Writer and publicist Sándor Zsigmond Papp is already beating the dust on me in his referendum publicism in connection with the Hungarian Nobel series. Written by Demeter Szilárd.
If I understand correctly, he assumes that if Krasznahorkai were to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, I would be upset because he was too cosmopolitan (for me), not Hungarian enough (where did I say that about him?!), and that I would long for the "real Hungarian" after acknowledgment of the writer".
My problem with this premeditated idiocy is basically that Zsigmond Sándor Papp doesn't understand what I said about it, because either he is too single-minded and assumes the same about me, or he hasn't read any further.
(The problem with these contemporary Hungarian literati, I have pointed out several times, is that they don't read, they just write.)
Because I have said and described in several places that this is already an old debate in Hungarian literature. János Arany put it in the best and most beautiful way, exactly what is the point. In order to spare Sándor Zsigmond Papp the tiresome and difficult task of clicking, I am copying Arany's brilliant poem here:
Cosmopolitan poetry
I'm not ashamed, I don't even regret
that, if I had to write,
my writing would be Hungarian
and it wouldn't go beyond the land of my country;
That it is not a miracle of "two worlds" -
I have only become one of my people:
His (if any) is the charm of my lute,
His is all the notes on me.
But spread your mighty
Language, your mother, your god!
It's a roaring price, it washes away everything,
Destroys and makes fertile:
But in a small race, which
stands in the way of this Destruction:
Let our people be poets, -
Because to desire: death is ready.
Or is there little glory here,
and it goes down to the grave with the nation?
Is such a priority small,
that the neighbor doesn't even suspect?
Is there no competition worthy of our strength?
Is there enough material for a song at home?
We can't fit in the continent,
should we also have Albion?...
Be a "world poet!"
Shake up the restful west:
Blessed is the cradle
that rocked me Hungarian;
From then on, with a thousand threads
I tie to my country in reserve:
With a pure abstract ideal
I would rather not even sing.
And where do you take your mourning mistake,
That
the great poet despises
stamp, what he engraved on it After all, I filmed it, at its best,
I once did a couple;
Everything was a mirror:
a people and a home appeared to me by themselves.
And don't think that
downtrodden peoples will die out suddenly,
and the national sentiment
unite You see danger, or the appearance of it,
Do you dare to appear in honor: Do you have the
to leave the holy flag
Oh, if with a more dignified and new coboz
I could still sing about
the mournful homeland Don't always complain!
But if I'm destined to lose, I
'll be among the Húnyó people in Ossia,
I'd rather not be a monster
My indifferent harmony!
Arany finished this poem in August 1877. Many things flashed in it, but what is important for us now is that Hungarian literature has not been understood by those who, like Zsigmond Sándor Papp, make the greatness of a writer's achievement a function of some external standard.
The more normal reader does not need the glare of the Nobel Prize to judge and enjoy the performance of Attila József, Endre Ady, János Pilinszky, or horribile dictu László Krasznahorkai.
It would be nice to get over the second-in-mind attitude that only the truly great creators are patted on the back by someone somewhere in the shiny West.
Believe me, Zsiga, even without a Nobel Prize, we would be able to recognize and recognize true achievement. Although to some extent I understand your uncertainty: in the case of Imre Kertész, the Hungarian profession, which judges the living and the dead with a sure hand, did not succeed.
