A Hungarian Writer’s Experience of the Mediterranean: On Ferenc Herczeg’s Szelek Szárnyán Travelogue/ Ship`s Log
A Hungarian Writer’s Experience of the Mediterranean: On Ferenc Herczeg’s Szelek Szárnyán Travelogue/ Ship`s Log

Summary/Abstract: One of the works of the much disputed and until recently often avoided oeuvre of Herczeg Ferenc is the attention-grabbing work entitled Szelek szárnyán [On the Wings of the Wind] (1905), a travelogue and a ship’s log. Its analysis casts another view on the life of this writer, born in South Banat, who, at the beginning of the 20th century, sailed the Adriatic and the Mediterranean with his nephew in his sailing boat called Sirály (The Seagull) – thus demonstrating and choosing a secessionist lifestyle, even abandoning Budapest –, and his inspiration by the sea reached a peak in this volume (Secessionist in every sense, advertising the beauties and values of the Adriatic). This prose work was created in the context of Rijeka, Zadar, Šibenik, Trogir, Split, Dubrovnik, and Boka Kotorska, which (apart from its Secessionist character), owing to its cross-artistic and multicultural features, blends various art forms and ways of expression. It gives a superb experience to the reader.The study interprets and analyses Ferenc Herczeg’s volume Szelek szárnyán as a complex genre created in a cross-artistic environment, with the objective to emphasize and present its special role and standing in Hungarian literature as well as in the field of fine and applied arts.

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