Széthullott kontextusok
Disintegrated Contexts

Side Notes to the Zalabai Monograph, a Quarter of a Century Later

Summary/Abstract: For years after the political turn in 1989, there was still the illusion that the work done for the Hungarian community in Czechoslovakia (and later in Slovakia) during the dictatorship was of value, that summarising it was an important task, and that taking an account of it was vital for the intellectual construction that was beginning anew. This was the leitmotif of some of the works of the author of this paper at that time, such as the mini-monographs on László Koncsol and Zsigmond Zalabai written at the end of the last millennium, but also the monograph on Péter Rákos, written in collaboration with László G. Kovács in 2005. The passing of time seems to have swept away the positive feeling towards the Hungarian community in Czechoslovakia, and has cast the former community involvements in a different (even ironic) light. Not least, previously latent inter-group or inter-personal tensions were exacerbated, the community became ideologically divided, then ideological debates were pushed into the background, the cornerstones of canon formation changed, and the aesthetic values were transformed. After a long period, the author of this study re-read his own monograph on Zalabai, published in 1998 (and expanded in a second edition in 2004), wondering how the considerations that he has developed in retrospect have repercussions on the perception of public and intellectual activities.

• Details
• Contents