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)

György Tverdota: 2x2 - The Journal Edited by Lajos Kassák and Andor Németh (1922)

mercial demands and not making any concessions to the inadequate erudition and consequent low standards of the readers, but avoiding self-indulgent theorizing.

There can be no better indication of Kassák’s relations with Németh than his comments in the introduction to the section he edited. He spoke of both cooperation and the likelihood of heated disputes breaking out between them: “both of us wanted to move towards the future and both want to go along with others who are trying to make their way in the same direction, but we must openly state the distinction between our thinking in matters of philosophy, social affairs and art. Quite possibly, our different thinking may spark off a struggle between us today or tomorrow. A struggle within the bounds of a single journal and towards the same end, but clearing different paths towards that end".13

We can find clues to the journal's orientation from the figures who lent it their support. One was the Transylvanian author Gábor Gaál, and another was Kassák’s “most loyal enemy” (as he once wrote in a book dedication), the critic Aladár Komlós: “What is the significance of this journal? In short, it is the organ of the post-Nyugat writers’ generation".14 Komlós had a disputatious friendship with Németh, disapproving of the extreme experiments of modernity and never tiring in his criticism of the excesses of the ‘isms’. By formulating a move towards eternal things, he got in ahead of the poet Mihály Babits, who set a new orientation for Nyugat by pronouncing a programme of tradition-preserving modernity. Komlós’ stand behind 2*2 shows that his informed criticisms of the age included some openness towards modern developments, but he was put off by doctrinaireness and self-indulgent-seeming experimentation.

WHAT WENT INTO 2x2

An orientation towards radical modernity, as is clear even from a brief inspection, runs as a common thread through the two halves of the journal. The differing tastes of the two editors, however, is also plain to see. Nérmeth's “permanent modernity” made room for many diverse currents, including Béla Balázs, who started out with Nyugat but later moved away from them; Mátyás György; Nyugat itself, Dadaism; the surrealism-approaching Tibor Déry; and József Lengyel, who was moving out of the avant-garde in the direction of Communism. In his years of Viennese exile, Andor Németh held Balázs’ writ13 ibid.

14 Aladár Komlós, 2*2, Bécsi Magyar Újság, 5 November 1922, 8.

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