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OCR
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, 379380. Nn wan * 463 "
