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)

Gábor Dobó: Generation Change, Synthesis and a Programme for a New Society - Dokumentum in Budapest (1926-1927)

to the general character of the journal (I don’t know whether I’ve told you), in that its attacking edge was not sufficiently specific. [...] Kassák, above whom constantly hangs the sword of Damocles, did not want the first issue to be to conspicuous - our homeland, how should I say, its health conditions are indescribable, you have to watch every word you write if you don’t want it to be seized".36 Nonetheless Dokumentum did address political issues, if obliquely. The typical method was to reproduce news considered typical of capitalism and the Horthy system with an ironic or satirical comment, in such a way that the editors could not be called to account under the letter of the law.

THE DISPLACEMENT OF AVANT-GARDE MOVEMENTS

In seeking the reason for Dokumentum's demise we should also bear in mind that there were modernizing (political) and modernist (artistic) movements in 1920s Hungtary with an interest in suppressing, neutralizing or perhaps integrating the avant-garde. This goes above all for the representatives of state-sponsored culture and tradition-preserving modernity (Nyugat). Kunó Klebelsberg, Minister of the Interior and subsequently Minister of Religious Affairs and Education, launched a large scale programme of educational, scientific and cultural policy on a “neonationalist” ideological base, thus drawing criticism from the old establishment conservatives, such as academic societies. Klebelsberg was behind the launch of the regime-linked right-wing modernist journal Napkelet [Orient], which was edited by Cécile Tormay between 1923 and 1940, and was set up as an opposition to Nyugat (that is, West).37 Unlike most cultural journals, Napkelet did not reject the avant-garde on aesthetic grounds. For example, articles by two excellent Italianists, Imre Várady and Jenő (Koltay-)Kästner, made a critical but intelligent study of Futurism, which was seeking a place in the Italian Fascist regime.38 By contrast, it was

36 Ferenc Botka (ed.), Déry Tibor levelezése, 1927-1935 [The correspondence of Tibor Déry, 1927-1935], Balassi-Petőfi Irodalmi Múzeum, Budapest, 2007, 10-11. Andor Németh, another member of the Dokumentum staff similarly perceived the state of access to the public, see György Tverdota, Németh Andor, Egy közép-európai értelmiségi a XX. század első felében [Andor Németh, a Central European intellectual in the first half of the 20th century], voi. I., Balassi, Budapest, 2009,107.

37 Right-wing modernist journals were not at all rare in this period. One example is II Selvag- gio (1924-1943), which criticized the Italian Fascist regime from the right.

38 For more details, see Orsolya Rékai, A Napkelet és az irodalmi modernség [Napkelet and literary modernity], Jelenkor, 56/2., 2013, 170-175. For a comprehensive view, see Ignác Rom- sics (ed.), A magyar jobboldali hagyomány, 1900-1948 [The Hungarian right-wing tradition, 1900-1948], Osiris, Budapest, 2009. On the relationship between avant-garde and conservative criticism, see György Kálmán C., Strange Interferences, Modernism and Conservativism vs. Avant-Garde, Hungary, 1910s, Hungarian Studies, 26/1., 2012,107-122.

229