters have graduated from the Detroit Teachers College and are now teaching in the city schools. They are the Misses Irene, Amy, Georgina and Marian Kemeny. Mr. Kemeny himself has had a share in the civic life, has served on civic committees, and has made addresses before some of the progressive study clubs. But it cannot be said that this city recognized the real greatness of his work, or knew that we had among us a man who would be compared by admirers in Budapest to Alexander Petőfi, the “Hungarian Burns,” or to John Arany, the most beloved of Hungarian epic poets.

Yet as far back as 1908 Mr. Kemeny had appeared as the author of

a book of One Hundred Poems (Ssas Bers). In 1910 appeared another book. Three years later, in 1913, the theme of another poem came to him, and out of this theme, as pondered upon and dreamed of it for 10 years, came his masterpiece, the epic Vas András or Andrew Vas. It is this poem which won him all the honor and fame he now enjoys in Hungary, has attracted new attention to all his earlier poems, and has made him a national guest on his visit to his native country.

The story of Vas András shows Americans that an epic poem may be developed in the little-known regions of Hungarian immigrant life, as well as among the gods of Greece. The poem which has so stirred Hungary is one which deals with the plain folk of the Magyar - -ce, plain colk, though stirred with ÍjfiTendon , e liotfefft and therefore exposed in life to great dramatic crises and transformations.

The poem begins in the midst of the puzta or prairies of Hungary, among the herdsmen, shepherds and farmers and the gentry of the countryside. Rivalry arises between one of the young gentry and the young Andrew Vas—there is a struggle, and the young man and his sweetheart become exiles in America, Then come scenes in the mines and the “Hungarian quarters,” and a transformation in fortunes by which the young man of gentry becomes a worker under the foremanship of the former peasant rival. The two rivals become friends, and in one powerful scene the young aristocrat rescues the family of his friend from death by fire, and loses his own life.

THIS poem of “a bird of passage,”

as Andrew Vas is called, has proved an illumination to European Hungarians of the life of their kinsmen in America, and has revealed to Americans of Hungarian descent a new knowledge of the life of their ancestral country. Thus, while Hungarians in America read the poem for what it recalls of Europe and also for familiar American scenes, the people of Hungary read it for its familar rural settings and for the pictures of the unknown America. Many critics in Hungary have declared that the work will thus make

a new bond of understanding between the Hungarians of Hungary and their kindred, the American citizens of Magyar race. It is now better understood by Hungarian patriots that a man may settle in America, and embrace citizenship in this country, and yet not lose sympathy and fraternity for those of his people who remain in their European homeland.

WHEN Vas Andros appeared, in 1923, literary recognition was immediate. The highest terms of eulogy were used by Americans of Magyar blood. This enthusiasm had impressive endorsement in Hungary itself. In Budapest a famous society, organized by the late novelist, Maurice Jókai, and named after Alexander Petőfi, poet and revolutionary patriot, holds a place in Hungarian letters like that of the Academie Francaise in the literature of France. Very soon after the copies of Vas András reached Hungary, Mr. Kemeny was notified that he had been elected a member of the Alexander Petőfi Society. He was invited to come to Budapest to take his chair.

Mr. Kemeny’s visit to Hungary was delayed for a few years. But in the meantime the fame of his poem grew, and his reception has shown that the admiration won by his works was not a mere passing enthusiasm.

Mr. and Mrs. Kemeny left for Europe Sept. 3. On Sept. 26, before a crowded auditorium in the Academy of Sciences at Budapest, he was formally installed. One striking fact noted at this gathering was that Hungarians who had lived in America gathered from all parts of the kingdom, and greeted Mr. Kemeny in “American style,’’ cheering and clapping hands and standing up on their chairs to wave their handkerchiefs.

The president of the Alexander Petőfi society, Julius Pekar, in installing Mr. Kemeny, praised the richness of the Magyar language in his writings, and declared: “The poem Vas András, is not merely a writing. It is a deed.” He praised the wholesomeness of the story, the universal humanity of the theme.

In the course of the following days Mr. Kemeny received other honors, membership in other societies, official and unofficial recognition. At the banquet on his installation the first to congratulate him was Stephen Horthy, a brother of the premier of Hungary. At that gathering were eminent officers of the army, representatives of the church, of universities, and of other organizations. At the end, Mr. Kemeny was almost mobbed by guests seeking his autograph. All his days that followed were full of recognitions, newspaper interviews, addresses, and conferences.

QNE of the interesting gatherings

at which Mr. Kemeny was present was one addressed by Sir, Rabin- aranath Tagore, the Beng h poet, with Mr. Kemeny translating.

The literary triumph of Mr. Kemeny is watched with great delight by the Hungarian-Americans, because they have so long recognized his unusual gifts. Immediately after he was elected to the Petőfi Society he was a guest at a banquet in Detroit, attended by leading Hungarian- Americans from all parts of the country. Before he left for Europe he was a banquest guest in Cleveland, Buffalo, and Alpha, N. J. Now the fame of Mr. Kemeny, which is “nation wide” among Hungarians in this country, is likewise nation-wide in Hungary itself. The close sympathy felt for him by his fellow- countrymen of Hungarian descent is shown by the fact that at his installation a wreath of green laurel was presented, as a gift from Hungarians in America, and congratulatory cablegrams were received from Cleveland, Detroit, Buffalo, and many other points.

Vas Andros now exists only in Hungarian. A translation into English has been projected, though the usual English versification does not easily reproduce the rippling liquid flow of the Magyar stanzas. However, the translation of the poem has been almost demanded by the interest already shown in it by the few Americans who have been aware of the literary triumph of Vas András in Hungary.