The Hungarian Student, 1958 (3. évfolyam, 1-2. szám)
1958-10-01 / 1. szám
basic cultural situation. We do not decry the lack of a hard and fast thesis to be recited by all the members of this generation, but we do require a basically constant stand, ever modified by unhesitatingly discarding what cannot be used. We speak of a position at once receptive and critical, a position firmly imbedded within the moist, shaping configurations of a culture. The generation which attempts this will probably undergo great changes. Names and ideas will often be revaluated, and some will be dropped and forgotten. During this process, which is the grasping of a culture as a true reality, the breaking point in the barrier may be found. When modern Western culture changes into a personal experience, an experience which is no longer special and unusual, but habitual, then every day will become a true and palpable unity, not just a theoretical exercise. Such a transition involves a process of assimilation, and we are now mid-stream in that process. This does not mean that the generation which landed in a foreign world will become assimilated to the environment in which it lives; rather, it will assimilate that environment to fit its own cultural tradition. And as we have determined before, this cultural, intellectual structure is deeply ethical in the most humanistic sense of the word. The youth whose problem we have been discussing lives dispersed throughout all the countries of Europe and America. Aside from their national culture, they seem connected only by their common fate. Their integration and reintegration into Western life will occur within the framework of different national cultures. Their dispersal is a negative fact, for the re-integration will not occur within Hungary, where it would have had an additional political-ideological aspect, but in a vaguer political environment. In Hungary the study and reading of Thomas Mann during World War II was not only a cultural act, but also, though it may sound strange, a political deed. The same was true during the past eight years, when the hottest literary battles revolved around the appreciation of Thomas Mann, and both attackers and defenders knew why they were fighting. The censorship and mockery of Mann’s work in Hungary in 1948 signified the official start of the persecution of 20th century, or bourgeois—the name does not change it—humanism. In our present situation of dispersal this political characteristic dwindles to a minimum. What takes its place is an understanding of the “pure” manifestations of a creative work and the personal appreciation of these manifestations. The difficulty involved in achieving this understanding, which should not be underestimated for a generation which matured to political revolt through intellectual-cultural revolution, points farther. If this generation is capable of accomplishing such an abstract deed, then this deed can be achieved again in a different situation; on the level of the actuality of the problem and state of being torn away. The generation now living abroad will probably not give up its attempt to comprehend French, English, German, Italian, American and Spanish cultures as the various limbs of an organic whole. The serious question is how it can acquire the finances necessary to obtain the cultural implements needed for this search. Its greatest aid is its own desire, which is stronger than average. Also, its humanism provokes the desire for true understanding of the whole, and this alone is an assurance against too easy acceptance of the adopted country’s cultural life as an intellectual base. This problem, along with the others, will be solved by time alone one way or another. There is only one solution at the moment. If we can recover from the intellectual amputation which we underwent during the past eight years and still maintain—this is important—an ethical viewpoint, which is by now not only a tradition but a law of this generation, we will become sponges temporarily sucking in the various trends of Western cultural life, sponges which will, in time, expel all they have accumulated through the marked individuality of their pores. Isolation, aloofness, fear of the many possibilities available would certainly, in this case, mean intellectual collapse. And this failure would be, in essence, an existential failure, the intellectual-existential failure of a generation. It would also be a moral failure. What could mean greater failure to us than becoming traitors to a task which back home inspired the struggles and labors of many generations? What could be a greater failure than giving up the goals which were the aims of a humanistic revolt? Among the aims of the October Revolution was the goal of establishing free ties between Hungarian and Western culture. These ties, considering the traditions of Hungarian culture and art, can only be the ties of a belonging and a unity. And this is what the Hungarian youth living abroad is now trying to realize through its individual life and work. 8 the hungarian student
