Oldal 132 [132]
How WE MADE THE HUNGARIAN VERSION OF SAMUEL BECKETT’S ALL THAT FALL
talent for the genre of drama, who had a competent knowledge of French;
and a staunch party-soldier, a faithful follower of the current ideological line
(however crooked), with the usual amount of worry and an unusual intensity
of wakefulness. He had one ambition: he was obsessed with making the new,
modern program-structure of the Radio. For this purpose he made the firm to
subscribe to Plays and Players, and ordered me to review each number; plus
translate, from cover to cover, the quarterly BBC Radio Drama Booklet.
Hungarian cultural institutions and workshops regularly received serious
amounts of “raw material” from British (and probably French, Italian and so
forth) publishers and other institutions. Even Nagyvildg received large parcels
of books to be reviewed, eventually translated. Our Drama Department was
sent each drama anthology the BBC published, plus the Drama Booklet. This
listed every drama broadcast with date, duration, station, slot (for example,
“Afternoon Theatre,” “Morning Comedy”), recorded repeat, and, for more
important (especially first) broadcasts, cast and a short synopsis. Translating
the booklet was boring, but the information I acquired from it was immensely
useful. Besides, whatever play-text I wanted to read (maybe to have translated
— I soon knew several good translators) I received via our Foreign Relations
Department. The amount went up to six to ten scripts every three to six
months; as for the unwanted scripts, I sent them back to the BBC Play Library
with thanks and regards via our Foreign Relations.
The university I went to was a timid one, heavily controlled by its own Party
Committee: instruction in English language literature stopped at Thomas Hardy
(t 1928); T. S Eliot was a forbidden fruit (as was our Lajos Kassak).’ I read Beckett
for the first time in Nagyvildg, with relish; then, already as script editor, read his
radio-plays. I found them as well as Martin Esslin’s The Theatre of the Absurd in
the excellently furnished Ervin Szabé Library, two minutes’ walk from the Radio
building. I fell for All That Fall at first read: the richness of the text enchanted
me. Driven by the hunter’s natural instinct, I applied for its production.
The system for realizing the production was the following. Script Editor,
in his own right, commissioned two Readers, and presented their (logically
positive) reports to the Head of Drama. The Head of Drama, in his own right,
gave or denied permission for commissioning a Translator, to be paid on
reception and first reading of text. On reading the translation, the Head of
Drama, in his own right, decided about submitting the text to the Drama
Council, or dumping it as waste. The Drama Council consisted of the Head
of Literature General Department, the Head of Drama, Assistant Head of
Drama, Head Director and Assistant Head Director. The Submitting Script
Editor participated without vote.
° Lajos Kassak (1887-1967) Poet, novelist, painter; important figure of the Hungarian avant¬
garde; he was a Socialist, but definitely a non-Communist.
e 131"