Budapest: The Town whose Modern Literature was born in a
Cafe'

Marble Plaques mark the places of Hungary's
Past Literary Pioneers

by Sandor Nadas

Americans are not acquainted with the concept of
American literary cafes. Nor can they understand the custom by
which the members of each literary circle have a table
permanently reserved, where they eat, drink and write
far into the night. Famous writers can be seen here who
for decades have composed their work in the same cafe,
brooding with flushed faces over black coffee. In 1848
Kossuth and Petofi started the fight for freedom of the
Hungarian press on a rainy night from the Cafe Pilvax.
This was the magyar's heroic age.

Modern Hungarian literature found its inspiration
in the Newyork Cafe on the Erzsebet Korut early in this
century. Ferenc Molnar, Sandor Brody, Frigyes Karinthy
started their careers from here.

Present conditions are not conducive to the literary
spirit. New press regulations have deprived many a writer
of his means of livelihood. These Hungarian writers
have lost their taste for poetizing. Many of them have
had to emigrate to Paris, London, The United States to
earn their living. And these expatriated authors are

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forever filled with a nostalgic longing for Hungary, and
keep a n eager watch on all literary developments at home.

The Hungarian writers dwelling in America are greatly
elated by the acclaim with which Frigyes Karinthy's novel,
"Journey Around my Skull," has been received in its recent
local publication. This author is no longer alive; about
two years ago he died of a serious <del>wein distze</del> <ins>he was</ins>
operated, and had but time enough to write his sensational
novel in which he bravely noted in repertorial fashion
the details of <ins>the operation</ins>, as a good reporter would
record each moment of his own impending death. He finished
his book and died.

The man died, but his work lives for him. And now
that it has appeared in English, Karinthy's colleagues
plan to place a commemorative plaque at the table in the
Budapest cafe where he wrote.

Karinthy and I started together; we were weaned to
literature at the same cafe table in Budapest; deeply
touched by the success of my deceased friend's book,
I feel it would be appropriate to tell the story of
those years in the Newyork Cafe.

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We were twenty-five years old, wore our hair long
and were enamoured of literature. Tolstoi and Knut
Hamsun were our idols, and we dressed in velvet jacket
and flowing lavalliere tie. Each dawn would see us
start for home: so, with lean stomachs, we hoped to
conquer the world.

The year was 1908 when we, spirited and fame-
thirsty Hungarian lads, laid the literary foundations
of a genial, gay and growing Budapest. This was the
birthplace of twentieth century *magyar* literature.

The sons of well-to-do parents, one had a banker
for father, another a doctor or merchant. Day and night
we sat hoping and dreaming on the worn but hallowed
green plush of the cafe at Erzsébet Kőrút. Ferenc
Molnar had his own corner table; here he worked, and
here he wrote his immortal "Lilium," in the noise- and
smoke-filled atmosphere of the cafe.

Here, too, was the center of operations of Hungary's
greatest modern poet, Endre Ady, a wild and dark-skinned
*magyar* filled with brooding desire. It was in this
Budapest cafe that he wept and poured out his soul in

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wonderful verse.

Ferenc Molnar was a son of Budapest, a city boy
--- his father was a doctor. The poet Ady came from
the country, came resolute and full of faith from his
beautiful Erdely. Two opposites --- the mountains of
Erdely had sent Ady, the Erdely so rudely forced from
Hungary after the war that our hearts bled for it.
It had brought forth Ady and others of like genius, and
they gave it to Roumania as rightfully "Roumanian"
territory.

The name of Ferenc Molnar became world-famous. He
was equally acclaimed as a playwright in Berlin and
New York.

Everyone knows the beautiful Margaret Island which
faces Budapest from the Danube. St. Margaret's cloister
was founded here in the far past, and here John Arany,
great national poet and Ady's ancestor, made his home.
And now Molnar lived there in a whitewashed room the
walls of which he covered with the myriad playbills
that displayed his work from Paris to Tokio. His first
international success was "The Devil," written in a
Budapest cafe and destined to enthrall New York. Here
it was presented in two theatres simultaneously; this
was possible in the early nineteen hundreds, since the
Hungarian playwrights were not yet protected from
literary piracy by copyright law. Molnar should have

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received thousands in royalties. He never got a cent. Nor did this disillusion those literary bohemians in Budapest, for they gaily continued to turn out their now-famous novellas which were the pride of the local papers' Sunday supplements. It was in this way, as a short story, that "Liliom" first appeared.

I was one of the group that frequented Molnar's table in the cafe. At that time I was just starting to publish the weekly "Pesti Futar" (Budapest Herald), a caustic and polemical magazine on the order of Karl Krauss' "Fackel." As an eager and earnest young man of twenty-five I joined my youthful enthusiasm to the others' in an effort to provide Budapest with a paper which would pass judgment, in grave pronouncements, on affairs literary and political.

Budapest caught its breath when the first "Pesti Futar" appeared; its blandly provocative cover shocked the peaceful town. People thought the periodical would not live more than a few weeks. Either I or the magazine were sure to be benobbed.

They were wrong. For thirty years I edited and wrote the paper alone. In the spring of 1938 we celebrated the thirtieth anniversary; the "Pesti Futar" and I had our only vacation during the Budapest Commune in 1919. At that time I fled from Bela Kun. For more than a year the magazine did not appear --- and now again it may not be published. A half year ago certain governmental regulations sounded the death-knell of the "Pesti Futar."