The personal legacy of "Thália the unruly fairy" is revealed by students from Cluj.
The legacy of the iconic actress Kiss Manyi, born in Transylvania, located in Cluj, containing her personal correspondence, photographs, and documents, is being researched and popularized by university students within the Master's Program in Applied Media Sciences of Babeș-Bolyai University. Henrietta Szabó-Kádár, a first-year master's student, spoke to Krónika about the processing of the legacy, the face of the famous actress emerging from the documents, and her connection to Transylvania.
The personal legacy of Kiss Manyi Kossuth and Jászai Mari prize-winning actress, worthy and excellent artist (1911. Magyarlóna - 1971. Budapest), also called "Thália's most unruly fairy", can be found in the Szabédi Memorial House in the treasured city.
Private documents, including letters, documents, and photographs. These are researched and processed by university students within the framework of the Applied Media Studies Master's Program of the Babeș–Bolyai University.
The Kiss Manyi legacy was discovered in 2008 by theater historian Zsuzsa Szebeni in Hatvan, following the previous exhibition in Cluj-Napoca and Zágoni, where it was placed in an attic due to the death of the actress' partner, "Úr Núl", and where it hid for decades. Since Manyi Kiss was closely connected to Transylvania, in consultation with József Kötő, the Transylvanian Hungarian Public Association (EMKE) purchased the material with his help. The primary processing was already done then, and a volume and an exhibition entitled "Thália's Unruly Fairy" were created.
The university students started processing the Kiss Manyi legacy about half a year ago, and since then they have gained a good insight into how to process a legacy professionally, said the university student from Sepsiszentgyörgy.
Manyi Kiss, who spent her childhood in Zágon in Triszék, returned to Székelyland often and gladly even after moving to Hungary. Henrietta said that she and her classmates got involved in the legacy processing work. "The goal of the project is to be able to show people a more personal picture of Kiss Manyi, so that they can learn more about him than if they only saw him on film. Everyone knows that she was a great actress, that she started from Transylvania, and then became well-known in Hungary, but less is known about what kind of person she was, where she went on vacation, where she traveled, who she was friends with. So we don't want to show his acting career as much as his personal side by revealing his legacy," stated the master's student.
As he said, the legacy is being researched and processed within the ranks of the Szabédi Memorial House.
The institution promotes the research of Hungarian literature in Transylvania and Romania after 1918, and aims to create a collection where various writers' legacies can be preserved and made accessible, on which a research workshop with its own concept can be built.
Henrietta Szabó-Kádár said that the estate practically contains a lot of paper-based documents: private correspondence, numerous photos from the actress's personal archive, scene sheets from the various performances in which she played.
By the way, exhibitions on the career of the actress Manyi Kiss have been opened several times in several locations in Transylvania: the public could see a centenary exhibition on the 100th anniversary of the actress' birth in the Székely National Museum in Sepsiszentgyörgy, as well as in Zágon, the location of her childhood years - the material for this can also be found in the Szabédi Memorial House.
Zágon and the family were very important to Manyi Kiss: he returned to the Székelyföld village every summer, and his art was also rooted in this soil.
"Although objects and pictures can only be faint impressions of a person's life, from the point of view of an artist's career, they are still a concrete tool for preserving memories. They can help ensure that the actress, one of the greatest talents of 20th-century Hungarian acting, is preserved in a dignified way in the memory of both the village and the visitors," said the organizers of the centenary exhibition, which could also be seen in Cluj-Napoca. In 2021, on the occasion of the 110th anniversary of Kiss Manyi's birth, the Sepsiszentgyörgy Hungarian Cultural Institute together with the Budapest National Theater History Museum and Institute and the Vadon Egyesület presented an outdoor exhibition on Sepsiszentgyörgy.
Henrietta Szabó-Kádár also spoke about the fact that the estate includes, among other things, telegrams of condolence addressed to the actress's husband, János Bakonyi, the death certificate of Manyi Kiss, and many other documents.
The university students who discovered the legacy a Facebook and Instagram page, where they shared and continue to share various interesting things, and they also want to dedicate a website to Kiss Manyi's legacy.
"Based on the examination of the documents, it became clear to us that he was a very cheerful and sociable person, traveled a lot with his friends and loved to live. There are a lot of photos in the legacy that show him laughing and smiling cheerfully, and it also turned out to us that he really loved animals," the university student explained. He also talked about how, following the study of the legacy, it was also outlined that the actress, although she was ill in her last years, hid this from those around her. She didn't tell anyone, only her husband, János Bakonyi, knew, with whom she swore on her deathbed: she loved this man so much that she invited the priest to her deathbed, to marry them so that she would die as if they were husband and wife.
Henrietta Szabó-Kádár also said that the estate also contained letters from Kiss Manyi's secret Transylvanian admirer,
in which the man, whose name is withheld, informs the artist that during his visit to Budapest, he eavesdropped on the conversation of a group of actors sitting in a café, one of whose members, actress Szondi Biri, said unflattering words about Kiss Manyi.
But the legacy also reveals how much he enjoyed returning to Zágon on vacation in Székelyföld with a group of friends, this landscape was also emotionally important to him, he preserved his Székelyföld self.
Henrietta Szabó-Kádár also explained what the most important guidelines are for the professional work of researching legacies. "The first and most important requirement in this exploration work is precision. So you have to pay close attention to what you put where, since there are many legacies waiting to be processed in one place, and documents can easily be mixed up. It must be organized precisely by category: private letter, official document, private photos, etc., so that the material is clearly transparent," explained the master's student.
Cover image: Kiss Manyi
Source: Fortepan/Zoltán Szalay
