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MÁRTON MESTERHÁZI
As regards the special field of our cultural life, world literature, these were
glorious years for editors and translators. I would not try to review the activity
of the well-funded Eurdépa Publishing,® staffed with the best brains of the
profession; it is worth a heroic epic. Even the more modest monthly literary
journal Nagyvildg (shamefully killed off in 1948, the year of the Stalinist
take-over, resuscitated in 1956),° often the vanguard of Eurdépa Publishing,
produced excellent full-text translations: Malamud, Bellow, Spark, Capote,
Mailer, Camus’ Caligula, Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
— examples picked from 1965-67; while the Orientation and Book Review
columns gave good information about fresh developments all over the world.
Of course, there were serious limits to euphoric liberty: the Warsaw
Treaty’ was to be mentioned with superlative praise only, the presence of
Soviet troops taken as non-existent, the system of party-rule as the rule ofthe
working class in the framework of socialist democracy. Names like Koestler
or Orwell were to be avoided, even in normal conversation.
What about Samuel Beckett? His name did not provoke hostility from the
cultural regime, but only received caution. "Favor — tolerate — ban" was the
party rule; he was tolerated or became so sooner or later. Nagyvilág was the first
to publish his work La derniére bande (Krapp’s Last Tape) in June 1962. Then
En attendant Godot (Waiting for Godot) followed, in Nagyvildg again, in August
1965, which was also staged at the Thalia Theater on 1 November 1965; directed
by Karoly Kazimir,® a moderately talented but highly reliable comrade.
In that autumn Nagyvildg opened a discussion on Godot, which went
on in several numbers, and then was closed by an Editor’s Statement, a
shrewd philosophical-ideological analysis condemning the author’s lack of a
constructive message: a fig-leaf, of course, as useful as it was commendable
(I will explain the dubiously funny term later). The Drama Department
of Hungarian Radio, with the separate Literature and Entertainment
Departments, followed suit with some moderation.
Here, I enter the story and will explain how I became involved in the work
of producing Beckett. With a fresh degree in Hungarian, English, and French,
I received the job of script editor (dramaturg) in the Drama Department (Radio
Theatre) of Hungarian Radio, in 1964. The Head of Drama, Viktor Gabor, former
manager of Hungarian Army Publishers, was an intelligent person, not without
5 Euröpa [Europe] Publishing is a literary publishing house with great traditions. Its
predecessor was established in 1946, and it has been operating under its current name since
1957. Euröpa has been the most prestigious publishing house of world literature in Hungary.
In its heyday the English department counted ten editors.
Closed in 2015. A small but able staff, one person per language territory.
Military organization (1955-1991), under Soviet command, of the (so-called) Socialist
countries.
Karoly Kazimir was the Head Artistic Director of Thalia Theatre from 1961, later became its
Managing Director.
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