HUNGARIAN STUDIES 20. No. 1. Nemzetközi Magyar Filológiai Társaság. Akadémiai Kiadó Budapest [2006]

Mihály Szegedy-Maszák: Hungarian Writers in the 1956 Revolution

MIHÁLY SZEGEDY-MASZÁK gary in the period between 1957 and 1989 with no trace of political concessions. On a personal note, I could mention that nowadays I participate in the monthly meetings of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences with an old colleague who cen­sored my publications in the 1960s, 70s, and even 80s. The latent, "deep down" thing is our mutual wonderment as to what we may remember. I may give him rope and yet at the same time remain tied. On one occasion, Péter Esterházy, whose works I admire, seemed to thank me that I never made him aware that I knew that his father was a spy, although he sent reports about my family that I did not care to read after the documents had been released. The words "you are both the prison-keeper and the prisoner" and "every one is a link in the chain" may strike us as prophetic for a long period. This prophecy about the inevitable conse­quences of everyone's active function as a wheel in the machine of the totalitarian system distinguishes One Sentence on Tyranny from the pseudo-confessional and/or bombastic declarations of second-rate versifiers and journalists who have done an excellent job in exploiting and manipulating the memory of the 1956 rev­olution. Illyés's French culture, his initiations of intelligence and experience, if one will, to say nothing of his work as a translator, make for me a sort of figure who wished to avoid both provincialism and superficial internationalism. It is im­portant that what we may learn from One Sentence on Tyranny, we learn less about the early 1950s than about the years that followed the date of its composi­tion. I seem to run here the risk of a bit of exposure to the charge of more or less re­peating what Márai wrote in exile, but it may be important to state that, whether designedly or not, the bulk of the Hungarian population betrayed the revolution in the decades that followed 1956. Of course, the blame should be put on the West­ern reluctance to help rather than on the lethargy of those who survived those de­cades as citizens of a Warsaw-Pact country. In any case, 1956 promotes infinite reflection, makes a hundred queer and ugly things glare at us right and left. References Csicsery-Rónai, István (ed.) (1996) Költök forradalma: Antológia 1'953-1956. 3rd ed. Budapest: Occidental Press. Dikán, Nóra (ed.) (1993) Az 1956-os forradalom utáni megtorlás Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg megyei dokumentumai. Nyíregyháza: Jósa András Múzeum. írók lázadása: Az 1956-os írószövetségi jegyzökönyvek (1990). Budapest: MTA Irodalomtudo­mányi Intézet. Standeisky, Éva (2005) '1956: Irodalom a forradalomban. Az Irodalmi Újság november 2-i száma' (typescript). Szegedy-Maszák, Mihály (1994) Ottlik Géza. Pozsony: Kalligram.

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