Küzdelem és megbékélés. Kiss György kiállítása (Gyulai katalógusok 4. Gyula, 1997)

Krasznahorkai Géza: Struggle and Reconciliation (About the Art of György Kiss)

of the original baroque calvary, nor to that of the original plans or the artistic quality of the ensemble. Even in spite of the pressing for time, the consecration feast could have been much more beautiful with a little more attention and more circumspect conformity of clerical, artistic and art memorial views. „Your artistic career has been accompanied with professional and national awards as well. The first may be characterized by the Béni Ferenczy Grand Piize, the other by the Munkácsy-Prize. Your works are to be found among the most precious pieces of several collections abroad, from the London British Museum to the Dante Museum in Ravenna, and in public collections at home, from Sopron to Gyula. This year, your native land has honoured you by presenting the freedom of the city of Gyula. This is an award given to very few, and different from the former ones. How did you take the news, what feelings do you have now, exhibiting as honoured citizen of your home town?" „Acknowledgments always reach you unexpectedly; after all, you do not work with that aim. If there exists a surprise, this title of an honoured citizen is one for me, indeed. For what does Gyula, the home town left thirtysix years ago, the scene of my childhood, really mean to me? First of all, the houses, places, people, not to be found any more. The „Göndöcs"-Garden with its winding, mysterious paths, its oak-trees centuries old, with the house of our eternal „enemy" uncle Faragó, with the sound of die balls popping on the tennis court, the wooden theatre with its secrets, the shrill whistle of the little train, the puffing and oily smell of its locomotive, Sunday icecreams, seating until late in the night, illicit angling under the wooden bridge. Instead of the newly built cube houses, I see the old single-story homes, I hear the voices of the people who used to live in them, I can sense, emanating from the kitchens, the smell of Sunday meals; I wake up to the nightly „dialogues" of familiar dogs. I feel uncle Tóni Tükrössy's baton moving us to correct intonation, I can still see uncle Dezső József 's rigorous yet anxious figure. I am looking for the mystery of the stone behind the big church, the scene of our button games. This has all vanished. Although my Gyula was taken away by time, in spite of that, after thirty six years, 1 have but one thing in mind when I get on the „Körös" Express the train for Gyula leaving the Eastern Railway Station in Budapest: I'm going home." 20