Ádám Makkai was born in Budapest on 16 December 1935. The place of his birth is particularly significant, for the greater part of his life is not in fact tied to the Hungarian capital, since the course of his career was profoundly affected by the history of the twentieth century. After his university studies at the Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem (Eötvös Loránd University, Hungarian and French major), he emigrated to the United States of America following the suppression of the 1956 Revolution and War of Independence. One reason for his departure was that he had left several articles in the offices of Szabad Nép, and in his view this fact might have resulted in a prison sentence of several years.
He studied at prestigious universities such as Yale and Harvard, and soon earned his doctorate in linguistics. A passage from one of his autobiographical writings reads as follows: “… on 2 September 1958 I started working in the Hawaiian Islands as a teacher of German, French and Latin at a private school called Iolani School, which had been founded in 1853 by Queen Emma. After the launch of the first Russian Sputnik I was asked to teach Russian as well, so Iolani became the first secondary school in the middle of the Pacific Ocean where it was possible to learn Russian…”
Thus began his career as teacher and linguist, whose principal field of investigation later became the idiomatic structures of languages. He became a university professor in Chicago, and his academic career increasingly unfolded.
All these biographical facts played as important a role in his life as his family background. His mother was Rózsa Ignácz, who descended from Transylvanian Reformed ancestors and became a writer; his father was János Makkai, a member of parliament and editor of the newspaper Esti Újság. These values may have contributed to the fact that he became a renowned and respected linguist, writer, poet, and literary translator.
At the same time, his origins in Hungary in the 1960s did not promise much good for him, considering his family’s and relatives’ social involvement and right-wing politics. (His uncle was Sándor Makkai, Reformed pastor in Cluj and a well-known writer.) Even in America, he remained connected to Hungarian culture and literature, and it is an interesting biographical detail that his mother sent him the greatest works of Hungarian literature while he was abroad. In this way he came to know, among others, the works of Ágnes Nemes Nagy, László Nagy, Géza Ottlik and Miklós Mészöly.
In the 1970s he was already able to visit Hungary in person, which made it easier for him to keep informed. His oeuvre became increasingly complex: he wrote poems and translated the works of Hungarian poets into English. He belongs among those men of letters who, even in emigration, served the cause of Hungarian literature and culture. One important achievement in this respect was his editing of an anthology of works by Hungarian poets, which he published in both English and Hungarian. The Hungarian version bore the title A csodaszarvas nyomában (In Quest of the Miracle Stag) and was issued by Tinta Kiadó (Tinta Publisher House) in 2002. He published one thousand poems from eight centuries of Hungarian poetry in it. A brief quotation from the editor’s preface is revealing: “The emigrant way of life turned the constant recollection of Hungarian poems, the repeated recitation of poems to ourselves, and the act of writing itself into a kind of force preserving the language in many of us who became Hungarian writers and poets in the West…”
It is also an important fact that from 1973 onwards Ádám Makkai was involved in the editing of the Hungarian periodical Ötágú Síp. This publication, which appeared in America, ran to six issues. During those years, his literary work gradually took shape, and his metaphysical and ironic poems reflected a remarkable sensitivity. Now, breaking the chronological order somewhat, we must speak of one of his special literary experiments, the volume published in 2003 under the title Úristen! Engedj meghalni! (lit. Lord God, Let Me Die!), whose subtitle runs: Petőfi Sándor pokoljárása és megidvezülése (lit. Sándor Petőfi’s Descent into Hell and Salvation) (Árgus–C.E.T. Belvárosi Kiadó [Árgus–C.E.T. Belvárosi Publisher House]). This work occupies a prominent place within his oeuvre, and the book offers an insight into the distinctive world of Ádám Makkai’s writing.
The following can be read in the dedication: “The reader holds in his hands one of the strangest and most provocative works of modern Hungarian literature. The subject is (partly) familiar from legends, hearsay, uncorroborated rumours and pseudo-scholarly treatments. According to these, on 31 July 1849 Sándor Petőfi did not fall in the lost battle near Fehéregyháza while attempting to flee, but remained alive, was taken prisoner by the Russians and eventually died in Siberia.” As Ilona Legeza writes: “This multi-genre volume – combining drama, prose and lyric poetry – is an interesting read both from the perspective of literary history and from that of prose aesthetics.” (legeza.oszk.hu/sendpage.php?rec=li2830)
We should also note that the legend, revived in the 1980s, truly touched many of us, for many of us thought that since there is no completely secure documentation even for the poet’s ‘fall’ in 1849, perhaps the story of Barguzin cannot be entirely without foundation either. Opinions were, and remain, divided, even if the version involving a female skeleton appears unrealistic.
In any case, Ádám Makkai ‘got the message’ and surprised the literary world with a response that was certainly witty and worthy of a writer and poet. Undoubtedly, satire and drama are both present in his writings, in every detail. For instance, in the opening piece, the literary screenplay Potomság: Petőfi Segesvárnál (lit. Small Matter: Petőfi at Segesvár), he summons up numerous figures of the period, among them Józef Bem, the Dalai Lama and indeed Sándor Kőrösi Csoma. Playfulness, fantasy and creative imagination are everywhere. Whether it is a question of poems written after the death of Sándor Petőfi or of the imagined poems of the poet’s imagined Siberian years, we always find these qualities. The poet also appears in Tibet and in the realm of the spirit, while elsewhere he is confronted with his own posthumous reputation. In further sections the circles of reference expand, reaching even as far as the twentieth-century poetic heirs, for example Gyula Illyés, who wrote a biography of Petőfi.
We can also see that in this odd work Ádám Makkai delights in deploying the knowledge and talents that had already been his own throughout his career. In addition to his literary work, his linguistic skills, proficiency in foreign languages, and ability to use language creatively also play a role here.
It is an exciting book as well for readers who are able to soar together with the author in the realm of the imagination – and, of course, for those whom the figure of Sándor Petőfi and his poetic afterlife also interest. The very title of the volume is, of course, quite out of the ordinary. If among the characteristics of a good title we count the capacity to arouse attention, relative brevity and an accurate indication of the subject of the work, then by these criteria Úristen! Engedj meghalni! (lit. Lord God, Let Me Die!) certainly qualifies as a good title. At the same time it signals the absurdity that has surrounded the Petőfi legend since the nineteenth century – the legend of the poet whose death many were unwilling to acknowledge, neither at the time nor later.
‘Legend-making’, the world of legends and tales, is not far from Hungarian thinking (to the national psyche?), including the long series of stories about the king who walks among ordinary people in disguise. In the case of Sándor Petőfi much of this repertoire can be observed. Not long after 1849 he was allegedly seen in many places, and we might also mention the not always tasteful depictions of the great figure of world freedom and patriotism. Ádám Makkai avoids such errors. He faces all the versions of the story and treats his material with a certain detachment. After receiving the Kossuth Prize, he commented as follows in an interview: “I believe that the prize will help my works to receive more attention and will bring some of my earlier volumes back to life. For example my book on Petőfi, which I consider my most interesting work. I do not know why oblivion was its fate…” (Eszter Laik: Egy világpolgár magyarul. Interjú Makkai Ádámmal és feleségével, Arany Ágnessel [A Cosmopolitan in Hungarian. Interview with Ádám Makkai and his wife, Ágnes Arany],https//irodalmijelen.hu/…/egy-vilagpolgar-magyarul-interju-makkai-adammal-f…)
This book is indeed rich in both sad and merry, tragic and comic elements. Total fiction, the mysterious spiritual relationship between Ádám Makkai and Sándor Petőfi, the episodes of the Siberian descent into hell, the mystique of wanderings in the East, the time-travel involving the Tibetan gold coffin – all these guarantee enjoyment for the discerning reader, something that, even in contemporary Hungarian literature, is not overly frequent, at least not in this unparalleled complexity. The time-travel even extends to the point where cameras scan this journey, reaching our own times and at the same time emphasising the force of a peculiar kind of immortality. For we know the truth of the cliché: the poet never truly dies, for he lives on in his works – provided, of course, that the shadow of oblivion does not settle upon his oeuvre.
Without any claim to completeness, let us arbitrarily single out one passage from the work – for example from the chapter entitled Petőfi Sándor halála után írott versei (lit. Sándor Petőfi’s poems written after his death), from the notes to the journey from Barguzin to Lassa. In this section epic and lyric elements are felicitously interwoven, and in this way Makkai connects himself to the author of János vitéz (John the Valiant) and A helység kalapácsa (The Village Blacksmith), to Sándor Petőfi, the distinguished nineteenth-century master of the verse tale. The protagonists of the narrative poem here are the Dalai Lama (of whatever period) and Sándor Kőrösi Csoma, the poet’s ‘namesake’.
Yet regardless of the fact that Makkai attempts to adopt Petőfi’s voice, it is very clear that his own use of language and style are ‘more modern’, at times ‘more grotesque’ than those of his great predecessor. One is almost tempted to think that the Petőfi story serves merely as a pretext for Makkai to give free rein to his innate propensity for linguistic and stylistic creation and to play and soar at will. Here is the ending: “… the road is long and arduous till the student reaches this place – / but if ‘even after your death’ you fail to pass the oral mid-term / in the celestial curriculum, you will be dragged before the devil / who will laugh in your face, sensing how frightened you have been: / you will fail miserably, with no leaving certificate – and you yourself remain a will-o’-the-wisp.”
This finale is excellent, intellectually rich, and almost breaks away from the specific content of the book, raising the message to a more general level. Overall, it is true that through this work we can become better acquainted with the oeuvre, for it displays many of the writer’s and poet’s virtues. Before this, his volumes had been appearing since 1966. The first among them was the poetry collection Szomj és ecet (Thirst and Vinegar) (Amerikai Magyar Írók [American Hungarian Writers], Los Angeles). The two dates 1952 and 1966 mark the period from which the poems in this volume are drawn. At this stage it is still clearly visible that his poetry bears strong traces of the influence of Attila József, prior to his later opening towards the avant-garde. Naturally, the experiences and impressions of emigration are also decisive for him at this time, although his earliest poems were written in Hungary. Even then, a satirical tone is already discernible in his poetry. He has a poem that commemorates 1956, in which his autobiographical background naturally plays an important role.
Ádám Makkai’s poetry is characterised by a sophisticated sense of form, by many distinctive features of creative imagination and by linguistic richness and inventiveness. Behind the world of his works we can discern his strong faith in God and the certainty associated with it. As László Neményi characterises him in the concluding study of the volume of selected poems Jézus és a démonok imája (Jesus and the Prayer of the Demons) (Tinta Kiadó [Tinta Publisher House], 2005): “Iconoclastic revolutionary spirit and respect for tradition in the poetry of Ádám Makkai…”
Earlier, in 1991, a volume of his collected poems had already appeared under the title Jupiter szeme (lit. The Eye of Jupiter) (Héttorony, Budapest). In connection with his poetry and his stance, the term ‘cosmopolitan’ is frequently used, but it is also added that, at the same time, one of his defining characteristics is that he experiences his Hungarian identity with great depth. This complexity is clearly visible in the works included in the 1991 volume. In one of his confessions he states: “Written text is good when it makes the imagination work twice or three times over…” To this we may add that the meditative quality and the influence of philosophy on his literary works are of particular importance for him. Alongside his poetic images he also employs linguistic constructions that follow from the nature of language itself. Referring to his first collection, he maintains that poetry is actually ‘vinegar’. In his view this also means that it belongs among the poet’s tasks to articulate ‘what is ugly’.
We can aptly characterise the complexity of his oeuvre with a few lines from one of his poems:
“Kelták és druidák ivadéka vagyok, / írva nagy keservem megírülök néha. / Tollam alól holtan hull ki a portéka, / dalom sírfelirat. / Fagyott égen ragyog…” (A panasz joga) (“I am the offspring of Celts and druids; / in writing my great distress I myself become text at times. / The wares fall dead from beneath my pen, / my song is an epitaph. / On a frozen sky it shines…” [The Right to Complain]) The creation of language, self-knowledge and the tension between beginning and end are, here as elsewhere, among the hallmarks of his work. His literary outlook was also shaped by the tradition of Nyugat, alongside the already mentioned influences of Attila József and the avant-garde.
Ádám Makkai’s distinctive method is exemplified by an unconventional autobiographical volume, Az erő (The Power), which appeared in its final form in 2003 (CET, Belvárosi Kiadó [CET, Belvárosi Publisher House]). From this book the reader can gain a more comprehensive picture than ever before of the author’s travels around the world and of his intellectual and other adventures. In its generic novelty it is comparable to the above-praised Petőfi book, and it constitutes another proof that experimentation and the intention to renew are essential to Makkai’s nature. The boundaries between literary genres and modes of writing often become blurred in his works, in this thereby aligning with tendencies in both world literature and Hungarian literature in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Here moral philosophy is of particular importance, as is the multitude of responsible, ethical answers that can be given to questions of destiny. These questions of destiny are not merely national in scope but can be extended to the whole world. At the same time, even here the didactic intention is not decisive, but rather an attitude that leaves the reader with a sense of freedom. In this book, too, we find lyric and epic elements condensed into a single volume and the complexity of the writer’s and poet’s activity.
In contrast to the Petőfi book, however, there is less mysticism here, and the play of creative imagination is more restrained, since in this volume it is after all the autobiography that is decisive, even if in a very singular form. In the background, alongside the poet and the writer, we find the scholar, who puts his unparalleled store of knowledge to use. Nor should we forget that during the decades of emigration he also preserved a secure command of his mother tongue and, together with it, his sense of Hungarian identity. It is also important that the author draws a sharp distinction between the ‘power’ evoked in the title and violence, in accordance with his world view. The lyrical sections serve this just as powerfully as the prose elements.
A good part of Ádám Makkai’s volumes consists of selected and collected works. Among these is the already mentioned Jézus és a démonok imája (Jesus and the Prayer of the Demons) of 2005. It contains works written between 1952 and 2005. The title poem can be added to the copious list of Christmas poems, for its decisive feature is indeed its biblical origin. Here, however, it is not the mystery of the Nativity that occupies the centre of attention, but the suffering Christ, frenziedly persecuted by demons. If such a work symbolises the entire volume of collected poems, then the distinctive character of the poet’s world view becomes quite evident. And these demons shriek that “… from now on and for ever / murderers and terrorists shall possess every land, power / and glory shall belong to the usury bankers…” In this way the two-thousand-year-old story becomes an admonition that can be applied very much to our own age as well. (It is an interesting feature of the poem’s genesis that the poet wrote it for the seventieth birthday of Sándor Kányádi.)
The volume presenting the harvest of half a century also makes it clear that the condition of being an emigrant and the sense of belonging to the homeland have at times forced the author into a kind of role inversion. In overcoming the numerous difficulties, it clearly helped that his ties to his native soil, to Transylvania, were never broken. For him these roots were, at all times, indissoluble. Anna Jókai, for instance, sees the source of Ádám Makkai’s strength precisely in this: “The poet is a co-worker in the divine plan. Ádám Makkai believes in the power of poetry, of creation…” In his poetry we often observe a combination of sacrality and the profane world, of profound emotion and rationality. Taken together, these elements yield an ever more complete picture of his career and oeuvre.
He is touched by the passing of time too, though his tone in treating this theme is also distinctive. He plays with Attila József’s famous birthday poem, among other ways as follows: “I have reached seventy-five years of age: / Trojan horse this poem of mine? / Foolish / pedagogue…” Biographical elements are then woven into the text, and a wry yet deeply humane overall picture takes shape. From here too we may look outwards when we seek to identify the qualities of Ádám Makkai’s lyric poetry.
His more recent volume Kutyapest (lit. Dogpest), which already promises much in its very title and contains both selected and new poems, has appeared in two editions (Erdélyi Híradó, Cluj, 2010, and Kárpát-medencei Tehetséggondozó Nonprofit Kft, Budapest, 2018). Its title suggests irony – as does the title poem itself. (Incidentally, a dog-training school of this name operates in the capital as well…) Endre Farkas Welmann writes of this volume: “… In Ádám Makkai’s poems one can discern the consubstantiality of poetry and life, the questions of the meaning of creation at the intersection of earthly and non-earthly existence. It is also a questioning of culture, for in his role-playing Ádám Makkai virtually summons up the entire portrait gallery of Hungarian literature…” (Endre Farkas Welmann: Tanár Úr, kérem! [lit. Excuse Me, Teacher!], Parnasszus, Winter 2017, p. 40.)
We may add that this sovereign poetic voice has, at one and the same time, bestowed upon readers one of the most important literary achievements of recent decades, both in Hungary and abroad.
[2019]