Relations by Zsigmond Móricz

Relations by Zsigmond Móricz
Translated by Bernard Adams
Introduction by George F. Cushing
Corvina Books, Ltd. (2007)
ISBN 978 963 13 5524 6

Posts:
"The only relation to love is the one that’s of use to you": problems in post-World War I Hungary
Lina and Magdaléna
Solutions?
Introduction to Móricz and the novel
My notes


Another day, another dead computer. This is getting frustrating.

Here is a summary for my links to this wonderful novel. I think I've said almost all I can say in the linked posts. I highly recommend the novel and hope other readers will explore his work.

Here is part of the summary of the novel from the author's page at Publishing Hungary. I have reformatted the text in order to make it easier to read:

Relatives (Rokonok) (1932) This utterly bitter novel of Móricz’s is set in a small town, around the great depression of 1929, showing the state of rural Hungary in the 1930s through the fate of a self-torturing intellectual. A strongly sociographical work about the small town’s life, it sheds light on the corrupt state of county world, on the panamas of the mayor’s office, of regional banks, shareholders and enterprises, and even on the illusory work of the parliament and the opposition.

In the town of Zsarátnok, a new public prosecutor is being elected, as his predecessor lined his pockets more than generally accepted, crossing other people’s interests. A harmless candidate is sought so as to be bribed from the first moment in a way that by the time he can realize it, he should be entangled in the affairs beyond measure. The middle-aged István Kopjáss [Pista] is somewhat more sensible and quicker-witted than the average – if not more scrupulous. Originally a man of social sensitivity, as a cultural councillor he used to hand in petitions for schools, naturally in vain. In his new position, he tries to get informed and soon realizes that his predecessor got into trouble in connection with the Pig-Farm Share Company near the town, but he does not suspect the proportions of the scandal. Meanwhile he is warmly encouraged by the mayor and the manager of the savings bank. ...

Kopjáss is happily married, and with his beautiful wife they can decently raise their two student sons. Although they have two rooms only, thanks to the woman’s sober economizing, they never went into debt even under the depression. They do not communicate much with their relatives, but when they [the relatives] learn of Kopjáss’s promotion, they turn up one by one – here Móricz lets his satirical vision loose. Wishing to help them all, Kopjáss immediately thinks of good jobs in the city for his brothers. But the real danger arrives in the person of an uncle infamous of his suspicious deals, who proposes to transport coal to the city, offering 20 percent of the profit. His nephew does not pry into how legal this is, and does not suspect the danger which naturally leads to his decline.

In the short span between his promotion and his fall, Kopjáss starts an investigation about the Pig Farm. He learns that the main share-holders involved in the panama are the heads of the town, the mayor and the manager of the savings bank. Naively he deludes himself to be able to eliminate the corruption by turning to the public. ... Through the struggle of the intellectual learning to lie to himself, Móricz wrote a critique of the upper classes, the gentries and the roots of the crisis of the Hungarian society. The novel has been adapted to the screen twice, in 1954 it was directed by Félix Máriássy, starring Klári Tolnay and László Ungvári and in 2006 by István Szabó, starring Sándor Csányi and Ildikó Tóth.

Relations by Zsigmond Móricz: solutions?

Zsigmond Móricz
Picture source

Relations by Zsigmond Móricz
Translated by Bernard Adams
Introduction by George F. Cushing
Corvina Books, Ltd. (2007)
ISBN 978 963 13 5524 6

In my first post on Relations, I included Móricz’s idea for the novel:

When he began to write it Móricz declared, “I postulated the idea that in every family there is one man, the rest are relations. By this I meant that there is a competent, strong personality to whom the many incompetent cling. And this strong man cannot achieve anything, because the network of relations enmeshes him and drags him into the depths.”

But what if he really isn’t competent or a strong man? That’s what we see with Pista, the pawn in the powerful elite’s game. Lina, his wife, understands that there is no such thing as a partial compromise. Pista, seconded by his brother, believes he can make a difference only if he moves in the elite’s circles. Unfortunately he increasingly compromises himself as the novel moves along. Determined not to play the patronage game, Pista’s first thoughts sometimes stray into plans to improve someone’s lot (not illegally, but still through favors). He finds himself behaving more and more like the elite he wants to bring to account, just on a smaller scale.

As the reader finds out more about Pista it’s clear he is not the man for cleaning up the city’s government. His heart is in the right place—his experience as a Russian POW during World War I shaped him:

[H]e had become accustomed to looking respectfully on the mass of unknown, simple people and on every individual among them, for the individual represents the mass, and authority is what the mass expects…He’d had plenty of time to learn that lesson in the Russian prison camp, but the upper classes here at home, and the women in particular, hadn’t been through that school and could still behave to isolated individuals with effortless superiority and tyrannical manners. (138)

Pista had harbored a secret plan to reorganize the school Assistance Board to help provide schoolbooks to all children. Nothing had come of it so far. First there was the war, then he was captured, and he was not able to help in his post as Cultural Adviser. It’s a minor point, but it helps highlight that Pista is a dreamer and planner, not a doer. A lot of the bleakness of the novel comes from this point, where a good man is unable to make any changes to a corrupt system.

In the introductory essay George F. Cushing mentions that Móricz provides solutions to the problems he outlines. I find the solutions ambiguous, though, as indefinite as the impossibility of implementing them. During the return train ride back from Budapest Pista muses about the unsatisfactory trip, the county official he is traveling with, and how things could improve. As he looks at the county official he thinks:

This was just a living human being, interested only in his own close circle of affairs. Who saw no farther than the County boundary, and even within that couldn’t think anything through or arrange things properly. There was a kind of bureaucratic system according to which things had to be done, but how should he think, for instance, of something higher, such as how to find work for the thirty thousand unemployed in the County? Thirty thousand men, agricultural workers, marvelous material. The country could be built with these thirty thousand. Roads, houses, schools, museums. All it needed was somebody to set the thirty thousand to work. A will, a power aiming at a goal. The whole country could be re-organized with just these thirty thousand. (120-121)

As much as this is a call to action, looking for a will or a power that will lead rather than skim money, it’s contradicted by other scenes in the book. The funds to do something like this aren't available--they have been stolen or lost. The County begs for loans and handouts in order to stay afloat (again, the chain of patronage is present at every level). Even if the funds were available, how many of the thirty thousand would want to work? The unemployed men in the novel range from industrious to loafers. The industrious men are often schemers, like Pista’s uncle who is industrious only in his schemes. Pista’s generosity toward family members rarely provide any structural help, instead leading to more dependence, something that also seems bred into the "chain of patronage."

Pista’s political philosophy was aligned with the Opposition party decrying the parasitic nature of the government. From Dr. Martiny, the leader of the Opposition:

"It really boils down to who the world belongs to. Capital? Or the workers? Or the State? What’s certain these days is that the State isn’t organised for the benefit of the people. It enjoys an exceptional position, like the ancient oligarchies. In the eyes of the people the State is a mystic power. An end in itself. Human life isn’t important, what matters is for the State to flourish. The State devours its children. It’s a real Cronos. They say we live in a State. No: the State lives on us." (149)

And yet Dr. Martiny paints an extremely bleak view of man with his emphasis on peasants not ready for their freedom. He maintains that freedom for the peasants would be a disaster because they wouldn’t know what to do with it. He says that man yearns for dependence, not independence. I guess being kept on a short leash is better than being devoured, but is that the best man can hope for? Likewise the recommendation of Pista for “bush farms” to improve the farmers’ lot comes with a dreary twist. While his advice does make sense in a world where farm commodity prices are falling, he sells it to the corrupt administration with the promise that the government will have more direct control over the farmers. So to Cushing’s point—there are solutions proposed but each one has drawbacks. Despite the humor (and I think there is more than he gives credit) there is at the core of the novel a bleak view: at best, incremental improvement is all Hungary can hope for given the state of the government and the people.

The reason Pista was chosen as a figurehead Town Clerk, which would allow the elite to remain in power, was that he was related (or rather his wife was) to one of the elites. At first the novel seemed to be going in a Being There direction, with Pista uttering banal phrases that draw applause from the public and leaders for their supposed insight. But Pista is no Chauncey Gardener. There is substance below the surface, it’s just that he is out of his league with these leaders. He finds his good intentions thwarted early and often, causing him to despair immediately. “All of a sudden he saw his life as hopeless. What did it all matter if one stood alone and couldn’t live by those principles that ruled one, that made life worth living?” (92) So what are his options? Pista wants to fight the patronage system by promoting men of worth, some of whom are conveniently family members. He feels he can trust family as much as he trusts himself, showing his faith is misplaced on both sides of the equation, fighting patronage with patronage.

Móricz provides disturbing hints in the novel about the complete loss a family experiences when the head of the household dies, especially by suicide. The uselessness of fighting adds to the bleak tone: “A man struggles and fights, sticks at nothing… When he dies, the whole thing collapses like a balloon when the air leaks out.” (79; ellipsis in original) After the all-night party, Pista realizes he has been played by virtuosos. The Mayor, someone Pista has dismissed as old and doddering, delivers a fascinating and masterful speech to Pista, undermining everything he has tried to accomplish. The intent was to deflate Pista’s ego and ideas so that he would more easily fall in line with what the elite wanted to accomplish. Instead he gives in to despair even though he knows the cost to his family. We don’t know whether or not he was successful in his suicide attempt, but that he attempted to kill himself knowing the cost to his family shows the depths he reached. The Mayor, realizing what a good man (to their corrupt cause) Pista would be, demands help for the Town Clerk and his family. This proves to be Móricz’s coup de grace for the optimism of improvement in the country: what had been hope for bettering the area is now only of use to those people stealing everyone blind.

Related posts:
"The only relation to love is the one that’s of use to you": problems in post-World War I Hungary
Lina and Magdaléna
Introduction to Móricz and the novel
My notes

Relations by Zsigmond Móricz: Lina and Magdaléna

Advertisement for Rokonok (Relations) by Zsigmond Móricz
Picture source at Wikimedia Commons

Relations by Zsigmond Móricz
Translated by Bernard Adams
Introduction by George F. Cushing
Corvina Books, Ltd. (2007)
ISBN 978 963 13 5524 6

Another quick post that ended up being waaaay, too long. Please accept my semi-apology.

Women in Relations play an important role in the novel so I wanted to spend a post looking at the two central female characters. Lina and Pista have been married for sixteen years and have developed a close relationship, shown in part when Pista accurately reads between the lines of their conversations. His election to Town Clerk changes Lina as much as it does him. “He’d found a whole new woman; he vaguely recalled that she could be like this, but for the last ten years there had been at his side a woman discontented, sour, wanting nothing, permitting nothing, satisfied with nothing.” (19) Part of the reason for Lina’s sourness has been her constant vigil to protect the family, causing her to forego many (if not all) pleasures. Pista’s election worries her—she’s afraid he will change and she’s scared that their higher profile will make them targets. She also accurately anticipates the influx of patronage requests.

Lina proves to be a shrewd judge of people and intuits many of the elite's frauds. She realizes the corrupting influence of power and worries how Pista may change: “She was wondering whether she could be sure that her husband would remain the same under the new circumstances. She was so humble that she truly dreaded his promotion. Would she satisfy the man who was rising to high places? Wouldn’t he have desires that would take him from her, for her unsophisticated world?” (25) She’s concerned that she will be replaced by another woman or simply left behind. Her father has asked the couple to come to the country and run his property, something Lina would love to do. Requests from relatives will only increase the tension between the couple during the novel.

Lina momentarily enjoys the thought of being the Town Clerk’s wife. She realizes she will be an important person in the city and people will have to treat her as an ally if they want her husband on their side. She understands what the cost will be, though, and fights against having to change: “Don’t take me to places like this Pista, don’t make me into what I’m not” (67) she pleads. After Pista and Lina argue he makes up with her, in part because “these awful, changeable times, with the whole world falling apart” (106) requires they face the world together. Lina does have her faults, especially pride. When her husband needs her most she belittles him. She has worked long and hard to make the family successful but feels the current whirlwind will erase everything she has achieved, even if the accomplishments are rather modest. Lina lets loose with major rants a couple of times in the novel. In one she makes it sound as if the election will prove to be a misfortune and cost them everything, souls included: “Now you’ve been caught up by this sudden good luck, or misfortune.” “It’s [the elite’s] ways are different, its morals, its atmosphere, everything is different.” “Why are you forcing me to move into an entirely new world?” “Can people be taken out of their old skins and given new ones? And even if you can get you a new skin, can your soul be remade?” (154) It’s not that Lina is ungrateful. She realizes Pista’s basic goodness, but that's what makes her a harsh mistress at times. Her concern is that they will betray their true selves… sell their souls… to do what is required in order to move in these new social circles. Pista realizes his wife is right and that she has their best interests at heart.

That doesn’t keep him from desiring his new position and everything that goes with it. He believes he has to be part of the system in order to change it—more on that in the next post. The party at the end of the novel turns out to be crucial for several reasons. For Lina it’s a chance to unburden herself regarding all the insults and demeaning things she has suffered. Thia excerpt is long, but I love the insight such a supposedly simple woman possesses. Some of the insults really bite and are fun to read (as long as you aren't their target):

[Lina] “This dress is burning my body. It’s not my dress, I’d like to tear the wretched thing off, because it’s not my skin, but theirs, these people here that turn their backs on me. If it were my dress, then I’d belong among them, and we’d have been friends for ages. Then I’d have sat with them on the sofa gossiping… But I don’t belong here, and you forget that you married Lina Szentkálnay, not Magdaléna. And now nothing will be any good in future, because you’ve had a taste and your ancestral blood has come out… Chance has thrown you out of your place, and now you want to compete with these fools that you’ve got among.”

[Pista] “I want to be a leader among them, to give the orders.”

“How dare you do that? … Do you know anything about it? Can you keep in step with them? … Their ways are different, their morals, their tone. If ever a friend’s come to my house she’s come in and been happy to sit at my table. She doesn’t send in a visiting-card like they did this mid-day, then dash off in the car as if she were avoiding lepers. And when I come here like a fool, for my husband’s sake, she says one word to me and goes off…”

“Because you stomp around like a queen in a huff.”

“Because that’s what I am. Because I’ve got a soul, and these haven’t, or rather they have got one, and it’s money… Here you’ve got to be able to compete, my dear, you can’t come here on foot, you have to come by car, and the bigger the better. Why did you marry me while you were poor? You should have waited! You shouldn’t have ruined me… What have you done to me? I never have time to read a book, I scarcely look at a paper, I don’t follow fashion, I don’t know the witty remarks these stylish women have to decorate their lives with… Magdaléna… Perhaps she too wouldn’t veen like me, but lie’s been too good to her…”

“Don’t keep on insulting her.”

Up to this point their conversation had proceeded as if they had just been discussing the company before them, saying to the loud jazz, perfumed, crowded. Now Lina sat up straight in agitation and Pista, even in his drunken state, became alarmed, because he knew his wife, and when she lost her temper she didn’t care about appearances.

“Why shoulnd’t I? She really impresses me. All the Pig Farm money went on her showing off, because when a woman’s being spoiled there isn’t enough money in the world… Do you want me to become what she is? Just buy this house then, and a car and a chauffeur to go with it, and a fur coat for the chauffeur and a gardener and everything. You think I don’t know how to spend more than three hundred and forty-six pengős a month? What am I, then? Am I so short of ideas? Couldn’t I get through thirty thousand? Every month? … Come on then… It’s pathetic… you’ve got five pengős of mine in your pocket and your head full of dreams. You want a cheque-book and a bank account. Will you get that? Where from? On what? You want to be in with the big-time thieves? … Mind you don’t get swallowed… Because I don’t know whether they’ll be prepared to give you a share… There are enough of them already… They don’t need the Kopjáss army [Pista’s family]… they can already spend what small change there still is in the city themselves.” (pages 233-4; ellipsis in original)

The woman that Lina insults in this rant is Magdaléna Boronkay, a distant relative. Magdaléna’s husband was at the center of the Pig Farm scandal and had been booted upstairs to a national post in order to relieve his exposure to the fallout. Magdaléna plays a minor role in the novel but a major influence on Pista. He has dreamed about her for years. Thoughts of Magdaléna change Pista from a reliable, quiet, happy man to an adolescent terrorized that he might be in love with her. She “had such a magical influence over him.” Pista compares Lina and Magdaléna in his mind: “The two women were similar, there was a family likeness, but Lina was the natural, simple creature; Magdaléna the cultivated, almost exotic flower of the species.”(24)

Lina looks down on Magdaléna because she has a “bad name among the correct, the so-called respectable women” (56) and also because she has no children. There's an irony here. Lina has decided not to have more children after two. Pista realizes she was right in this decision. How this limit has occurred is implied (and I'll say no more). Magdaléna represents differences in class as well as highlighting the gap between obscure, solid, poor peasants and the elite. Pista meets Magdaléna several times and he realizes she has changed. With only a little contact he realizes the depth of her sadness. She appears resigned to her fate, such as having to move because of the Pig Farm scandal. He also notes when inspecting Magdaléna’s villa, which Pista and Lina are slated to buy, the banker is *very* familiar with where things are located in the private parts of the house. Pista finds the wildness and volatility of her youth tempered. Pista even finds the painting of Magdaléna and her husband disconcerting—he notes the picture looks like a Svengali / Trilby relationship, although the Svengali is terrified of the woman. The breaking point for Pista occurs after Lina’s diatribe quoted above. He confesses his infatuation to Magdaléna but finds her cold and unreceptive, while she had been interested and accommodating earlier. Pista assumes the Mayor has instructed her how to behave toward him.

The symbolism of Lina and Magdaléna represent several things but I wanted to spend a minute on the old-world versus new-world symbolism. Lina represents the hard-working peasantry, continually defending her family from danger. She has sacrificed everything while rarely mentioning it (and even then it’s when she’s provoked by Pista’s thoughtless comments). She fights against compromising her morals, or as she likes to put it, her soul. This is the old world that is being left behind with the new age, as well as representing what is being excised from the Hungarian world by treaty. But not everything is what it seems in the novel. Despite many clear-cut judgments, Móricz loves to serve up plenty of ambiguity. A cousin of Pista’s mother, Aunt Kati, shows up on the doorstep one day pleading for work. Her stories of the “old times” conflict with descriptions that Pista and Lina have heard and believe. She belittles the hard work peasant women allegedly performed. Is Kati a reliable character? Of course not, but that adds to the ambiguity since some of what she says is confirmed.

We get no insight into Magdaléna except through how other characters evaluate her. She represents the values of the new world, but even that is tinged with ambivalence. As I noted earlier Pista notes a sadness in her bearing while the things that originally attracted her to him have disappeared. The last time we see her she demonstrates an air of acceptance, meekly doing what is required. The contrast with Lina, though, is unmistakable. Everything each woman has accomplished has come with a cost but the nature of the toll is very different. For Lina it has been hard work, self-sacrifice, denial, and constant vigilance. Magdaléna has enjoyed the finer things of life but it has robbed her of her essence. While Móricz wants Hungary to move forward and join the modern world he appears to comment on the cost it will take to do so. It’s possible Móricz was making a statement against the mix of old- and new-world that Magdaléna represents. It’s hard to tell, but that’s what makes the novel so much fun to read and try to interpret. I’ll stop here since I intend the next post to cover some of the supposed solutions Móricz advances in the novel.

Related posts:
”The only relation to love is the one that’s of use to you”: problems in post-World War I Hungary
Solutions?
Introduction to Móricz and the novel
My notes

Relations by Zsigmond Móricz: “The only relation to love is the one that’s of use to you.”

Relations by Zsigmond Móricz
Translated by Bernard Adams
Introduction by George F. Cushing
Corvina Books, Ltd. (2007)
ISBN 978 963 13 5524 6

The original intent was that this post would have been two or three separate posts, but time constraints put an end to that plan. So I’ll apologize for the length of this post in advance, as well as the lack of editing…

In the previous post I had some info on Zsigmond Móricz and a little bit about his 1932 novel Relations. In this post I wanted to begin to focus on the problems in Hungary as Móricz presented them in the novel. The story begins with István Kopjáss (Pista) just elected as the Town Clerk of Zsarátnok, a fictional city but one based on real places. The name means "embers," something dull on the surface but with heat or potential fire underneath. Pista had been the Cultural Adviser, a post with responsibility in name but with little practical influence. The result of the election is a surprise to everyone, but it's gradually revealed that it had been engineered by the real power of the city in order to have a pliant front-man that will help further their causes. They also hope Pista will help limit their liabilities resulting from soured investments and corruption. To the dismay of those in power Pista shows that he has ideas to improve the life of everyday people and an ability to (slowly) grasp the intricacies of a scandal that plagues the city and businessmen. Even though Pista is on his guard he becomes caught in the corruption and patronage web. The exposure damages him physically, mentally, and emotionally, although the Mayor believes Pista will be a very useful man now that he’s been broken. Instead the novel ends with Pista’s attempted suicide, the outcome unclear.

While there are many problems in Hungary presented in the novel I will group them into four major categories. Some of these overlap and I could expand to more categories, but I want to keep things simple. The first category revolves around the corruption and greed of the ruling class. The presence of these characters can be impressive, with one gent described as “an elegant, refined and distinguished man, tall and slim, bearded, seemingly from another planet, even his beard indicated that he was of another race, another world.” (25) Móricz’s story is full of double-edged descriptions: “All present, generally speaking, were proud men, and even if they were small of stature nonetheless they held their heads high. Perhaps this was only because of their stiff collars, because among themselves they were thoroughly cheerful, good-humoured, could laugh like children, as if they were hiding nothing, neither age nor wealth nor power nor an impoverished country.” (69)

Pista talks with a member of the Gentlemen’s Club, providing Móricz with an opportunity to note the divide in the country. The rich and powerful were like a family, “linked by common memories,” acting like a crime syndicate. This is a group that blocks out the fact that the host the parasites are living off of is very sick:

This was a powerful organisation. In its hands were the authority and governmental power of the whole country. All of them were in high positions, senior officers of the army, mighty landowners. Secret societies had no sign that bound their members together more surely than this class that had done well in life.

And they were all cheerful, good-humoured, happy souls. Even the sick, even those who were out of sorts, once they were at home in that private world, were stripped of life’s every care and united there in warm, welcoming, understanding reassurance and conviviality.

But the material basis which had brought this social network into being was crumbling terribly. The salaries of senior officials were falling. This year they’d been cut three times. The landowners were losing their life-blood. Those that had a thousand acres were penniless, buried in a mass of debt. Those with five thousand acres were in debt for a million pengós or two, and were only kept afloat by the special decree for the protection of the farmer. All of them were landowners in name alone.” The only reason that they didn’t get rid of their properties was that they could find no purchaser at auction. There were those whose ancestral estates had come down in the form of mansions of sixty rooms, and they still clung to existence around the mansion while the hyenas of the salesrooms auctioned the clothes of one or another in the great Budapest town house. (102-3)

This is a city where the elite gather at the bank president’s house on Thursday evening so that the outcome of the next day’s council meeting can be decided in advance. As Pista begins to investigate the corruption he has always suspected, “Shock followed shock as he delved ever deeper into the labyrinth of false balances, creative accounting and manipulation of statistics.” (113) The corruption he uncovers has the aptly named 'Pig Farm' scandal, where those in power have gorged themselves at public trough. In another scandal Pista catches an engineer copying bids (with obvious administration support) in order to win a contract: “That was why the city was going nowhere. The people were being subjected to bare-faced robbery.” (206)

So what does it take to succeed in such an atmosphere? As we’ll see later, you have to be related to the right people. But the ability to gluttonously consume without choking helps, too. Pista reflects on the Mayor’s secretary’s behavior at the election party and decides the assistant was going to go far in such an environment. “He [Imrike], the Mayor’s secretary] had been there, and had done some very amusing things. He’d drunk a glass of champagne standing, sitting and lying down without swallowing, merely pouring it into his throat and letting it trickle down, without choking. He had a great future in the Administration.” (35) Ah, if only Country Dick Montana had been alive then. He would have been crowned emperor.

I think I included all the quotes above in order to provide the proper context for the following one, which shows Lina’s (Pista’s wife’s) knack for concise, accurate barbs and allows Móricz an opportunity to provide a suitable summation :

[Pista] “The garden alone is amazing. It all faces south. Great big box bushes, like in the city park.”

[Lina] “That’s where they came from.”

At that he was silent. It was possible, it was conceivable. He thought as he walked. These people really did live as if city property and the personal property of the leaders were fully interchangeable. (142, emphasis mine)

The title of the novel provides my second category: patronage for relatives. Translator Bernard Adams leaves the word protekció untranslated, which means the exercise of personal influence on behalf of another. Every acquaintance of Pista accosts him for favors but the bulk comes from relatives. Many characters provide their commentary on relatives climbing out of the woodwork to ask for help from a relation that recently did well, but none better than Móricz himself (as I included in the introductory post): “When he began to write it Móricz declared, ‘I postulated the idea that in every family there is one man, the rest are relations. By this I meant that there is a competent, strong personality to whom the many incompetent cling. And this strong man cannot achieve anything, because the network of relations enmeshes him and drags him into the depths.’” Lina, the rock and compass for the family, understands the issue immediately: generosity once started for the “blood suckers” will know no end. (91)

What makes things difficult is that Pista is a very idealistic and philosophical man. He muses on the duty of those that are successful in a family to help the others. He tries to weasel out of this duty by declaring his election “an act of God.” (92) That doesn’t stop the appearances of family members, one of which will play a major role in bringing him to the point of attempting suicide. As one character puts it, “Relationships only spread downwards,” which means that the “relation isn’t the man who’s doing well, but the man who’s doing badly.” (184) You only hear from relations when they are in need. The dependence on family members is reflected in other relationships in the novel, including knowledge as well as influence, although the two are so intertwined that it can be difficult to separate the two. Younger students know more about the older students, a tie they try to capitalize on. The poor know more about the elite than the other way around—the poor might as well not exist in the elite’s social circle. The city depends on the generosity of the state. The state begs for assistance from rich countries. And so on…

The right to include family members in shady deals and patronage follows the interchangeability of public and private property for the city’s leaders: “As he sat down it crossed his mind that these urak [members of the decadent (former) land-owning class] really conceived being related to someone as implying an established right to be cut in on any rackets that were going.” (192) Pista’s Uncle Berci provides the greatest truth of the novel: “The only relation to love is the one that’s of use to you.” (221) The quote ends up dripping with irony since Uncle Berci’s attempted coal scam brings Pista down. Pista arrives at a philosophy that coincides with one that the Mayor had put into practice: “One could only make progress in life if one freed oneself of burdens, and that meant all of one’s burdensome relations too. There was nothing else for it, one should keep only those likely to prove beneficial, and the wasters, of whom nothing could be made, must be left to their fate.” (157) The ‘relations’ angle provides much of the humor of the novel, not least of which is when the Mayor learns that Pista is distantly related to the leader of the Opposition party.

The third category of problems focuses on the poverty of most of Hungary and its dependence on the poor international situation of the time. The situation reveals itself early. Pista muses on the poor drainage for houses that are located off of the main road. There had been a program to improve the drainage but it ceased after the affluent had been serviced since the funds (which should have been enough for the whole city) had been exhausted due to corruption. The leader of the Opposition party summarizes what agricultural workers and the poor faced: “illiteracy, ignorance and poverty.” (44) The exact date of the novel’s setting, covering a couple of weeks, isn’t noted but from the comments it appears to be November 1930. The impacts of the financial collapse is working its way around the globe and Hungary can’t escape the fallout. Pista and Lina make similar comments about the “awful, changeable times, with the whole world falling apart.” (130)

A play on the title of the novel is the interrelatedness of the world. Decisions by large countries impact the smaller ones. Small countries like Hungary are asking for favors from the larger ones like the U.S. Officials realize they don't have much control in Hungary's internal affairs when international agreements and commodity pricing dictate living condition. So here’s the interesting question—is that a good thing? Some control has been wrested out of the hands of rapacious officials but are the resulting forces good or bad for the country? I’ll try and address that in a separate post on the so-called ‘solutions’ Móricz proposes. The Prime Minster’s focus is on investing in profitable projects, turning the country into a business model and ignoring the basic needs of the population. The poor, especially the farmers, are caught between the international forces of deteriorating markets and local politicians skimming what’s left. Hungary, especially the elite, want to live in the world as it was while forces are forcing changes they don't want to face.

The fourth category looks at the psychological damage in Hungary from the loss of World War I. I think it’s an important one, especially for the the country at the time. The Treaty of Trianon in 1920 broke up Hungary and left the country at about one-third it’s pre-WWI size. Transylvania was given to Romania while much of northern Hungary went to Czechoslovakia. Many of the places mentioned in the book are in these “lost” territories. Aunt Kati shows up on Pista’s doorstep and tells him about troubles in these territories:

“Well, it’s no life in those parts now. In the Rima valley. The Czechs are in charge. … He’s such a good farmer, and such a Hungarian person. You should hear them all talk about him! Last year, when he went to Prague, he went into a shop to buy some little thing for the family, some souvenir of Prague. He couldn’t understand what they said, because in his whole life he hasn’t learnt a word of any other language. So he said, ‘Heavens, you’ve belonged to us these ten years, haven’t you learnt to speak Hungarian yet? … What can poor Hungarian children learn up there? They have to speak Slovak, and a real Hungarian like him can’t stomach that. Going to school means learning in Czech. What a lesson to learn in such a real Hungarian’s house.” (108-9; ellipsis mine)

So what to do with these problems? The characters live in a situation where nothing changes for the better. Well, unless a relative hits it lucky. The Mayor’s initial meeting with Pista provides insight from the savviest politician of the novel, acknowledging the entrenched power can’t reform itself. The Mayor tells Pista that he, as a new man coming into power, can change things that established men can’t do. “You, as a novus homo, aren’t bound by fear or favour, nothing.” He also issues a warning about how the system will treat him, something that Pista proves to be aware of but unable to carry out:“[Y]ou must move people about, bring in new men, because an established man who’s caught up in the system can’t do it, but a new man…because the system grows into you, wraps round the man in charge like a spider’s web…you see, my boy… On the contrary, you’re got a free hand…a new broom in City Hall.” (38: ellipsis in original) As mentioned earlier, Pista is humiliated by the requirement to change to meet their expectations as he becomes aware that “he was no good to the city as he was. They wanted to transform him in their own image and likeness.” In other words, to get anything done he has to become like those in power.

Pista’s fate reflects that of Hungary at times, especially when he feels “as if his train had been hitched to a new engine, with an unknown driver at the controls, and was under way with him as a passenger, travelling into exile, being deported to some unknown world.” (80) He adopts the way of the elite a lot faster than he is willing to admit, loathing his former life and relations, or at least that have inconvenienced him. There are certain aspects of Hungary’s legacy that aren’t easily forgotten. This adds to the elite’s predicament. as one of the Gentlemen’s Club members tells Pista:

“Believe you me, dear boy, Hungarian law takes a draconian stand against the debtor. The old law-givers maintained that anybody that fell into debt was either a gambler or a drunkard. Both deserved all the punishment possible, so as to become a terrible example to others. Now, however, a new world order has come along.”(103)

Pista sits in on a session of Parliament and watches the leaders of the country deal with the problems they are facing. Rather, he saw their dereliction of duty as the Prime Minister spoke to an almost empty Parliament. There is hope for a reformation when Pista reads about a mayor dismissed by the central government for irregularities and corruption, although he sees it as a warning on how he should behave. There is a counterpoint to this positive development—a journalist friend of Pista’s tells him about the damage that landowners bring upon themselves by entering politics. They neglect their farms and rack up debt on the many elections they have to stand for. As the journalist puts it, “There’s nothing for him to do but resign himself to what can’t be altered.” (123) It's an outlook that many characters ascribe to, giving up on advancement in general but hoping for a relation's good luck to improve their own lot.

I’m planning an additional two posts on the book, one on the women in the novel and another on the ‘proposed’ solutions.

Related posts:
Introduction to Móricz and the novel
Lina and Magdaléna
Solutions?
My notes

Zsigmond Móricz; Relations

Zsigmond Móricz (1935)
Picture source at Wikimedia Commons Before I begin posting on Zsigmond Móricz's Relations I thought I would include a post looking at the author and the introduction to the book written by George F. Cushing (Corvina Books, Ltd.; 2007).

I'll have to admit I had not heard of Zsigmond Móricz until I picked up Relations. There is a little bit of information in English available online but not that much. His entry at Wikipedia isn't very long. More helpful is the author's page at Publishing Hungary, which looks at a few of his major works. His first published short story, Seven Pennies, is the most common work in translation I have found. If you find more helpful links on Móricz let me know and I'll be glad to add them to this list.

The late George F. Cushing provided the introductory essay "Zsigmond Móricz, The Passionate Observer." Móricz was obviously more than just an observer:

He wrote some 36 novels, 600 short stories and numerous so-called reports, which are often indistinguishable from the stories; he also wrote a number of studies, some verse and dramas. Although he loved the stage and adapted several of his novels for it, he was a failure as a playwright. But in the rest of his work he described contemporary Hungarian society with the passion of a reformer, starting with the people he knew best, the peasants of the Great Plain, but gradually moving to the rural and small-town gentry and the slum-dwellers of Budapest. (page 7)

Much of Móricz's early works centered on peasants. By the mid-1920s, his focus changed and wrote about “the rural and small-town gentry, who had it in their power to initiate reform.” (page 9) The failures of the peasants is now replaced with a moral failure by the gentry to improve life in Hungary. Móricz shines a light on the upper levels of society and implies that they should not be trusted with the future of the country. Given everything going on outside of the country, the Hungarian gentry was becoming a 20th-century anachronism. At this point in his career, Móricz published Relations in installments, then in a larger book form in 1932. Cushing's comments on Relations:

It is a novel of total disillusionment, with barely a glimmer of humour; only the rogue of an uncle, Berci, who tries to palm off coal from Hungary’s best mine as his own, offers any relief. When he began to write it Móricz declared, “I postulated the idea that in every family there is one man, the rest are relations. By this I meant that there is a competent, strong personality to whom the many incompetent cling. And this strong man cannot achieve anything, because the network of relations enmeshes him and drags him into the depths.” But in its telling the story takes on a much wider significance. Kopjáss is another failed hero; he has ideas, but is no fighter. He is unexpectedly promoted from a minor post in the civic administration to a major one for which he is not qualified. … As news of his promotion spreads, relations, both close and very distant, begin to turn up on his doorstep demanding his patronage, much to his cool and hard-headed wife’s annoyance. Throughout the novel, Lina personifies good sense and sobriety as she protests ever more vehemently against the involvement of her husband in schemes of doubtful morality. But this is not all; the town administration in which he now has a key role is thoroughly corrupt and plays a part in numerous shady deals. Whatever his good intentions, Kopjáss is drawn into the net, soon realizing that he has been promoted not for his abilities, but as an easily-led accomplice. … The novel, which spreads its net even wider, to the whole country, is a complete rejection of the idea that the gentry could ever initiate reform; all they are interested in is their own personal position and wealth (even when there is little or none of the latter to support them). (page 10)

It's a ferocious condemnation, where patronage and family relations trump the need for civic-minded leaders. Móricz had a Calvinist upbringing, which shines through in some of the positive characters. Cushing says that Móricz offers solutions, which I think paints what Móricz does a little too strongly. Alternatives are offered, which I'll cover in a separate post. Cushing also highlights Móricz's remaining works, which adopt "a gentler, but no less effective mode of writing." For someone who declared "I needed writing to become a human being," Móricz left what appears to be a broad coverage of what it meant to be human in Hungary during his lifetime. Hopefully I'll get to the other easily obtainable book in English translation, Be Faithful Unto Death, before too long.

Update: One of my favorite sites, Hungarian Literature Online, should have been my first stop when looking for articles on Móricz. The essay "Land of Swindlers" by Lajos Jánossy looks at the English translation release of Relations by Corvina.

Móricz's novel Relations, recently published in English, is a career story in the Balzac vein, a kaleidoscopic image of the hierarchic society of a Hungarian small town, as well as a description of the "natural history" of corruption, the all-encompassing network of swindles.

Update: There are two film versions of Relations, "Rokonok," one in 1954 and a more recent one in 2006. I doubt the early version is available with English subtitles, but I know there is one for the 2006 version. Unfortunately I can not find a copy available for sale (through some one I can trust). WorldCat turns up - 0 - copies. If anyone knows where a copy may be obtained or rented, please let me know in the comments.

Related posts:
”The only relation to love is the one that’s of use to you”: problems in post-World War I Hungary
Lina and Magdaléna
Solutions?
My notes