Oldal 124 [124]
FROM IDOL DESTRUCTION TO IDOLATRY
can also be classified as part of a series of plays that the National included in its
repertory for explicitly political purposes from 1949 on, and “Endre Marton
directed within this socio-political horror, this strict obligation disguised as
aesthetics, the worthless new Hungarian, Soviet, Chinese and other plays he
was forced to”.°” This time, however, as Marton emphasized in an interview,
he did not have to “stage a standard play”, but a unique work, “every word of
which is an authentic document”.°** Thirdly, this premiere was also greatly
anticipated, since the foremost theatre of the country was greeting the Lenin
centenary, a highly important event of state socialist culture with it. And
as reviewers stated (even beyond the obligatory praise), it was not “mired in
formalism, but showed the substance of things"? with admirable, “polemic
novelty”,°* with “revelatory” dry documentarism.°”° After “the religious fog
of myth-building” it was a performance that “cut to the heart”.°” Fourthly,
the production of Chapters on Lenin at the National was not quite a world
premiere, since the Universitas Együttes had performed the same work in
a different formation back in 1967. (The version performed at the National
Theatre was dated 1969 and published in Gyurkö’s volume, collecting all his
plays, TV and radio scripts in 1984.) No doubt, the most important antecedent
was this performance of the Universitas Egyiittes at the University Theatre
(Egyetemi Szinpad), directed by Eva Mezei as commemorative program for
the 50" anniversary of the 1917 Russian revolution. It presented an alternative
image of Lenin compared to the one established two decades before,°”® and
although it was not directly oppositional, it was still saturated with dissenting
activism."" When the National Theatre’s premiere three years later made
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Léner: Pista bácsi, Tanár úr, Karcsi, 122.
Marianne Gách: Együtt éljük át a lenini gondolatot. Gyurkó László új színpadi művének
próbáján, Film Színház Muzsika, Vol. 14, No. 16, 18" April, 1970, 4.
Pál E. Fehér: Fejezetek Leninről. Gyurkó László dokumentumoratóriuma a Nemzeti
Színházban, Népszabadság, Vol. 28, No. 96, 25* April, 1970, 7.
Miklós Almási: A demokrácia gyakorlása. Gyurkó László: Fejezetek Leninről, Kritika 8:7
(1970), 38.
Endre Varjas: Alkalmatlan alkalmiság, Élet és Irodalom, Vol. 24, No. 20, 174 May, 1980, 13.
Vera Létay: , Ha tisztelni akarjatok...”, Elet és Irodalom, Vol. 14, No. 18, 2"4 May, 1970, 13.
This alternative image was created by Gyurkö’s Lenin, October, a “historical essay” first
published in 1967 (almost atthe same time as the commemorative program at the University
Theatre was held) and later in many editions. It was based on previously ignored documents
and sought to nuance the complex image of the man behind the “great Bolshevik”. In a radio
interview, Gyurkö stated that “I wrote my first essay on Lenin [in 1963 and then he put it at
the beginning of the 1967 book] because I was not satisfied with the poster face that I was
shown over and over again about Lenin. I was interested in his personality in the first place.”
Szombat délután. Radio broadcast at 16.34 on 18" April, 1970. Transcript for the Hungarian
Theatre Museum and Institute, Budapest.
We cannot ignore the fact that Gyurkö wrote his play in a form typical of the structure of
the literary evenings at the University Theatre. Istvan Nanay points out that from the late
1950s on the University Theatre produced special literary programs in which “poetry, prose,
documents and music were combined, strengthening and counterpointing each other, and
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