Pál Deréky teaches Hungarian literature at the University of Vienna. He has devoted many years to the theory and history of the Avant-garde. His A vasbeton torony költői (The Poets of the Tower of Reinforced Concrete) was published in 1992 in Budapest, one year after the German-language version of the book (Ungarische Avantgarde-Dichtung in Wien. 1920–1926, Wien, 1991) appeared.

In 1996 Deréky brought out a supplementary reader in two languages: A magyar avantgárd irodalom (1915–1930) olvasókönyve (In German as Lesebuch der Ungarischen Avantgarde-literatur (1915-1930). The book here considered is the revised edition of the reader, this time only in Hungarian. As an extra feature, there are unsigned commentaries, written by Deréky and others. Close to the year 2000, Deréky’s reader meets a need. To explain what I mean by this, I shall briefly review the history of the Hungarian Avant-garde and its reception. Ady’s Új versek (New Poems) a herald of Symbolism and the emergence of one of the giants of Hungarian poetry were published in 1906; the first volume of the anthology Holnap (Tomorrow) came out in 1908, the same year that saw the first issue of the journal Nyugat (West). (Nyugat lasted until 1941.) The main figure behind both the anthology and the magazine was Endre Ady. Modern Hungarian literature (including the Hungarian Avant-garde, a more or less distinct entity within it, and of a more limited time-span than the more generally used term modernity denotes) emerged against a background that was far from intellectually isolated, introspective or backward-looking; it was an open environment, which looked to the future and was able to incorporate foreign influences in a sovereign manner. The environment was one in which the works of Marx, Nietzsche, Ferrero, Bergson and Freud were known to every educated man or woman. Budapest was Europe’s most rapidly developing city at the time. The spring of 1914 saw the appearance of Modern költők (Modern Poets), a collection of Dezső Kosztolányi’s translations. Making accessible the poetry that followed Poe, Baudelaire and Whitman was among the greatest achievements of the revolution in poetry that Nyugat set off. The collection introduced Belgian and Russian Symbolists, Italian Futurists and German Expressionists, thus bringing these diverse movements to Hungary more or less simultaneously. Beside Kosztolányi’s book, the great art exhibitions before 1914 also provide evidence to confirm this. Works by Picasso, Kandinsky and the Italian Futurists were shown in Budapest. In April 1909—the same year that the Futurist Manifesto was published in Paris, with its momentous international repercussions—Lajos Kassák (1887–1967), a young man of twenty-two at the time, set out to walk there. Dropping out of school at the age of eleven, Kassák found employment in a foundry. He had taken up serious reading and writing more or less around that time, at the age of just twenty; the first volume of Holnap made a crucial impact on him. At his wife’s prompting, he decided to emulate Ady’s journey to Paris. His journey took him through Pozsony, the later Bratislava, and Germany; it was in a German tavern that he met the Hungarian Emil Szittya, who persuaded him to make his way to Paris via Belgium.

Szittya, a vagabond apostle of the European Avant-garde, was a character who defies description. He had helped launch two great poets, Kassák and the French Blaise Cendrars, and he was probably also the first to recognize Chagall’s talent. Kassák mentioned him in two of his works that describe his wanderings across Western Europe: in the long narrative poem "A ló meghal a madarak kirepülnek" (The Horse Dies the Birds Fly Away, 1922) and in both volumes of his autobiography Egy ember élete (The Life of a Man). In the poem he speaks of him briefly and scornfully, and in prose at length and in great detail, with a love-hate ambivalence. He made no bones about admitting that Szittya had spotted his talent as early as 1909, and that it was Szittya who directed him towards the arts; nor did he deny that in 1915, when the two met once again, it was Szittya who encouraged him to publish his poems and launch a new magazine. Kassák was also quick to point out that they had fallen out soon after that. What Kassák failed to mention was that in the Autumn of 1914, when Szittya started the journal Mistral in Switzerland, its first issue included a poem each from Kassák and Apollinaire; and he also forgot to say anything about the relations between Szittya and Cendrars, of which he must have been fully aware. Falling out and excommunication was very much an everyday occurrence in modernist circles. On his return from Paris in 1910, Kassák published a fortnightly, Renaissance (1910–1911). (All the leading figures of Nyugat, including Ady, contributed to Renaissance.)

Kassák’s first book, a collection of short stories Életsiratás (Life Mourning), appeared in 1912. The critics welcomed it as the first authentic product of proletarian literature; nothing was said about the isms—quite rightly.

Right up to autumn 1914 Nyugat accepted Kassák; it was Kassák who singled out Nyugat as his chosen opposition, the circle against which he wished to define his own movement. (He did not even consider the conservative opposition to Nyugat.)

In 1915 he published a book of poems, Eposz Wagner maszkjában (Epic in Wagner’s Mask—three of its important pieces had been published in Nyugat), and soon afterwards started another journal,Tett (Act).

Eposz and Tett are closely related. Through the former Kassák established the authority he needed to start Tett, and Tett in turn proved that something radically new had begun with Eposz. It was Tett that provoked controversy, rather than Eposz, which was well received by Nyugat; in other words, it was Kassák’s movement, rather than his poetry, that touched off the storm.

In 1916 Tett was banned because of the foreword to its international issue; however, within weeks Kassák launched yet another new journal, MA (Today). There is a fundamental difference between the two. Tett was a workshop, in which Kassák was still merely the first among equals. By contrast, in MA Kassák was already the undisputed leader, against whom the others could, at the most, only rebel—and rebel they did. Furthermore, Tett was a literary magazine with occasional articles on art. In MA literature and art were on an equal footing, with the latter coming to dominate during the Viennese period of the magazine (1920–1925).

Kassák and his movement had four glorious years after starting Tett and MA. The two revolutions that came in quick succession, first in Russia and then in Hungary, seemed to bear out the international, world-revolutionary and messianic views of MA. The MA contributors launched a frontal attack against the writers of Nyugat, burying Ady as a relic of the past even in his lifetime. The future seemed to belong to Kassák and his circle. Ady died in January 1919; Kassák himself wrote the obituary in MA, which read like a proclamation of a victor’s viewpoint. The establishment of the Hungarian Soviet Republic in March 1919 further brightened Kassák’s prospects; however, he soon fell out with its Communist leader Béla Kun over artistic and political matters. In all probability he would have been jailed, had the Republic not collapsed so quickly; however, during the ensuing white terror he was arrested as a dangerous revolutionary. On his release from prison he went into exile in Vienna, then the haven for those of progressive views, who often engaged in fierce disputes among themselves.

Against incredible odds, Kassák managed to re-launch MA in Vienna in 1920; it was able to survive until 1925, a surprisingly long period in comparison with other international modernist magazines. The following six years were the most productive and most versatile period in Kassák’s life. Meanwhile, the position of Nyugat in Hungary was weakened, although not on account of MA, but under the attacks of the conservative right, who accused Nyugat, and most notably Ady, of subversion.

In 1926, following the proclamation of a general amnesty, a large number of the exiles returned to Hungary. With his associates (Tibor Déry, József Nádass, Gyula Illyés, Andor Németh), Kassák founded Dokumentum, the most important magazine of Hungarian Surrealism. (It even published a review of the Budapest phone directory by Illyés.) Around that time, Lőrinc Szabó, the author of a volume of Expressionist free verses, A sátán műremekei (Satan’s Masterpieces), founded Pandora, launched from within the Nyugat circle by some young writers, who had turned against it. Another new journal was founded, Kút (Well), which was first and foremost an art magazine, although it did publish a poem by Lőrinc Szabó and a play by Herwarth Walden. One of its regular contributors was the art critic Ernő Kállay, who had earlier published his articles in MA of Vienna. In 1927 all three magazines folded.

To all appearances it was curtains for the Avant-garde.

The literature devoted to a discussion of Hungarian Avant-garde since 1916–1917 could fill a small library. The earliest article on the subject was written in 1916 by Mihály Babits, a prominent poet, and later editor, of Nyugat, who was the magazine’s most important figure between the two World Wars. Although Babits rejected the movement, he discussed it at length, and gave it much attention, in fact doing much to boost its standing. Soon after this he reviewed the activities of Tett in an academic magazine. Since then, masses of pamphlets, essays, monographs and auto- biographies have been published on the subject. Even the theoretical writings about Avant-garde art and literature have been collected in a single volume—everything except the poems and short stories that prompted the debates.

Only a few devoted students had access to the old magazines and the rare volumes of poems, now mostly transferred to microfiche. The interested general reader could read the commentaries, but not the original texts. It is hard not to form the impression that both supporters and opponents of the Avant-garde were equally reluctant to check the actual primary texts for fear that these would not corroborate their respective positions, for or against. Indeed, the non-availability of texts might also have been caused by the unswerving hostility the political powers of the day showed towards modernism in all its aspects. As a result, Deréky’ s anthology provides non-specialist readers with their first chance to make direct contact with Hungarian Avant-garde poetry, their first opportunity to select and to evaluate it according to individual taste, experience and sensibilities.

Naturally, not all texts were completely unknown. Lajos Kassák’s books were usually available, except in the period roughly between 1949 and 1955, but sometimes even his books had their own fate. In 1920, in Vienna, he published a prose epic on the Hungarian Soviet Republic, Máglyák énekelnek (The Bonfires Are Singing), which was rejected by the successive political regimes with equal vehemence. A second edition came out only in 1970, a few years after Kassák’s death (1967). The epic poem "A ló meghal a madarak kirepülnek", a major opus in Kassák’s oeuvre, was published in Vienna in 1922, in a small Hungarian magazine which only had a single issue; it was also published soon after in an anthology. At the time of its appearance it elicited no response whatsoever. In any event, the year 1922 was a turning point in the history of Kassák’s reception. Up till then all the important critics had applauded the poet; after that, critical enthusiasm began to wane, and after the late 1920s they praised the author of the autobiography Egy ember élete at the expense of the poet. It was only in the mid-1960s that the poem "A ló meghal a madarak kirepülnek" came to be regarded as one of the great poems of the century; its growing reputation culminated in 1967, when an entire academic conference was devoted to its analysis. It has frequently been suggested by literary historians that the piece was inspired by Apollinaire and Cendrars. About fifteen years ago it was suggested that the poem may have had a Hungarian antecedent in the form of a poem of a journey published in Kassák’s Tett. After 1916, this poem, Páris, Ličge, Trencsényteplic, by Tivadar Raith, was republished first by Pál Deréky in his anthology. It was Tivadar Raith who was the first to translate Apollinaire into Hungarian, in the very first issue of Tett. Raith’s first volume of prose poems, in Hungarian, was published in Paris in 1914. Deréky, who puts the birth of the Avant-garde at 1915, did not include any pieces from the volume in this anthology.

In consequence, Deréky omits the proto-history of the Avant-garde, the years preceding the formation of Tett; however, he does show the Avant-garde spirit that was present in the 1920s independent of the movement by publishing works by Sándor Márai, just then first publishing as a novelist, and by three other young poets, Lőrinc Szabó, Attila József and Miklós Radnóti. In other words, for the early period he identifies the Avant-garde with the movement, drawing a distinction between the two only later, after 1920.

In 1920 Kassák was forced into exile in Vienna, and the movement continued to operate from there. However, after the war new figures emerged both in Hungary and in exile, who were influenced by the

Avant-garde yet did not wish to join the movement. One of them was the novelist Sándor Márai (1900–1989), who wrote about Kassák with great enthusiasm in 1918. In 1919 he left Hungary to live in Berlin and later in Paris; he even switched to using German in his prose right up to the mid-1920s; he had no contact with Kassák whatsoever. Today, Márai is regarded as one of the outstanding masters of twentieth-century Hungarian prose, who soon shed all traces of the experimental or of modernism. Back in the 1940s, and most recently also, many of his novels were translated into foreign languages, primarily into French and Italian. Deréky deserves much credit for rediscovering the poet Márai, whose lyrical vein has been largely overlooked even by his greatest admirers; the reader contains a selection of his early poems. Deréky also merits praise for his decision to include some of Lőrinc Szabó’s expressionist poems. Szabó had no connection with the movement, nor with the exiles; as a young poet whose star was rapidly rising in the circles of Nyugat, it was there that he published an enthusiastic article about Máglyák énekelnek. He predicted that these poems would soon come home to Hungary; they had to wait fifty years. In

Az izmusok története (A History of the Isms), a book written after the Second World War, Kassák claimed that the Avant-garde lived on in the poetry of Attila József (1905–1937) and Gyula Illyés (1902–1983). Attila József, who did not go into exile, tried to establish contact with Kassák; in Vienna he looked him up, but Kassák was unwilling to publish any of his poems. The only piece he ever published by Attila József was a translation, but that was in Budapest, in the magazine Munka (Work), established in 1928. Illyés, who was in exile in Paris between 1920 and 1926, met the Dadaist and Surrealist poets there. He enjoyed a lifelong friendship with Tzara and Eluard. Illyés sent his poems and translations to the rival journals in Vienna. These were usually run by those who had deserted Kassák, such as Kassák’s brother-in-law, Sándor Barta, a poet by whom was included in Ivan Goll’s anthology Počtes de cinq continents (1922). After their return to Hungary in 1926, Illyés and Kassák co-edited (along with Tibor Déry, Andor Németh and József Nádass) Dokumentum. The journal folded after six issues for want of an audience who could have appreciated it, as Kassák put it. After that, the lives of Kassák and Illyés took their different courses, and Deréky once again deserves credit for including the relevant poems by Attila József and Gyula Illyés in his anthology.

In this selection, Deréky has provided a new portrait of the Hungarian Avant-garde. Before the publication of his book, the Avant-garde was essentially identified with the movement, and the movement with Kassák. The Hungarian Avant-garde was basically reduced to the person of Kassák, whose talent even his opponents recognized. The general assumption was, however, that only people of mediocre gifts and unhappy circumstances gathered around Kassák, and that the entire movement was an alien body in twentieth-century Hungarian literature. This was done without actually denying that for a brief period of time, Attila József and Gyula Illyés, two poets now regarded as classic twentieth-century authors, had also been seduced by him. Although Deréky never questions Kassák’s revolutionary significance, he does not identify the Avant-garde with the movement and, therefore, assumes the Avant-garde spirit to be a great deal more complex and with a more intricately woven texture. This Avant-garde is hallmarked not only by Kassák, but also by Attila József, Gyula Illyés, Sándor Márai, Lőrinc Szabó and Miklós Radnóti.

The anthology also merits praise for selecting the works of many neglected poets. József Nádass, for example, deliberately left his early, Avant-garde works out from his collected poems published in 1962—on political considerations. After seventy years, Deréky has republished some fine pieces that Nádass was trying to edit out of his oeuvre.

Deréky ends his anthology with the year 1930, and quite rightly so. In 1930, or perhaps even a few years earlier, the Avant-garde was generally viewed as finished, outmoded and dangerous. Many, Kassák included, identified free verse with the Avant-garde; and in 1929 Lőrinc Szabó suggested that anyone who wrote free verse was a Communist. By contrast, after 1945 those so engaged were branded as bourgeois decadents, the servants of Imperialism. In any event, regardless of the political connotations, people writing free verse were regarded as clumsy and artistically immature, especially after Attila József, Miklós Radnóti, Gyula Illyés and Lőrinc Szabó had all reverted to rhyme and classic metric forms. The rehabilitation of free verse, and also of the isms in general, began in the 1960s.

Pál Deréky has published a very useful book: he has made formerly inaccessible and, thus, largely forgotten texts available again. For the first time, the general reader has direct access to these works, rather than through the interpretation of literary historians and theoreticians. His arrangement is alphabetical by authors, which is the most unbiased way, one that allows the works to speak for themselves, independent of the intentions and individual ideas of the editor. Since his intention was not a comprehensive anthology, Deréky was bold enough to leave out those Avant-garde authors, or authors publishing in Avant-garde magazines, for whom he felt no special affinity.