Kerényi Ferenc szerk.: Színháztudományi Szemle 27. (Budapest, 1990)

IDEGEN NYELVŰ ÖSSZEFOGLALÓK

The special value of this correspondence lies in the fact that it contains additional biographical information which were unknown or unpublished until now. GÁBOR SZIGETHY: ENDRE ILLÉS' LETTERS TO MÁRIA MEZEI (1945—1977) Endre Illés was a prominent Hungarian essayist, playwright and translator. Two of his plays, Méreg (Poison, 1943) and A mostoha (The Stepmother, 1947) garnered great success on the stage with Mária Mezei, the great Hungarian actress in the leading role. During their common theatrical work, an intellectual friendship was formed between writer and actress. Mária Mezei tried to draw lessons from her life as a writer in her book entitled Névjegy (Visiting Card, 1941); and when she wrote as essay in 1945 under the title Hoztam valamit a hegyekből (I Brought Something from the Hills), she sent it to her writer-friend, hoping to receive criticism or appreciation from Illés. Illés considered Mária Mezei an excellent actress, but he thought that toying with literature was a needless, exhibitionist intellectual adventure for her. During the era of Communist dictatorship, Illés, the prudent writer, urged the passionate actress, who wanted to live a full life and understand everything around her, to remain, cleverly and with discipline, outside the mainstream of events. By the 1950s, the plays of Illés were already absent from the stage, and Mária Mezei was also banished by the centralized theatrical management to the cheaper performances of the Operetta Theatre. The friendship between the writer and the actress slowly faded away, its last phases manifested in the abating correspondence, short written notices by Endre Illés and, once in a while, one or two personal conversations. Eleven of Illés'

s letters have survived and reflect, with the power of a historical source, in the relationship of an uncompromising, passionate actress and an intelligent, educated and disciplined writer, what had to be the fate of artists in the last 40 years in Hungary. ZSUZSA RADNÓTI: ISTVÁN ÖRKÉNY'S LETTERS TO MÁRIA SULYOK István Örkény (1912—1979) has been praised world-wide for his One-minute Stories as a prose writer and for his plays The Tóth Family and Catsplay as a dramatist. Catsplay was staged in more than a hundred cities of more than twenty countries, from the United States to the Soviet Union, from Iceland to the Habima Theatre, Tel Aviv.