Fraternity-Testvériség, 1959 (37. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)

1959-02-01 / 2. szám

FRATERNITY

5

end of the First World War he had published only short, lyric novels

and literary essays, mostly on French poets of the fin de siede. His admiration for the European symbolists, expressionists and even futurists, beside a great enthusiasm — with reservation — for French poetry, changed somewhat when he made the acquaintance of Walt Witman’s cosmic-lyrical universalism and of William James’ pragmatic philosophy. He was the first Hungarian to percieve and write about the significance of these two Americans. Indeed, American influence on him soon caused a divergence between him and the rest of his circle. The latter, especially the poets Ady, Juhász, Árpád Tóth, Kosztolányi and others, continued to express the tragic pessimism of existence, while Dezső Szabó,

fortified by the influence of Balzac, Zola, Tolstoy and Walt Witman, looked for the birth of a new generation in the brighter horizon of

democracy. He was 40 years of age when his first great novel, “THE

ABANDONED VILLAGE”, caused a literary sensation.

When the three volumes first reached the public on May 23, 1919, Hungary was in the depth of a most desperate situation. At the close of a lost war she had lost two-thirds of her territory and population,

after a bourgeois-type revolution in 1918 the first Soviet dictatorship

followed. Though lasting but a few months, red terrorists were still in

power in Budapest when his bold political novel appeared in the bookstores. Three consecutive editions were immediately sold and Szabó was thereafter known as the “author of ‘The Abandoned Village’ ”, although he subsequently wrote prolifically and became a leading novelist between the two world wars. Even his enemies acknowledged his genius.

“The Abandoned Village” is like Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina”, a complete picture of Hungarian society. It begins in 1912 in a peaceful, poor and neglected Transylvanian Székler village. Peasant life is depicted in all its facts, reminding us of the Nobel prize winner Reymont’s cyclical novel, “The Peasants”, or Miczkiewicz’ Lithuanian villages in “Pan Taddeus”. Then the violence of the war and invasion breaks up not only village community life but we go through the turmoil of the whole war-agitated nation. Like an immense disturbed beehove, the politicians, intellectuals and writers in Budapest, the soldiers in the trenches, hospitals and barracks, discontented industrial workers on the streets, swarm feverishly in the novel. The hundreds of well-drawn characters are, like in Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina”, grouped round two central couples. One couple, Miklós Farkas, great poet of decadence modelled after the Hungarian lyrical genius Ady, and beautiful Judith Farcády, ambitious daughter of a village priest engulfed in high social circles in Budapest, represent the self-destructive forces of the old society, as Anna Karenina and Vronsky in Tolstoy’s social picture. The other pair, János Bőjthe and Mária Barabás, represent the new Hungary. They rebuild village life destroyed by war and are a practical example of how to transform the war-stricken country into a prosperous, new nation like Denmark.

In fact, Dezső Szabó was a leader in the democratic fight for land distribution and other social reforms. He hoped that after the lessons of the two recent revolutions the transition into a new democratic life was at hand. In order to promote it he held numerous ardent lectures, wrote rousing political pamphlets and articles. Between 1923 and 1925,