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The Modernist as Primitive: The Cultural Role of Endre Ady in Fin-de-Siècle Hungary

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 February 2009

Abstract

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Type
Forum The Other Modernisms: Culture and Politics in East Central Europe
Copyright
Copyright © Center for Austrian Studies, University of Minnesota 2002

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References

1 Éva, Forgács, “Van-e kelet-europai müvészet? Passúth Krisztina: Avantgarde kapcsolatok Prágától Bukarestig 1907–1930Google Scholar, Mansbach, Steven A.: Modern Art in Eastern Europe from the Baltic to the Balkans, ca. 1890–1939” (Is there an Eastern European art? [Review essay of] Krisztina Passúth, Avant-Garde Links from Prague to Bucharest, 1907–1930Google Scholar, [and] Mansbach, Steven A., Modern Art in Eastern Europe from the Baltic to the Balkans, ca. 1890–1939), Buksz (fall 1999): 240.Google Scholar

2 Ibid., 241.

3 Scott, Spector, Prague Territories: National Conflict and Cultural Innovation in Franz Kafka's Fin de Siècle (Berkeley, 2000)Google Scholar; Judit, Frigyesi, Béla Bartók and Turn-of-the-Century Budapest (Berkeley, 1998).Google Scholar

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5 Péter, Hanák, A Kert és a mühely (The Garden and the workshop) (Budapest, 1988), 137.Google Scholar

6 Ibid., 165.

7 For a critique of Schorske's modernist model, see Scott, Spector, “Beyond the Aesthetic Garden: Politics and Culture on the Margins of Fin-de-Siècle Vienna,” The Journal of the History of Ideas, Oct. 1998Google Scholar; and Mary, Gluck, “Beyond Vienna 1900: Rethinking Culture in Central Europe,” Austrian History Yearbook 28 (1997): 217–22.Google Scholar

8 I am deliberately using “modernism” in the broadest definition of the term, to refer to the project of radical aesthetic autonomy that first made its appearance in Hungary in the first decade of the twentieth century. This is essentially a cultural category, which makes no attempt to differentiate between different moments of artistic innovation at the turn of the nineteenth century, often referred to under the rubric of decadence, high modernism, and avant-gardism. In the context of the argument of this paper, I felt that it was unnecessary to categorize Ady's relationship to these phenomena, since, in a sense, he both incorporated and transcended them all. For a detailed discussion of the line of demarcation between Hungarian modernism and avant-gardism, see Mary, Gluck, “Toward a Historical Definition of Modernism: Georg Lukács and the Avant-Garde,” Journal of Modern History 58 (12 1986).Google Scholar

9 Miklós, Havas, “Ady és a napisajtó” (Ady and the daily press) Huszadik Század, Aug. 1919, 119.Google Scholar

10 Georg, Lukács, “Ady Endre” (1909) in Magyar irodalom—Magyar kultúra (Hungarian literature—Hungarian culture) (Budapest, 1970), 51.Google Scholar

11 Ibid., 49, 45.

12 János, Horváth, Ady s a legújabb magyar lyra (Ady and the latest Hungarian poetry) (Budapest, 1910), 2223, 40.Google Scholar

13 Béla, Balázs, “Ady Endre mitologiaja” (The mythology of Endre Ady) Huszadik Század, Aug. 1919, 105–6.Google Scholar

14 See Mary, Gluck, “Interpreting Primitivism, Mass Culture and Modernism: The Making of Wilhelm Worringer's Abstraction and Empathy,” The New German Critique, no. 80 (spring/summer 2000).Google Scholar

15 See Marianna, Torgovnick, Gone Primitive: Savage Intellects, Modern Lives (Chicago, 1990).Google Scholar

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20 In the case of Bartók, it is evident that his primitivism transcended the ethnographic boundaries of the Hungarian people. Even in Ady's case, his identification with historic Hungary coexisted with a deep empathy with the oppressed peoples of East Central Europe and, after the outbreak of World War I, with the fate of humankind in general.

21 Ady, “A Magyar Pimodan,” in Ady Endre összes prózai művei, ed. Földessy, and Király, , 9:168.Google Scholar

22 Ady learned about the Hotel Pimodan through Theophile Gautier's 1867 preface to Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal. The preface, it seems, made a deep impression on him, for as late as 1917, he wrote, “I have once again been reading Theophile Gautier's prologue to Baudelaire's poems, for the hundredth time, perhaps.” Ady Endre összes prózai müvei, ed. Földessy and Király, 9:456.

23 One of Ady's biographers rightfully identified Ady's preference for the Három Holló in opposition to a more conventional coffeehouse as a symbol of Ady's alienation from the progressive literary elite of the time: “This was Ady's revolt against the literary monopoly of Budapest; the conflict of the city and Ady's apparently rural roots… It seemed as if Ady's tavern was pitted against the coffeehouse of Budapest; his glass of wine against the afternoon espresso.” György, Bölöni, Az igazi Ady (The real Ady) (Budapest, 1932), 210.Google Scholar

24 Ady, “A Magyar Pimodan,” in Ady Endre összes prózai müvei, ed. Földessy, and Király, , 9:162.Google Scholar

25 Lajos, Hatvany, “Irodalompolitika” (Literary politics), Nyugat, 1911, vol. 2, p. 174.Google Scholar

26 See Pierre, Bourdieu, The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field, trans. Susan, Emanuel (Stanford, 1996).Google Scholar

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31 “Disputa” (Disputes), Nyugat, 1912, 381.Google Scholar

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33 Ady to Hatvany, end of April 1913, quoted in Lajos, Hatvany, Ady Endre: Cikkek, emlékezések, levelek (Endre Ady: Articles, remembrances, letters) 2 vols. (Budapest, 1959), 1:248.Google Scholar

34 Endre, Ady, “Hun, új legenda' (New Legend of Hunnia), in Ady Endre összes versei (The Complete poems of Endre Ady) (Budapest, 1971), 1:724.Google Scholar

35 Franco, Moretti, Modern Epic: The World-System from Goethe to Garcia Marquez, trans. Quintin, Hoare (London, 1996).Google Scholar

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