Contextualisation as a Methodological Possibility[1]
The Case of a History of Hungarian Literature in Romanian
Ferenc Vincze
ferenczvincze@gmail.com
Abstract: The preparations for a history of Hungarian literature written in Romanian pose a set of methodological problems and questions which refer partly to the methodology and practice of literary history, and partly to various phenomena of Romanian and Hungarian literary media. The paper analyses first the international practice of literary historiography and its influence on the Hungarian discourse, moving on to the experiences of Hungarian literary history in this respect. Next, it examines some of the features of Romanian literary history, possibly relevant from the perspective of a history of Hungarian literature in Romanian under preparation. Finally, it discusses literary tendencies and problems of translation which are unavoidably present in the planning of such a work.
Keywords: literary historiography, theoretical methodology, Romanian literature, cultural transfers
The endeavour of writing the history(ies) of Hungarian literature in Romanian entails at least three aspects which also concern the methodology of literary historiography that need to be addressed. As a first aspect, I must mention the narrative of the literary history in progress, which cannot be avoided regardless of the language of the work – Hungarian, Romanian or other. As a second aspect, I must also mention the tendencies of the past 25 years of Hungarian literary historiography, which are related to the theoretical problems of the narrative formulation of literary historiography. One of these is the tradition of the history of Hungarian literature written in Romanian, a tradition that can highlight how a different culture, in this case Romanian, approached Hungarian literature and its history. A third aspect would be the localisation of the texts of Hungarian literature within the context of Romanian literature, justified by the introduction of Hungarian literature into another culture.
All three aspects pertain in the first place to the methodological possibility of the intention formulated above, but before we move on to it, it is worth looking at the purpose or intention of a Hungarian literary history in Romanian, and the target audience of such an endeavour.
The presentation of any national literature in a different language may have intentions other than the obvious and undisputed intention of making it known. Approaching it from Itamar Even-Zohar’s theory of multiple literary systems (Even-Zohar 1990a, 9–26), or system theory in general, the problem of centre–periphery pops up immediately, as an attempt to settle the mutual relationship of the source and target culture within a multiple system. When the summarising works on Hungarian literature appear in English, German or French, they reveal a sort of hierarchical relationship between the source and target culture, seen from the idea of “world literature”. The very intent to make accessible the history of Hungarian literature in an international language posits in fact this very literature at a lower level in the hierarchy of literatures. This is what Even-Zohar claims as well when stating that „Since peripheral literatures in the Western Hemisphere tend more often than not to be identical with the literatures of smaller nations, as unpalatable as this idea may seem to us, we have no choice but to admit that within a group of relatable national literatures, such as the literatures of Europe, hierarchical relations have been established since the very beginnings of these literatures. Within this (macro-) polysystem some literatures have taken peripheral positions, which is only to say that they were often modelled to a large extent upon an exterior literature.” (Even-Zohar 1990b, 48) Taking into account the phenomena of other historiographies of European literatures, it may not be irresponsible to state that if that particular literature is presented in English, it may indicate its higher position in a dominant target culture. This statement is also proved by the fact that the need to publish English summaries exists even in French or German literary historiography. (Hollier 1989; Wellbery 2004)
In contrast, or in addition, when I examine the possibilities and intentions of a Hungarian literary history written in Romanian, I am more interested – from an imagined idea of world literature – in the literary representations of peripheric parallels or differences, cultural overlaps, literatures bordering on each other, similar social and/or regional phenomena, etc. as starting points. However, before turning to the three aspects mentioned in the introduction, I think it is worthwhile to ask how we position the medium of the source and target culture, because the solution of the composition and narrative structure of certain perspectives or approaches should be made after the implicit or explicit answering of these questions.
Mihály Szegedy-Maszák drew attention already in a 2004 study that “One of the main weaknesses of Hungarian literary historiography is that we do not take a close enough look at the theoretical foundation of international literary trends. It even happens that some work of Hungarian literary historiography only makes reference to an international trend as a pretext, while actually continuing some long-standing Hungarian tradition.” (Szegedy-Maszák 2004, 220–221) The first aspect mentioned in the introduction can be deduced from this remark as well. One of the most influential literary histories of the past three decades is probably the more-than-one-thousand-pages-long A New History of French Literature edited by Denis Hollier, first published in English in 1989, then five years later in French. The book breaks with the traditions of literary historiography in several respects. As Hollier formulated it in the preface to the 1989 English-language edition, the starting point is aleatory, it may be the date of publication of a book, the death of an author, or the premiere of a play, and the analysis of a work, a phenomenon, a genre, or an institution happens by moving backward or forward in time from this date. Hollier also emphasises that none of the texts in the book present the entire life work of any author. (Hollier 1989, xix–xx) Hollier’s literary history is dominated by division and different, unconnected, simultaneous stories, and the history of Hungarian literature cannot disregard their history of effect. A German undertaking, coordinated by David E. Wellbery, also comes as an effect of Hollier’s scientific historically important work from 2004. This book follows similar principles and narrative structure in writing the history of German literature, and “its formal arrangement and selection of contents are motivated by a consideration of the conditions that spawned literary history as both an intellectual inquiry and a literary genre. Such self-scrutiny is especially appropriate to a volume that portrays German literary and intellectual traditions, since the historical treatment of literature is itself arguably a German discovery.” (Wellbery 2004, xviii) In the preface, Wellbery refers back to Hippolyte Taine’s history of English literature from 1864, especially the part on German literary historiography, and later in the introduction mentions how important and inevitable Hollier’s work is.
In addition to Hollier’s 1989 work, and since I used the history of French literature as an example, one should mention the book entitled French global, A new approach to literary history (McDonald–Suleiman 2011), published in 2011, which looks back at Hollier’s text from 20 years’ distance. The volume considers the linguistically identical, but territorially divided nature of French literature, and stresses first of all the relationship of various discourses. “In this book, rather then focus on the nation and on a model of literary space as an arena of struggle for domination – or even for Enlightenment ideals of freedom – we have chosen to emphazise points of contact and multiple kinds of dialogue that found and inform literary space including history, philosophy, politics, religion, and geography; these are not external to literature but integral to its conception and history […]”. (McDonald–Suleiman 2011, xix) The rereading of the past is treated in the book French global also as a reading of the present, marked by the chapter titles as well: Spaces, Mobilities, Multiplicities. This also signals a shift from Hollier’s chronological literary history: the stress falls primarily on structural connections, the comparison or transcendability of spaces and systems.
Besides the comparison of spaces and systems, and the two French literary histories, it is worth mentioning briefly Galin Tihanov’s claims on literary historiography. One of these refers to the fact that the nation state, which was an important trigger of the birth of national literary histories, is declining, and he states, related to the new Oxford English literary history, that it is „[…] seeking to transpose – without canceling – the largely exhausted national narrative into the (questionable) tonality of multicultural globalism.” (Tihanov 2008, 67–68) Another of his claims, in response to the issues and tendencies raised by media theory, states that, because of the medial transformations, „the result is an archive of semantically dynamic deposits, which can be added to or subtracted from at liberty at any time. The author/reader boundary is totally erased, and so are the foundations of reception theory and traditional literary history.” (Tihanov 2008, 69)
Taking into account the French literary histories following Hollier’s or Tihanov’s claims, and their concepts on literary history narratives, it may lead one to ask what would be the most appropriate system or structure to write the history of Hungarian literature in Romanian. This question has taken us to the first part of the second aspect mentioned above. In addition to international connections, we must also not forget that a prospective Romanian-language history of Hungarian literature cannot disregard the tradition of Hungarian literary historiography. The academic and scholarly media and forms of the mediation of Hungarian literature are closely linked to how the Hungarian literature is perceived in a Hungarian cultural context.
Therefore in addition to reflecting on and using international tendencies as means of contextualisation, one should focus also on those histories of literature which in the past thirty years have significantly defined our thinking on Hungarian literary historiography. We are talking mainly about four texts: A magyar irodalom története 1945–1991 [The history of Hungarian literature 1945–1991) (Kulcsár Szabó 1993), A magyar irodalom történetei [Histories of Hungarian literature] (Szegedy-Maszák–Veres 2007) Magyar irodalom [Hungarian literature] (Gintli 2010) and Geschichte der ungarischen Literatur. (Kulcsár Szabó 2013). These four literary histories complete the first aspect from two points of view. First, these are the reference points for a future history of Hungarian literature in Romanian, and by the way they relate to each other and to the international trends, they also illustrate how the above mentioned cultural and academic medium relates to Hungarian literature. On their basis, it can be stated that the time of single-author literary histories has passed, as, except for the 1993 volume, the rest are all the works of several authors, or rather a collective of authors, therefore they cannot, and more importantly, they would not represent one single approach, point of view or theoretical trend. The 1993 volume proposes to rewrite the previous academic literary history (Sőtér 1962–1964), primarily regarding the period after 1945, following a different, less ideological, and mostly poetical approach. Szegedy-Maszák’s 2007 literary history started from the methodology of Hollier’s French literary history, but diverted from it as well in certain cases: “The chapters here are usually longer, so the work is less fragmented than the French literary history in question. We also diverted from the concept of the volume that inspired us when establishing the criteria of selection. […] We also wished to discuss works less known or disputable, or such that had been considered problematic and neglected before, but we also wished to be autonomous in that we did not limit our interests to the so-called elite literature alone. On the one hand, we extended the range of phenomena discussed to various fields of culture – to the other arts, psychology, history, etc. -, while on the other hand, instead of a synthesis of many phenomena, we favoured a detailed analysis of individual works.” (Szegedy-Maszák 2007, 12–13) It is apparent that the methodology of Szegedy-Maszák’s literary history moves away from its reference point towards interdisciplinarity, while the editor also formulates in the preface that the time of great narratives has passed, and as a result, “we should regard neither the period, nor the individual life work as an organising principle, and present Hungarian literature as a fragmented heritage.” (Szegedy-Maszák 2007, 16) An even more important assertion of the preface is, however, that “While it is possible to claim that the Hungarian literature has a prominent place in world heritage, one should still consider the possibility that the national approach to literatures is a historical phenomenon, which not only had a definite beginning, but we should also prepare for its possible end. The target is obviously to include some of the products of Hungarian literature into European and world heritage, which is only possible if the structure of this heritage also changes.” (Szegedy-Maszák 2007, 16) This is precisely the target that I have discussed earlier, in connection with the above remark, that questions the legitimacy of archiving literature in national literary histories.
Gintli’s 2010 literary history chooses the history of poetic forms as the guiding principle of his narrative, claiming that the authors of the book had to choose “from among the possible points of view of the narrative, with the clear insight that their aim is to narrate not the history of Hungarian literature, but one possible history of it”. (Gintli 2010, 17). Apparently, compared to Szegedy-Maszák’s work, this literary history is a return to the idea of one single narrative and a clear point of view, while it also emphasises that the authors wanted to tell not the, but a narrative.
As a fourth text, one should mention the history of Hungarian literature edited by Ernő Kulcsár Szabó, published in German, Geschichte der ungarischen Literatur, in 2013. This work, published at De Gruyter, chooses as its narrative guideline the historically-effected approach to historical-poetical changes in the analysis of literary writing and communication. It also includes two further aspects: the changes of literary language and of the forms of historical-cultural techniques that make literature accessible to us depending on the mediation techniques available at certain times. In this approach, the medial possibilities and conditions of literature and their changes are also treated as the aspects of a literary history. The editor mentions in the preface the snapshot-like organisation and compilation techniques of Hollier’s literary history, adding that it also cannot avoid the problem of historically-effected situatedness (distancing himself also from Szegedy-Maszák’s literary history), and runs into the dead end of historical or historicising analyses. (Kulcsár Szabó 2013, XIII–XIV)
These four histories of Hungarian literature signal the Hungarian scholarship’s relations to literary history, and the reflections thereupon may also be informed by the national or international tendencies or issues that guide the writing of a literary history. The transition to the second aspect could be the interest in Romanian literary historiography, primarily in what could be termed as a dual formal nature of the historical approach to Romanian literature. In addition to traditional, narrative literary histories, one may emphasise the dictionary- or lexicon-like endeavours, based on a canonised list, which are less frequent in Hungarian literary historical tradition. However, it cannot be overlooked, as precisely the contextualisation of Hungarian literary history may also imply a similar formal approach; let me mention for example the multi-volume Dicționar general al literaturii române (Simion 2004–2016), or the Dicționarul Biografic al Literaturii Române, edited by Aurel Sasu (Sasu 2006). In addition, it must also be mentioned that, while in the 1990s and later on the time of single-authored Hungarian literary histories has passed, this form has still remained prevalent in the Romanian discourse: Nicolae Manolescu’s literary history published in 2008 is the latest such undertaking. In the preface of the several-hundred pages long work, Manolescu makes reference to Hans-Robert Jauss’s reception theory, René Wellek’s dilemmas about historiography, and, in connection with Fernand Braudel, the French Annales-school, mostly these schools’ ideas on historicity and synchronicity. (Manolescu 2008, 9–13). Besides looking at the twentieth-century history of Romanian literary historiography, he emphasises the work of George Călinescu published in 1941, and it is probably not mistaken to say that this work is one of the most important reference points for Manolescu. The stress on tradition and the unavoidability of standing-in-tradition are primary concerns of Manolescu’s 2008 work, and this is not only valid in terms of references to Călinescu’s work, but also regarding his concept and interpretation of literature. At the same time, with reference to Maurits Cornelis Escher’s lithograph on the book cover (two hands drawing each other), Manolescu reflects on the problematic nature of single-authored literary histories, and although, unlike the Hungarian practice, he does not think that a multi-author system is the solution, he still wants to solve the dilemma by the theoretical need for (re)assessment and (re)interpretation.[2]
It is precisely the metaphor of the two writing hands in reference to interpretation that creates the possibility to contextualise the multiple authorship of Hungarian literary history within the Romanian discourse, as this interpretation is made by a highly canonised, prominent figure of this discourse.
Also as part of the second aspect, I wish to emphasise the Romanian works on Hungarian literature published in the past. There are in fact four such works to speak about: Ion Chinezu, Aspecte din literatura maghiară ardeleană [Aspects of Hungarian literature from Transylvania] (Chinezu 1930), Nicolae Balotă, Scriitori maghiari din România [Hungarian writers from Romania] (Balotă 1981), Gavril Scridon, Istoria literaturii maghiare din România 1918–1989 [The history of Hungarian literature from Romania, 1918–1989] (Scridon 1996), and Szabolcs Szonda, Literatura maghiară din România. Aspecte cronologice și noțiune de bază [Hungarian literature from Romania. Chronological aspects and fundamental concepts] (Szonda 2008). All four works, as the titles show, were meant to present the Hungarian literature from Romania.[3] This is not the place to present these books in detail, but it is worth mentioning that Scridon’s work, and partly also Balotă’s and Szonda’s works (the latter most reflectedly and consciously) build upon the characteristic discourse of Hungarian literary historiography from Romania, its stresses and periods. We could also say that these works of literary history also read and interpret the Hungarian literary historiography from Romania, thus form an important part of its Romanian reception. It should still be said about Balotă that in his book periodisation has no relevance: the first part is entitled Galeria scriitorilor [The gallery of writers], the second is Confluenţe literare şi artistice romăno-maghiare [Romanian-Hungarian literary and artistic relations]. The second part presents musical and art connections, while the first part contains portraits of writers and analyses of some of their works; this rendering seems to apply the lexicon-like arrangement prevalent in Romanian literary historiography. As shown by these volumes, the histories of Hungarian literature in Romanian refer first of all to the Hungarian literature from Romania, creating and enforcing the hyopthesis that between the Hungarian and Romanian literature there is another entity, the much debated Hungarian literature from Transylvania/Romania. This is important because a Hungarian literary history written in Romanian must also reflect on its preliminaries to a certain extent, and these volumes can be regarded as a sort of tradition. So can also the attempts in the early 2000s in Romanian literary history which treated the Hungarian literature from Romania most often as a foreign element within the corpus of Romanian literature (Vincze 2008, 144–145), as for example Marian Popa’s monumental 2001 book, Istoria literaturii române de azi pe mâine [The history of Romanian literature today and tomorrow] (Popa 2001).
In this sense the Romanian reception of the Hungarian literature from Romania can be regarded as an aspect that is strongly context-related, and allows for the thematisation of various phenomena. One of these is the territorial interpretation which is also present in Romanian literary historiography, such as, for example, Mihai Cimpoi’s O istorie deschisă a literaturii române din Basarabia [An open history of the Romanian literature from Bessarabia] on the history of Romanian literature from Bessarabia. In the preface, the author highlights the aspects of langauge, regionalism and closedness in connection with the Romanian literature written in a Russian linguistic and cultural context, and – similarly to some Hungarian interpretive attempts – also thematises the relationship of Romanian and Bessarabian Romanian literatures. (Cimpoi 1996, 13–14). These ideas are revisited later, in 2010, by Ana Bantoș, who looks at the preliminaries of Cimpoi’s work, namely the literary histories that build on territoriality (Bantoş 2010, 12–13), but in the last chapter of her volume, she moves on to a multicultural literary space, starting from the problem of identity which had an important role also in Cimpoi’s text. (Bantoş 2010, 247–271). Besides Cimpoi and others, it is Bantoș’s work which, in my opinion, may provide the context to present the function of Hungarian literatures outside Hungary in a Hungarian literary history in Romanian.
Finally, as a third aspect, I shall speak about literature, and within it translations, as well as about a feature of the Hungarian reception of Romanian literature which may also be working the other way around. Hungarian literature in Romanian translation can be a reference point too, and let us not forget the prefaces and introductions written to these translations which often have a literary historical value. In addition, it is important that the existence of translations can often make quotations and references possible, as the discussed text can be included in the analysis in Romanian. An example for this is the recent Romanian translation of Bálint Balassi’s Célia-cycle (Balassi 2016), where the preface and the afterword of the bilingual volume (Dumitru 2016, 11–14, 67–79) does not simply speak about the translation, but contextualises Balassi’s poetry within world literature, primarily Renaissance poetry.
I would like to give three examples for the contextualisation of Hungarian literature within Romanian literature. The first example is the anthology of contemporary Romanian literature entitled Dilingó, which presents the Romanian literature of the 1980s generation (Podoabă–Şef 2008). Péter Esterházy, writer of the preface, connects the texts to the phenomenon in Hungarian literature known as the prose turn, which balances to a certain extent the strangeness of the Romanian texts. Esterházy says: “It’s as if something happened in the Romanian prose in the eighties similar to what happened here somewhat earlier; we can say: a new way of reading or using tradition, or rather traditions have emerged; or we can say: new questions about the relationship of text and reality have emerged.” (Esterházy 2008, 7–8) Esterházy gives a lot of context here, which makes the “eighties’” generation familiar, giving a solid point of reference and framework for reading the texts in the anthology. In addition, the writer of the afterword, Virgil Podoabă, highlighting similar characteristics, also mentions that this generation emerged as a group, and this phenomenon is again not unknown to us, so this would also be a contextual reference point (Podoabă 2008). If we reverse this logic, then the phenomenon of prose turn can be linked to the text perception of the generation of the eighties, which offers a context for a tendency, an important change of Hungarian literature, bringin it closer to Romanian literature, to the Romanian reader.
As a second example, I mention the case of Ádám Bodor’s novel Sinistra körzet and Ștefan Bănulescu’s Cartea milionarului, which was introduced into Hungarian literature as the prefiguration, or indeed preliminary of the Sinistra körzet, whose possible direct influence cannot be excluded either. Well, in case of Bodor’s novel, it can also work in a reverse way, and texts with a strong emphasis on space can also be put in context with the help of Bănulescu’s volume, as pointed out by Éva Bányai’s study on the similarities of the two novels. (Bányai 2015). She also highlights that the interplay of fictive and referential spaces is not unknown in either of the two texts, therefore it is natural to read them side by side.
Finally, as a third example, let me mention the texts of Filip Florian, Florin Lăzărescu, Bogdan Suceava, Ioan Groşan, Lucian Dan Teodorovici, Radu Pavel Gheo, who, in addition to continuing the prose of the eighties’ generation, offer a highly problematised relation to the recent past and the ways to deal with it, while also inquring about the medial conditions of the access to the past. This is again a possibility to find connections between authors or subjects, making them familiar, and the context given this way presents the Hungarian literature and its history as a corpus which is neither strange nor unfamiliar.
The three aspects discussed above open up the way for locating Hungarian literature in the context of Romanian literature. I think that the overview and analysis of the system of Romanian literature and the interpretive strategies and concepts apparent in its literary historiography is paramount, and it cannot be avoided also when preparing a history of Hungarian literature written in Romanian. This is also helpful to create not simply a Hungarian literary history written in Romanian, but a work that, given its points of reference and possibilities of contextualisation, has every chance to become more than merely a work of literary history. It may have consequences regarding the practices and methodology of literary historiography of the wider region – meaning Eastern Europe – while also allowing for the identification of parallel creative or poetical tendencies serving as important experience for the interpretation of both Romanian and Hungarian literature.
Translated from the Hungarian by Emese Czintos
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[1] This work was supported by the projects entitled Space-ing Otherness. Cultural Images of Space, Contact Zones in Contemporary Hungarian and Romanian Film and Literature (OTKA NN 112700) and Confession and nation building in Hungarian and Romanian history from the Reformation to Communism (with special interest in the Hungarian-Romanian-German cultural transfer zones) (NKFI 111871).
[2] Cf. “This is the second acceptable meaning that we can render to critical history written by two hands: it bears a permenant (re)assessment and (re)interpretation of each text and literature as a whole, as an infinite interglossing. Through this prism, our entire culture is a series of subjects with variations.” (Manolescu 2008, 13).
[3] Hungarian literature from Romania means in Hungarian literary history the literature written on the territory of Romania in Hungarian from the early 20th century until today. Similarly, especially before 1990, the histories of Hungarian literature distinguished between Hungarian literature from Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia or Ukraine, which all had their own institutions (magazines, publishers, etc.), just like in Romania. A similar phenomenon in an international context is the German literature in Prague, or German literatures in South-Eastern Europe (e.g. Saxon literature from Transylvania, German literature from Romania).