Dezso Kosztolanyi, the Hungarian poet, novelist, short-story writer, critic and translator, played a prominent part in the cultural life of his native land, and for a time he was the center of heated controversies. His works are translated into English, Italian, French, German and other languages. His artistic consciousness determined his relationship to the Hungarian literary scene. Kosztolanyi was extremely word-conscious. He said that to play with words is to play with destiny. As a purifier of the Hungarian language, he emphasized the coordination of the nation's morality with the integrity of words. In his university years he was influenced by Professor Laszlo Negyesy's canons of Hungarian philology; and when Negyesy, at the age of seventy-two, renewed his campaign for linguistic purity, Kosztolanyi, then a recognized poet, joined this movement and added greatly to its success. He was not against neologisms, but against the corruption of the language.