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)

Márton Pacsika: Purposeful Player of the New Instrument - Lajos Kassák and the Budapest MA

MA also strove to build up cultural and political contacts with Hungarian and international workers’ movements. Prominent figures of proletarian literature like Béla Révész and Maxim Gorky10 * were regularly promoted by Kassák’s group, both in the journal and at public events run by MA. Although Révész’s Naturalism must have seemed aesthetically somewhat obsolete to the MA circle, his “socialist-nationalist” outlook was still an important point of reference for activists. Furthermore, the journal Szabadgondolat [Free Thought], linked to the Galileo Circle and to the “bourgeois democrats”, advertised itself in MA, and the most influential leftist philosopher Ervin Szabó even paid a visit to the MA gallery.

MA - unusually for a left-wing artistic journal - also gave space to authoritative artistic figures. Several issues were centred on a single artist, and these included the composer Béla Bartók, the modernist poet Endre Ady and even Kassák himself. The “Kassák issue” is particularly interesting in relation to MA’s self-designation. Although the editorial board often presented itself as a movement, it was Kassák’s own thinking and tastes that were definitive for the journal’s operations. Nonetheless, MA maintained an open outlook and sensitivity to criticism. In the “Kassák issue" of MA, the young critic József Révai included some sardonic comments among his words of praise for the journal’s leading figure.2 13

The conflicts in which the MA circle became embroiled during the period were later to have a negative effect on the workings of the journal. Relations with two important young intellectuals of the time, Béla Balázs and György Lukács, became peculiarly embittered. In an interview, the elderly Lukács recalled, “Kassák loathed me as I did him. I had good reason to”.14 Kassák wrote of his antipathies to the philosopher both in the columns of MA and in his autobiography.15 Their differences took on pressing significance during the

10 See, e.g., Ervin Sinkó, Az egyéniség, Maxim Gorkij könyvéből [Individuality, From Maxim Gorky's book], MA, 2/9., 1917,144.

í Lajos Kassák, Révész Béla (Kontúrok egy portrait-hoz) [Béla Révész (Outlines of a portrait)], MA, 2/6., 1917, 82-83.

12 “From the outset, there have been some perceptible peasant and, one might say, agrarian-socialist hints.” József Révai, Kassák, új fajiság és objektív lira, op. cit., 192-193.

13 “We should note that in contrast to the en-garde of György Lukács, we have not a moment’s doubt regarding the purity of Balázs' intentions as an author and his out-of-the-ordinary values.” F. László Boross, Balázs Béla, Kalandok és figurák [Review of Béla Balázs, Adventures and figures], MA, 3/7., 1918, 87.

14 György Lukács, Megélt gondolkodás, Életrajz magnószalagon [Lived-through thought, Biography on tape], Magvető, Budapest, 1989,159.

15 Lajos Kassák, Egy ember élete, voi. II., op. cit, 479,598-600.

76