ÖNREFLEXIÓ ÉS SZÁMVETÉS JUHÁSZ ERZSÉBET PRÓZÁJÁBAN
SELF-REFLECTION AND RECKOGNITION IN THE PROSE OF ERZSÉBET JUHÁSZ

Summary/Abstract: Erzsébet Juhász has always created situations in her epic works which established her protagonists’ issues regarding identity. In her collection of short stories Gyöngyhalászok [Pearlers], it is the family that represents the social environment influencing identity on a fundamental level, and in her novel Műkedvelők [Art Lovers], she presents the cultural conditions defining minority existence in the period between the two world wars. Her final, posthumously published novel Határregény [Frontier Novel], which remained in fragments, is set in parallel time periods: the present of the Balkan Wars and in the period following the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. The structure, indicative a great epic composition, was formed by the editors based on the completed fragments; however, even these make the author's intent of a parallel between the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and the distintigration of Yugoslavia palpable. Juhász’s 1993 collection of essays and 1997 collection of studies can, in a sense, be considered the predecessors of Határregény [Fontier Novel]. In her essays, she examines the situation ensuing after the Balkan Wars, the state of existence as a national minority, the question of Central-Europeanness, and the chances of hope from the perspective of a creator. She discovers hope only in a dimension beyond the reach of everyday existence—reading and writing. Her studies on the literature of the Monarchy bear witness to these life experiences as well. This paper examines how the revelations described in the collections of essays and studies by Erzsébet Juhász are represented in the epic text of the Határregény [Frontier Novel].

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