3. Neo-Catholic Literature

Although Catholic devotion continued to find an outlet in literature long after the Middle Ages, particularly in the works of Cardinal Pázmány or Count Zrínyi, Hungarian literature became wholly secular from the Age of Enlightenment. In the late nineteenth century there appeared poets whose main themes were derived from religious piety and developed in the form of moral exhortation. They were all devoted servants of the Catholic Church; their poetry, however, did not attain the level of secular poetry. It was only at the beginning of this century that religious experience inspired works of merit, although Hungarian Catholic poetry never reached that intensity which characterizes, for example, the religious renewal in French literature after Baudelaire, because it often lacked the soul-searching and self-torment which make the French Catholic writers’ search for refuge in religion a genuinely personal and poetic quest.

Catholic renewal fostered the new outlook of the Catholic Review (1887-1944*Catholic Review was re-established in Rome as a quarterly in 1949. It is edited by Gellért Békés (1915-1999), himself a poet and an accomplished philologist, whose translation of the New Testament (with P. Dalos, Rome, 1951) into modern Hungarian received acclaim. Catholic Review commands authority among Catholic Hungarians living abroad; its distribution is, however, barred in Hungary.); from the 1930s onwards, this journal contributed to the popularization of the modern Catholic spirit and ideals. On the literary scene, however, Vigilia (1935- ) achieved prominence by offering scope to a new breed of Catholic writers who preached values until then very unfamiliar to the mainstream of Hungarian literature, which had always concerned itself with social reality, and on the whole lacked metaphysical inspiration. In addition Vigilia offered its pages to authors of the second and third generations of Nyugat, in a common protest against the new barbarism which was spreading on the Continent with awesome speed.

The Catholic revival was heralded by the poetry of Lajos Harsányi (1883-1955), whose early verses reveal Ady’s influence in both imagery and language (On New Waters, 1908). His mature poetry developed from a sincere devotion to his calling as a priest, and an admiration for the solemn splendour of the Church and its traditions; in the background of this religious experience the reader always finds the tranquillity of the Baroque churches and the scenery of Harsányi’s native, rural Transdanubia. He also attempted to write longer meditative pieces about the philosophical relevance of religion (Hagia Sophia,1913).

Ady’s influence can also be detected in the early poetry of Sándor Sík (1889-1963), whose poetic meditations expressed the joy of the believers. Sík himself was aware that he was not acquainted with all aspects of human experience. Protected by his faith and by the power of the Church, he could sing only about religious devotion and nature, which linked him to eternity. His holy seclusion preserved the purity of his soul and of his poetry, which was devoid of any disquieting note; and it is precisely this lack of doubt, uncertainty, and mundane interest which make his poetic world limited in experience, if not in vision. Sík was also an accomplished translator and a versatile man of letters, whose literary studies displayed his conscious endeavour to maintain Catholic literary traditions (Gárdonyi, Ady, Prohászka, 1929; Pázmány, 1939; and Zrínyi, 1941) and to elucidate his aesthetic views (Aesthetics, 1943). As a professor of Hungarian literature at Szeged University before World War II, and as the editor of Vigilia afterwards, his contribution to the development of literary taste, particularly in the younger generation,*Sík was the co-author of the most popular textbook on the history of Hungarian literature to be used in gimnáziums in the inter-war period. is significant.

It was, however, László Mécs (1895-1978) who achieved real fame as a poet-priest. His poetry, in spite of its thin intellectual substance, has a commanding quality which stems from its vibrant exuberance, for Mécs possessed the secret of popular appeal. Armed with Ady’s poetic innovations, and intoxicated by the sound of his own rich voice, this rhapsodic singer of joy, godliness, faith, and redemption is always filled with optimism. His rhetorical assertion that a universe created by God cannot be a place exclusively of injustice, squalor, and disaster found receptive ears in impoverished post-war Hungary.

A native of Upper Hungary, which was ceded to Czechoslovakia after World War I, Mécs represented the voice of the Hungarian minority living there (Angelus at Dawn, Ungvár, 1923), and soon became the object of a cult; his poetry recitals, given both at home and abroad, were stunning feats of performance. As a result of his success with large audiences in the 1930s Mécs made considerable concessions to popular taste. The authoritative poets of the Nyugat generations largely ignored him, and their verdict was followed by total and enforced silence after World War II; Mécs was denied all publicity, and was even imprisoned by the Rákosi regime. This conspiracy of silence makes it difficult to write about him; the uncritical adulation of the old fans of Mécs and the cold-shouldering of later literary public opinion make both criticism and praise difficult.

Paul Valéry, who wrote an introductory essay to one of Mécs’s volumes in French translation praised his poetry unreservedly. It might well be that the great French poet was struck by the irresistible personality of Mécs, or admired those features of his poetry which he called Romantic and which were missing from his own lyrics. For Mécs, in spite of creating symbols and metaphors resembling those of Ady, did not conform to those poetic norms which were approved by Nyugat, and consequently by French poets, at the beginning of this century. His poems are built out of rhymes and rhythms (e.g. ‘The Ballad of the Universe’, 1933), and the narrative element always prevails. The resulting poetry is therefore simple and easy to understand, sometimes it is even naïve or pedestrian; yet when recited its effect cannot be denied.

His themes are few – the world as seen through the unsophisticated eyes of a country priest. Mécs noticed social injustice and, although he was not interested in politics, he strongly protested against the totalitarian danger (‘A Prayer for the Great Lunatic’,*i.e. Hitler. 1942). He continued to write after World War II, without the slightest hope of ever being published. These later poems reveal his complete withdrawal into his immediate environment (‘Canons Playing Cards’, 1947), or give an ascetic inventory of his worldly possessions: ‘My country is in the moon. My house is on my back. / My larder is hidden in my knapsack. / This is how I confront winter.’ (‘The Cranes Write a Capital V’, 1951.) When Mécs was allowed to re-enter the outside world after his imprisonment, he was profoundly shaken at finding himself rejected and forgotten (‘The Musings of Lazarus Resurrected’, 1957).Yet he survived his trials and tribulations: his survival was due to the strength of his will – and perhaps to the fact that his faith remained unshaken – ‘Only the trade secrets of the saints are eerie: / How does the cage with the captive bird fly’ (‘Norbert’s Astral Moment’, 1952.)

It was not easy to be a Catholic poet in a country where the traditions of the Church demanded conformity from its members and the loyalty of its leaders to a foreign power, as if Catholicism were a Church of Austria. Béla Horváth (1908-75) was a layman; his early religious experiences were different from those of the priest-poets, for Horváth’s God was essentially the ‘King of the Poor’. Radical Catholicism, however, was not welcomed in Hungary in the 1930s, and Horváth had many clashes with the authorities, both secular and ecclesiastical. After World War II he lived abroad until 1962, when he returned completely disillusioned. He could not fit into the new Hungary he found, and eventually fell silent and died half-forgotten.

Horváth’s basic poetic experience was derived from his humble origins; his radical Catholicism could not tolerate the social wrongs at which the Church seemed to connive. A brilliant craftsman when translating medieval Latin hymns, of which he was a connoisseur, Horváth’s poetry reflected his everyday struggle to shed protective rhetoric and mannerism, and to face the problems of the self. His poetic development abroad displayed a gradual disappointment with Christian ideas and with the world at large. Rhetoric, however, was still with him: ‘I have nothing to do with the past and the future, / I have thrown away everything and move back to the heavens’ (‘Ultima Verba’, 1947); but occasionally he was able to look at himself with irony (‘The Sorrow of the Patriot’, 1953). The volume which he published abroad (Poems, Munich, 1955) contains some of his best verses (e.g. the inspired ode ‘A Flashing Light in Genoa’, 1952). In the late 1950s Horváth turned to experimenting with avant-garde forms – genuine desperation, total pessimism about mankind’s future, the fear of ecological disasters, and the rejection of Western values characterize these poems (The Age of Doom, 1962). Then he stopped altogether, he had no longer the faith to sustain himself as a poet.

Another layman, one of the founders of Vigilia, Béla Just (1906-54), was an exponent of French neo-Catholicism; his novels, written with intellectual honesty, document the conflicts between duty and conscience. His best known work was written after he had left Hungary. The narrator in The Gallows and the Cross (1954) is a prison chaplain, eventually imprisoned himself for assisting a condemned man to escape. The atmosphere of the death row in a Budapest prison during and shortly after World War II is presented in a simple and unembellished narrative; the portraits of the assorted prisoners (who include a mass-murderer and a prime minister) are drawn with valid psychological observation. The chaplain is linked to authority in the prisoners’ minds, and his conscience is laden with controversial feelings. Just manages to describe the chaplain’s moral struggle with convincing authenticity and uncomfortable honesty. This gifted writer is completely unknown in Hungary today.