Will we forget Faludy, the poet, who makes fun of us even after death?

Fortuitously, during the clear-out a Faludy researcher just happened to be on hand: József Gál, third year doctoral student of the Szeged humanities faculty, who is writing his dissertation on the works of the poet known by many simply as Uncle Gyuri. Although it is not possible to say with 100% certainty, still it is highly likely (based on calligraphy and his biography) that the script was indeed written by Faludy himself.

The inscription may have found its way onto the piece of furniture when György Faludy held (full house) lectures at the university in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

József Gál didn’t hesitate and he set about bargaining for the table with Zsófia Szilágyi, head of the Hungarian Literature Department. His persistence paid off (he offered six chairs and a table in return) and he finally became the proud owner of the relic, which he was unable to keep in one piece. He had the part containing the signature glazed and a photo of the original state of the table can be seen in the head office of Forrás periodical in Kecskemét.

However, György Faludy is not only currently playing tricks on his colleagues at Szeged University, but on the literature canon, too. Mainly by his being unable to find his place in it. According to József Gál, the reason for this neglect is that the poet who spent many years in emigration and returned to Hungary in 1988, and who then got mixed up in a series of frivolous situations in his life and depicted these in his works, “always positioned himself outside ‘grand  politics’ while he always had an opinion about nearly all political changes”. This may go some way to explaining why nobody is lobbying for the popularization and publishing of Faludy’s works that have stirred up today’s literary scene just a little. Although the researcher notes that he reckons Faludy is currently not on the periphery but instead “in purgatory, awaiting a decision on whether he is to be moved up or down”.

It is well worth paying a visit to this poetic purgatory because with the help of poems one gets a better sense of and feels closer to historical situations, which have become dry facts to learn in the pages of textbooks.

Anyone interested in having an overview of the Rákosi era from the viewpoint of those imprisoned, or would like to better understand why Hungarians took up arms in 1956, would be well advised to bury themselves in his work Prison Poems 1950–53. It is sufficient to mention, from among the many sufferings, his internment in Kistarcsa, the underground cells of the state security police (ÁVH) and the labour camp at Recsk, where György Faludy conceived one of his most important poems in 1952: Monologue on Life and Death. Gál reckons that in terms of quality, this poem on Hungarianhood can easily stand alongside Miklós Radnóti’s work I Cannot Know. Whereas the verse by Radnóti took its final shape prior to forced labour at Lager Heidenau, Faludy’s, according to his own statement, was born in his head in an ÁVH cell and, lacking a pen, the author shared it verbally with his own cellmates. Monologue on Life and Death recited by Faludy himself can be seen on YouTube by clicking here, and as they say on social media, if you only listen to one poem today, make sure it is this one.

The PhD student reveals that these days, legacy research is no easy matter. The main reason for this is that it is difficult to access existing memorabilia due to complex inheritance ownership rights. József Gál is working on the collection of the poet’s correspondence between 1956 and 1963, in addition to which he is gathering data primarily in the State Security Services Historical Archives where a dossier containing a significant number of documents was kept.

He is trying to reconstruct what was probably the most productive and significant period in the life of the poet (between 1945 and 1963) largely based on reports by ÁVH informers.

The fact that it is possible to examine the life of a significant literary figure from the point of view of state bodies exercising power may bring about new results, says the researcher.

Since the quantity of Faludy correspondence is not far off that of the diaries of Márai, József Gál is in no easy position and unfortunately he does not have much competition. The poems of Uncle Gyuri are starting to drop out of the secondary school curriculum and his other important patriotic poem, Ode to the Hungarian Language, is heard increasingly rarely at recital competitions. Ever fewer people know what the dedication that turned up just a few weeks ago means: ‘György Faludy was here’. An important oeuvre is beginning to fade from memory.