Writers in Politics: The Role of Nyugat in Hungary, 1908–19

Abstract

Nyugat [Occident] was the title of a Hungarian literary periodical, which was published from 1908 until 1941. It was by far the most significant such periodical, especially in its first decade before the upheavals following the first world war, the 'Chrysanthemum' revolution of 1918 and the Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919. This paper is concerned with the role of Nyugat in those years. Did the writers who congregated around the periodical contribute to the upheavals of 1918-19 or did their writings merely reflect the currents of social and economic change? Can the poet write poems that are as useful and utilitarian as metal and flour, as Pablo Neruda claims to have once hoped to do (Oda a la poesia)? And can the writer act as a kind of seismograph, registering or predicting the tremors before anyone else, and keeping 'his people' on the alert, as Nikos Kazantzakis may have done?1 A closer examination of Nyugat may not answer those questions but will at least shed some light on the problems involved.