A balancing act: a decoration for Imre Kertész and another for his right-wing foe

The debate about Imre Kertész’s acceptance of the Order of St. Stephen is slowly subsiding. There were important voices on the left, Ágnes Heller and Tamás Ungvári among them, who decided that since Imre Kertész is a great writer and the only Hungarian Nobel Prize winner in literature he richly deserves the highest decoration that can be awarded by any Hungarian government. In this view, it really doesn’t matter that between 1940 and 1944 several war criminals received the Order of St. Stephen.

Others who are  less forgiving  hope that Imre Kertész, given his illness and possible mental impairment, simply didn’t realize that this award was the Orbán government’s cynical answer to the unsavory reputation it acquired as the leading force in the falsification of the history of the Hungarian Holocaust. Honoring Kertész was conceived as a way to blunt the sharp clash between the Hungarian government and the domestic and international Jewish communities.

But trying to appease one group was guaranteed to outrage another. The Orbán government knew that there would be an outcry in extreme right-wing circles following the decision to award such a high honor to someone whom they consider to be not a member of the nation.

In order to “balance” things they opted to bestow a lesser decoration on a man of extreme political views. The Hungarian government settled on Mihály Takaró, who is supposed to be a “poet and literary historian.”

Takaró’s mission in life is the propagation of Hungary’s “banished literature.” Members of this banished group are writers of the interwar period who in Takaró’s opinion were supremely talented but because of their political views were barred from Hungary’s literary corpus.

The decoration Takaró received is a modest one, called Magyar Érdemrend Lovagkereszt (polgári tagozat), something I’m not even going to try to translate. It is given out twice a year: on March 15 and August 20. Each time at least 30-40 people receive it as a token of the government’s appreciation. In this case presumably one reason for the appreciation is that Takaró was among those who consider Kertész to be a mediocre writer and not a member of the Hungarian nation.

Takaró, who until fairly recently was just a humble high school teacher, is now on the faculty of the Gáspár Károli Hungarian Reformed University, which seems to be a gathering place for people of decidedly rightist views. Takaró’s time arrived with Viktor Orbán’s second administration when he had his own series entitled “Száműzött irodalom” (Banished Literature) on the state Duna TV.  The work of members of this group, in Takaró’s opinion, is among the greatest in Hungarian literature. For example, in an interview he gave on HírTV after receiving the decoration, he talked about Wass and Nyirő as equals of Sándor Petőfi and Attila József.

Featured in the series is an odd assortment of writers. Some, like Albert Wass  and József Nyirő, were members of or very close to Ferenc Szálasi’s Hungarist movement. Others, like Cecile Tormay, were rabid anti-Semites. And there were conservative writers, representatives of the Horthy regime’s “official literature” like Ferenc Herczeg. These writers are not considered by literary historians to be great. But Takaró also included a couple of poets of real talent who were there only because they were from Transylvania, by then in Romanian hands. All in all, Takaró’s series on Duna TV can be considered to be officially sponsored far-right propaganda. Some of the episodes can be seen on YouTube.

Here are a couple of them that should give readers a sense of Takaró’s mission. The first is about Albert Wass.

And here is another one on Cecile Tormay.

Takaró, in addition to his decidedly extremist views, has odd ideas about literary merit in general. He claims that the worth of a writer shouldn’t be determined by literary critics in later generations but by their popularity and acceptance by their contemporaries. In this view bestsellers of the 1920s and 1930s, like the works of Miklós Harsányi or Julianna Zsigray, should be judged to be better and more valuable than those of Attila József, who was almost an unknown but today is considered to be the greatest Hungarian poet.

Takaró complains bitterly about the falsification of the works of Hungarian classics–he specifically mentions Mihály Babits–whose irredentist utterances were unceremoniously left out even from “critical editions.” Very true. But what Takaró does not mention is that the Kádár regime’s self-censoring literary critics did the same thing to the works of such writers as János Kodolányi or László Németh, who became fully accepted writers by the regime although both had more than a slight brush with extreme right views in the 1930s. In their collected works the editors simply left out or rewrote passages that gave away their unsavory pasts.

HírTV invited Takaró for a fifteen-minute talk after he received his award. During the interview the question of literary worth and the writer’s political views was discussed. Perhaps the two should be completely separated, said the reporter. This was an opportunity for Takaró to get out of a sticky situation, especially when it came to his evangelizing for Hungarists like Wass and Nyirő. But our literary historian refused to budge. No, when judging an artist that person should be taken as a whole, including his political views. So Takaró is rehabilitating not only literary works but political ideologies as well.

In fact, one has the distinct feeling that Takaró’s main concern is the political views of these people and not the literary merit of their work. Moreover, he does not restrict his campaign to right-wing writers but often ventures into the field of history. Among his available lectures on YouTube there is a long appreciation of Miklós Horthy.

I doubt whether the extreme right will be satisfied with the decoration of one of their own as a consolation prize for the Order of St. Stephen for Imre Kertész. Even so, this government’s well practiced navigation through the treacherous waters of the far right never ceases to amaze me.

Ákos Kertész granted political asylum in Canada

The Hungarian media is stunned. Ákos Kertész, a Kossuth Prize-winning Hungarian author, received political asylum in Canada because he feared for his life after he wrote an article in  Amerikai Népszava, published in New York and available on the Internet. I wrote two articles about the Kertész case, the first on September 7, 2011, shortly after the appearance of the controversial article, and the second on March 4, 2012, right after the news spread in Hungarian Internet circles that Kertész had arrived in Montreal on February 29 and had turned to immigration authorities asking for political asylum.  A Hungarian-language press release was sent to Hungarian media organs officially announcing Kertész’s arrival in Canada.

Following the appearance of Ákos Kertész’s open letter in the Amerikai-Magyar Népszava [on August 29, 2011] a hate campaign was launched against him not only in the City Council of Budapest but also in Parliament. At the insistence of Jobbik, the anti-Semite Hungarian Nazi party, the City Council’s pro-government majority deprived him of his Freedom of Budapest award. The pro-government media openly incited the extremists against him. As a result he was exposed to constant physical harassment and threats. He was physically attacked in public. He felt that his life was in danger.

There must be grave reasons for an eighty-year-old writer who is attached to his birthplace in a million ways to come to such a decision and to take such a step full of risks. Kertész’s case says a lot about a country from which a writer must escape because of one of his writings. 

Kertész said, ‘I came to this conclusion with grave difficulty because for me the Hungarian language means life. Hungary is my birthplace, my home. I made this painful decision not against Hungary and the Hungarian people with whom I always shared the same fate. I was forced to make this decision because of the current Hungarian government. I hope that one day I will be able to return to a democratic, tolerant, humane Hungary.’ Otherwise, for the time being the writer is not going to make public statements concerning his decision.

What did Ákos Kertész do that so upset the Hungarian government, the leadership of the City of Budapest, and the right-wing media? In an open letter he bitterly complained about Hungarians who are “genetically servile”and who therefore allow the dictatorial Viktor Orbán to rule over them. He compared his fellow Hungarians to pigs who for the slop the farmer puts in front of them happily grunt, not realizing that they will be killed.

You can imagine what the reaction to this letter was. Although he admitted that his choice of the word “genetically” made no sense, the attacks on him continued for about six months. When it became known that Kertész had asked for political asylum in Canada, Szentkorona Rádió, a far-right Internet publication, included a picture of a pig with the caption: “He can go to Canada to grunt.”

At that time I noted that Kertész’s arrival in Canada and his description of his experiences before his departure might have an adverse effect on the Orbán’s government’s standing in the West. Because from there on it doesn’t matter how often government officials or Fidesz politicians try to convince the world that there is no anti-Semitism in Hungary, it will be very difficult to maintain that fiction.

Ákos Kertész at home in Canada

Now that Kertész  has been granted refugee status in Canada that fiction is definitely dead. The Canadian government’s decision ratifies the claim that if the Hungarian authorities and certain segments of the Hungarian public find that criticism by a Hungarian with Jewish roots is “unfair,” they harass, threaten, and physically attack him. This is what happened to Kertész, who is 80 years old and “does not wish to fight any longer,” as he told Anna Porter, who wrote a short article dealing with his political asylum status in Maclean’s.

Many of Kertész’s books–there are about twenty all told–have been translated into multiple languages, though not into English. I learned from Anna Porter’s article that his best known novel, Makra, will be published shortly in Canada.

Kertész has begun a new life in Canada, which he considers to be “an island of peace and tolerance.” Kertész wrote a longer article, the first since his arrival in Canada, for Amerikai Népszava in which he expressed his “deep gratitude to Canada” and thank to his old and new friends, including the editor-in-chief of the paper, László Bartus. He called Amerikai Népszava “the bravest Hungarian paper which is the most consistent representative of human rights [and] liberal democracy” and praised its readership for their democratic, tolerant and intelligent comments. This readership appreciates Ákos Kertész’s devotion to democracy and his bravery for taking such a big step. It is worth taking a look at the comments that follow his article. They wish him all the luck and happiness in his new country. So do I.

Was Ferenc Kölcsey, author of the Hungarian national anthem, gay?

Although I realize there is great interest in Viktor Obán’s trip to London, I’m going to turn my attention elsewhere today. But before moving on, I would like to call your attention to an interview with Orbán that appeared in The Daily Telegraph today. Some readers of Hungarian Spectrum have already discussed this interview in the comments section, but, if you haven’t read it yet, it is definitely worth taking a look at. I might add here that the prime minister’s office was quick to charge that the Telegraph‘s reporter falsified certain parts of the interview. The specific passage the spokesman referred to concerns the reporter’s question whether “he could become an authoritarian strongman, the Vladimir Putin of his country,” to which he answered: “The risk is there. . . though it is much smaller if Hungary is economically successful.” “He thinks,” the reporter continued, “that circumstances have changed.”

Today I’m turning to a nineteenth-century poet, the author of the lyrics of Hungary’s national anthem, Ferenc Kölcsey (1790-1838), who became a minor online sensation in the wake of a literary historian’s revelation that most likely the greatly revered Kölcsey was gay.

Now you have to understand that the literature on Kölcsey is enormous and there is nothing he ever wrote, as far as we know, that remains unpublished. His early love poems may not have identified the object of his love, but his letters did. Since 1960 his surviving letters, all 420 of them, have been available. Among these letters are several addressed to Pál Szemere, a fellow poet, which indicate that Kölcsey’s love poems were most likely were written to him.

Ferenc Kölcsey, portrait by Anton Einsle, 1835 / Wikipedia.org

There were other reasons to suspect possible homosexuality. We know a great deal about Kölcsey’s life but nothing about any female companions. Here and there in some of his poems he talks about a mysterious “girl,” but that girl is nameless and faceless. We also know about his melancholic nature and his references to his unfulfilled desires. But literary historians simply didn’t want to dwell on the secret life of one of Hungary’s great poets. The author of the national anthem’s lyrics was untouchable. At least until now.

Krisztián Nyáry, a literary historian, is in the middle of publishing a series of books devoted to the great love affairs of Hungarian poets and writers. He promotes his books by publishing short “teasers” on Facebook. It was here that the other day he had a post on Kölcsey. Nyáry identified at least two men Kölcsey most likely was in love with. The first was Ferenc Kállay, a schoolmate of Kölcsey in the famous Calvinist Debrecen Kollégium, where the orphaned boy was sent at the age of six. We know relatively little about their relationship because no early correspondence between the two survived. About the second, however, Pál Szemere, a fellow poet and writer, we know a lot. I was able to read Kölcsey’s letters to Szemere and have no doubt that Nyáry correctly analyzed his feelings. The letters are available on the Internet. Szemere’s letters to Kölcsey are not so easy to access. As far as I could ascertain, in this country they are available only in Columbia University’s Butler Library.

According to Nyáry, Kölcsey’s passionate love was not returned by Szemere, who looked upon Kölcsey as a good friend and not more. Szemere was known to be a ladies’ man, and about three years after he met Kölcsey he got married. When Kölcsey learned about the impending marriage, he wrote and sent to Szemere a poem entitled “Jegyváltó” (Engagement): “„Mért e reszkető könyű szememben? / Mért ez édes órán új remény? / Bájos arcod, százszor boldog álom, / A múltban s jövőben nem találom.” (Why the fluttering tears in my eyes? / Why is there new hope in this sweet hour? / Your charming face is a hundred times a happy dream, / I cannot find in the past and the future.) And he finished his letter with these words:  „Ölellek véghetetlen szerelemmel, mint mátkád ölelni soha sem foghat – ez a szív nem a lyánykájé.” (I embrace you with infinite love as your betrothed never will–this heart does not belong to that girl.) I don’t think that he could have been more explicit.

The fact that Kölcsey had homosexual desires is not the important issue. Many poets and writers did, and this is not why I decided to talk about this case. What is important here is Hungarian society’s total inability to handle the issue of homosexuality. Surely, no scholar who ever dealt with Kölcsey’s oeuvre could have missed the obvious signs in his letters to Szemere. Yet they decided to ignore them or even to hide them from the public. The result is a misinterpretation of Kölcsey’s literary work, which centered on his contemplation of issues of love, friendship, and love of country. As Nyáry says, once he recovered from his unrequited love of Szemere, he devoted his life to the betterment of his country. As if he transferred his love from a person to the homeland and its people.

So far only the Internet crowd and the few papers that picked up the story have been buzzing about Kölcsey. I can hardly wait to see when Hungary’s literary establishment will discuss the matter. I’m curious what kind of explanations will be offered.