Budapest, 1945. (1. évfolyam)

2. szám - VARGA GÉZA ERNŐNÉ: A Dunahidak jelentősége a főváros életében

THE ARCHITECTURE OF BUDAPEST IN PAST AND FUTURE The opinion that styles of the past should be copied, that it is a matter of good manners to stick to old styles, could became familiar only in the 19th century. Schopenhauer, who definitely influenced the thinking of his contemporaries, openly declared that it is impossible to create new style and the same view was represented at us by Henszelman. The only way to salvation being the copying of historical styles, the excluding possibility of that became an aesthethic dogma and — let us confess it — it is a living temptation in many people's head. Obviously, there were others, who thought otherwise. When Hentzi's austrian cannons shelled the Vigadó to pieces, on the old Danube-lane, (one of M. Pollack's most beautiful creation,) F. Feszl did not care a fig about how the late master's work looked, he designed the new building to his own will and to suit the taste and demand of this time so that it kept nothing of Pollack's style. This is a lesson for us who face the huge problem of reconstructing Budapest. »Our duty is not to reconstruct a fourth Buda but to create a fifth one.« For one thing, we must build now for our own life, on the other hand, when building, we must find our own voice as our predecessors did. And who could deny that our own life, our own taste and the mentality expressed through them is essentially different from those of past generations ? Of course, something else must be said, too! The hegelian dialectic based on the investigations of human thinking present itself also on the field of these questions : to the beginning of 19th century, the architecture of the past — in contrast with the period's needs — was valuated to very little if to anything at all. The 19th

century, on the other hand, favourized the past above all and, when respecting appearances, denied even himself. We — methinks — occupy a third sort of stand-point. Let us explain it by some examples. Modern weapons unveiled — in the thick walls of some of the Burgh's ancient houses — several valuable, interesting elements of original beauty of which we had no idea for, at earlier renovations and reconstructions, they were built over or covered with mortar. Now, when rebuilding those houses, we want to keep those stones of noble form, belonging mostly to the cercles of ogive style, »in statu« or — if not otherwise — at least in a secondary placing. We want to use them visibly because we sincerly appreciate their beauty and their manvfold artistic value, we esteem them much more then did 19th

century favourising appearances when — for instance — they stuck a fake gothic (one that they created after their own fancy) onto the remained row of genuine gothic niches of the Pest City church. But we are up to hold this stand-point not only in relation to forms cut out of fine materials and with a past of centuries, while F. Feszl kept nothing — in his time — of the Pest Vigadó's frontal that was much easier to restore than the one ruined now ; we want to keep the Feszl — one's facade by all means for we consider it to be an interesting, picturesque element of the City's aspect and — though it is rather far from our present taste — we appreciate the artist's intentions in it. But beyond our above stand-point of respecting the really valuable and old, where the situation of the ruins give us a free hand (e. g. the Haas-palace, Vörösmarty sq.) or, where we'll have to build anew on a free ground, we can only build in fully respecting .our present-day life. We hope that the catastrophy haserased in all of us — individuals and authorities who give orders to build — the nostalgy for neo-styles of past times. Virgil Borbíró REMEMBERENCE OF PAUL VALÉRY The author of this article, dealing with P. Valéry's visit in Budapest, collected some memories of Paris and Geneva meetings. These are just fragments, mosaic-stones stijl, they may interest those who knew Valéry's work or his person. In June, 1936, the literary and arts commitee of the League of Nations' Institute for Spiritual Collaboration had its conference in Budapest with Valéry as president : Duhamel, Huizinga, Thomas Mann and many other distinguished authors, scholars and artists being present. The subject was the part that humanism played in our times. Valéry's spirit radiated the ideas, he watched their effect and — simultaneously — his own spirit at work. His lecture lacked even the slightest persuasive intention. His view was that, as for opinions, it is the craziest and most ordinary thing if anybody claimed his own being the only right one. Therefore he considered disputes useless except for unveiling new sides of the same questions by them. He never resented oppositions to his own opinions. His thinking was phenomenally logic still, rich in paradoxes. In the unlimited wealth of thoughts and possibilities he gave utmost care for the way of expression. »Literature should conceil all efforts by wich the result was attained. The author must convince his or her reader that no other way existed to treat his or her subject. Flaubert maintained that a thought can only have one right way of expression and all must be done till we find or create that only one. This theory — unfortunately — has no sense at all. Still, it is not bad to follow it. Sysiphus developed strong muscles«. In the summers of 1938 and 39 the author of these lines was together with Valéry in Geneva, at the Spiritual Collaboration-conference of the League of Nations. At the long table in the commitee-room they sat side by side, with a heap of paper at hand for notes. Valéry, not as to kill time but just during discussions that interested him, began to draw. First he marked some aimless dots and lines developing them line after line into a sort of picture. At one time he was drawing ships, than landscapes and academy. He called these sketches »Travail de commission«. On one of the sittings, during his dispute with Reynold, the Swiss historian of literature, they both were drawing on the same paper : while the one spoke, the other continued the picture. Thus the interesting picture was born. The signature on it is rather biblical : Reynold created the Earth and Valery the Heavens. A war-time picture, it was done in the summer of 1939, just a few months before the war broke out. Béla Kerékjártó BÉLA BARTÓK At the grave of Béla Bartók, one of the greatest personalities and creative geniuses of our times stand not only the musicians and music lovers of the civilized world because through his music Bartók didn't only talk to this narrow circle. Like all big masters he affected the public beyond his music i. e. by his human greatness and by his unchangeable and unanimous moral principles. АЛ his human and artistic manifestations were actual confessions of the artistic and human truth, in wich he believed during his whole life so passionately that he even endured the hardship and bitterness of emigration, when he saw that at home he couldn't fight anymore for it. In the autumn of 1940 he decided to leave Hungary only after a hard struggle with himself when he saw — and how clearly he saw — that there was no more any possibility for individual opposition against the growing barbarism of nazi tyranny. He left for a country where the flag of human right and free spirit was flying high, where the conception of freedom is not a mere phrase but serious reality, an inextinguishable flame in the human soul. Bartók's fine features and clear impelling eyes was the embodiment of the true soul of the Hungarian folk, it was this spirit he wished to show the New World, the spirit which lay hidden and bruised in the Old World left behind. Besides his art he took the results of his long studies on folkmusic, which shows us the truth, that culturally as well as in their folkmusic between the nations of the Danube Basin, hungarians, rumanians, slovaks, ruthenians, southslavs, Croats lies more similarity than contrast. Liying under the same climatic and geographic conditions during their long history these nations were influenced by each other. And in one thing they are above all a unit: the entire lack of german idiom in their culture. This is why we felt during the darkness of the past years as though the light of Bartók's spirit burnt brightly in the deepness of our consciousness. And the »bartókian pharos« enabled us to continue the fight when often everything seemed hopless and lost. It is a great tragedy that now when the hungarian nation, bleeding from thousand wounds, struggling in the midst of destruction but slowly finding itself, has lost him who could have found his place in that new Hungary for which he fought and worked with the weapons of art and science throughout his whole life. Sándor Veress , 7 he English translation of the articles written by K. Szimflv, S. Lestyán, L. Vayer, I. IS agy and Mrs. G. E. Varga, owing to paper-restrictions, could not be published. The Editor BUDAPEST HZEKKRPÖVAROS HÁZINYOMDÁJA — «8780 — FELELŐS VEZETŐ. DR M [HA LI К О U Я X Т А V IGAZGATÓ 85