Адаптации Чехова в современной венгерской литературе
Adaptations of Chekhov in Contemporary Hungarian Literature

Summary/Abstract: The creative reception of Anton Chekhov in contemporary Hungarian literature often takes the form of a role-play in which poets put on an authorial mask that displays Russian literary references, while their Chekhovian intertexts constitute an organic part of a playful evocation of classic Russian literature. The form of the mask lyric, including especially that of the so-called “oroszvers” (verbatim: a Russian poem), is also characteristic of poetry from across the border in Transylvania; more specifically, of the writers’ generations starting out in the sixties and seventies, named after the book series entitled Forrás (Springs), growing up on the heritage of the 20th-century Hungarian poet Attila József, and apparently representing this heritage but, at the same time, introducing a new form of expression as well. This study focuses on the poetics of two such contemporary authors, László Király (b. 1943) and András Ferenc Kovács (b. 1959), in whose poetry I wish to examine the phenomenon belonging to the category of literary mystification, while analyzing the manifestations of the typical Chekhovian protagonist and the Chekhovian “atmosphere” as transposed into poetry.

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