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BELA ZSOLT, THE HUNGARIAN “SOCIOLOGIST OF
JEWRY”!
dos ——
ALEXANDRA M. SZABO
ABSTRACT
My presentation discusses Jewishness as a differentiated identity from the
Hungarian national collective identity in the 20" century through a literary
mirror. More precisely, I argue that Bela Zsolt’s novels, written and published
in the interwar period function as instruments for understanding Jewish
identification of the time.
My line of reasoning is based on four of his novels: Házassággal végződik
(1926) — (transl. It Ends in Marriage), Gerson és neje (1930) — (transl. Gerson
and his Wife), Kínos ügy (1935) — (transl. Ihe Embarrassing Affair), and A
dunaparti né (1936) — (transl. The Woman from the Riverside of the Danube).
While studying the identification techniques, and in some instances the
identity representations, I only take the world of the novel into account,
never the authors personal expression of identity, nor do I implement any
psychological evaluation.
I analyze Jewish identification techniques through the narrative positions,
the protagonists’ utterances of identity inconvenience, and the representation
of the Jewish body in the worlds of the novels.
The emphasis of the different narratives is an important aspect due to its
(hidden) emancipatory aim, as the focalization is the perspective of contemporary
society. I also exhibit the first instances of the word Jew, Jewess, Jewish (zsidó)
in each novel to show their context, and to identify the value(s) they represent.
The representation of the Jewish body is shown as another crucially important
! The reference is to Péter Sz. Nagy’s essay on the author, where Béla Zsolt is considered to
be a sociologist of the Hungarian Jewry through his works. Peter Sz. Nagy: Zsidöirodalom?
A zsidösäg szociogräfusa: Zsolt Bela, in P. Török (ed.): A határ és határolt, Töprengések a
magyar-zsidó irodalom létformáiról, Budapest, Yahalom, 1997, 368.
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