EMMA RITOÓK’S NOVEL “SPIRITUAL ADVENTURERS” [A SZELLEM KALANDORAI]
EMMA RITOÓK’S NOVEL “SPIRITUAL ADVENTURERS” [A SZELLEM KALANDORAI]

Summary/Abstract: Emma Ritoók’s novel “Spiritual Adventurers” (A szellem kalandorai, 1921) is a chronicle of fin-de-siècle intellectual history. It was inspired by the author’s participation in the “Sunday Circle” (Vasárnapi Kör) and its members and friends: Ervin Donáth’s character was most likely modelled after Ernst Bloch. Of all the ideologies represented in the novel, those associated with the women’s movement and the conflicts that the “new woman” had to face seem to be the most actual for today’s readers. Ritoók’s novel represents the “new woman” as torn between multiple and often conflicting discourses regarding female creativity and sexuality and the world around her as not ready yet for her to enter the stage. Whereas the novel ends with a destructive act, the shooting of Ervin, which can be read as a metaphor for the collapse of the old world order for which the revolution offered no real alternative, the “new woman” portrayed through Héva Bártoldy’s character becomes the carrier of a message of hope for future generations to further what the previous ones had painstakingly initiated.

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