“I am a journalist, nothing else,” Marosi Barna declares when asked about his work as a writer. We might add: a travelling reporter. Indeed, his first book, written jointly with Miklós Dános when he was still young, at the age of twenty-five, Két hét a Dunán (Two Weeks on the Danube, 1957), presents the entire Romanian stretch of the Danube. It focuses primarily on the extraordinary beauty of the landscape, but also pauses for occasional digressions on achievements created by human hands, historical events of the distant past, and political events of the recent past (for example, the crossing of the Danube by “the liberating Soviet troops”). The introduction justifies the writing of the reportage book by invoking “a reader’s letter” of the kind so characteristic of the 1950s: “Why do you write so very rarely about our greatest river, the Danube?” From then on, the Danube, and particularly the decades-long construction of the Iron Gates project, would become one of the favourite recurring subjects of his reports from around the country.
Almost ten years later, however, he published a work that comes close to suggesting that the journalist had moved closer towards the borderlands of literature, towards writing that had aesthetic value as well. In the subtitle of Kapu utca tíz (10 Kapu Street, 1965), he describes the work as a novella, but it could just as legitimately be regarded as a piece of investigative long-form reportage constructed according to the precision-oriented methods of sociography, or as a crime story recalling the unexpected twists of a classic detective novel. Kapu utca tíz was Marosi Barna’s first and only work written with literary intent; had it been followed by similar works in his career, one might even claim that it represented the first attempt to create a distinctively Romanian Hungarian socialist detective novel – a literary mode capable of portraying the complex, internally generated contradictions of the system with nuanced, factual authenticity.
Because of the disciplining and constraining framework imposed by the investigative genre, the unfolding story has no protagonist; instead, the narrative voice, assuming the position of the reporter, continually asks questions, interprets and comments. Accordingly, the character types representing different social groups in a small Romanian Hungarian (Transylvanian) town of the 1950s and 1960s are portrayed objectively, as figures of equal importance. The terse testimonies and authorial comments gradually shape them into distinct personalities; behind these personalities, individual lives and destinies are revealed, until finally the murder – first encountered at the beginning of the story through police reports – is solved.
The story – seemingly following the classics of the crime genre – begins by tracing the news of the murder, and suspicion immediately falls on a member of the family. A father and his daughter were killed while on their way to the railway station, while the elder son has no alibi for the critical period. The reporter’s rapid-fire conversations, however, gradually reveal an extraordinarily complex web of relationships within the victims’ family. The mother, who openly testifies against her own son, had in fact led a profoundly immoral life. She sought to compensate for her humble origins partly through scheming and wheeling and dealing (in conflict with the moral principles of socialism), occasionally through adultery that helped her social advancement, and partly through the shrewd management of her daughter’s career. Under her influence, the daughter – in pursuit of a better match and a pleasure-seeking way of life – cruelly humiliates and rejects her former lover, while gradually destroying the child they had together. It becomes evident that this former lover, humiliated and cast out, committed the murder in a final act of despair, having lost all self-control.
The sense of adventure of a detective story, and the mystery to be solved, are provided by the investigators’ mistaken lines of inquiry and their misleading suspicion of the victim’s innocent brother; its novelistic quality, meanwhile, is shaped by the situations preceding and surrounding the double murder, the complexity of the characters, and the intricacy of the life stories that seem to prepare the way for the tragedy. Behind the facts and events, an intriguing moral dilemma emerges, though it never becomes a force capable of shaping the work’s overall worldview: the murderer, although guilty in the legal sense and certainly not deserving of acquittal, is nevertheless worthy of human understanding, since he is in fact a victim of the murdered girl.
In Marosi Barna’s career, this direction – one that also displayed aesthetic qualities – was not pursued any further; until the historic turning point of 1989, his works consisted almost exclusively of reports on industry and production. One element of the momentum of his first book that did filter through into his later work was the depiction of crime in his reportage, albeit in a restrained manner, presumably because of censorship and the guidelines governing the press. Beyond his personal interest, he was undoubtedly also drawn to the subject by a journalistic purpose in the best sense of the term: to make a sprawling genre filled with masses of concrete facts more exciting and readable. In his report on Háromszék, for example (Széljárta Háromszék [Wind-Swept Háromszék], in Megbolygatott világ [A World Disturbed]), he devotes an entire chapter to a conversation with an imprisoned murderer, and the subject evidently also carries a message open to sociological interpretation: in Szekler Land, poor living conditions and a pervasive sense of discontent contributed to the spread of alcoholism in the 1970s and, partly as a consequence, to rising crime. In his report on the Zsil Valley (Sújtólégben rezesbandával [With a Brass Band amid Firedamp], 1979), he also alludes to the hellish side of life among miners living in workers’ hostels, noting the growing number of tragic crimes and girls who were raped. (The latter may be partly explained by fundamentally misguided social policies: the number of women was disproportionately low compared with the deliberately swollen population of men engaged in heavy manual labour.)
Two volumes of Marosi’s own reportage were published in the 1970s. The earlier one, Megbolygatott világ (A World Disturbed, 1974), contains six substantial pieces. Prominent among them is a documentary account of the late mayor of Marosvásárhely (Târgu Mureș) György Bernády’s achievements in urban development, which can be judged by European standards; the remaining pieces can be classified as reports on industry and production.
Since in 1970s Romania there was generally no institutional framework for Hungarian-language scholarship, and the authorities provided none whatsoever for research into Hungarian history, cultural history and, above all, local history, the press – entirely at the mercy of censorship and subject to total control – sought to assume at least some of these functions. This gave rise to the “distinctively” Romanian Hungarian factual reportage, which was compelled to combine the portrayal of socialist development demanded by the political authorities with digressions in which authors smuggled in references and information relating to Hungarian cultural and local history. They did so in a style approaching literary sophistication, attentive simultaneously to the censor and to the perceptive reader, and at times sounding like metaphorical double-speak. This burdensome task was undertaken mainly by professional, full-time journalists (including György Beke, Zoltán Tófalvi, Ferenc Kenéz, György Gálfalvi and Barna Marosi), although determined working intellectuals also took it upon themselves to serve the cause of minority existence in this way (such as György Lőrincz).
Fogarasi napló (Făgăraș Diary), a piece in the aforementioned volume, might even be regarded as a model of the literary form described above. It opens with a lyrical image with literary associations, evoking Babits’s years in Făgăraș, before moving on to an account of the town’s history supported by factual data. In describing the bridge over the Olt and its aesthetic and engineering merits, Marosi draws on a whole series of old documents – including a surviving expert opinion by László Kővári. This is followed by an explanation of the place name (Terra Fugros – ‘Land of Flight’) and then by the history of the settlement’s famous castle. In short, he undertakes work of scholarly ambition, but presents it in a light, journalistic and popularising style with a broad readership in mind. Only after this does he turn to the obligatory, almost assignment-like central theme: a detailed discussion of the rapid industrial development of the present. Facts follow one another in succession, but the pathos of industrial development must also be affirmed by the tone: “No plant or industrial complex anywhere else in the country can be compared with the Făgăraș Chemical Combine.” (Such enthusiastic celebration of the monumental scale and uniqueness of every factory, construction project and industrial complex was obligatory.)
A similar structure is found in the writings of Barna Marosi, as indeed in those of almost all professional travelling reporters, an integral part of which is an empathetic, lyrical evocation of the industrial landscape: “Trees, groves, streambeds and shrub-covered hollows alternate; I can smell the clean air of the forest. Yet railway tracks run between the trees, signalling equipment shows the way, while sizeable halls, a power plant, machine houses and countless external installations occupy the clearings; elsewhere there are sluices, a weir and settling basins. Along the edges of the asphalt roads, bundles of pipes clad in isometric insulation and massive pipe giants snake in every direction. Farther away stand squat concrete buildings and glass pavilions; the clearing expands into a square, with an office block in the middle, a church-high granulating and pelletising station, a steel-pipe tower exhaling nitrous vapours – and flowerbeds everywhere, though naturally covered with patches of snow…” The extraordinary achievements of the present era invariably surpass even the greatest historical treasures of the past: “Even at the height of its splendour, with all its treasures and possessions, the medieval castle could not have been as rich as this vast industrial giant is today.” The reporter regularly returns to places he has described before, using such occasions to discuss cultural matters – for example, the flourishing Hungarian section of the Făgăraș school – and, in connection with this, once again to investigate, this time in greater detail, certain hidden aspects of Mihály Babits’s life there: the secrets of his love affair, his colleagues and his favourite café.
The other pieces in the book display similar thematic, structural and stylistic features. Viewed in the context of the author’s entire oeuvre, Ősz az Al-Dunán (Autumn on the Lower Danube) is perhaps of greater importance, since the regions along the Danube, and particularly the construction of the Iron Gates, constitute a frequently recurring – indeed, arguably central – theme in Marosi’s work as a reporter. It is in this piece that he describes himself as a “travelling reporter”, “who returns to the Iron Gates year after year”. For some thirty years he followed the construction work taking place there, and its achievements invariably filled him with unreserved admiration. He acknowledges the nineteenth-century plans for transforming the area devised by Széchenyi and Pál Vásárhelyi, yet the true miracle, he argues, could only be accomplished in the present: “Only in the era of socialist construction could Romania undertake this immense task.” He also provides an explanation for these extraordinary achievements: “at the Iron Gates […] every communist, in his own position, must be not merely an ordinary craftsman or engineer, but also a responsible Party worker. […] The same holds equally true elsewhere.” The result is an achievement capable of attaining perfection: “And wonder of wonders, everything happened exactly as the schedule prescribed.”
His experiences on all his reporting trips confirm this uninterrupted, positive development, which is presented as beyond any possible criticism. Gold mining at Verespatak (Roșia Montană) genuinely brought prosperity to the region and its inhabitants (Gyalogút az Érchegységben [On Foot through the Ore Mountains]); in the Danube Delta – after certain human failings and missteps – “things are on the right track now” (Kacsalábon forgó Delta [The Fairy-Tale Delta]); and in Székelyföld, too, the former poverty is disappearing: “Industrialisation caused the towns to swell, and almost overnight a new situation emerged” (Széljárta Háromszék [Wind-Swept Háromszék]).
His other volume published in the 1970s, Sújtólégben rezesbandával [With a Brass Band amid Firedamp] (1979), is essentially a single vast piece of reportage on the Zsil Valley. He divides his subject into three major sections. In the first, A pokolba kívánt Zsil-völgye [The Zsil Valley We Wished to Hell], in keeping with his stated objective (“To this day, the Zsil Valley has neither a local history nor an industrial history”), he searches out medieval charters and every available set of statistics, conducts thorough investigations on the ground, and talks to people from the most diverse sections of the population, from the highest-ranking local political and industrial leaders to manual workers and elderly people who still remember the past. Having returned to the region for decades, he is thoroughly familiar with the various stages of its development, but he also comes to realise that the Hungarian spoken by those who have settled there has deteriorated alarmingly. The second section, Glück auf [Good Luck], presents each of the region’s mining operations in turn, while the third, (Kő)szénrajzok jelen időben [Contemporary (Char)coal Sketches], draws portraits and human profiles, depicting small communities, individual destinies and life stories.
The form of reportage practised by Barna Marosi (among others) was essentially intended to serve as a substitute for Hungarian scholarship in Transylvania, above all for sociography, which had been officially banned; it thus became a genre characteristically concerned with the community and with the community’s problems – problems that could not be articulated publicly. This, together perhaps with press and publishing policies, may partly explain why a considerable number of “collective”, multi-author volumes of reportage appeared. The pieces in Csőposta [Pneumatic Post] (1974) examine Vajdahunyad (Hunedoara), with each author approaching the subject according to his own conception and taste, but within the framework of the familiar “principle of service”. In Marosi Barna’s contribution, Amit a memóriatároló nem „tud” [What the Memory Storage Does Not “Know”], following the model described above, he begins by exploring the history of the castle and its literary associations, and then, with a keen sociographic eye, illustrates a situation that even then foreshadowed a bleak future: masses of villagers, drawn by the prospect of more attractive employment opportunities, were moving into the new high-rise apartment blocks and, having become uprooted, were rapidly turning the old town into a village. Naturally, a substantial part of his piece consists of figures on the production capacity of the factory and its blast furnaces.
In Emberarcok [Human Faces] (1976), likewise a collective work, Marosi presents Balánybánya (Bălan) and the arduous journey of the copper extracted there, interspersed with historical digressions and human portraits.
It is a well-known fact of literary and political history that in Romania in the second half of the 1980s, it was impossible to publish genuine literature or journalism conveying coded sociographic facts; almost the only texts that could reach the public were those echoing the ideology of the Communist Party and its leader. Kriterion, the only Hungarian-language publishing house, was likewise able to maintain a public presence only through publications conforming to official guidelines. In 1986, for example, it paid tribute to the regime with two anthologies of reportage. Sokágú termőfa (The Many-Branched Fruit-Bearing Tree) was prefaced by Hans Liebhardt in the spirit of fraternity: “The fraternal solidarity of all the inhabitants of our homeland manifests itself day after day […] This idea was also emphasised by Comrade Nicolae Ceauşescu.” The volume included Marosi’s Vaskapu-kettő (Iron Gates II), whose continuation, under the same title, appeared in the next anthology, Hazánk új arculata (The New Face of Our Homeland). Here, with the same admiration he had displayed for several decades, he considers the transformative significance of monumental construction projects for the country: “Every detail is a sensation in itself. […] If I count yesterday as beginning in 1950, then 71 hydroelectric power stations have so far been commissioned in the era of socialist construction.” He returned to what was clearly his favourite subject in Kriterion’s 1987 publication Tenni és teremteni (To Act and Create), in a piece entitled A Vaskapu-kettő alaprajza (The Ground Plan of Iron Gates II). In the same year, two of his pieces appeared in Jövőépítők (Builders of the Future), where he assesses the enormous expansion and production capacity of the Marosvásárhely Chemical Combine with the optimism characteristic of the 1950s: “the key word, the magic word: modernisation” (Egy korszerű bázis leírása [Description of a Modern Base]). In the substantial, forty-page Retyezáti napló (Retezat Diary), the key idea underlying his presentation of the hydroelectric power station is that although mistakes may always occur in magnificent construction projects of this kind, they can be overcome: “An outstanding event in the history of the construction project was […] the guidance and words of Comrade Ceauşescu […]; they transformed the situation at once, and the pace began to accelerate.” His concluding thought is: “I shall forever see before me this eventful, almost novelistic era: this non-stop construction project.”
Around Christmas 1989, in the wake of a single momentous turn of history, the social demand that had given rise to the genre of reportage portraying the great achievements of socialist industrialisation disappeared entirely, and Barna Marosi – as a professional journalist – no longer followed the ensuing process of decline with the same attention as before. His interest turned instead to the well-known existential issues, dilemmas and conflicts facing the Hungarian community in Romania during the 1990s. Above all, he reported in shorter articles for national and county newspapers on local events, particularly those connected with the activities of András Sütő and his circle. His real popular success among Transylvanian readers came with a short publication Bernády György városa (György Bernády’s city), an accomplished, highly readable piece of popular local history. Written in 1968, it first appeared in book form in the 1974 volume Megbolygatott világ (A World Disturbed). In the 1990s, furnished with a preface by András Sütő and supplemented by sixty exceptionally valuable, richly informative images documenting the history of the city and filling an important gap in the historical record, it was published as a standalone volume with a suitably celebratory cover and went through several editions.
[2012]