The renaissance of an important book
“I’m in it from top to bottom,” said Mária Tóth on Wednesday (27 September 2023) evening at the Present House, as part of the Arad Hungarian Days and under the auspices of the Hungarian PEN Club, in connection with her book The Death of a Courier , published in 1979 and now republished.
It is hardly disputed that an author is, to a large extent, writing himself or herself in a short story or novel that evokes his or her childhood, youth or adulthood – the truly authentic experience is the one that is lived, accepted and acknowledged as true. This makes a piece of writing authentic, even if things didn’t happen exactly as described. But they could have eaten you.
The 91. a writer in her late teens – a woman is only her gender, nothing else, a good writer is not distinguished from a weak one by her gender -, so Mária Tóth, who moved back home from Bucharest to her parents’ house in Arad a few years ago, told us that she has been working steadily since then, and has even written a collection of short stories.
This volume would be the 33rd, following the 32 published so far.
However, we are still at the stage of the republication of The Death of the Courier, which would certainly not have been republished without the contribution of Zoltán Böszörményi (who is of Aradian origin and who is definitely Aradian), a writer-poet and winner of the Attila József and the Hungarian Winner of the Hungarian Winner of the Golden Wreath of Beans, the president of the Hungarian PEN Club (let us not mention his other functions known to Aradians).
If B.Z. is not captivated by the novel published almost 45 years ago, in the “communist era”, he will certainly not be fully in favour of the republication of the work published under the auspices of the Hungarian PEN Club, with the support of the Petőfi Cultural Agency.
At Wednesday evening’s presentation, Zoltán Böszörményi spoke about the novel in a presentation that could be considered a study, and during the evening Réka Fekete (the author’s niece – the apple didn’t fall far from the tree), a well-known name in the Hungarian cultural life of Arad, read two excerpts.
The most memorable for the undersigned, however, was Mária Tóth’s testimony about the novel and its heroes, which seemed very honest and human. As I listened, I was thinking: a creator in his nineties has hardly any obstacles, reasons or interests to cosmeticize the reality of the past.
When Mária Tóth talked about the “original characters of the novel’s heroes” (for example, she modelled Irén Botár, Mother Mother on Elekna Kajlik Karolina Köblös, the wife of the tragic former president of the Romanian Communist Party in the 1930s), she was obviously using many similar characters. With nuance, sensitivity and literary talent, not yielding to the demands of the one-plane approach of the time.
Some people (not teenagers) brought along their original 1979 edition, signed (or not). But almost all of them also took home a copy of the new (reprinted, preferably signed) edition.
Mária Tóth also spoke about her Arad ties, her experiences and her childhood, and about her book The Taste of Sugar (Her father, whom the undersigned had the privilege of knowing, was an employee of the old sugar factory in Arad for decades.) Nowadays, a few decades ago, the new sugar factory in Arad did not exist either.
Thus passes the glory of the world.
But the writing will hopefully remain.
“The death of the courier authentically evokes the struggles, value judgements and intellectual repository of the intellectual middle generation, while at the same time critically examining the myth of the communists, the former fighters of illegality, and dramatically and dogmatically articulating the eternal truths of an ever-changing world. The novel’s realistic portrayal of a region, with all its virtues and faults, is an outstanding literary achievement of high artistic merit.” – said Zoltán Böszörményi, among others, about the novel, noting at the end of his study that “reading Mária Tóth’s novel several times has always brought me endless joy.”
We hope you do too, dear reader!
Gyula Jámbor
