According to the unanimous opinion of literary critics, Gábor Czakó’s oeuvre to date may be characterised by two principal observations. The first is that, in terms of genre diversity, his career reveals an artistic trajectory in which the harmony between content and form is determined, to a high degree, by the communicative force of the work. In other words, whether the emerging creation takes the shape of a novel, essay, short story, or tale is not primarily the result of an authorial decision, but of the inherent suitability of a given form to its content (although, of course, this assessment itself presupposes a significant act of authorial judgement).
The second observation is that, while until the political transition of 1989 the appearance of a Christian message in literary works could evidently be read as a form of resistance, after 1989 it became more a matter of emblematic display – and, according to some critics of Czakó, this perceptibly diminished the aesthetic value of his writings. The present author naturally disagrees with this latter claim. For Christianity, as an emblem, also signifies a particular mode of vision: the presence of religiosity in a literary text necessarily carries multiple layers of meaning, extending far beyond the mere emblematic.
A telling example is Czakó Gábor’s Szótárkönyv (lit. Dictionary Book, 2001), in which, amid the disintegrated linguistic construction, numerological associations, and semantic correspondences, one may discern not only a Christian ideological framework but also sociological, social-philosophical, and existential dimensions. The interrelations of these layers of meaning are discussed by János Butella in his study Műelemzés – Czakó Gábor: Szótárkönyv (lit. Textual Analysis – Gábor Czakó: Dictionary Book). To better understand Czakó’s worldview, it is worth quoting him at some length:
“The book consists of four words in total, and Four is the number of completeness, of the eternal, of the divine quality; it also represents the unity of humankind. The ancients regarded the number Four as symbolising the unity of existence – not only of space and time–regardless of whether they were connected to the Kabbalistic tradition, the most elaborate exposition of number theory. (…) The Four is therefore the final point of human development. What is this endpoint? Its quality reveals it: our deification. But can man be deified? Moreover, can a Christian, indeed a Catholic, human being achieve this? A solitary person hardly, perhaps not at all – but for two it may be possible.” [1]
The multiplicity of the author’s message is thus unmistakable. Alongside the biblical ethos, Czakó’s prose presents – consistent with the sensitive reader’s interpretation – a cultural cross-section in which the symbolism of the individual’s abandonment and search for direction is at least as powerful as the Christian thought itself.
György Kellei, in one of his essays, argues that Gábor Czakó, who emerged in the 1970s as a promising novelist, failed to meet readers’ expectations after the political transition of 1989, turning instead into a Christian ideologue. [2] Péter Sneé, however, warns in the pages of Kortárs [lit. Contemporary, a Hungarian literary monthly] that this shift did not result in any aesthetic rupture in the works Czakó produced after 1989:
“His essays, satirical horror tales, dictionary-style collections, and even his novels all reveal the ascendancy of the intention to persuade over the effort to depict. It is as if he approached his subject with prior knowledge, already possessing, at the very outset of sketching, the lessons of his future work. In his determined purposiveness, he resembles a publicist.” [3]
This, then, does not point to a decline in aesthetic value, but rather to a change in the author’s artistic intent.
A recurrent – indeed, one might say emblematic – feature of Czakó Gábor’s literary career over the decades is his series of “horror tales”: 77 magyar rémmese (lit. 77 Hungarian Horror Tales, Szépirodalmi, Budapest, 1988); Hetvenhét és fél magyar rémmese (lit. Seventy-Seven and a Half Hungarian Horror Tales, Szépirodalmi, Budapest, 1990); … és hetvenhét magyar rémmese (lit. … and Seventy-Seven Hungarian Horror Tales, Windsor, Budapest, 1996); and Kilencvenkilenc magyar rémmese (lit. Ninety-Nine Hungarian Horror Tales, Cz. Simon Bt., Budapest, 2007). These are, of course, not genuine tales of horror; their genre classification is complicated by the author’s consistent intent to blend different prose forms. Yet they show considerable kinship with Boccaccio’s novellas:
“The tales are written according to a single scenario, each possessing a pre-planned structural arc. A brief introduction tells us who the members of the distinguished company gathered at the Beautiful Lady’s table are; then the speaker of the moment presents the topic, introduces the characters, and gives free rein to the story and the emerging opinions. From this structure it is indeed perceptible that the genre hovers at the border of several others.” [4]
Among the book versions of Czakó’s Beavatás (lit. Initiation) essay series, one also finds a strong linguistic orientation. In Beavatás a magyar észjárásba (lit. Initiation into the Hungarian Way of Thinking), for example, he “examines, turns over, and feels the body of language, like a housewife at the market handling carrots and lettuce.” [5]
Czakó Gábor’s linguistic-philosophical position is both intriguing and, in my view, exemplary. Just as one can study only the psyche of a living person – since one cannot analyse organs through dissection in their living, functioning state – so, too, can only the soul of a living language inspire the writer; it cannot be dissected or polished mechanically. Inevitably, this brings to mind the postmodern forms of expression that rest on linguistic deconstruction. In the field of linguistics, too, Czakó explores (or, more pointedly, tests) the boundaries – yet he does so with the benevolent approach of the scholar-writer.
For this reason, the critic was right to observe of his 2009 book Beljebb a magyar észjárásba (lit. Further Inside the Hungarian Way of Thinking):
“It is rarely that a reader can claim to have read one of the founding books of a new branch of scholarship. Further Inside the Hungarian Way of Thinking by Gábor Czakó and Zoltán Juhász is such a book – the opening volume of linguistic archaeology and melodic archaeology. I warmly recommend it.” [6]
In Gábor Czakó’s most recent novels, the experience of hopelessness is coupled with an expression of the impossibility of representation itself – the impossibility of enclosing reality within a frame. This is why, for instance, in his book Hosszúalattság (lit. Longunderness, 2010), the author uses the generic designation “a half-finished novel-garden”. László Sturm, in his review of the work, explains that the novel is “half-finished not as a confession of artistic impotence, but because reality itself remains unfinished.” [7]
Indeed, the intertwining narratives, the forward and backward references, and the absurd framing of the storytelling all question the expressibility of experience and the representability of reality. Thus, it is that episodes evoking the Soviet era are constantly interwoven into a plot set in the post-transition present, or that the reader may feel “the place-bound stories grow side by side like plants in a garden – sometimes meeting above ground, sometimes only, one suspects, at the level of their roots.” [8]
Overall, one may conclude that in Czakó Gábor’s prose the most striking feature is the harmony between representation, narration, exemplarity, and didactic intent. Whatever his subject – be it the description of a concrete event or the expression of an opinion – he always approaches it with a pedagogical and illustrative purpose. He does so with such writerly assurance and such a firm ideological foundation that his mode of presentation acquires genuine persuasive force, initiating the receptive reader into the work by its conclusion.
[2015]
[1] János Butella, Műelemzés – Czakó Gábor: Szótárkönyv (lit. Textual Analysis – Gábor Czakó: Dictionary Book), Kortárs, 2002/5.
[2] “Czakó once ranked among my favourite writers; his novels Megváltó (lit. The Redeemer), Csata minden áldott nap (lit. Battle Every Blessed Day), and Iskolavár (lit. School Fortress) remain memorable. I still have his first novel, A szoba (lit. The Room), which appeared in Magvető’s legendary Új Termés series. Today these volumes represent literary-historical value. I continued to leaf through his later works and thought he would rise among the defining figures of our literature. Yet this revelation did not come to pass. With the trickle of freedom after the political transition, Czakó suddenly seemed to feel that a Christian leadership role awaited him.” (György Kellei, Közhelyek negyedórában [lit. Commonplaces in a Quarter of an Hour], Veszprémi Napló, 2005.)
[3] Péter Sneé, “Czakó Gábor: Bujdosók (lit. Gábor Czakó: Exiles),” Kortárs, 1998/7.
[4] Krisztina Hanti, “Czakó Gábor: Kilencvenkilenc magyar rémmese (lit. Gábor Czakó: Ninety-Nine Hungarian Horror Tales),” Kortárs, 2008/6.
[5] Lóránt Bencze, “A nyelv élménye – Czakó Gábor: Beavatás a magyar észjárásba (lit. The Language Experience. Initiation into the Hungarian Way of Thinking),” Kortárs, 2009/1.
[6] Szaniszló Bérczi, “Czakó Gábor – Juhász Zoltán: Beljebb a magyar észjárásba (lit. Gábor Czakó – Zoltán Juhász: Further Inside the Hungarian Way of Thinking),” Mikes International, 2010/4.
[7] László Sturm, “Czakó Gábor: Hosszúalattság (Gábor Czakó: Longunderness),” Kortárs, 2012/10.
[8] Sturm, ibid.