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BOX-FOLDER-REPORT: 31-4-259
TITLE:             The Land of Smiles
BY:                Urban
DATE:              1961-8-4
COUNTRY:           Hungary
ORIGINAL SUBJECT:  
THEMATIC SUBJECTS: Hungary--1956-1965, Hungary--Literature, Personalities

--- Begin ---

RFE EVALUATION AND
RESEARCH DEPARTMENT

1961

News Background

F-145 

X CURT THE LAND OF SMILES

Munich- 4 August 1961, (Urban) -- Mr. Hegedus has had a
dream -- a curious and daring dream at that. Dreams are , of course,
reactionary almost by definition, and, under a more rigorous
political constellation, Mr. Hegedus's dream would have never
seen the light of day or, to be more precise, the printed pages of
"Elet es Irodalom". But these are more frivolous times in Hungary
(at least at the upper flights of Parnassus) and Mr. Hegedus's
pointed fancies are now the talk of that very garrulous town,
Budapest.

One fine night, lean and thin man that he is, he found
himself flown to the land of Fat and Happy Men. Smiles grinned
at him from every signpost and fatness was extolled at every
steal-corner) as the one outstanding virtue which made this land superior
to all others. Double chins, tires round the waist and spreads of
various kinds at the lower parts of the citizen's anatomy were this
country's hall-marks of respectability and belonging. Driving past
the "Inn to the Well-fed Docile ", a store which warned customers
that lean patrons are not served, and posters exhorting the
citizen to distrust thinness, love the fat and be vigilant against
all of a serious mien or a reflective temper, Mr. Hegedus was
finally dumped in a seething mass of overweight humanity.

Our visitor was none too happy in these surroundings
because in this land of corpulent men and women he was only too
conscious of his own shortcomings and the nervous condition of
his stomach which he brought with himself from Central Europe.

Fortunately, he was not completely isolated, because
he soon discovered that there was a local minority of people of an
inveterately skinny and choleric complexion, whom neither
state-feeding nor propaganda could convert to the company of fat citizens.
And, goodness knows, it was for no lack of trying. Big Joker, who
first thought of the historic destiny of the fat over the lean,
had seen to it that there was no easy way out of happiness. There
was a Ministry of Public Joy run by the Chief Smiler. One of his
duties was to be a kind of Public Relations Officer and explain
to the delegates from less enlightened lands why fat men and
their social order, were superior to those of the thin and why
it was right that the bony and loose-limbed should be eliminated
from public life.

At this point in his dream scruples besiege our dreamer's
mind. Was this country really democratic? He could well understand
that in the land of the fat the majority of people were born fat,
but he could not help wondering whether it was not, at least
occasionally, possible for fat parents to give birth to skinny

[pages 2]

X CURT (1) THE LAND OF SMILES 

NEWS BACKGROUND, 4 August 1961, page 2

off spring. How would they fare in this land of state-enforced
obesity? How, God forbid, would he fare if he had to live among
the fat and the happy?

There had, of course, been a minority of thin
men -- the Chief Smiler explains -- who had turned out to be enemies of
the common weal. These had to be put to death. It was all very
unfortunate.

But others, who, did not oppose the rule of the fat,
were tolerated in menial jobs. Of course, they were on
probation all the time and, the Chief Smiler added genially, should
they demur against the rule of the fat, the full severity of the
law would be brought to bear upon them,, To live down your
thinness is no easy matter, he continued. The lean and the morose
have missed no trick to pass themselves off as members of the
ruling east. But the state is on its guard. A medical
examination is held before candidates are appointed to public office and
unless their inclination to obesity is convincingly established
they are invariably rejected. The same rule governs admission to
the universities and, what is more, fat men who lose wight while 
holding public office are liable to be dismissed upon reaching
proportions of an insidious thinness.

On the last lap of his tour Mr. Hegedus was whisked
past the municipal art gallery. For centuries, the Great Smiler
explained, the finest paintings of the world had been collected
there. But, before Big Joker liberated the people from their
trammels, the pictures had been arranged with insufficient care,
and some of poisonous content were allowed to be shown. Under the
new regime, however, the gallery, too, underwent a salutary reform.
The pictures of El Greco, for instance, had been removed and burnt
because his figures were subversively gaunt and unhappy to behold.
Pride of place is now given to Rubens in whose paintings the citizen
can feast his eyes on a galaxy of constructively fat women.

At this state Mr. Hegedus wakes from his dream and his
story ends with the homily that lean dictators and fascists should
learn from his allegory, because there is no more truth in fascism
than in big Joker's faith in the superiority of fat men.

The symbolism is too transparent to need comment. Nothing
more daring has appeared in the Hungarian press since 1956.

End

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