Szatmári Gizella: Signs of Remembrance - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2005)
was the same Mihály Bauer who made the parapet sculptures of the former City Hall of Pest. "The public spaces of our city sorely want stone statues; it is therefore by no means unpleasant to the eye, albeit it was not made in Italy, such a huge piece on the fayade of a house in our busiest street," opined the Honművéiz (The Patriotic Artist). "With its head, the huge work - an anatomically perfect, 4 fathom 1 foot tall, male nude sculpted in the round — reaches up to the second floor," reports the enthusiastic commentator. Its instalment was a significant event: it Was "stared at without a moment's respite by the crowds gathered in front of it." The unveiling ceremony was attended by the magistrates of Pest and Buda. In 1843 the square itself was named for the statue. "The small marketplace created by the confluence of Kis-hid and Hajó streets shall be named Kristóf Square after St. Christopher henceforward,” reports the Regélő Peiti Divatlap (The Pest Vogue Chronicler). Dr Birly's house was demolished in 1909. Christopher the Great was sawn up into three pieces and removed to one of the yards of the central City Hall. A relief was set up in its place, but it, too, was destroyed. The old painted tablet is still extant in the collection of the Kiscelli Museum. The Nation’s Gofer The fellow-writer Kálmán Mikszáth described him as the "nation’s gofer" or man of all work, and fittingly, as András Fáy exerted himself throughout his busy life as a Renaissance-style polymath to help his nation in every way he could. •Making Pest his home in 1822, he joined the circle of Mihály Vitkovics, whose hóúse in today’s Veres Pálné utca attracted the leading figures of the country’s contemporaneous literature. These included Berzsenyi, Döbrentei, Kölcsey, V. ’ Vörösmarty, and later Károly Kisfaludy, too, whose Aurora magazine launched in 1821, carried contributions by, among others, Pest county district magistrate András Fáy. FSy’s name was no longer unknown in these circles. His writings had been published under the title Bouquet in 1807 and Fresh Bouquet in 1818. His first book he dedicated to Kazinczy, whom he had set out to emulate. It is not only * * his literary activities in which he heeded the master’s injunction: "Good and 30
