A Studia Litteraria Kosztolányi-számának törzsanyagát a VIII. Nemzetközi Magyarságtudományi Kongresszus Kosztolányi Dezső szimpóziumán elhangzott előadások tanulmánnyá formált változatai adják. A klasszikus szövegek kritikai kiadásának tudomány- és kultúraköztisége című tanácskozás a klasszikus szövegek kritikai kiadását érintő tudomány- és kultúraközi kérdések megvitatásának biztosított helyet.

Dezső Kosztolányi published three sonnets (Christmas, Easter, Pentecost) in 1905 with the common title Fasti. This title might serve as an allusion to the work of the roman poet, ovid, who composed a poem on the roman calendar. Kosztolányi’s letters and other writings confirm that he was reading ovid’s poems that year, and it is obvious that he knew ovid’s Metamorphoses and Fasti as well. It is Kosztolányi’s innovation to connect the most important Christian holidays using the ancient pagan terminus. What is more, the representation of the three feasts does not only resemble the viewpoint of Parnassian poetry, but also ovid’s mode of representation. The Christian elements reappear in a profane context.

Endre Ady and Dezső Kosztolányi are two distinguished poets of modern Hungarian literature. Although their poetic self-interpretation and practice show
numerous differences, they both interpret poetry in a metaphysical context. While Ady represents the modern version of the prophet poet’s archaic role, Kosztolányi considers the transcendent sphere exclusively as a fiction created within the stretch of the poem. Therefore Kosztolányi regards all interpretations about the role of the poet as a self-betrayal which considers the poet as a medium who may get an insight into the actually existing metaphysical world.

Hungarian poet and writer Dezső Kosztolányi edited and translated the first anthology of Chinese classical poetry in the 20th century, entitled Chinese and Japanese Poems, which was published at the end of 1931. But his interest in Chinese culture can be traced back to much earlier, to the first decade of the 20th century. This article takes into consideration all of Kosztolányi’s prose writings, articles and translations related to China, Chinese poetry and also the sources of his knowledge about China, published in Hungarian and in english, German and French, such as the books of H. A. Giles, arthur Waley, richard Wilhelms, Paul Claudel and others. The paper also analyzes the role of anthologies of Chinese poetry in foreign languages that Kosztolányi consulted for his translations into Hungarian. in his writings, he depicted a somewhat idealistic picture of Chinese culture, and in spite of some occasional errors, he was successful in describing some important characteristics of Chinese life of the past, and his writings and translations have had a great influence in Hungary.

From the beginning of 1931, the editors of an important journal of Hungarian literature called Nyugat (West) organized a series of lectures, under the title “West Friends Circle”. Their aim was to organize a reading audience connected to the journal with the help of regular these occasions. The authors of the nyugat also performed on the lectures, with Dezső Kosztolányi making several appearances. The study examines the contents of his lectures, using his writings with similar titles.

Publication practices during the early decades of the 20th century had a significant impact on the approach to literary works for both writers and readers. The majority of authors, including Kosztolányi, published the same work several times in different papers. The genealogy of texts is pervaded by the effects of contingency and unintentionality due to the lack of authorial, and sometimes editorial, control in the extensive and variable dissemination of works. Nevertheless, since the interaction of variants and their contexts can be conceived of as a mutual process, the mentioned publication practices also give rise to the possibility that a textual frame can be built around a work by re-publishing connected writings of the author’s oeuvre in the same paper within a short period. As an example, i show how Kosztolányi compiled an almost invisible series of short stories about death and suicide around the publication of one of his novels in the middle of the 1920s.

The novel, titled Nero, the Bloody Poet, written by Kosztolányi in 1922, is about the deviant human being; the portrayal of a deteriorating era serves as background for the portrait of a degenerate personality possessed by the demon spirit – the amateur poet and the disturbed dictator at the same time. it is about a man who submitted himself to, and became the ambassador of, the evil in the world. However, the manifestation of evil cannot be solely related to the main protagonist of the novel. As nero was left alone to make his way in life the novel can also be accounted for as a story of value dissolution. Kosztolányi deliberately put evil in the centre of discussion in his novel and identified it with the fundamental problem of human existence. The reader witnesses several aspects and stages of the distortion of nero’s character until finally distinguishes the inexperienced poet from the oppressive emperor. The use of the framework of the theory of value systems and the incorporation of Hermann Broch’s conception of kitsch might open up new perspectives for the analysis of the novel in the future.

So far, this piece by Dezső Kosztolányi has not been analyzed from the aspect of biopoetics. The novel seeks to answer the query whether we are able to transcend the framework of interpreting ourselves that is traditionally available for us and move to the level of other relationships of existence (present in the vegetable or animal kingdoms, or in nature) in this effort. In Aranysárkány [verbatim: golden dragon], the eponymous creature is neither a human being, nor an animal, but a model of a mythological beast, which the characters seem to personify in various ways. Its role in the book is to gradually undermine the anthropological conviction that considers human beings to be the opposite of animals. according to this latter assumption, our absolute superiority in this respect is guaranteed by our intellect, willpower, morality, and the use of language. The novel suggests that the differences and discrepancies that separate us from animals and other natural creatures are much more complex and the essence of human existence cannot be defined or pinpointed through simple binary oppositions. it is the act of being addressed by the imaginary gaze of the golden dragon and the effort of embedding the interpretation of the experience of this encounter into the image perceptible about human nature that provide the perspectives and angles of comprehension which may justify the possibility of approaching Kosztolányi’s Aranysárkány from a bio-poetic aspect.

The study approaches the interpretation of the two novels with the tools of prose poetics. It unfolds the manifestations of the isomorphy of the name and the text at the level of narration, metaphorical meaning and semantic innovations. It explores the coreferential operation that can be perceived between the text interior and the texts, and also the source texts of these entities in the subject of judgment and mercy. From a generic perspective, the interference of the epic novel, the thesis novel, and the sacral discourse gains more attention, along with their polemic character as opposed to the norms of political utterance. With regards to the symbolic systems of both novels, the study thoroughly examines the central role of the interrelations of love, corporeality and spirituality, and also their coreferential connections to the poetics of Charis and Charisma. The poetic relevancies of the two writers’ statements are also explored, so that the fundamentals of their unique literary anthropology can be enlightened.

Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland has been translated into Hungarian six times. The most prominent literary personality of the six translators, Dezső Kosztolányi published his version in 1936, near the end of his life. The key hypothesis of my study is that Kosztolányi made his translation with a very specific purpose. He wanted to create the ultimate masterwork of domesticating translation: a text that cuts all its cultural connections with the source culture and replaces them with references of the target culture. He managed to create a translation of the first alice-book from which he removed every hint of englishness with the sole exception of the author’s name, and replaced them with Hungarian cultural items. This method is the exact opposite of the one Vladimir Nabokov used in his translation of Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, which excludes any target-language references and makes up for them with bulky annotations. While nabokov’s extreme method replaces the signifiers of the original (transcoding), Kosztolányi’s replaces its signified elements and attitudes (adaptation). My paper examines his highly sophisticated tricks.

Even though Kosztolányi was not a linguist, his concept of language – developed in several essays – has been playing a considerable role in the reception of his oeuvre even assigning him a unique mark among his contemporaries. His approach toward language as such was characteristic yet far from being static during his lifetime; the undoubted influence of historical experiences is elucidated by preceding essays (Szegedy-Maszák, M.; Bengi, L.). The recent study emphasizes one of the most characteristic and telling components of Kosztolányi’s concept, namely his ’purism’ or the rejection of using loan words in his writing. as it has been proven, his protest against loan words – declared in essays as well as the systematic avoidance of loan words in literary works – can be observed from the mid-1910s already; this tendency seems to have been restrained during the beginning of the 1920s but it thoroughly culminated by the 1930s. The study focuses on the novel Skylark (first published in 1923), an homage to the austro-Hungarian Monarchy written by an author whose grandfather took an active part in the Hungarian revolution and War of independence between 1848 and 1849. The main goal of the present study is to demonstrate that loan words frequently used in Skylark function not only as spatial but also as temporal signs; thus, instead of highlighting some foreign nature, loan words serve rather as links to a tradition that was swept away by history.

Based on the above claims it can be concluded that the research of Kosztolányi’s literary onomastics and “naming practices” is justified by the fact that he is often regarded as one of the “name-sensitive” authors. This paper demonstrates that an interdisciplinary approach to this question, which combines both linguistic and literary aspects, proves to be highly effective in creating a detailed overview of the topic. The study sheds light on the “naming practices” which can be deducted from dezső Kosztolányi’s statements and writings related to naming and on how these approaches are reflected in his prose and harmonise with his views of language. The study provides illustrative examples from the most important and relevant name-related texts and at the same time gives a brief explanation of the author’s naming procedures and strategies, which i analysed in detail in a previous study. As we have seen, both the published and announced volumes of the lifework’s critical edition are of crucial importance for future research in the author’s literary onomastics. These volumes make it possible to compare and visualise the eventual and not-so-rare name changes and the path to finding the right name during the creation of the text.

The paper aims to answer the question how legal and economic environment shapes literary oeuvres. The possible impact is investigated in the relationship of the first and second editions of Within Four Walls (Négy fal között), Dezső Kosztolányi’s first collection of poems. The importance of this interrelation can be opposed to Ady’s oft-quoted criticism, “Kosztolányi is a literary author.” If the reason behind Kosztolányi being compelled to radically rearrange the second edition of his book was that the first edition was basically not self-published, then the economic environment of literary works cannot only be considered an implicit and unspoken factor of the autonomy of literature but a condition having direct influence on literary compositions.

Mágia, one of Dezső Kosztolányi’s lyrical works, was first published in 1912 by tevan Printing-House. With a few minor changes the book was published again in 1920, and finally in 1935 as a part of the Collected Poems, in which the poet chose to feature only 19 of his poems instead of the original 46. The study focuses on the complete 46-poem-long version, and offers an insight of the creation, composition and reception of the volume. The aim of these aspects are to explain the editorial decision behind the soon-to-be-released critical edition, which is questioning the validity of the abridged edition: the ultima manus principle cannot be validated because of the last edition’s abbreviated nature. The study argues that the second edition should have a privileged position over the last edition of 1935.

In my work, i examine the collection of short stories titled Beteg lelkek by Dezső Kosztolányi, published in 1912; searching for proof for my theory, in which i propose that Beteg lelkek is the result of Kosztolányi’s conscious and thorough composition of the book. Based on the results of the literature fundamentally connected to the topic, on the one hand the importance of colours as symbols will be revised in some short stories, on the other hand, the seven short stories of the collection will be examined focusing on the topic of sickness regarding as the central theme. During my work, besides examining the history and theory of literature, i also use some writings of cultural history and psychology, connected to the matter; this method is requested by the title as well as by the topic of the short stories that give the substance of the collection. In some chapters, i also mention the results of the philology researches in connection to the oeuvre of Kosztolányi, and i try to focus on the challenges raised by the examination and complexity of the sources in connection with Kosztolányi.

In my study the focus is on those literary works by Dezső Kosztolányi in which an animal, specifically a dog, appears. i am analysing a work of prose and a lyrical text – Hattyú halála (Dying Swan) and Hattyú kutyám… (Swan, my dog…). in order to do that, it is crucial to first discuss the ontological and cultural historical role of the animal, the relation of human and animal, the literary theoretical and literary historical aspect, as well as the literary representation of the questions regarding the animal. Since these questions are quite recent in the area of Hungarian literary studies, they require clarification, although here it might necessarily be in less detail. Therefore, the first part of this study is about the questions raised above, and only after that does it proceed with the actual analyses of texts. My aim is to provide an insight into how the animal and the literary text, the historical-cultural and the linguistic dimensions can be integrated into literary reading, and how the topic of the animal can be interpreted regarding the chosen works by Kosztolányi.

In my essay i begin a critical dialogue with the monograph of Tibor Bónus entitled A másik titok (The other Secret). acknowledging its interpretive advantages and force, i question the study (mis)reading the novel Édes Anna regarding the sacred elements that appear in various forms within the novel. along these lines, i mention possible interpretations that could have enriched the results of the study, and also reveal the possible causes of the continuous misreading of the interpretive starting point frequently mentioned by the author, in his words, of the theological or Christian cliché.

The essay tries to examine the influence of dezső Kosztolányi with the help of three contemporary poets, György Somlyó, ottó tolnai and Szilárd Borbély. One of them looks at Kosztolányi’s poetry from a classical modern, the other from an avant-garde modern, and the third one from a postmodern point of view.

Szilágyi Zsófia, Az éretlen Kosztolányi, Budapest, Kalligram, 2017.