Page 464 [464]
BELA ZSOLT, THE HUNGARIAN “SOCIOLOGIST OF JEWRY”
was especially loud compared to his parents’ generation (who might have felt
the same amount of respect towards Vienna as to Budapest). He later fought
in World War I and his reminiscences from the time he spent in hospital are
emphatic in the understanding of his shift from nationalism to Marxism, next
to some utterances about the fact that his Jewish roots bore some negative
reactions — some of which can be read in his earliest biographical work,
Thunderbolt (Villamcsapds). By the time he moved to Budapest in 1921, Zsolt
was again looking for an ideological solution. He started writing for left-wing
liberal papers; however, he left Marxist ideas behind because of contemporary
Hungarian politics, aiming for a reformist direction.® Initially, he became
known as a poet and started writing for Nyugat, one of the most important
and prominent Hungarian literary journals of the 20 century. He had
always been inspired by the well-known Nyugat-writers such as Endre Ady*
and Mihaly Babits", and his work was recognized by such acclaimed writers
as Dezső Kosztolányi" and Attila József". Later on, most of his expectations
failed him, and besides ideological and political frustrations, Zsolt fought his
battles in the literary scene as well. Zsolt was one of the representatives —
together with Attila Jozsef — of those second generation Nyugat-urbanists
who went against the new peasantism movement led by Läszlö Nemeth and
Gyula Illyés. Ihe main points of conflict were far from only being ideological,
since the peasant-writers started to present a racist attitude and published
some anti-Semitic utterances.® Today, having the possibility to read Gyula
Illyés’s thoughts from his diary, we can see that Zsolt’s struggles against a
general anti-Jewish atmosphere were interpreted as unethical pro-Jewish
“propaganda”.® Consequently, the most significant distress for Zsolt came to
be the time’s growing pressure of anti-Semitism, and therefore his sense of
injustice and anti-fascism began to rule his reputation. He mainly exploited
the platforms of prose and journalistic pieces to give voice to these social (and
not only personal) problems.
For a more detailed introduction of Béla Zsolt’s ideological background see Clara Royer: A
VI. és VIL. keriiletpublicistaja? Zsolt Béla elkötelezett magyarsága, Múlt és Jövő, No. 2, 2015,
78-85.
Zsolt Béla: Tanulságok és reménységek, Nagyvarad, Béla Zsolt (author’s edition), 1942, 148.
Lőrinc Szabó: Zsolt Béla: Minden hiába, Nyugat, No. 19, 1921, 1508.
Dezső Kosztolányi: Egy ég alatt, Budapest, Szépirodalmi Könyvkiadó, 1977, 553.
They worked together and were on good terms not only concerning literary taste and
criticism, but for the journal A Toll (transl. The Pen), which periodical gave place for their
social and literary aspirations.
This conflict wound up being a very own “Jewish question” of the Hungarian literary scene,
arguing how much influence or part a Jewish intellectual should take in the making of
Hungarian literature. For further reading, see Laszl6 Németh: Ember és Szerep, Kalangya,
No. 3, 1934, 46-47.
° Gyula Illyés: Naplojegyzetek, 1929-1945, Budapest, Szépirodalmi Könyvkiadó, 1986, 379¬
380.
Nn wan
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