The dramatist’s tragedy is when his works are rarely, if ever, performed, and his plays exist only as text. Hubay Miklós celebrated a premiere at a very young age, but his relationship with the theatres that could have provided a home and brought his dramas to life later became extraordinarily contradictory. He himself was raised on bourgeois drama, speaking its language natively, and he continued to vary the existing Western European models of bourgeois drama, never changing even when theatrical languages significantly evolved. He often declared that the performance was merely the ‘handmaiden’ of the written work, and although he always wrote with the stage in mind, he didn’t tolerate directors and dramaturgs adapting, cutting, rewriting, or perhaps adding to his works to suit their own concepts. Yet, modern theatre, even during his active decades, had already become an independent art form, a place where the director and the performance’s other creators were sovereign artists who viewed the text merely as the starting point for the production. This demands great humility and flexibility from authors – but Hubay only very rarely acknowledged the right of the living theatre to make changes. Conversely, the frequently heard opinion of directors and dramaturgs was that only the core ideas of Hubay’s works were truly exciting, with a scene or two rising far above average, but the realised works were by no means immaculate and were never stage-ready.
Perhaps Hubay saw and felt this, which is why he regularly rewrote his plays. He was dissatisfied with them and sometimes kept track of three, four, or even more text variations, or perhaps re-envisioned the work in connection with a new premiere. Sometimes, there was still a message remaining after the current ending; at other times, the reason for a new variation was to alleviate the burden and complications caused by overwriting or his characteristic contrapuntal structure. However, there are legends about how vehemently he protested when a director attempted to create yet another variation during a rehearsal process. He expected empathy and a text-centric approach, aiming to place the writer at the centre of the theatre, but in doing so, he himself erected the greatest obstacles to his own productions. Instead of fruitful cooperation, a kind of ‘tug-of-war’ developed between the Hungarian theatre scene and Hubay – and while all of his important plays were staged, none managed to achieve a genuine breakthrough. The breakthrough perhaps required Hubay’s humility and trust, as in the tug-of-war, the institutions and potential creative partners were ultimately the stronger party; the works couldn’t truly exist without the theatres. Hubay’s plays, with their surprising imagination and sometimes bizarre perspective, already struggled to find a place in the canon of Hungarian dramaturgy – the author’s inflexibility only made this more difficult. It is therefore not surprising that his dramas were often staged earlier and with far greater success in Italian or French theatres than they were at home – for a long time, the Hungarian audience primarily knew him as the librettist of musical productions, as only these performances achieved popular success. But his plays have remained with us even after the author’s death; they are currently waiting to be rediscovered by directors and theatres receptive to works with unconventional dramaturgy and open to challenges.
Hubay’s lifework, spanning more than half a century, features a great variety of eras, themes, and modes of speech; one could say there is something in it for everyone. The Hungarian 16th century and Greek mythology, comedy and psychological drama, one-act and multi-character full-length plays, absurd and realistic drama, musical theatre, and even opera. His first dramas, Lear herceg (lit. Prince Lear) (1937) and Európa elrablása (lit. The Abduction of Europe) (1939), are more like steps in his learning process, addressing the threat to European people and European culture as the young author felt the approaching winds of war – but these plays weren’t staged. However, in the spring of 1942, at the age of 24, the chamber theatre of the Nemzeti Színház (National Theatre) premiered his drama Hősök nélkül (lit. Without Heroes). Artúr Somlay played the lead role – nothing more was needed for a successful premiere and the writer’s consecration. The social drama exposes the hollowing out of the Hungarian bourgeoisie’s way of life, conceptually similar to the works of Márai, Kodolányi, or László Németh. The gentlemanly revelry in Hűvösvölgy has no real heroes; the spectacular exteriors hide sorrowful, loveless lives, deceptive relationships, bonds masquerading as friendship but filled with envy, and, in reality, lonely people struggling with suicidal thoughts. The tragicomic text, sometimes verging on the absurd and sometimes the grotesque, was the debut of an extraordinarily talented writer, worthy of the tradition of national dramatic literature.
Hubay introduces his work Késdobálók (lit. Knife Throwers) by stating that he wrote it half a year after the 1956 Revolution, “in the vacuum that followed the revolution” – and although there is no specific reference to ’56 in the work, it is not difficult to see that the author is essentially talking about it. The censorship naturally noticed this too, banning the rehearsals and attempts at staging. The married couple, Dóra and Imre, constantly argue without knowing exactly what is causing their frustration and ill-temper. We can guess: hopelessness, disappointment following the crushing of the revolution, the thought that it is impossible to do anything against the dictatorship, which will likely remain with them for the rest of their lives. There is no chance of a solution – and this destroys their otherwise hopeful relationship: the logic of power seeps into apartments and bedrooms, dictating the everyday life of the personal sphere – there is no escape. Hubay sensitively depicts the repressed atmosphere of the 1950s, the language of the intellectuals at the time, and the compulsion to play with the unsayable. His protagonists suffer, they gnaw at each other, yet all they want is to be happy.
It is already evident from this that Hubay’s dramatic ideal is the active hero who recognises his duty and acts to improve his own and his community’s fate. He speaks much of this in his essays, but in his works, he shows precisely that the man of the second half of the twentieth century constantly runs into walls. Perhaps there are no true heroes anymore, and those who could be heroes have already given up, or cannot contend with the obstacles posed by the era, history, or familial or political circumstances. The world in Hubay’s art is always waiting for heroes, but is without them. Neither the bourgeoisie nor the intellectuals of the 1950s produces ready-to-act, exceptional, or exemplary individuals – instead, these large social groups consist only of isolated, introverted members who choose either degradation, lazy, resigned survival, or even suicide. Bitterness and doubt outweigh their faith and motivation. These are Hubay’s desperate yet dedicated plays, written with journalistic rage, and we must recognise that the works very much want to effect change; they try to shake the audience, seeking to awaken their sense of responsibility toward themselves, their families, their broader community, their generation, and even their nation.
Csend az ajtó mögött (lit. Silence Behind the Door) (1963) is the drama of another couple in a very similar situation. Pál and Eti live their lives paralysed and depressed, weighed down by their bad temper and disillusionment, tearing open the wounds of their broken marriage again and again with their arguments. They live with the boy’s father, who is terminally ill, but sees his final task as reconciling and rousing the young couple. Thus, he becomes Hubay’s first active hero, the old communist who at least possesses faith, specifically hope in the building of socialism – which is based on peace. He succeeds in convincing the couple, seemingly smoothing over the conflicts between them, but it is no accident that Hubay doesn’t end the play with the phrase “they lived happily ever after,” as it is quite possible that the reconciliation is only temporary, and the harmony remains fragile. Moreover, the old man’s romantic figure must be treated with irony: in the stifling air of the 1960s, such devout people, ready to sacrifice their lives for the cause and blind to all social contradictions, seem more naive than saintly. Thus, Hubay’s thesis is confirmed again: the second half of the twentieth century no longer knows truly great and pure characters; there is no place or means for heroism; the heirs of classical drama’s characters are anachronistic. This era destroys people who cherish their moral integrity and cling to their identity: nothing good awaits those who don’t fall in line. And nothing good awaits those who do, either. Miklós Hubay saw the individual’s chances as hopeless during this time, and he accurately portrayed this, its causes, and its consequences in his works.
C’est la guerre (1958), which Emil Petrovics later set to music and which became successful as an opera, depicts the cruel and merciless destruction of the last bastions of humanity against the backdrop of World War II. Selfishness, the destruction of love and certainly romance, and hatred incited from all sides devastate every sphere of private life – the psychologically damaged caretakers and the spying neighbours, the warmongers and the disappointed, vengeful former friends crush the lives of the couple who have retreated into their small, initially safe space. The bad guys win; the good repeatedly fail – Hubay ceaselessly repeats in his consecutive plays: there is no hope, no chance; evil now rules all. Although he searches for pure, innocent, honest heroes, and may find them (and we must no longer think of generals or princes fighting dragons, but people fighting the most cliché battles of everyday life in city spaces), they, too, are forced into failure by their environment.
Another one-act play is Ők tudják, mi a szerelem (lit. They Know What Love Is), one of Hubay’s most polished dramas. The bourgeois milieu is familiar: a cold, emotionless world, shallow thought, the pursuit of appearances, and the centring of practical matters characterise it. The elderly, recently widowed lady who has lived her life in this environment is proposed to by the composer Berlioz, also over sixty, who spied on her making love as a teenager and has desired her ever since. However, the elderly lady still doesn’t want to be the composer’s partner, and they eventually laugh together at romantic and passionate love, and at their own aging. The simple form, the flawless, focused sentences, the economical structure, and the pulsing of seriousness and irony give birth to a genuine masterpiece.
Many say that Hubay Miklós’s truly suitable genre is the one-act, single-situation drama. He tried to argue in his essays that 20th-century dramatic literature developed most significantly in this genre. He cites the plays of Sartre, Genet, Ionesco, and Beckett as examples, but the list could go on. There is no doubt that Hubay is at his best in this genre, but this again pits him against the expectations of the theatre as an institution, which requires full-length plays that offer the audience the opportunity for social interaction during intermissions. The writer’s response to this is to inflate those dramatic ideas that would truly be strongest in one act, or to string several one-acts together into a new play. An example of the latter is Néró játszik (lit. Nero Plays) (1968), which consists of eight short one-acts. Deep thoughts and comedic scenes alternate within it; perfect technical knowledge, well-written dialogues, and measured dramaturgy are taken for granted by now – Hubay is a master of his craft. It is another matter that the characters’ personalities are too static – but he convincingly asserts that in Nero’s time (and who wouldn’t understand this as the Hungarian dictatorship of the sixties?), unworthy, immoral, decadent, endlessly cynical, and uncultured people could rise to power, those who would trample over even their best friends for the sake of retaining power and achieving success. And they are proud of it.
Egy szerelem három éjszakája (lit. Three Nights of a Love) (1960), a musical co-written with István Vas and György Ránki, was the first Hungarian work in this genre. It is essentially a poetic parable about the shattering of the war generation’s dreams, the tragically vast distance between imagination and reality. This work is traditionally understood as the love story of Miklós Radnóti and Fanni Gyarmati, a love that was broken by the war, and specifically by the persecution of Jews within it. Incidentally, it is broken with the same momentum and cruelty as in the dramas just discussed: humanity, emotions, and a romantic, happy-ending story have no place during this period; the selfish, compromising, and petty people of the era become the ‘Judases’ and ‘Pilates’ who will betray everyone who simply wants to live beautifully and freely for culture, art, or perhaps their love and family. In Hubay’s humanist dramas, sovereign personalities are broken or destroyed by society, and a portion of the dramas speaks precisely about the spiritual misery of people who have already been broken and compromised. And let us also see that this is valid far beyond the wartime or the Kádár era, carrying a much more general validity and greater stakes.
The Római karnevál (lit. Carnival in Rome) (1966) re-examines the roles played in life, the necessity of masks, and the relationship between the written drama and the realised stage play, framed by the depiction of a theatre rehearsal process. It reveals how the extras and supporting actors, those at the bottom of the theatrical hierarchy, participate much more authentically in a play depicting the lives of the poor, because there they play themselves even beneath the costumes and masks. According to Hubay’s diagnosis here, the director’s theatre is gaining sole domination over the drama as a whole, and through it, the particularism of improvisation, and instead of the text, everything related to costume, wig, mask, manner, and speech style comes to the forefront, “and the question of how we play replaces what we play.” And he is right; this trend has indeed occurred over the past half-century, but Hubay couldn’t accept this change, which naturally also occurred on the world’s great stages, and he fought against it his whole life. Even when everyone else was going the other way on the motorway. Surely there will be significant new changes in this area; writer-centric theatre may yet return to important stages – if so, the time for Miklós Hubay’s dramas may come again.
Among the works written in the seventies, Tüzet viszek (lit. I Bring Fire) has the greatest chance of a revival; it was staged in Debrecen in 2017, albeit substantially rewritten and reshaped, and it had numerous previous premieres and was also made into a film starring György Cserhalmi. Interestingly, three valid versions of this play are known, as Hubay revised it again and again out of a desire for perfection and to find the adequate form. It is worth remembering while reading that the mid-seventies was almost the antechamber of the postmodern era, where the possibility of tragedy itself was questioned, as the loosening and relativisation of values, the rejection of grand narratives, and the crisis of traditional literary forms and voices treated classical dramatic situations with ironic distance. Yet, throughout his life, Hubay clung to the ‘pure tragedy,’ believing that life’s serious questions could be posed in every era and that one shouldn’t fear their pathos. In this play, he examines two important questions: there is a love thread and a socio-political one. Love is a story of an extraordinary encounter, although it certainly has many models in literature: the boy who comes from a poor, rural background falls in love with the urban, educated, female doctor who is fluent in many languages, only for external forces to drive both of them to seek refuge in death. The political thread is perhaps more interesting today: how does someone become successful, and how can the same environment that elevated them earlier let go of their hand? We see that this is not a question characteristic of a specific political system or era; elevation, honour, and abandonment can happen to anyone, anytime – this is counterpointed by the strength of the love relationship, which seemingly overcomes every obstacle, saying no to all arguments of common sense, but ultimately cracks and ends in tragedy, though at least it is the lovers’ shared tragedy, as they never abandon each other.
Búcsú a csodáktól (lit. Farewell to Miracles) (1978) is primarily a drama about the threat to a unified European culture, an anxiety felt for the Greco-Latin heritage. These are important questions, but Hubay spends too much of the play dealing with the crisis of his own profession and his own concepts, with much philosophising as he has Sophocles and Alcibiades discuss the playwright’s responsibility and duties. An essay never works well on stage, no matter what problem it discusses. The play is nonetheless worthy of mention because it is an excellent summary of the author’s worldview, his dramatic theoretical concept, and his sense of mission. The essence of which, in Alcibiades’ words, is: “We must learn to think in terms of humanity, or we will perish.”
Among the newer dramas, the two Freud plays (Császár és analízis [lit. Emperor and Analysis], Az álomfejtő álma [The Dream Interpreter’s Dream]), Egy faun éjszakája (lit. A Faun’s Night), and Hova lett a Rózsa Lelke? (lit. What Happened to the Rose’s Soul?) deserve mention. Hubay aims to create something great in all of them, and he partially succeeds, but according to contemporary taste, I believe he grasps too much. Freud’s personality is inherently very exciting, and his life has many turning points that would merit a drama, but this is not enough for Hubay; he brings his hero into contact with Franz Joseph, and even brings Clio, the muse of history, onto the stage, which again introduces one of the difficulties of Hubay’s dramas: the essay-like, philosophical thread, which is very strange to today’s theatrical world. Egy faun éjszakája (lit. A Faun’s Night) is also built on a splendid idea: Nijinsky, one of the greatest dancers of the 20th century, receives his family and former lover in a mental sanatorium, and the life stories revealed in these encounters provide an excellent foundation for the play. However, in Hubay’s imagination, Wilson, the US president, is also being treated in the same sanatorium, an equally interesting figure deserving of his own drama – but these two threads are difficult to reconcile and strain the text. Yet, both are promising: two self-proclaimed saviours who want to improve the world, one with his art, the other with his politics – but both are regarded as mad. The question takes us back to the first pieces of his oeuvre.
Miklós Hubay’s life’s work is extremely rich; we can speak of roughly forty dramas, at least fifteen hundred pages of essays, a thousand pages of a diary, screenplays, and significant dramatic translations – all of which have long warranted a monograph. Here, only a few works deemed important today could be highlighted, but perhaps even this brief presentation shows the problems that occupied him, the writing technique, dramaturgical, philosophical, and social questions the writer faced again and again. We could see that he primarily thought in the present; he only very rarely stumbled upon historical themes, typically placing his heroes and antiheroes in the contemporary Hungarian reality and deriving their tragedies from it – but in such a way that they are valid across eras and borders, understandable and relatable to everyone else. His main question is: how the valuable can prevail in a world that relativises values, elevates the worthless, and favours kitsch and pulp fiction. Or, in more eloquent words, echoing the Greek myths Hubay so loved: how can good prevail in a corrupt, unjust system? And above all: how can all this be portrayed in plays that respect tradition, take themselves seriously, and keep the pure tragedy in mind? The answers are hidden in the works of Miklós Hubay.
[2017]