János Kõbányai
At the Crossroads of the Soul
Aladár Komlós (1892-1980) is remem bered as a prominent critic, a contributor to Nyugat, the dominating literary journal early this century, and the author of the definitive work on János Vajda, one of the first modern Hungarian poets of note in the nineteenth century. Another aspect of his work has been all but forgotten: he was the sole important critic and theoretician of Hungarian-Jewish literature. Indeed, between the 1938 anti-Jewish legislation and the occupation of the country by the German army in 1944 no-one did more for Jewish writing in Hungary. Some of his forgotten writings are basic and theoretical, others are profiles of particular authors, or the summing up of a period or trend. These pieces, which appeared before 1945 in a variety of papers and anthologies in Slovakia, Vienna and Hungary, provided a challenge: a posthumous whole had to be produced out of a vast collection of pieces which are fragmentary in character. Articles on a variety of subjects and authors suggested the need for a treatise of a broad sweep. He himself hinted as much in an essay, "Towards a Future History of Hungarian-Jewish Literature," which survived in a basement. All the doubts and uncertainties finally bore fruit: a bundle of typewritten sheets was found "full of men long dead, of forgotten names, of facts that will interest no-one."
[...]
The margin notes to the manuscript and an irascible remark here and there - which a scholar's dispassionate discipline then prompted him to delete - show that Komlós must have worked in the early Forties suffering from the day-by-day irritations of an ever more unbearable deprivation of rights. Inaccurate references and passages quoted from memory (put right when the manuscript was prepared for the printer) suggest that, at the time, he no longer had access to libraries and had to rely on his notes and memory. How and when he started and when he finished collecting the immense amount of material is something not even members of his family know. It is certain, however, that he wished to continue, if circumstances permitted.
This book, the first half of the planned work, more or less covers the 1800 to 1890 period. It extends to the point where the Jews of Hungary become Hungarians, prosperous and educated. These are the years of preparation and apprenticeship, years in which the major achievements of Jewry are still confined to capitalism and scholarship. In the new age starting in 1890 their own individuality puts in a forceful appearance. [...] Towards the end of the Eighties, a new ferment appears in Hungarian life, a ferment produced by Jewry. The Jews had not come to full flower yet, creativity in literature had hardly started, but there was preparation and soon Jews would be strong enough to fertilize Hungarian intellectual life in an unparallelled embrace. They were about to show what they were capable of.
History soon took the chronicler to Bergen-Belsen. The scholar survived, the chronicler of his people did not.
[...]
The treatise ends where the posthumous collection of papers starts, with the appearance, early this century, of József Kis, the poet, founder and editor of journals, and his generation. Komlós systematically proceeds from him, or rather the literary review A Hét, which laid the foundations of Nyugat to what, to him, was the end of the story, a roll call of all those lost to literature because of the Holocaust. He never again dealt with a Jewish subject, albeit, unlike many of his contemporaries, he never denied his Jewish antecedents. True, he never mentioned them either, except for his stay at Bergen-Belsen.
The second volume of the present edition is structured following the pattern of the first, and that of Komlós's other comprehensive work, Az új magyar líra (New Hungarian Verse). Thus a projection of the theoretical writings provides the historical, sociological and social-psychological background, and the profiles of writers then follow, even if not in the number and with the weight that would have been present if Komlós had had the chance to proceed to the middle of the twentieth century as methodically as he handled the material of the first volume. The essays, studies, articles and reviews are not arranged in the chronological order of writing, the very first paper, "Jews at the Crossroads," being in fact written first in 1921.
There Komlós defines his identity in terms of the spiritual space within which he wishes to operate. "My blood is Jewish, my skin is Hungarian, and I am a man. Our Hungarian nature is more visible since it is on the surface. This threefold determination is the final result of an anatomical dissection", he concludes to his satisfaction.
[...]
János Kõbányai
is editor of the Jewish cultural journal Múlt és Jövõ and author of short stories, essays and reportage on Sarajevo.
