The Eighth Hungarian Tribe, 1983 (10. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1983-05-01 / 5. szám
May, 1983 THE EIGHTH HUNGARIAN TRIBE Page 5 Ferenc Molnár Molnár, already a legend in his lifetime, epitomized all the virtues and defects of his work. His paradoxical personality and his works alike evoked extreme emotions. Throughout his career, he was besieged by ardent admirers and fanatic enemies. He split the camps of critics both in Hungary and abroad; at the summit of his success, each Molnár play was greeted with sound and fury, with panegyrics and scorn. His friends and foes were equally vocal and passionate in their attempts to define the author’s unprecedented popularity, but their temporary evaluation was always charged with emotions and often motivated by social and political reasons, subject to changes in accordance with the intellectual climates of the successive microeras. As a result, no comprehensive biography or objective critical analysis of Molnár has ever been written. This study has been undertaken to redress the inordinate subjectivity of previous critics and at least to fill partially the lack of critical evaluation of Molnár. The recent revival of interest in Molnár’s work further inspired this study, originally prepared as a modest tribute to the author when the hundredth anniversary of his birth was celebrated. With the passage of time, more valid judgment of Molnár’s art has emerged since the reaction of posterity is often the only true test of prominence. During my research, I encountered numerous difficulties: despite Molnár’s wide publicity, accurate information and data concerning his long and colorful life are scarce. The writer himself had been extremely secretive about his private life; for example, no reference book mentions the names of his parents and not even his grandchildren could supply this simple information. Most of his contemporaries have died, and a great deal of resource material in Hungary was destroyed during World War II. In addition, obtaining the prolific writer’s seventy-two volumes was no easy task. Furthermore, writing a book about a Hungarian author for an American public presented special problems. Hungarian is an isolated language; its culture and literature are relatively unknown in the English-speaking world. Thus, I could not assume familiarity with Molnár’s background and native idiosyncracies on the part of the reader, nor could I suppose that the interested students and scholars had had a chance to view his plays in America between 1908-1930, when Molnár was one of Broadway’s most popular playwrights. Perhaps the severest limitation was the realization of the enormity of his artistic output and the relatively little space at my disposal. Since I aimed at rendering the first complete evaluation of Molnár’s literary career, I was unable to analyze every work in depth. Instead, I chose to discuss all the novels, plays, and collected volumes of the most representative shorter pieces fairly briefly, devoting more or less space to individual works according to their significance. Since Molnár was an autobiographical artist, all his works are here presented closely intertwined with historical and biographical comments, necessary extensions of the cursory introductory chapters which describe his milieu and his life. In discussing his works, I adhered to chronology within those chapters which are arranged according to genres, covering his achievements in the fields of journalism, short story, novel, and drama. His masterpiece, Liliom, warranted deeper analysis, and so did his unfamiliar late writings during the final years in the United States. Therefore, these were treated in separate chapters. While writing the book, I have tried to maintain a reasonable balance between plot summaries and critical commentaries, and provide the Hungarian and American views alternately, bearing in mind both those readers who are totally unfamiliar with the author and those who merely seek new insights for a better understanding of him. I feel I have been able to offer a general exposition to Molnár’s oeuvre, a useful resource book, and a challenge for further study. Whenever the work under scrutiny was available in translation, I quoted the authorized English text, even when it was not accurate or the style of the adaptation seemed inferior to the original. In these instances, however, I made an effort to warn the reader who, in all probabilities, would have access only to the English versions. In the preparation of this critical evaluation I have been motivated by two convictions: first, that an objective, succinct analysis of all aspects of Molnár’s life and works may shed a new light on their inextricable interrelationship; and second, that the accomplishment of the Hungarian “King of Entertainment” is worthy of listing in the annals of world literature. Clara Györgyey Orange, Connecticut (( Jt/jTOLNÁRl Author, stage-director, dramatist, poet: Ferenc ÍVJ. Molnár. Today, whether at home in his beloved Hungary, or here, in America, a name to reckon with.”1 Thus exclaimed David Belasco in 1929, echoing many other critics around the world. Through his plays, Molnár broke out of the literary isolation of his native land, and achieved international fame by amusing audiences everywhere for five decades. Instead of pretending to convey social messages or extreme profundity, this prolific, facile, imaginative writer aimed merely to entertain by transforming his personal experience into effective works of art. Molnár had no significant links with any fashionable literary movements of his time; he stood alone, but dipped freely into the literary wealth of the past. He utilized the tenets of Naturalism, Neo-Romanticism, Expressionism, and the Freudian psychoanalytical concepts, but only when and insofar as they suited his purpose. In his prose, he was inspired by the works of Zola, Maupassant, Dumas, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky. In his dramas, he at first continued the tradition of the French boulevard authors—Capus, Bataille, Bernstein, and Bernard; later, Wilde, Shaw, Hauptmann, Schnitzler, and Pirandello left the deepest impression upon him. By fusing the realistic narrative and stage tradition of Hungary with Western influences into a cosmopolitan amalgam, Molnár emerged as a versatile artist whose style was uniquely his own. As a Hungarian journalist, he valued keen observation, precise description, suave mischief, and wit. His easy-flowing, urbane, vibrant short stories are poetic and meticulously structured, reflecting his consummate skill with dialogue. Although his novels are characterized by stylistic brilliance and cleverly calculated plots, thematically their range is rather narrow, and in content largely empirical. While his mostly autobiographical novels are only interesting period pieces, The Paul Street Boys emerges as a masterpiece. Molnár, a natural-born playwright, demonstrated mesmerizing, unerring dramatic instincts, originality, dazzling technique, and craftsmanship, and it was in this field that he rendered his major contribution. In his graceful, whimsical, sophisticated drawingroom comedies, he provided a felicitous synthesis of Naturalism and fantasy, Realism and Romanticism, cynicism and sentimentality, the profane and the sublime. He delivered his invariably interesting plots with accurate dramatic timing, through witty, sparkling, and spicy dialogues. According to Robert Brustein, his civilized plays enjoy universal appeal because of their “champagne quality: they are healthy, bubbly, and refreshing; they suit the taste of a general public everywhere.”2 Molnár wrote elegant, satiric dramas on manners, human frailties, and illusions; he portrayed suave, lovesick gentlemen and perfumed, cunning women, or thugs and simple servants, all engaged in the battle of the sexes. Out of his forty-two plays, The Devil, Liliom, The Swan, The Guardsman, and The Play’s the Thing endure as I
