Endre Farkas Wellmann: Tasks entrusted to us

The intellectual legacy of Géza Szőcs presents us with countless challenges. Challenges that we may or may not respond to at our discretion, challenges that we may or may not recognise, but one thing is certain: he has passed away from us by remaining present in our lives: in our personal lives, in our literary lives, in our political thought, and everywhere and in everything, as he did as a flesh and blood man for as long as he could.

Now – I think we are here to express our gratitude for this presence and to try to find these tasks that he has entrusted to us, to identify them, each one for himself, what he recognises in them and what he is able to undertake and take up. Géza was a one-man institution, carrying countless tasks, problems, and problems to solve on his back, he could be burdened endlessly, and the only limit to the tasks he undertook was the twenty-four-hour time frame of the day. One of his friends jokingly called his office, on József Nagysándor Street, the Gézasztérium, where answers and solutions to many personal and community problems were constantly being found at ministerial heights, where work was done day and night, where goals and plans were born over many years.

It was a challenge for him not to let anyone down. Just as the Indians are not abandoning us – as he wrote in the mid-eighties.

The question now is, how prepared are we who are left behind to touch this heritage? Even if divided, even if broken down into fragments, are we able to continue the work? Do we have the faith, knowledge, determination and especially the capacity for clear thinking, the selflessness to make decisions about our personal and community problems, and the sensitivity to the beautiful and the good that makes us authentic in the process?

Géza was the benchmark. And all we have to do is to keep it present.

That is why this book, these books, this film and the objects in this exhibition, which may be familiar to many of us, and which we saw not so long ago in a completely different context in Géza’s environment, are trying to personalise this encounter. That’s why we are celebrating the anniversary of his birth now, and I would very much like to see it continue to be so in the years to come, and his death simply commemorated year after year – because, unacceptable as it is, it is a fact.

As for our tasks, I quote from a passage by Géza:

“I sometimes watch babies aged 10-11 months with amazement: how amazingly fast and agile they are on all fours. They glide and crawl, meandering here and there, using floor-level opportunities, passages, shortcuts, under-table prevailing, moving unexpectedly this way or that, forwards or backwards.

If adults didn’t hold their hands, if they didn’t teach them to stand up, would they be able to stand on their own two feet, on their own?

Perhaps the biggest mental and spiritual obstacle to standing on two legs is the experience of success on all fours. From a four-footer, you can’t fall hard, topple over, trip over, roll over badly. A skilled crawler is lightning fast and effective. The easily mastered, ancient form of locomotion of dogs, horses and all four-legged creatures provides a natural sense of safety and comfort for people who cannot yet walk.” – and nation, I add, knowing the context.

I trust that we will always remember this thought, that we will always recognise in it the call that has been placed upon us as we search for our place between heaven and earth.