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BOX-FOLDER-REPORT: 30-5-3
TITLE:             Yugoslav Paper on "Love and the Class Struggle" in Hungary
BY:                Stankovic
DATE:              1959-12-15
COUNTRY:           Hungary
ORIGINAL SUBJECT:  General Desk No.815
THEMATIC SUBJECTS: Hungary--1956-1965, Cultural Policy, Hungary--Literature

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RFE NEWS & INFORMATION
EVALUATION & RESEARCH
General Desk -- No. 815

News Background

YUGOSLAV PAPER ON "LOVE AND THE CLASS STRUGGLE" IN
HUNGARY

Munich, December 15 (Stankovic) -- Hungarian poets are
facing a dilemma. "Can they write poems about love while the
class struggle continues?" -- asks Tanjug's correspondent in
Budapest Milosh Choroyich.

Chorovich's thoughts were published in the December
issues of the Sarajevo daily "Oslobodjenje" and Ljubljana daily
"Delo" under the title "Love and the Class Struggle". The 
Yugoslav journalist was reviewing a book of poems by György Szilagy
in an edition of 3,400 copies by the Budapest publishing house
"Zriny". According to Chorovich this book of poems is very
strange one. To prove this he quotes the introductory poem by
Szilagy, which reads:

"They tell me I am only a Party poet.
Fools. There is nothing more
Precious than this.
I am happy to deserve the name.
Let dogs bark... I shall have
Time enough to write poems on love
When the class struggle is only a memory
Or I am very old.."

Chorovich further said that with his 37 poems Szilagy
"discloses to any patient reader the sources of his poetic
inspirations" for he writes poems "about the greyness of the
Budapest suburbs in the past, about exploitation, class struggle,
the Party congress, about the May 1, workers' militia, about the
Russian tanks penetrating the city on 4 November 1956. He is
today 31 years old and he states the following in one of his poems:

"Thirty years passed by,
But this thirty first is the
Most beautiful,
Because in this year
I became a member of the
Workers' militia."

Szilagy greets "guns from the Russian tanks" forcing
their way into Budapest on 4 November 1956 and writes about a
father telling his little son:

[page 2]

NEWS BACKGROUND REPORT, No.815

CURT - (1) YUGO PAPER ...

"Do you hear how guns are
Singing a poem,

A poem about the renewed brother hood."

The preface for Szilagy's book of poems was written by
Janos Feldeák whom Chorovich criticizes for his "dictatorial
attitude". Feldeak, according to the Yugoslav journalist, "has
condemned everybody in advance.... who would repudiate Szilagy's
poetry". Feldeak called Szilagy "a poet -- politician".

The Hungarian Party organ "Nepszabadsag", Chorovich
said, expressed "its dismay about some poems" in Szilagy's book,
but "did not claim that the book should not have been published".
It only criticized Feldeak "for his dictatorial attitude in not
allowing anybody to have an opposite opinion".

End

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