Katalin Kemény writer, art historian, literary translator

The history of the arts abounds in creators whom their contemporaries failed to understand or appreciate, or whose work was ignored. Nonetheless, some of these individuals were rediscovered decades or centuries later, some of them were eventually incorporated into the highest ranks of the canon; however, in the case of the majority, the passage of time offered no correction: neither contemporaries nor their successors recognised the value of their art (as yet). Katalin Kemény has had, and still has, her adherents, but they are few in number, and their critical impact is even more limited: there have been very few published appreciations of this otherwise rich and wide-ranging oeuvre, and the anniversary or celebratory pieces that are published sporadically say little about the construction of the texts; moreover, they are authored by the same small circle of enthusiastic readers.

Nor has the expansion of the reception of Kemény’s work been aided by the fact that her oeuvre has always remained in the shadow of her husband, Béla Hamvas’s body of work, even though his work likewise faced substantial obstacles to reception. The parallel life trajectories of husband and wife resulted in affinities between their works, an essential consonance of thought, and a close proximity of language. Naturally, these difficulties began with the complete suppression of their publishing activity during the Kádár regime, continued with the cult that developed around works largely accessible only through samizdat, reaching its peak in the second half of the 1980s, and culminated in the decline of interest that became perceptible from the mid-1990s onwards. Cultic modes of discourse proved obstructive because they rendered criticism, and even critical distance, virtually impossible; however, the distancing from this type of discourse observable in recent years has not been sufficient to loosen the readerly and interpretative circles surrounding their oeuvres to such an extent that new, younger voices, capable of and willing to ask questions, attentive to the values of the texts yet able to draw attention to poetic problems, such as the absence of irony and closure to intertextual dialogue, might join them. As a result, the discourse narrowed decisively and became the preserve of a small circle, producing texts that took the form of pronouncements or, alternatively, of reverential, gesture-like tributes. It is symptomatic that the monumental monograph on Hamvas published in 2002 by his former disciple, Pál Darabos, arrived already in this discursive vacuum and served little more than as a pretext for conflicts among the putative intellectual heirs and for the condemnation of its author, to the point that even Katalin Kemény, in one of her rare public statements, subjected the book to explicit condemnation.

Owing to censorship under the Kádár regime, Kemény’s works were withheld from publication for decades, and although one might argue that great works are timeless and speak with enduring validity, they are nonetheless part of contemporary literary processes, and they have a genuine chance of finding their place, of exerting an effect, and of entering into dialogue with other texts of the recent past and the present only if they are available to be read at the time of their writing. Labdajáték (lit. Ball Game), written in 1951, could be published only in 1988; her second novel, Sztélé nagyanyámnak (lit. Stele for My Grandmother), written in 1960, was published in 2002. Her essays fared no better: A hely ismerője (lit. The One Who Knows This Place), published posthumously in 2006, was written in 1968; …de a sivatag (lit. …But the Desert), issued in 1993, dates from 1970; and Levelek a halott baráthoz (lit. Letters to a Dead Friend), published in the same volume, likewise in 1993, was written as early as 1941. The truly wide-ranging Hamvas interpretation Az ember, aki ismerte saját neveit (lit. The Man Who Knew His Own Names), published in 1990, likewise dates from the 1970s. I am aware that many people imagine the literary worlds of Hamvas and Kemény as islands within the history of Hungarian literature, unique and without peers (that is, they are only in relation to one another); yet this would not be a virtue even if it were true. Instead, it should be recognised that no work, not even a work of genius, comes into being ex nihilo, each work has precisely identifiable sources, antecedents, and affinities, and it is precisely this fact that can render works genial, that they are able to appropriate and synthesise existing linguistic and intellectual impulses and patterns in creative, novel ways. It is only by virtue of being in dialogue with the tradition of national literature and with contemporary literature, and by exerting a self-evident influence on works that follow, that such texts may be regarded as works of genius. Only in this way can they become readable and do they enter circulation, for readers themselves are socialised into literature within this very context as well. However, at present, Katalin Kemény’s art lacks these connections, and consequently, it lacks a discernible readership (at least for the time being).

Yet the crafted, refined, and sensitive use of language that characterises her novels, short stories, and essays alike, and that almost renders the fictional and essayistic texts indistinguishable, reveals a writer of extraordinary talent. Not everyone is capable of composing long sentences of such meticulous workmanship; this is the preserve only of those who are truly artists of language, who possess an exceptional command of their mother tongue, and who set about shaping sentences with a clear and confident sense of what they wish to convey. It can be said that these texts are worth reading for the beauty and lightness of the sentences alone, for the combination of weighty content with complex syntactic structures handled with a light touch. This mode of discourse, which defines the oeuvre as a whole and has become the author’s hallmark, offers a perfect example of the convergence of language and thought: elevation, dignity, seriousness, and commitment are all reflected within it.

This sense of dignity permeates the novel Stele for My Grandmother, one of the most outstanding among her prose works. In this book, Katalin Kemény returns to her Transylvanian childhood, to Cluj (Kolozsvár) and Turda (Torda), and, as the title promises, she offers a literary monument in memory of her grandmother. However, beyond the act of remembrance, the book is of great importance because, through the retracing of childhood, it enacts a search for, and a recovery of, spiritual and existential roots: the reader encounters a meditative and evocative immersion, a renewed experience of a pure and sincere childlike world. A similar aspiration, though with far greater stakes, characterises the essays: a return to the spiritual legacy of humanity’s golden age, a return to tradition, the cornerstone of this literary and intellectual world, something that alone offers a chance for a higher level of spiritual life worthy of the human being.

The richness of a language that is refined to an almost poetic register, together with the concentrated yet vortex-like, ramifying operation of memory, to some extent obscures the actual events of the novel: it is no easy task to extract from the text what happened, when, and in precisely what manner. Moreover, Kemény shows a marked predilection for archaic symbols, and the text is dense with allusions to a body of learning accessible only to a few, even the term ‘stele’ in the title belongs to a specialised vocabulary rather than to everyday usage. When sentences and images are constructed around these words, concepts, and references, the reader is placed in a difficult position, for each individual word exceeds itself: in the passage cited here, for instance, seeds, the burning bush, fire, the turtledove, the beak and lightning, the stork, and the ocean are all culturally charged symbols, so that their use activates the dense clusters of cultural meaning condensed within them, something that is exceedingly difficult to follow as a reader. As the text puts it: “your three-pronged glowing seeds have all burst forth; behold, the burning bush breathes fire even in the moonless night, and the turtledove is flying with last year’s berry in its beak; yet beyond, the stork wades in the marsh, its beak is a red lightning bolt in the drowsy autumn landscape; seeds of the ocean, with your plaything, I seeded the earth, wave upon wave, rings within rings, I scattered variegated numbers clasping one another, leaping across one another, colours, forms, and measure, translucent shadows passing through one another.”

In essence, it is these symbols that provide the novel with its framework: they bring with them their metaphysical meanings and the layers of context that have accrued around them, only to be reanimated within the text and to assume new roles as elements of a singular narrative, continuing their lives in transformed forms. Remembrance and autobiographical reference carry the promise of recalling a once-lived reality; yet the lyrical, elevated mode of discourse and the weight of the symbolic register prevent the text from being read as a straightforward reproduction of the factual past. It thus becomes apparent that a metaphysical, even sacral, dimension is concealed within the carefully wrought paragraphs. The story is narrated by Kóré, a little girl, a granddaughter, at times from the perspective of her childhood self and at others from the vantage point of the adult at the time of writing, with the grandmother’s name occupying the central position of the narrative. The name remains unknown, and not without reason: it functions as the symbol of the grandmother’s fate, the meaning of her life, her destined role; once these are grasped over the course of the book, once they are understood by the narrator herself, the name is disclosed. Moreover, this act of understanding rebounds upon the little girl as well, for in the process, Kóré comes to recognise the fateful significance of her own name and, through it, her place within creation. These are weighty claims, but the significance extends still further if one recall that the book-length study Kemény devoted to Hamvas, more precisely, to his novel Karnevál (lit. Carnival), bears the title The Man Who Knew His Own Names. In other words, this motif is of particular importance and resonance for the author. In this literary world, knowledge of the name signifies knowledge itself: the name is the emblem of face, fate, character, and place. When the grandmother’s name is disclosed, its recognition signifies rebirth for the one who recognises it; whoever knows their own name, or names, is the wise one, the master, capable of leading others towards the same spiritual and intellectual rebirth.

On the one hand, there is a beautiful worldview permeated by transcendence and articulated in lyrical language; on the other, an uncompromising seriousness, a prophetic tone, philosophical depth, a proclamation-like mode of address, an aspiration to initiation, and a marked absence of humour. The event-like conception of literature, together with the author’s desire to convey something profoundly important, a kind of secret, to a reader imagined as occupying a lower level, lends the text a certain rigidity, one that is felt with particular force from the vantage point of the present. The reader of the early twenty-first century is more ironic and more grounded: ironic in the sense of approaching grand, world-redeeming ideas and weighty words with an a priori scepticism; and more grounded in that they are more concerned with their own personal distress, such as the damage caused by toxic parents, private troubles, crises of marriage and relationships, networks of self-deception, or public affairs, than with distant, arduous, and slow-moving philosophical questions. There is a conflict at work, for Katalin Kemény’s essays largely insist that ‘authentic’, ‘organic’ existence can be attained only through confronting the traditional philosophical questions – where do we come from? who are we? where are we going? – and that only by embarking upon a spiritual path can one form a conception of being that draws close to the transcendent and offers a chance of harmony. However, even if this claim is granted, the dense and demanding essayistic language through which the claim is articulated can easily deter even those readers who might otherwise be receptive to her works. This is especially true given that, unlike in the 1980s, nowadays, there is an abundance of authors available in Hungarian who promise and deliver something similar, yet do so in forms that may be more readily accessible or that employ more familiar means. Both the writer and the work are compelled to compete for readers – this constitutes another aspect of reception history.

It can be said of …But the Desert, Letters to a Dead Friend, and The One Who Knows This Place, volumes that balance on the borderland between prose and essay, but ultimately incline more towards the essay, that they are written in a language of rare finesse: meticulously wrought, carefully elaborated, elevated, almost poetically melodic, yet enigmatic. Their author emerges here as a true artist of the Hungarian language. The message of these books is closely aligned: the corruption of being, that is, the sin that shattered primordial, golden-age harmony, was a genuine catastrophe, and it is the consequences of this catastrophe that we are now living through, or rather, it is within this catastrophe that we live, for it continues to unfold in our present experience. Kemény repeatedly turns to the true meaning of catastrophe, emphasising that it ultimately leads to the confrontation described above and to the search for, then the discovery of, the right path (with the Gospel serving as the guide). And although the conjunction of “the Catastrophe and the Golden Age” is in itself paradoxical (a paradox whose validity and necessity Kemény explains with reference to the Empedoclean tradition), the foundations of her thought are further shaped by a series of oppositions that appear mutually exclusive yet are more accurately defined in relation to one another: reality and complete unreality, being and life, the abyss and the “eternal order”, falsehood and vigilance, “cyclic and apocalyptic time”, and the problem of time and timelessness. Beneath an argumentation that at times seems erratic and at others dissolves into poetic obscurity, a stable and consistent conception of being nonetheless takes shape, a philosophically ambitious thought experiment, a comprehensive interpretation of the world. These books seek to grasp the concept and metaphysics of space, time, and place. Motifs of “desert existence”, wandering, the longing for homecoming and the condition of perpetual homelessness, poetic dwelling, and the desire for a house and home recur in these genuinely poem-like texts, which are therefore difficult to interpret or summarise, composed of loosely connected, brief, associative essay fragments. In the posthumously published volume Maszk és valóság (lit. Mask and Reality), which gathers her essays on the visual arts, one can observe that, even when writing about the works of Lajos Vajda or Béla Veszelszky, Kemény is primarily concerned with the same set of questions outlined above: the opposition between art and reality; the transient and the eternal; the sayable and the invisible; and the relation between mask and face, including the discoverability of the true face, a key concept both in Carnival and in Katalin Kemény’s interpretation of Carnival. It may be noted that the essays on the visual arts are markedly more pared-down, direct, and concrete than the novel interpretation mentioned above, and this contrast is most pronounced in comparison with the philosophical essays. It is an interesting rhetorical strategy that, when encountering these texts, the reader may often come to feel that the fault lies with themselves, that they are insufficiently prepared, insufficiently committed, ultimately unworthy of receiving the text, of being initiated into it, of becoming the master’s disciple. This may derive from a perception that the reader does not know enough about primordial tradition and is therefore deemed uncultivated, or because they dare to pose questions in relation to the text, to doubt it, or even to criticise it. The text is constructed in such a way as to leave no room for questions: only complete acceptance and submission seem to promise understanding, and ultimately, this leads to another paradox. For although the books lead the reader along the paths of body and soul, along the path of the spirit, one can lead only those who wish to be led. The fact that Katalin Kemény is able to make this intelligible to her readers, and to secure the acceptance of it by some of them, is a significant authorial achievement. Personalness, confessional tone, and the poetic devices that intensify them underscore the quasi-initiatory character of these texts, the privileged and chosen status of the discerning reader, and the speaker’s experiential depth, the lived quality of her words. Although the “one who knows the place” just as earlier the “one who knows the names” is in fact Béla Hamvas, and Katalin Kemény regards him, and not primarily herself, as the master. For within this subculture, and this is a crucial issue when considering the reasons for Kemény’s limited recognition and readership, the task of the guidance towards the spiritual path, of ‘realisation’, and even of coming to know the feminine principle within oneself is assigned to men, while women are accorded a predominantly auxiliary and supportive role. As is well known, in the 1980s, the members of the Hamvasian circles were almost exclusively men; women could gain entry only as wives or partners, and it was precisely this gender-based, yet philosophically grounded, distinction that lay behind that exclusion.

Notwithstanding the above, Katalin Kemény is a sovereign and powerful author who, over the course of decades, consistently and faithfully represented a mode of literariness and a mode of thought aligned with her own convictions. She produced books of a high standard that are distinctive and extraordinarily demanding, and attached to them a generous offer: those who are willing to take the trouble to follow with her the spiritual path she herself has already traversed may partake not only in the pleasure of reading, in a textual pleasure unlike that of any other author, but may also come to learn something about how life can be lived in its fullness, in such a way that not a single day is felt to have been squandered. Many others have made similar promises before, and have written books with greater or lesser success, and have no doubt found readers upon whose lives they had a genuine impact, readers who, after reading those books, came to live clearer, more transparent, calmer lives endowed with meaning, in short, happier lives. In Katalin Kemény’s understanding, this is probably the most important role and task of literature and philosophy. What she was able to do, and what her means allowed her to do, she did; yet it is ultimately the readers who must decide whether to accept her offer. If they do not, her oeuvre, like so many others before it, may slip into oblivion. However, there are many individuals who can act to ensure that this does not happen. Periods and fashions change, readers’ expectations are reshaped, and authorial languages seek out ever new paths. What was once deemed outdated may suddenly become sought after, whereas celebrated authors may be forgotten within a few years. It is impossible to predict what fate awaits her body of work.

[2017]