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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 avantgarde; he was a Socialist, but definitely a non-Communist. e 131"
