The Hungarian Student, 1958 (3. évfolyam, 1-2. szám)

1958-10-01 / 1. szám

began, which resulted in the materialization of all the dangers to the regime which were inherent in the complete cultural isolation it practised. After this materialization, in 1956, a healthier cultural life emerged and continued for a while after the Revolution was crushed, only to return to its former, negative state when Stalinism was again revived.

The Hungarian youth which was dispersed to universities all over the world at the end of 1956, had missed all that had transpired culturally in the West between 1948 and 1956. Then, in 1956, it tried to soak up, in a concentrated dose, all that had happened in those years, but the enterprise was doomed from its inception. A generation whose sudden isolation had caused it to overestimate the total reality of what it had known as a growing idea, and w'hich with equal suddenness regained its freedom of choice and action, lost its sense of direction. The isolation caused by the Iron Curtain in no way lessened the thirst for modern Western culture, but by making it impossible to be well-informed, it bred the misinformed. The operation which had removed Western culture and art from this generation resulted, as soon as the chance came, in a reaction whose strained anxiety and insatiable appetite consumed its own energy and thus defeated itself. The young generation which fled from Hungary in 1956 still belonged to the Western intellectual life of 1948, and on arriving in the West tried desperately to find its way in a pattern of thought and life from which time and circumstance had exiled it.

We have spoken of the antecedents of this problem and of the reasons for its origin. In doing so we tried to simplify our discussion, and shall now limit ourselves to the essential content of the problem. Even a simplified delineation, however, clearly indicates that this problem is not peripheral to the generation, but centrally existential. If this generation cannot find a way of integrating itself with Western culture, then it is lost both to Hungary and to its adopted country. If this should happen, as it very well may, it would mean the loss of a generation whose function would have been the safeguarding of a cultural continuity. The stakes are too high for such a loss to occur, and there is the possibility of avoiding this tragedy. If the problem is existential in nature, then so is the plane of its solution. This generation’s problem emerges within the confines of a situation completely different in character from any situation before the October of 1956. It is important, then, that the

members of the generation become conscious of the fact that the Revolution of October, 1956, and the intellectual germination which preceded it, acted upon them not only as a historical fact or as a series of cultural events, but as a moral source which can feed their action. This generation, realizing its function, must endeavor to solve its problem almost collectively, and this must be the decisive characteristic of its effort.

Of major importance to the whole problem is the fact that integration must take place within a historical environment basically different from the one which harbored this generation during its growth, when the first unhesitating step towards an integration with the West was taken. When we speak of historical environment we mean that cultural-historic situation with all its previously-described variants and that national tradition which this generation always used as its yardstick. Linguistic difficulty is presently a grave obstacle to integration, but that will disappear eventually. The most serious obstacle and the one most difficult to overcome is the fact of being uninformed. By this, of course, we do not mean that in the last decade Hungarian youth had no opportunity to read Western periodicals or novels published during the past few years. We mean, rather, that these youth had no opportunity to become acquainted with the reality to which this intellectual life is connected. The problem is not caused by a lack of knowledge, but by the fact that, at present, there are no adequate tools at their disposal with which to process or filter the events rushing at them so continuously.

The problem is not the lack of something to take up connections with again, but the question of what it is that should be taken up again. In ten years cultural life in the West underwent a complete change. But we, from our worm’s-eye view, did not change the picture which we imagined to be real during the eight years of our isolation. The picture now has changed by becoming more complete, by becoming larger not only in breadth but also in depth. It has changed as a result of the questions asked of this generation every day, questions which they are still unable to answer, but for which they must find an answer relatively soon. One of the greatest inadequacies in facing these questions is the lack of a completely contemporary vocabulary and all that it implies. We do not mean a viewpoint formulated with philosophical clarity, but one that grew slowly and perhaps unevenly but, nevertheless, organically from a

October 1958

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