The New Past and Future

Short summary of articles
Two thousand and eight was a year of anniversaries and commemorations. We dedicated two issues each to the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of Israel and the hundredth anniversary of the founding of the journal Nyugat. These two events shed light on the fate and strategy of Jews, including Hungarian Jews. The case of the Nyugat illustrates the desire to assimilate, to adjust to Hungarian culture in a creative way, from a literary perspective. Alongside the Nyugat appeared the Mult es Jovo (1911-1944), edited by Jozsef Patai, which attempted to preserve and enhance Jewish identity within the context of modernization. It was this same spirit which accounts for the foundations of modern Israel - the beginnings of its intellectual foundation preceding the actual foundation of the state by many years; moreover, the process took place within the same geographic and cultural milieu as did assimilation, which had such a fateful outcome, albeit with stunning, scintillating intellectual achievements. This issue focuses on the examination of this none too simple network of connections.
Rudolf Klein, the Jewish historian of architecture of international renown, examines the visual style of the transition into the modern and its Jewish aspects in his essay, “A szecesszio: un gout juif?” [Secession, or art nouveau—was it a Jewish preference?] (Both the Nyugat and Mult es Jovo endorsed this style in their visual manifestations.) Peter Hars Gyorgy continues his major study, initiated in the first issue of this volume, on the ties between the Nyugat and the Hungarian association of psychoanalists [?] and culture, centering on the friendship and professional relations between the editor-in-chief Ignotus and Sandor Ferenczi. Petra Horvath introduces us to a less well-known author from the Nyugat circle, Oliver Brachfeld, who was particularly interested in both psychology and Spanish literature. Noemi Sally, historian of the coffee-house, enumerates and describes the coffee-houses frequented by the editors and authors of the Nyugat. This “bourgeois” stratum and this cult of exceptional significance added value to the flowering of modern Hungarian culture. (The practitioner of this unusual yet all the more important branch of cultural history has just been awarded the Pro Urbe prize by the mayor of Budapest, and congratulations are in order). Clara Royer, a young French researcher (who has just obtained her Ph.D. from the Sorbonne with a dissertation on the topic of Hungarian Jewish literature), examines the works of Karoly Papp and Andor Gelleri in the light of their conflicted relations with their respective fathers, under the shadow of Franz Kafka. Katalin Fenyves takes a look at the few existing monographs of the subject of the Nyugat, stressing the Jewish features of the social background of each. Our issue introduces the sons of two Nyugat authors. Matyas Sarkozi, who lives in London, evokes the role of his grandfather, the playwright Ferenc Molnar, and of his father, Gyorgy Sarkozi, as members of the Nyugat circle. Mario Fenyo, who lives in the United States, the son of one of the founders (Miksa Fenyo)-- who is also the author of one of those monographs on the Nyugat,-- evokes his recollections of and his multiple-layered relations with the journal, on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of its founding. Janos Kobanyai sketches the parallel roads taken by the Nyugat and Mult es Jovo, as a thesis/antithesis rapport, notwithstanding their many common features and shared authors. Jozsef Krupp wrote a review essay on Dezso Tandori’s book and living experience of the poet Erno Szep [ I hope I understood this correctly] . (We salute the poet Tandori on the occasion of his 70th birthday). The historian of music Judit Frigyesi, who lives in Jerusalem, writes about the Nyugat as a forum on music; she writes under the pseudonym Judit Niran, to distinguish her role as historian from her literary activities. (We reserve the right to publish a comprehensive study of the Nyugat as a venue for fine and plastic arts—indeed, so many Nyugat topics have yet to be examined). The selection from the Russian writer and painter Nikoda Singer, who also lives in Jerusalem, was included in this issue because Geza Csath is the fictional protagonist of the story. The writer and music critic Csath and his fate, belonging to the golden age of the Nyugat, impressed the Russian writer via an English translation of one of his works, will be discussed in future issues. The invisible ties between the Nyugat and Mult es Jovo are also referred to in hitherto unpublished poems by Karoly Pap and Aladar Komlos, which enrich our collection by their almost geometric precision. Gyorgy Gomori (from London) enlivens his relations with Aladar Komlos by allowing us a peek into his private correspondence.
Gorgy Nemeth’s contribution evokes the memory of Istvan Hahn, one of the few scholars who presented the Hungarian Jewish spirit, in all its versatility, from before the holocaust to the generations after the holocaust.

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Content

Károly Pap: It is Hard for Me

Rudolf Klein: Secession: un gou^ t juif?

Saly, Noémi: The Coffee-houses of the Nyugat and its Circle

Péter György Hárs: Psychoanalysis in the Nyugat II.

Horváth, Petra: The Case of Olivér Brachfeld with Ramón Gómez de la Serna

Aladár Komlós: Poems

Royer, Clara: From Paternal Law to Mother’s Writing (how Károly Papp and Andor Endre Gelléri depicted the father)

Katalin Fenyves: The “Jewishness” of the Nyugat

Sárközi, Mátyás: Ferenc Molnár, György Sárközi and the Nyugat

Fenyő, Mario: Random Thoughts on the Anniversary of the Nyugat

Zinger, Nekod: The briefcase of man-made materials

Niran, Judit: Three Sketches for Osvát, or the Nyugat and Music

János Kőbányai: The Nyugat and Múlt és Jövő

József Krupp: The great “Reading of Ernő Szép”

Gömöri, György: Letters from Aladár Komlós

Német, György: István Hahn and Appianos

Eszter Dallos: Observer

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