Faludy és a szirének: egy visszautasítás története
György Faludy and the Sirens – The Story of a Rebuff0

Author(s): Gábor Csiszár
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies, Studies of Literature
Published by: Scientia Kiadó
Keywords: Faludy; Béládi; Western Hungarian literature; reception;
Summary/Abstract: In the beginning of the eighties, George Faludy, the “Ulysses of the 20th century”, heard the siren songs of Hungarian literature policy, but he refused those two tempting requests. Both endeavours related to Miklós Béládi. In 1981, he edited an anthology of emigrant literature (Vándorének). Faludy declined the offer even though from 1964 onwards he had repeatedly attempted to get published in Hungary and had even been censored. He had three arguments. The fee would be paid only during a stay in Hungary, yet it had not been a problem for him before. The selection was politically unilateral since the volume would have included poems only against the American existence despite the absence of his many anti-communist pieces. Later he added the most interesting controversy: the quarantine space in between that he would not have liked to appear only among emigrant poets, under the label “Western Literature”. Regarding Faludy, an undivided Hungarian literature exists by itself, and only transborder writers should use the label transborder and emigrant literature, not Budapest.In 1982, Béládi and his colleagues wrote a manual on transborder Hungarian literature (A magyar irodalom története 1945–1975. IV. A határon túli magyar irodalom). As I will demonstrate, not only did Faludy write an article indulging in personal criticism of the book, but he also mentioned some mistakes up to his last days – even though sometimes Faludy confused Béládi with another scholar, Miklós Szabolcsi.For the paper, I have collected the private letters from the Hungarian National Library and the archive of the Faludy family in Portsmouth; further, I have used his noted library and have cited from the published Faludy oeuvre.

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