Correspondence'
A LETTER PROM BUDAPEST. [To the. Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sin,—The Budapest Carnival—such as it is in these lugu- brious times of peace—has been in full swing. Youth refuses to be denied any of its privileges, seeing that, whatever the theosophists and Professor. Steinach may say to the con- trary, the chancel are that one is young but once. So the walls of the old redciute and of the Hotel Hungaria still echo to the strains of the cscirdds, the Szechenyi Ball has once again united society in memory of that " greatest - Magyar " to whose' Initiative the capital owes its Academy of Sciences and the bridge which first connected Pest with Buda, and the Park Club continues, against odds,, to arrange those sup- posedly impromptu weekly dances which so quaintly go by the name of picnics. Yet it is noteworthy as a sign of the times that at least one charitable society has had recourse to the , ingenious, expedient of an " invisible ball " in order to expend on the alleviation of social distress the full sum of the subscriptions received.
The theatres, all of which are repertory ones, are gratifying an increasing craving on the part of the public for English plays, and have produced_ as many as, four during the winter season. These were Barrie's • What Every Woman Knows, Lonsdale's The Last of Mrs. Cheyney, St. John Er vine's The First
Mrs. Fraser and so Sweet. Of -new Hungarian plays the most successful,sb far, has been Zsigmond Moricz's Legy JO Mindhaldlig, whose tumbersome title, literally rendered, is "Be Kindly To Your L ist Breath." It is a tiagedy en miniature , subscribing to the unimaginative theory that the woes of childhood are on a lesser scale than those of adult humanity, and has for its hero a schoolboy of fourteen whose yearning it is to enter the world of grown-ups, naively imagined by him to be peopled by perfect beings incapable of doing wrong. He is doonied to a ride awakening, and is involved in almost irreparable disaster. Ably played by a talented actress who specializes in gamin parts, the forlorn and tragic figure of the boy facing single-handed a world that he has learned to fear and despise is not one to be quickly forgotten. It is not -easy to sift the works of value from the recent out- put in works of fiction, but Miklos Surimyi's Csodaveira, an untranslatable word meaning " Those Who Spend Their Lives Expecting a Miracle," certainly deserves mention. It is the history of a Hungarian family of the upper middle class before, during, and after the War ; and the picture which it gives of a clan of gallant dreamers and gifted but unprac- tical drifters, each of Whom expects life to produce for his or her benefit the miracle which will solve all immediate difficul- ties, is sufficiently true and sufficiently typical to serve as a moral and a warning to the class it portrays.
Jen8 Heltai's Almokluiza (House of Dreams) is of an entirely different stamp. A work of art purely, and simply, it is as _ delicate and intricate-patterned as a bit of fine lace. Black lace, for both background and pattern are sombre. If there is a moral in it it is the pessimistic one that we can never atone even for the simplest sin of omission. But since it is the poet, not the moralist, who draws it, the only motive it serves is that of enhancing the beauty of the pattern, and we are left not depressed but uplifted, as one cannot but be by pure art.
Space forbids more than a passing reference to Ern45 Szep's Hortobdgy, a series of lyrical word pictures of the Great Plain, and of Lajos Bibe's and Lajos Kassik's peasant novels, both first-rate.
A curious literary controversy, in which the general public developed a passionate partizanship, occurred here a month or two ago. The antagonists were two eminent Hungarian historians, and the not altogether novel issue raised was whether or not- it is fitting and permissible to pull national heroes from the semi-divine eminence to which their country's veneration has raised them and show them to have been, with all their heroic qualities, imperfect human beings like the rest of us. This is what Professor Szekfii, of Budapest Univer- sity, has done in his recent excellent and scholarly work on Gabriel Bethlen, Prince of Transylvania ; and he has been bitterly attacked for it by Professor Kiss, of Szeged Univer- sity, who evidently prefers his heroes' heroism neat. In the heated polemics which followed politics and creeds became mixed up with the main issue, ultra-catholic circles entering the lists on Professor Szekfirs side, ultra-protestant ones on Professor Kiss's. The climax was reached when = the latter proposed to lay the case before a jury of historians, under- taking for his own part to abide by its verdict even to the extreme step of relinquishing his professorial chair should it go against him. Professor Szekfo wisely refused to be " drawn "—for how can such a question be conclusively decided by ballot ?—and there, for the moment, the matter rests. The results obtained by- Connt Bethlen at The Hague are recognized by every reasonable person here—alas, that all men are not reasonable !—as being, if not, ideal, the best that the circumstances permitted. Hungary is freed from the obligation of paying reparations after 1943. The " Optants" have been promised some sort of compensation, and thereby have been ruled out of the field- of world politics—a fact which no doubt will be a relief to many people who have never been able to ascertain whether they are a political party, a racial minority, or a religious sect,— and the country has regained its financial independence and that power of taking up foreign loans, of which it had temporarily been deprived. While this is held, theoretically, to be a boon, both the Prime Minister and the President of the National Bank have made it clear that the privilege of getting into debt is not one to be abused.=I am, Sir, &c., Yoini BUDAPEST CORRESPONDENT.
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