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THE LOST LAND OF OURS - THE IMAGE OF KOSICE IN
THE WORKS OF SANDOR MARAI AND DUSAN SIMKO
dos ——
CSABA HORVÁTH
ABSTRACT
This essay focuses on the image of Kosice in the works of two writers of different
languages, ages and identities. One of them is Sándor Márai, a Hungarian
writer from the 20 century, and the other one is a contemporary Slovak
writer, Dusan Simko. Marai was born in Kosice in the epoch of the Austro¬
Hungarian Monarchy and left the city when he was 14. Dusan Simko is a
Slovak writer living in Basel, Switzerland. He left Czechoslovakia in 1972.
In his first book, The Kosice Marathon (Kosicky maratön, 1984) he wrote the
collective memories of the city. This essay is going to show how these writers
make in their works a Kosice of memories and how they build a special literary
identity belonging to the lost city.
Keywords: Sandor Mdrai, Dusan Simko, Kassa, Kosice, Kaschau, emigration,
cultural crossroads, multiculturalism
The subject of this essay is to show the process and the result of the construction
of literary images of the city KoSice in the works of two writers of different
languages, ages and identities: the 20" Century Hungarian Sándor Márai and
the contemporary Slovak Dugan Simko.
The paper attempts to read the artistic attitudes of the authors in question
and show how they constructed their “cities of memories” based on the real
Kassa-Kosice.
In their works they create a city which had long vanished before or may not
even have ever existed. Marai and Simko have rebuilt an imaginary place in
literature. Their version of KoSice-like the real city — is located at the crossing
point of cultures.
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