Endre Medvigy: Career path of József Mács
Along with László Dobos and Gyula Duba, József Mács is an outstanding prose writer of the first generation of post-World War II Hungarian literature in Slovakia. In the first half of the 1950s, when he started writing, he began with poetry, continued with reports and short stories, and then became a novelist. In his stories and novels, he writes about his native village of Bátka, the good Palóc people of Gömör County and the endangerment of the Hungarian minority in the Highlands, about questions of fate and the chances of survival with stubborn loyalty and unwavering commitment. As the child of an industrialist (stone-mason) father, he grew up in a village and became an inspired portrayer and courageous advocate of the Hungarian peasantry in Slovakia. The defence of the mother tongue, the cause of Hungarian schools and the nationality question in general became increasingly prominent in his literary work and publicist writings from the mid-1960s onwards, and after the Prague Spring of 1968. For a long time, his indisputable novel Adósságtörlesztés (Debt Repayment), published in 1968, was considered his best book, the pinnacle of his career, forgetting his more recent achievements. Freed from the daily editorial work, the writer can devote more time to his creative work, not only writing more important books, but also moving towards new peaks in his career.
The ancient culture of Gömör, the Kuruc Protestant spirituality acquired at the college in Sárospatak and the radicalism of the folk college movement in search of social justice provided the intellectual ammunition for the literary start. The works of Tömörkény and Mikszáth, Zsigmond Móricz and the folk writers could also provide the impetus for a career start. The timing is not favourable: a narrow interpretation of so-called socialist realism and sematism characterise this period, especially in the first half of the 1950s. From 1951 he published in Szabad Földműves (Free Farmer) and Új Szó (New Word), writing poetry, book reviews, short stories and newspaper articles. In the first decade of his fiction writing career, as circumstances allowed, he slowly and gradually freed himself from the schematism and the obligatory frills of socialist realism.
His first book, Végnélküli Gyűlés (Endless Gathering), was published in 1955 in Bratislava by the Czechoslovak Hungarian Book Publishing House. The subtitle is also a genre designation, the volume contains village satires and stories. There is more reportage and genre-defying writing here than perhaps still tender but promising fiction. Yet Háromszázötven tyúk és egy tojás (Three Hundred and Fifty Hens and an Egg) is taken over and published by a Slovak satirical magazine, Rohács. This circumstance widens the author's scope, since the editor-in-chief of the Új Szó (New Word) was also afraid of satire until the publication in Slovak. Olivér Rácz nevertheless passed a sentence of censure on the first volume, which also hit the publisher: “[...] we do not consider it good planning to harvest from fruit that is just about to ripen”. The critics of the time, including Zoltán Fábry, criticised the anecdotal nature of József Mács's writings. In Mikszáth's native land, the land of the good Palóc and the Tót brothers, anecdote cannot be a dirty word, especially if we consider that Sándor Karácsony defended the untruthful slander and considered it a typical Hungarian genre.
Zoltán Fábry considered the young writer, who was searching for his voice, still immature in his writings, yet showing individual traits, worthy of a strict but helpful criticism. There is no doubt that the writing and publication of the collection of short stories entitled Téli Világ (Winter World) in 1957 marked a high point in József Mács's prose writing. This is clear from the reviews of the time and from Zoltán Fábry's exacting analysis. The work A stószi remete (The Hermit of Stósz) was published rather late, in 1960, in the Pozsony Literary Review. In his longer study entitled The Genre of Demandingness, Fábry devotes a separate structural unit to József Mács's volume of short stories. He points out the flaws and structural weaknesses of the short stories in Téli Világ (Winter World), and the shortcomings of the developmental sketch, but his few encouraging sentences suggest that he had a glimpse of the young author as a future great creator. For example, he says: “Mács takes centuries-old peasant signs and can condense them into a sentence instead of a long explanation.” He appreciates the 'vernacular style and perceptive taste of the son of Gömör'.
Pipafüst (Pipe Smoke), published in 1959, is not a collection of short stories but of reports. It is a more significant work than The Endless Assembly, but it is a step backwards in terms of Téli világ (Winter World). In the year of its publication, László Dobos described it in the Literary Review as the second book of reports on Hungarian literature in Czechoslovakia after World War II. Here, the schematism is reasserted. Dobos reminds us that it is difficult to classify Mács's first three volumes, because the author did not have sharp genre boundaries at that time. The strength of the book is that it is not local or provincial, but covers the whole of Slovakia. The structure of Pipafüst (Pipe Smoke) is also worthy of attention: it is divided into clusters of reports. Unfortunately, the main problem is still whether or not the working peasant should join the cooperative.
József Mács's first short novel, A kamasz (The Adolescent) youth novel, was published in 1961 by the Slovak Literary Book Publishing House. The story is set in a village near Pelsőc in the Highlands, which was returned to Hungary by the First Vienna decision. Before Mács's book, there was no precedent for the depiction of this period without political slogans in Slovak Hungarian literature. It was a successful work, so it could be expected to appeal to a wider readership. Bálint Magyar, the master shoemaker, is taken to an early grave by brandy. He leaves behind a weeping widow and four hungry children. After the funeral, the eldest, 16-year-old Bálint, receives his father's inheritance, a well-worn cloak. He becomes a footman and then a woodcutter, helping his family's dire financial situation. Then the flights and bombings begin. The family is moved to the farmyard of Farmer Forgács, where they set up home in the colour. Bálint, as a servant, is allowed to rest overnight on the stable's dicot. They work him from sight to blindness. Only frequent nightly lovemaking with the master's wife brings some variety and sultry eroticism to his life. In the conditions of war, Bálint is sent to a levente paramilitary training school and then enlisted as a soldier. He is sent to Austria to leave his regiment and then returns to his village. Under the influence of a nineteen-year veteran, he flees to the mountains and joins the resistance. In his review, István Käfer pointed out that some of the narratives in Téli Világ (Winter World) can be seen as thematic prequels to A kamasz (The Adolescent). He drew attention to József Mács's choice use of language as a “rich treasure trove of folk language”.
Megbillen az ég (The Sky is Falling) was published in 1964 in Bratislava by the Slovak Literary Publishing House. Uncontrollable emotions run rampant in some of the short stories in this volume, especially those that reveal the influence of Zsigmond Móricz. The Prisoners of the Moon explores the abuses of the first half of the 1950s and the power of the communist kings. The book was edited into a volume before its publication, and the vigilant guardians of power did not prevent, but slowed down, its publication. In his review, Zoltán Szeberényi criticized the tragic rivalry between László Szépe, a man of Dani Turi's blood, and Miska Végh, who avenged his male grievances with the power of the people. Social problems cannot be reduced to a sexually motivated conflict.
The title narrative, Megbillen az ég (The Sky is Falling), depicts a lowly, barbaric act, reminiscent in its drama of Zsigmond Móricz's short story The Barbarians. “The story of the moral 'short-circuiting' of the father who has his eyes on his foster daughter is more powerful, more nuanced in its motivation. Even the exaggerated dog scene can be justified psychologically. Despite a few jarring, unnecessary detours, it retains its dramatic tension and emotional saturation throughout. The writer's moral judgment leaves no doubt, and despite what appears to be a case of impunity, the fallen father does not escape with his conscience in torment.” (Zoltán Szeberényi)
Két finánc között (Between Two Customs Officers) is an autobiographical story.In the autumn of 1947, in the absence of Hungarian schools in Slovakia, the young József Mács, who was eager to learn, was forced to cross the border to study at the Reformed College in Sárospatak. He is accompanied by his caring father, who understands the language of the border guards better than his son.
Pataki diákok (Students from Patak) is an anthologically successful work of his. After the legation, the suspicious father is vigilant in guarding his daughter's virtues from the students, who are perceived to be of high character. For safety's sake, he prefers to lie next to the student as a lodger to thwart the seduction.
In 1964, the year of the publication of the above-mentioned book of short stories, József Mács's novel on minority issues, Adósságtörlesztés (Debt Repayment), was already finished but could not go to press. The author worked on the manuscript in Páskaháza from April to July 1964. He suspected that he had little chance of publication. Earlier, he had tried in vain to get his narrative about Hungarians deported to the Czech Republic, Nappalok és éjszakák (Days and Nights), published in Hét (Week), but Gyula Lőrincz rejected the manuscript. Adósságtörlesztés (Debt Repayment) is not a solitary enterprise in Slovak Hungarian literature. Earlier, Olivér Rácz and László Dobos had written simultaneously about the bitterness of the years of statelessness, the settlement in the Sudetenland and the population exchange. József Mács wrote in the column about his book in the weekly Hétben, after the publication of Adósságtörlesztés (Debt Repayment) in 1968: “I was born in the district of Rimaszombat and married in Páskaháza, and both regions are such that Hungarians and Slovaks have lived together and side by side for centuries, for better or worse, in joy and in sorrow. They have never been the instigators of discord and enmity - ordinary people have. The greatest danger has always come from elsewhere, from higher regions. This is what I write about in the novel, I talk about the lives and fates of these people in Adósságtörlesztés (Debt Repayment).”
They have not migrated, they have not moved, they have lived in the same place for centuries, their ancestors have been in the cemetery for I don't know how many decades, and it is not their fault that the sky has often “changed” over their heads. They were torn here and there! My novel is about people who live along the border, who are different in many ways from the others who work in the purest ethnic group, who think differently, who have different wallets, and whose backs are most often the ones on whom the whip snaps. My hero is a teacher who has no “children”. A general without an army - a teacher without children! And with this I have also revealed that the starting point of my novel, Adósságtörlesztés (Debt Repayment), is the disenfranchisement, the most difficult and tragic years of Hungarian life in Czechoslovakia... Of course, the story is not just about forty-five or forty-eight years, because people's lives cannot fit into three years.”
András Görömbei was one of the first in Hungary to point out the novel's value: “József Mács's novel recalls a difficult time. Mács József's Mács József is a difficult time. Mács József's Mács József is a poignant and bitter writer, with a sad sadness, a sadness of life, a sadness of life, but there is no bitterness in which a cheerful joke or a tearful humour does not occasionally shine through. These are part of life. József Mács's novel shows the fullness of life, and history is to blame for the fact that there is more pain. The many forms of vulnerability and the fate of the innocent people suffering along the border are increasingly impatient for the ultimate reconciliation, for a Central Europe without borders, which unfortunately still seems like a utopia today.”
József Mács's book Kétszer harangoztak (They rang the bell twice), published in Bratislava in 1979, is a social and psychological novel. In many cases, its critics have been puzzled by, or have little sympathy for, the obsession of the protagonist, the lonely Mrs. Károly Boda Hermin Boda, who sees her house, built under difficult circumstances and with bitter effort, as under threat. She would have left it to her daughter by blood and then, after her daughter's suicide, to her niece (foster daughter), but she too ended her life with her own hands. Hermin Cséplő's persecution mania is fuelled by the derailment of Hungarian history, Trianon, all the victims of the Don Bend, and the statelessness of the Hungarians in the Highlands, which cannot be reduced to three years. His younger brother was killed in the Carpathian defensive fighting in World War II, his daughter-in-law's tragedy was caused by a bomb shrapnel during the devastation of the war. The alcoholism or suicide of his loved ones is the result of historical traumas, national or ethnic tragedies. This is also the origin of the mania for persecution for fear of house, home and heritage. András Kroó observes that the literary strength of József Mács's novels lies in their characterisation. “He is able to create a character from a few characteristic details, from a few words - this time he outlines Hermin's husband, the word-shy peasant farmer, or his brother-in-law, the 'scholar' crow, most authentically. Finally, [...] the strength of Twice they have rung the bell is its style, which is suited to the subject and the atmosphere, and is at its smoothest and most enjoyable where the writer makes use of the vernacular turns of phrase, peasant imagery and similes.”
In his 1981 novel Szélfúvásban (In the Blowing Wind), published by Madách Publishing House, Mács speaks out against prejudiced thinking and points to the serious problem of homelessness, hopelessness and the oppressive nature of minority existence. Gergő Hargitai, the hero of the novel, is a tramp on the path of the stateless, longing for a home and human community. Born in Northern Transylvania, he was a foundling raised by shepherds in the Harghita. Towards the end of the Great War, he was taken prisoner by the Romanians, not as a soldier, but as a soldier. After the bitter experience of being a minority and a prisoner of war before the war, and fearing the brutality of the Iron Guard, he does not wish to return to his homeland. He seeks refuge in a Hungarian village in the Highlands. He does his job well, is well liked, has a chance to fit in and put down roots.
He has no travel document or identity card and cannot prove his identity or nationality. Although he knows more Hungarian folk songs than the villagers, it is rumoured that he is Romanian. As an intruding “foreigner”, he is cast out by the suspicious community. Dénes Kiss, reading Szélfúvásban (In the Blowing Wind), said of the author's creative method. Just as the symphonies are strengthened by the individual movements and gradually bring the many strands of the message into harmony, the writer completes and harmonises his thoughts in a similar way. And it is perhaps inevitable that the work is ultimately unfinished - we do not learn the true fate of the protagonist.”
In 1982, József Mács published a youth novel, A vesztes (The Loser), with Madách Publishing House. The book consists of two interconnected, longer short stories or novellas. According to the blurb, “Both are the often humorous, yet painful, stories of the same village child hero from Gömöri - the author's former self - from a turbulent, almost fateful time for the Hungarian nation of Slovakia.”
The first story is a narrative called Hasszán (Hassan). It is set in the “little Hungarian time” following the First Vienna decision, the invasion of Upper Hungary, in the years 1938-1944. The hero is a teenage boy born into a family of industrialists and merchants, whose main desire is to own a horse, a cart and land, to live as a peasant farmer. The boy's love of horses grows to enormous proportions, yet his parents would rather see their well-meaning son educated. The adolescent, who wants a horse, becomes so obsessed with the idea that, at school, encouraged by his teacher, he tells the story of his imaginary horse, Hassan, with great persuasive power and visualisation skills, as if it were a real, flesh and blood horse, owned by him, of course. When he unmasks himself, no one believes that the horse he is portraying does not exist. In the political circumstances, the writer can just touch on the First Vienna decision and the invasion of the Highlands in his book, but he can only show the backhand side of it.
The second story, A vesztes (The Loser), takes place after World War II, during the years of statelessness. The Hungarian schools are closed, so the father takes his son to a village in the Tatar language, to learn Slovak. The much-talked-about “bridge” connects nations and nationalities speaking different languages, even in difficult times.
In 1988, another novel by the author from Gömöri, Temetőkapu (The Cemetery Gate), was published by Madách Publishing House in Bratislava. As in the previous book, Kétszer harangoztak (They rang the bell twice), the author portrays a defect of spiritual life, depicting the increasingly troubled state of mind of a mother of a girl. For as long as humanity and individual peoples have had literature, the subject of the girl mother has been a recurring theme to be dealt with again and again. In rural society, such cases are particularly striking, with the distressed daughter being gutted by the village. She is condemned even if she is not to blame, but has been the victim of violence. In the novel, the damsel who has fallen seeks to turn her fate around by making a vow to keep away from men, to abstain. As the months and years go by, the girl's fears and gruesome fantasies become more and more haunting. The novel begins with the funeral of the illegitimate child. The psychic disturbance escalates into madness, and the mother, fleeing from the perceived advances of the male astronaut, digs up the dusty bones of her dead child from the grave and takes her to a crypt, a place she thinks is a safe haven. Mihály Czine drew attention to the Transylvanian literary parallels of the Highland novel, pointing to the similar world of ballad drama in István Szilágyi's novel Kő hull apadó kútba (Stone falls into a low-water well).
Égig érő palatábla (Slate Reaching to the Sky) was published in 1993, as József Mács's first volume after the regime change. The author tells the story of a young boy born in a mixed marriage in a foreign environment, in the Czech Republic, and of his spiritual growth, and describes life in a village in Gömöri. László Cselényi, reflecting on the writer's means and his way of expression, says: “Mács, now in retirement, the slate reaching up to the sky, is proof that he is not giving up the race. And in the same way that he does not give up the style he has found before for a bowl of lentils. Today's reader, the younger contemporary, sometimes wants to find a new voice from his old authors, but in the end the writer may be right. Fashions come, styles go, but the problems remain. And Mács is on the side of the problems.”
It seemed that Mács's novel Magasság és Mélység (Height and Depth) would appear as continued episodes in the pages of Nő (Woman) from January 1973. The author was expelled from the CSKP on charges of anti-Partyism, and his press credentials were withdrawn. Another charge was that he had not written the name of a settlement in Árva county, Alsókubin, in accordance with the official rules on the use of place names. At the time, in 1973, the novel was edited and awaiting publication by Madách Publishing House, but after a storm over the publication of the excerpts, it was not published. It reached readers much later, after two decades. At that time, József Mács was sent by the editorial staff of Hét (Week) to the Slovakian countryside, to report on the situation in the Árva county. Instead of inquiring about the results of production in factories and cooperatives, he chose a different subject. He was more interested in the fate of his guide, Mrs Kozak. He asked her about her past, especially about how she had become a family man, the mistress of a Hungarian journalist, while working as a party delegate and teacher in Bratislava. Her teaching job and party career came to an early end. She kept herself proud, never telling anyone the name of her child's father.
József Mács's main work, his most significant book, is the tetralogy published in volumes between 1998 and 2001, Öröködbe, Uram… (To your Legacy, My Lord) published by Méry Ratio in Somorja... This novel is a family history, local history, social history, autobiography, Central European history and the description of the fate of minorities. After the publication of the complete work, the journalist János Juhász Nagy called József Mács an authentic chronicler of a hundred years. His contemporaries László Cselényi, Gyula Duba and Árpád Tőzsér, regardless of isms or literary sectarianism, have spoken highly of the author and his tetralogy. In writing his main work, his most significant work, József Mács used, among other sources, the family history and autobiographical notes of his retired father, thus painting an accurate picture of turn-of-the-century Hungary, the former Highlands and Gömör with the help of eyewitnesses.
The first volume of Öröködbe, Uram… (To your Legacy, My Lord), Apám regénye (The Novel of my Father), follows the story of the father's struggles from the turn of the century until the birth of the author in April 1931, in the framework of a nuanced chronography and social history, sharing with the reader everything the father experienced. The second volume, A Kos jegyében (Under the Sign of Aries), from April 1931 to the summer of 1947, shows the changes of the times, with a special focus on Gömör, Bátka and the Mács family, the father, a master stonemason who runs the cooperative shop at the same time, and his self-confident son, the future writer. The third book, A sötétség gyermekei (The Children of Darkness), shows the fate of József Mács and his loved ones, the struggles and trials of the Hungarian Highlanders from autumn 1947 to January 1957. The fourth volume, Az üstökös visszatér (The Comet Returns), is a rich tableau of two decades' worth of events, from József Mács's dismissal from Új Szó (New Word) to the death of his father.
On the publication of the first volume, Gyula Duba reviews József Mács's novel A tények költészete (The Poetry of Facts). His findings apply to all four volumes. He speaks in the language of a direct and precise Hungarian style. His dramaturgy is determined by the flow of life and the order of events in time. The result is a gripping text, which, besides being reading material, is also fascinating. We read it with a good feeling, it captivates us, its drift is absorbing. Reflecting on its impact, we realise that the magic of the text lies in its lyricism, which seems hidden yet effective. Regular and concise declarative sentences are peculiar to his poetry. We feel they speak to us from somewhere deep in our souls. And when we search for the reason for this, when we look for the basic motives for the text's impact, we unexpectedly and surprisingly discover the facts! We sense the poetry of the everyday, the sheer fact of life.”
Árpád Tőzsér, a former debating partner, sees the place of József Mács's book in the Hungarian literature of the Highlands already at the publication of the second volume: “József Mács's work is of pioneering significance for the history of Hungarian writing in Slovakia after World War II. The genre of the memoir and confessional autobiography with sociographic objectivity, which was successfully developed in our literature in the early 1970s by András Sütő from Transylvania, was added to the landscape, soul and history of the Highlands by the Bratislava author with the two books mentioned above.” Let us add that Gyula Duba, author of Vajúdó parasztvilág (The Peasant World in Trouble), and György Beke, author of two volumes of Barangolások Erdélyben (Travels in Transylvania), also have a great deal to offer in the field of social history. Beke is also an example of how to get to sophisticated cultural history and sociology from reportage.
In reading the fourth volume, Az üstökös visszatér (The Comet Returns), László Cselényi observes the unprecedented value of József Mács's writing. József Mács is a writer of historical confrontation, who preserves the forgotten past in his memory and writing. “His generation is barely ten years older than ours, we have been fighting, arguing and quarrelling together for fifty years, and we, who arrived in Bratislava only after 56, know little of what happened between 49 and 56. Mács opened Pandora's box, let the genie out of the bottle. And I think this is an act of literary history.”
Bolondok hajóján (On the Boat of Fools) was published in 2010, almost a decade after the final volume of Öröködbe, Uram… (To your Legacy, My Lord) by Madách-Posonium in Bratislava. This book is a picaresque novel, like Jenő Józsi Tersánszky's Kakuk Marcijá, Áron Tamási's Ábel, József Nyirő's Úz Bence (Bence Úz). Its most important character, Szeplős, is also related to Jaroslav Hasek's Svejk. The basic premise of the book is based on a historical, political bluff and absurdity. During the preparatory negotiations for the Trianon peace treaty, Benes made the peacemakers believe the blatant lie that the Ipoly was a navigable river. The all-seeing, all-doing, all-living-on-ice freckle-faced Szeplős dares to prove the truth of this concocted proposition throughout Czechoslovakia, perhaps to this day. József Mács still finds the strange subject timely, and his work is more than just a recollection of the past. In constant peril in the stormy winds that twist our lives.” This book marks a renewal in the author's writing, which, in the light of his latest work, moves towards the absurd and the grotesque. It is precisely his historical realism that calls for it.
In 2014, József Mács's latest novel, Az elcsatolt vagon (The detached Wagon), was published by Felsőmagyarország Publishing House in Miskolc. This book is further evidence of the expansion of his rich toolbox, the reappearance of the absurd and the grotesque in his writing. It is a historical fact that, after World War II, the agents of the Czechoslovak state enjoyed complete freedom to recruit Slovaks to resettle in Hungary's once again mutilated territory, in the place of their Slavic ancestors, the Hungarians from the Highlands who had been deported to Slovakia or who had been forced to resettle in Hungary through population exchange. The novel's protagonist, István Kovács, declares himself Slovak in the hope of the fate offered to him, so that he can resettle in Slovakia. Before the Resettlement Committee in Miskolc, he not only declares himself Slovak, but also provides documents to prove his claim. In fact, he was a Hungarian from Upland who wanted to resettle with his family in his house in Habánfalvi. He was issued the permit he wanted and a carriage was made available to him in Ózd to help him resettle. However, the 'annexed wagon' was attached to a train of Hungarians deported from Gömör to the Czech Republic. Instead of Habánfalva, he and his family ended up in Glüg, from where there was no return.
Tradition and innovation are in harmonious balance in József Mács's writing. His rich oeuvre, which strengthens our sense of identity, is an inescapable value of universal Hungarian literature.
[2015]