3. Populist Prose-Writers

János Kodolányi (1899-1969) was in his class background an outsider like Németh. But unlike Németh, Kodolányi devoted his energies to laying bare the social maladies of the peasantry in one particular region only, in Ormánság.*Ormánság: a region in south-west Transdanubia, marked by its dialect and popular customs. His powerfully written short stories (e.g. ‘Darkness’, 1922) describe this dark world with ruthless sobriety and gloomy naturalism. It was Kodolányi who called attention to the suicidal demographic changes prevalent there. In Ormánság children were considered as a curse responsible for poverty; more than one child in a family was certainly a problem, since the small estate of the parents would have to be split up among them, resulting even in greater poverty than the parents’ generation had experienced. Remedy was found in procreating one child only (egyke) and in abortion. Kodolányi’s observations in Ormánság were decisive for his creative career; the depressing reality he found there contradicted the existence of the mythical őserő in the peasantry or the Rousseauesque view of man’s ‘inherent goodness’. It also led him to document repugnant detail in most of his writings; he often describes figures who are cruel, deformed, or infected with loathsome, incurable diseases.

His morbid obession with the ugly side of the peasants’ life seems to have subsided by the 1930s; many of Kodolányi’s other works were autobiographical in inspiration, and in these the dark images were not unequivocally pessimistic. His optimism, however, was plagued by irrational hopes, which he himself often recognized. This produced a defense-mechanism, turning to the past in order to evoke the atmosphere of bygone ages in historical novels, of which The Sons of Iron (1936), Blessed Margaret (1937), and Friar Julian (1938), were set in the Middle Ages in Hungary, and all contain a wealth of ethnographical information. Their special merit is a linguistic feat, an individual recreation of archaic spoken Hungarian. Kodolányi’s excursions into the past were yet another example of the national obsession with history, of the constant search for a lesson which might be profitable for the present. In his case the lesson was found in the medieval Hungarian peasants’ will to survive at all costs during the Tartar invasion of 1241.

Kodolányi’s preoccupation with preserving the vital energies of the nation and with the survival of ethnic identity on the eve of World War II came from his recognition of the dangerous geographical position of his country in the event of a Russian-German confrontation. His obsessions, however, led him to a distorted perception of the world, and consequently to self-deception. While the young Kodolányi sympathized with leftist movements, after the Communist takeover he found it difficult to come to terms with the regime, which in any case frowned upon his brand of nationalism. In his last years he rewrote his autobiography, and became absorbed in the symbolism of the early myths of mankind, going further and further back in time, using the Old Testament or an Assyrian epic about the Flood as a source for his last novels.

Of the genuine peasant-writers, Pá1 Szabó (1893-1970) made his debut quite late-he was thirty-seven when he published People of the Plain (1930). His main concern was the fate of those peasants who struggle to leave the poverty-stricken village with its narrow horizon. Full of class hatred, Szabó’s heroes are bound to a treadmill existence which eventually wear out their energies. These uneven novels show his forthright sincerity and simple dignity, but they are marred by mannerisms and loose construction. The trilogy, Wedding (1942), Baptism (1942), and Cradle (1943), later issued under the title: The Soil Under Your Feet (1949), is written with great emotional intensity, and is probably his best work. Szabó’s works contain no irrational or mystic concepts; his down-to-earth realism tolerates no intricate plots; his only indulgence concerns crude passions, a mark of the influence of Móricz. The carving up of large estates after 1945 filled him with expectations, and he set out to describe the new way of life of the peasantry now that they were no longer choked in the stranglehold of great landowners. His eagerness, however, produced disappointing books (e.g. New Land, 1953); he crammed the details of a rosy future into his novels, but they remained sadly lacking in artistic plausibility.

A good populist novel was written by Dénes Barsi (1905-68), whose association with the movement is now often ignored. He edited The People of the East (1935-42), an early organ of the népi writers, with Pál Szabó for a time; after World War II he was silenced, and worked as a kubikos. His belated novel Jehovah’s Witness (1957) is both a document of the 1930s-describing with sure psychological insight religious frenzy among agricultural workers as their only way to escape from the realities of their down-trodden existence – and a well-composed novel, written in a dramatically terse style, and marked by compassion and an all-pervading intensity.

The sensibilities of a landless peasant found an outlet in the works of Péter Veres (1897-1970). Burdened with the trauma of his illegitimate birth and with bitter childhood experiences, Veres rebelled by joining the agrarian socialist movement when very young. His first attempts at writing were documents of the poverty-stricken existence of the landless poor. Of little formal education, Veres regarded writing as a course of self-education, his only guidance being common sense, and a strong commitment to his own class. He found his comrades among the népi writers, and became a spokesman of their radical left-wing. His main virtue as a writer is a keen eye for detail, and the compelling urgency with which he describes the world of farm labourers and their lot. His best works are autobiographical: Accounting (1937), and A Village Chronicle (1941).

After World War II he took an active part in public life as a chairman of the Peasant Party, Minister of Defence, and later president of the Writers’ Union. His belief in socialism remained unshaken even during the Stalinist era; both his friends and enemies admired his moral uprightness as much as they were amused by his showmanship – he never wore a tie, and appeared at receptions in the ‘Sunday best’ of a peasant, complete with shiny black boots. This proud assertion of his social origin was not only a self-protecting device against the corruption of power; it also characterized his unpretentious intellectual approach. Far from being influenced by snobbery, Veres reexamined literary, political, and sociologial ideas for himself, and had the courage to disagree with the sophisticated, as his essays show. His most ambitious attempt at writing a novel, Three Generations (1950-57), failed largely beause of its colourless plot and a lack of unity in its composition. His straightforward honesty often turned sour in his other works, written during the bleak 1950s when uncritical adulation of official policies was the order of the day.

József Darvas (1912-73) came from the same depths of society as Veres, and had definite Marxist sympathies. Some of his novels (e.g. From Twelfth Night to New Year’s Eve, 1934) display craftsmanship, although they are often without that penetration which is the hallmark of the true artist. Not that he lacked compassion or a keen eye; these qualities, however, came out best in his sociological reportage. In The Largest Hungarian Village (1937) he wrote about his native Orosháza (south of the Lowlands), and in A History of a Peasant Family (1939) he produced a moving family chronicle, based on research in parish archives and on family traditions. After 1945 he became involved in public life, and left literature for politics. He was one of the few writers whose Communist creed remained unshaken by the revolution of 1956, and he wrote his last works as a vindication of his decision to remain loyal to the Party, having managed to extricate himself from the moral dilemma with an apparently unscathed conscience (Smoky Sky, play, 1959 and Drunken Rain, novel, 1963).

Sociological reportage*In English literature only George Orwell wrote a similar work: The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), commissioned by the Left Book Club. was perhaps the most impressive outcome of the népi movement, and those writers who cultivated this genre were called ‘village explorers’ (falukutatók). While Németh dreamed about a ‘garden Hungary’, and the peasant writers graphically described their sufferings, the village explorers set out to unearth and size up the realities of village existence with the tools of social science. The falukutatók were politically the most conscious and radical of the népi writers. Sociological reportage had some antecedents: Lajos Nagy, for example, wrote Kiskunhalom, but did not voice the same passionate plea for improvement as did the works of the village explorers, a plea which made a national issue of the condition of the peasantry.

The youngest generation of the népi writers were relentless in their criticism of these conditions. The opening of the book fair* Könyvnap. Initiated by a journalist in 1927, book fairs are held annually to promote quality books and to provide young authors with an occasion to meet the public. Since 1952 it has been known as a könyvhét. in 1936 was marked by an explosive account by Zoltán Szabó (1912-84), The Situation at Tard. It described the day-to-day existence of a village in the Mátra Mountains, together with the relevant sociological, historical, ethnographic, and demographic background. The book implied that the establishment was responsible for the social condition and economic backwardness of the villagers. As a result of the wide publicity, a series entitled The Discovery of Hungary was launched, edited by György Sárközi. In it young authors described different regions of the country, with bewilderingly similar results. Imre Kovács (1913-80) wrote Silent Revolution (1937), Géza Féja (1900-78) Stormy Corner (1937), and Ferenc Erdei (1910-71) Drifting Sand (1937). These books, together with Kodolányi’s account of Ormánság and the personal narratives of Veres and Darvas already referred to, constituted a political indictment by virtue of their disclosures of the ‘secrets’ of the Hungarian terra incognita. Moreover, nothing contrasted better with the escapism of traditional historical fiction produced by popular authors than the stark reality of those social ills for which a remedy had urgently to be found. Committed writers once more proved that the pen was mightier than the sword. While official disapproval resulted in at least one case of persecution (Féja was indicted for ‘slandering the nation’, ‘nemzetgyalázás*The law protecting ‘the reputation of the nation’ against slander or vilification was enacted in Law III:7 (1921), as a measure to silence criticism.’, and his book confiscated), the conscience of the intelligentsia was awakened, and when the népi writers produced a common platform for action (March Front*An allusion to 15 March 1848, when revolution broke out. 1937) they obtained a wide response.

That the opposition thus kindled eventually lost its appeal was not the népi writers’ fault; the socio-political reasons were complex, and their explanation would go far beyond the scope of a survey of literature. The populists’ participation was, however, indispensible to any form of political opposition, a fact which had to be admitted even by the Communists who, in any case, could boast no popular support. While at the outset populist ideology had no contact with either Fascism or Communism, subsequent history saw the reorientation of the village explorers. Some espoused the cause of the National Socialists, but most of them, after 1945 when the class structure of the Hungarian society was broken up, came to believe in the possibility of a social revolution, particularly after the returning Muscovite Communists launched the partitioning of the great estates. After the Communist takeover, Szabó and Kovács left Hungary (the former lived in Brittany, the latter lived in New York), but all the others accepted the status quo and became prominent in intellectual life.