Vates

Just as January is Ferenc Kölcsey, or April is Attila József, for me, February is Sándor Csoóri. And now I should say something beautiful about Sándor Csoóri, I who don’t even reach up to his little finger, and precisely because I don’t even reach up to his little finger, I miss him very much.

It would be good if I could sit at his feet and say, teach me, Master, as if shifting onto him the uncomfortable responsibility of thinking. And Sándor Csoóri would speak, because his enormous sense of responsibility, his commitment to his nation would compel him to do so, he wouldn’t ask why, why him, why he should say anything at all, he wouldn’t ask for money, for a state award in return, for an allowance, for a place in all sorts of committees, he wouldn’t want his enemy’s neck to be broken, he wouldn’t even vilify his enemy, nor his friend, he wouldn’t hold me accountable for decisions I didn’t make, he wouldn’t punish me for sins I didn’t commit, in short: he wouldn’t behave the way we behave nowadays.

Four years ago, as a green museum director, I said on his 90th birthday: “…there’s an oppressive feeling lurking in me, like some kind of incipient fever, you know, the kind that no instrument can detect yet, we just feel that some trouble is approaching. I feel that we’re late. And I can’t even say what we’re late for. To know this, we should be at the place Sándor Csoóri and our other greats designated for us. But what’s oppressive is that we don’t know if we’re there or somewhere else. We’re just poking at that fog Csoóri talks about, which settles on our brains, and ‘because of this fog, we don’t see processes that insidiously affect us and fatally change us.’ And no matter what anyone says, in this fog, neither reason nor knowledge helps us. We learned this from Csoóri too, that with the retreat of religion and poetry, it wasn’t the triumph of reason that followed, it wasn’t rationality that increased in the world, but confusion.”

Since then, a lot of water has flowed down the Danube, bringing a worldwide disease, war in the neighborhood where our Hungarian blood relatives are dying, an energy crisis, summers like my great-grandfather never saw, as a parent you bite your lip because you can no longer make snowmen with your children. And if all this weren’t enough, the neo-Marxists and liberarians frame the old tale, that of fascist communism, with rainbow colors. What’s more, I started my second term as director general a few days ago, setting a condition that there be a reading armchair in my office.

I’m sitting in this reading armchair now, leafing through Csoóri’s works. It’s February, so it’s Csoóri, when you open a book, you open yourself, he writes somewhere, so I would open some lousy depth in myself through Csoóri. When I look up, I see Áron Tamási’s painted portrait. I look at Tamási and Csoóri looks back at me, not a mirror, more like an X-ray, involuntarily I straighten up, let the spine be straight. The other portrait painting shows Tamási’s mother, I look at the mother as if she were mine, as if she were ours, a black rose looks back at me, and I hear Miklós H. Vecsey and company’s adaptation of this, I hum a Csoóri song to myself in first person plural, our mother is a black rose, she can’t become colorful.

Can’t she? I ask Csoóri, ‘No,’ he shakes his head, ‘You can’t hide behind her skirt, take care of the black rose, this is your filial duty.’

But since we’re on the subject of mother, I say to him: others get a community from their mother, we get a language. The Hungarian born of a Hungarian mother must say: I am Hungarian. And there will always be another Hungarian who doubts this.

Being Hungarian is not a natural state, being Hungarian is a choice. Speaking Hungarian is not a natural state either, it requires attention and effort. ‘The mother tongue,’ Csoóri nods, ‘can indeed be forgotten. But not only abroad, in the sovereign atmosphere or neighborhood of foreign languages – it can be forgotten here at home too. If we don’t use it for what it’s meant, the language declines. If we don’t express the truth with it, and if we don’t entrust our most urgent, most burning dreams to it, it withers like women living without love.’

‘And this is as it should be,’ Csoóri looks at me from between the lines. In response to my uncomprehending gaze, he adds that the fabric of swirling apparent realities has come undone, revealing the raw reality that helps us live. This is why it’s good this way. ‘During the war,’ he tells me as a farewell, ‘we drank ersatz coffee instead of real coffee beans. We accepted it because there were no real ones. Today we are with the world as we were then with coffee. We get a substitute world because there isn’t much else. Its taste, its color is as if it were original, but the aftertaste is disappointing. It’s a weak, thin something, lacking that barbaric flavor and stimulant that makes the heart race.’

‘What you hear now,’ Csoóri sends me on my way, ‘that pounding, well, that’s your heartbeat. It’s time you heard it.’

Notes:

Title and concept:

“Vátesz” (Vates): In Hungarian literary tradition, refers to a poet-prophet or bard, emphasizing the social and national role of poets.

Literary figures mentioned:

Ferenc Kölcsey (1790-1838): Poet, critic and politician, author of the Hungarian national anthem.

Attila József (1905-1937): One of the most significant Hungarian poets of the 20th century.

Sándor Csoóri (1930-2016): Poet, essayist, and political activist, known for his role in preserving Hungarian national identity.

Áron Tamási (1897-1966): Transylvanian-born Hungarian writer, known for his novels and short stories.

Literary allusions:

“Black rose” metaphor: From Csoóri’s poem, symbolizing enduring hardship and national identity.

The concept of mother language as central to Hungarian identity is emphasized.

Political references:

“Neo-Marxists and liberarians”: Critical terms used for progressive political movements.

“Fascist communism”: This term originates from Attila József’s poem “Thomas Mann üdvözlése” (Greeting to Thomas Mann), written in 1937. József uses this phrase to criticize totalitarian ideologies. In the context of this essay, it’s used to draw parallels between historical and contemporary political movements.