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ESZTER TARJÁNYI "In that case, have Mihály Farkas hanged on one pillar and yourself on the other. It won’t cost much, the dear man will be surprised, and the people will be deliriously happy.” With that he grabbed his hat and walked out. Whether this exchange really took place or not I cannot say. But that it was on everyone’s lips and that every Hungarian was glad to hear it is as sure as I stand here." Considering the style, this version reflects a more substantial transformation of the basic story, although formally Mikszáths does so more adeguately. Esterházys actual text is more strongly connected to Béla Tóths, even preserving the same form in the last paragraph not closely linked to the plot, which refers back to oral tradition gaining authenticity from it. Justas Mikszath adjusts the names to the period of his narrative, so does Esterhazy, finding equivalent characters from the beginning of the 1950s with the prevailing cult of Rakosi. However, as with Béla Toth, the answering character is given a name here. Francis Joseph corresponds to Matyas Rakosi (1903-1971), the communist leader bearing the greatest responsibility for the Stalinist Soviet policy of oppression in the 1950s. The writer, Tibor Déry (1894-1977) can be paralleled by Jozsef Edtvés, while Augusz and Protmann are analogous to Ernö Gerö (1898-1980), who controlled the area of science as Rakosi’s right hand. Kálmán Mikszáth also tried to imitate the way people communicated in the 17“ and 18" centuries (“Rhenus forints”, “planum”) but this is not so distinctive. Esterhazy’s version is more courageous, as it features the party apparatchik’s parodistically trite clichés (“imperialist subversion”) and Russian-style language (“Da”) of the 1950s as well as hearkening back to older, more particular language (“keszködött” compared to "készült" in Bela Töth’s variant — both of which mean “prepare” in Hungarian). When compared to the original anecdote in The Hungarian Treasury of Anecdotes, Esterhazy’s adaptation evidently loses any reference to reality, for the reader knowing the earlier version can not regard it as authentic but rather as a fictional anecdote based on a factual anecdote — just as in Mikszath’s story. Readers, however, who are unaware of the narrative that was originally linked to the 1850s tend to read it as a factual anecdote. For them the only warning sign might be the presence of anachronism in the style. Factual anecdotes tend to be related ina neutral style, without such a specific use of language. Yet here the narrator and his stylistic invention reflect two historical periods simultaneously, with their different styles of locution being accentuated. The historical interpretation in Esterhazy’s text creates an associative connection between absolutist forms of government in two different periods, the 1850s and the 1950s, which is A Péter Esterházy: A Little Hungarian Pornography, translated by Judith Sollosy, Evanston, Illinois, Northwest University Press, 1995, 56-57. * 418 +
