Zárszámadás a Lexikonról – a jövő felé nézve
Final Accounts about the Encyclopedia – Looking towards the Future

Summary/Abstract: The Encyclopedia of Hungarian Literature in Romania, which came to an end with its fi fth volume in 2010, is the greatest proposition of the contemporary Hungarian literary- and specialist community from Romania. Its initiator and editor of the fi rst two volumes was Edgár Balogh, and József Vencel assembled the basic index of the entries. Starting from the third volume the editor was Gyula Dávid. The starting year of the work is 1968; the fi rst volume (A–F) appeared in the edition of the Kriterion Publishing House, with Ferenc Deák’s cover, the second volume (G–Ke) was ready in 1983 but it could appear only after the fall of the communist dictatorship, the third one (Ki–M) came out in 1994 in a common edition with the Transylvanian Museum Society, the fourth volume (N–R) appeared in 2002, and the last piece contained the entries with the initials T–Zs in two parts. The whole content of the fi ve volumes is 4212 pages of book, containing the entries of 228 contributors during the 40 years of work. 16 of them sign entries in all the fi ve volumes. Besides the 10-member editorial committee which teamed up at the beginning, the main part of the work was done by specialist editors and territorial editors – they have also changed in the course of time. The editing and publishing went on under rigorous circumstances, fact which can be explained by the intervention of censorship in the fi rst two decades, and later by the uncertainty of material background. Behind this work there was no background institution – except for the different kinds of help from the Kriterion Publishing House, then the Transylvanian Museum Society and the Szabédi-House in Kolozsvár. The members taking part in it did their job very often voluntarily, without any material compensation. The encyclopedia takes on the overall consideration of the Hungarian literacy appeared in Romania after 1919. According to the predefi ned editorial conception – which could be maintained throughout the work in its main respects – the sense of “literature” prevailed in a wide way. We meant the whole of literacy by it, but it expanded to other domains, as well, which could be connected with literacy: the certain domains of fi ne arts, literatures of music and performance art, the background institutions of spiritual life. The events before the starting date of 1919 – which was determined by the pressure of the authorities – could be included in the introduction of summarizing entries, and we could speak about the classical and contemporary literature of Hungary only in the entries which presented the relations and afterlives of outstanding Transylvanian/Romanian writers. Only those authors could participate who were present with their work in the minority spiritual life – after Transylvania was attached to Romania. In this presentation the editor-in-chief of the last volumes summarizes the genesis of the work, the problems appeared as a consequence of the above mentioned conception, talks about pr

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