When Georg Brandes paid his first visit to Hungary in 1900, György Lukács was fifteen years old and was already an enthusiastic, discriminating reader.
There was certainly no shortage of books in his well-equipped childhood home. The family lived in the best part of Lipótváros, the residential area favoured by the assimilated Jewish bourgeoisie.* It was here, in the Lipótváros Casino, that Brandes gave his lecture on Ibsen in 1900. Lukács' father, Jószef, might well have been present on that occasion. At any rate, he could not have avoided reading about it in the press. Pester Lloyd, A Hét and Budapesti Napló, to which he subscribed, all carried reports of Brandes' visit to Budapest.
Lukács senior kept up with the latest cultural developments and also acted as patron for many of his son's gifted friends. He was a genuinely self-made man, who had obtained an important position at the Anglo-Austrian bank in Budapest by the age of twenty-four. He moved up into the urban middle class, changed his name from Löwinger to the more Hungarian-sounding Lukács, and in 1901 he was given the aristocratic title 'Szegedi' (von Szeged). Like other immigrants from Moravia, Grandfather Löwinger, an enterprising provincial artisan, was very favourably disposed towards his new country. He proudly served in the 1848-49 War of Independence and was an enthusiastic spectator at the festivities that were held to celebrate Hungary's millenium.
This meant that Lukács' father absorbed national-liberal views from his earliest years. He had a feeling of loyalty towards the new fatherland. But although he became a 'Hungarian patriot' and an integrated member of Hungarian society, he did not completely abandon his Jewish faith. The Jewishness, however, merely served as a practical framework for the family's way of life. The home in Lipótváros was characterized by a pragmatic attitude towards religion. This special constellation of Hungarianism and 'a
The young György Lukács.
show' of Jewishness, not an unusual phenonemon at the end of the 19th century, provided Lukács with his early spiritual and intellectual baggage.
There are certain indications that György Lukács had a somewhat ambivalent attitude towards his liberal father. He rightly regarded him as a member of the staid, contented bourgeoisie. With his zest for life in Hungary, József Lukács believed in the growth of economic prosperity and in political freedom. He identified with those members of the liberal middle class who were the most enthusiastic recipients of all the modern trends that came from Western Europe. But the young Lukács was dissatisfied with the pragmatic tolerance of the liberals. The younger generation, to which Lukács and his friends belonged, were looking for a new kind of liberalism. Above all, they wanted to seem unconventional and original and they condemned the older generation's penchant for traditions. And yet this younger generation was also firmly rooted in bourgeois traditions. The ties that bound them to the middle class could not be severed at one blow.
Lukács' father paid for his son's academic education and followed his progress. He wrote to his son:
Du sagst selbst, dass ich Dir in Deiner Entwicklung und der Wahl ihrer Wege freie Hand gebe. Das tue ich bewusst, weil ich Dir unbegrenzt vertraue und Dich unendlich liebe - ich opfere alles auf, um Dich gross, annerkant, berühmt werden zu sehen, ich werde es als mein höchstes Glück empfinden wenn man von mir sagt, ich sei der Vater von Georg Lukács.^
In 1902, he paid for his newly-matriculated son to make the journey to Scandinavia that he had long desired. He wanted to meet Ibsen and Bj0rnson. There is no evidence that Lukács had any plans to visit Brandes on this trip, but even if he had, a meeting with Brandes would not have been possible, since he was in Karlsbad at the time.^ Unfortunately, we have no account of the visit to Ibsen, although Lukács' friends asked him to write about it:
Dear Gyuri,
It was only today that I received your letter from Kristiania containing your article about the midnight sun/* I would like to give you my most heartfelt congratulations on your meeting with Ibsen
-"it was successful" must mean that, I suppose. I would love to have
an account of your conversation - which you probably know by heart - preferably in the original language so as not to lose any of the nuances..
Although the visit to Ibsen was probably a short one, since Ibsen had recently suffered a serious stroke, the meeting with the great idol must have made a big impression on the young traveller. It seems amazing that Lukács was actually permitted access to the dramatist. It must have been Ibsen's long-standing sympathy for the Hungarians that made the visit possible. As we shall see, this visit was to have a strong influence on Lukács. Soon after returning home, he began to write theatre reviews in "the impressionistic style of Alfred Kerr"" which are full of literary allusions, including references to Scandinavian dramatists, notably Bj0rnson and Ibsen. An article on Peer Gynt was published in 1903 where, with a sensitivity and maturity that belied his age, he outlined the ideas that lay behind Ibsen's dramatic poem. In many important respects, the article reflects the contemporary view of Ibsen, and a closer reading of Lukács' text reveals expressions that Brandes had used in his critique of Ibsen: that "all or nothing" is Brand's "seemingly inhuman solution" is mentioned in B r a n d e s J who also compares the two religious discussions that Brand and Emperor and Galilean o f f e r ì Per Gynt, we are told, "is all too close to"^ Brand, and he sees how Peer Gynt's personality "hardens and stiffens into e g o i s m " . ^ The fact that this youthful article contains expressions that are reminiscent of Brandes is not really of any significance, what is much more striking is how similar his ideas are to those of Brandes. Lukács' closest friends followed these literary exercises with interest. But who were the members of this inner circle? Anyone who might be considered to be a close friend had to have the same, unconventional attitude to life and culture that Lukács believed himself to have. In his Memoirs, he seems to be somewhat disapproving of this youthful arrogance:
Das hatte wiederum in meiner literarischen Entwicklung die weitere Konsequenz, dass ich mit jugendlicher Unverschämheit - im Alter von 18 Jahren - gegen die gesamte ungarische Kritik war.l * To this self-appointed group, originality was the highest virtue. We can get some idea of the kind of criteria that Lukács employed when making his selections if we eavesdrop on him as he speaks of one of his new friends: "He is our man: an anti-psychologist, an anti-positivist, a metaphysicist. He is intelligent, well-educated, and does not belong to any Hungarian g r o u p . " ^
This statement clearly reveals the intellectual-aristocratic nature of Lukács' views. He felt a strong distaste for the existing radical groups and cultivated a form of exclusiveness that only allowed such close friends as Leó P o p p e r , ^ Marcell B e n e d e k , ^ László B á n ó z i , ^ Béla B a l á z s ^ and Irma Seidler1 7 to join in. On any given occasion they made a point of emphasizing their alienation from any form of authority and considered themselves free and uncommitted, both politically and artistically, but with a permanent base in the progressive camp. They all belonged to the second generation of the assimilated Jewish bourgeoisie.
These young people began their university studies in the first decade of the new century. The atmosphere was so tense at the time, not just at the university but throughout the whole country, that the moderate position that had earlier been associated with the old national liberals now seemed to be a practical impossibility for the young intellectuals. The problem was that of finding a way to express their oppositional views.
On reading about the youth of the subsequently world famous Marxist philosopher and aesthete, one realizes that he felt alienated from the world of his parents. Psychological and historical explanations for this response are not difficult to find. At a time of increasing anti-Semitism and uncompromising right-wing radicalism, the second generation of middle-class Jews felt that they were in a very exposed, vulnerable position. At the beginning of the new century, the younger generation regarded both the Jewish and the Hungarian inheritances as burdens and they felt equally excluded from both camps. National liberalism had earlier opened up a new world to the liberal generation of their parents, who had delighted in the personal liberty and civil rights and had joyfully embraced European culture.
This ideology seemed rather naive and old-fashioned to their successors, the younger generation.
The increasingly conservative, chauvinistic and intolerant political climate in Hungary before the First World War led to the isolation of the liberal middle class. Originally, this class had hoped to find common cause with the gentry, but that turned out to be wishful thinking. Despite the fine-sounding titles, the newly-created barons were still thought of as mere assimilants. Whether from self-deception or self-protection, the liberal middle class continued to believe in its old dreams of freedom and did not voice their opposition to the political situation that existed after the turn of the century.
Opposition did come, however, from a militant group of university educated intellectuals that included Oszkár Jászi, editor of the aptly named periodical Huszadik Század (The Twentieth Century), Ödön Wildner, Ervin
Szabó, József Diner-Dénes, one of Brandes' first contacts in Hungary, and many others. Like Lukács, most of them had grown up in a middle-class environment and had a Jewish background. But having been bom around the year 1870, they were older than him and had begun their university studies around 1890. This gap of half a generation led to divergent views on many issues. Right from the beginning, the periodical was receptive to the latest European currents, and it published articles about and by such modem thinkers and poets as Rilke, Strindberg, Nietzsche, Simmel and, later, Bergson. There was also room for Brandes. According to its editor, Huszadik Szádad supplied "the ideas and ideals that stir the most radical, the most intransigent, and the most international segment of Hungarian society at the beginning of the twentieth c e n t u r y . " L u k á c s and his inner circle at this time, especially Béla Balázs, Anna Lesznai and Karl Mannheim, wrote prolifically for the periodical. Even so, it seems that although they felt some affinity with the radicals in their attitude to the status quo in Hungary, they were completely opposed to their fundamentally positivist agenda, both at the political and the aesthetic level. Members of the Lukács group had to acknowledge that they were outside the political factions of both the left and the right. It became increasingly clear that these young intellectuals were unable to identify with either the liberalism of their parents or the reformist views of the radicals. This made Lukács' relationship with Brandes problematic. The image of the Danish critic as a liberal, progressive person, an aristocratic radical or a political activist could simply not be squared with the horizon of expectations of György Lukács and his friends. It is not easy to think of Lukács as a committed recipient of Brandes, let alone of Brandes the liberal.
The Lukács circle regarded itself as a generation or sect with a common destiny.1 9 They were 'anti-recipients' in the sense that they refused to accept prevailing literary judgements, existing movements or European celebrities.
This generally negative attitude can, of course, be partly attributed to the instinctive opposition of a younger generation to their fathers, teachers and advisers. But there was more to Lukács' silence on Brandes than mere youthful rebelliousness. As a 'precursor' Brandes had been weighed and found wanting. Lukács simply did not wish to be bracketed with him. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that he is seldom referred to and that whenever he is quoted, it is to show him in an unfavourable light. The Lukács circle shared this oppositional attitude. Thus Bánóczi wrote to Lukács: "I have just bought Brandes' book on I b s e n , i t is just a lot of superficial nonsense, 80 pages of it. You are thankful for any clever cliché you can find. The sections that are not mediocre are simply badly written. The letters are interesting,
though, and the girl2^ even more s o . "2 2 Lukács said nothing to contradict this.
He adopted a correspondingly antagonistic attitude towards the leading literary journals, which was of course soon noted in critical circles, where he was not exactly welcomed with open arms. Although the first essays from his early years were published in the leading literary organ of the period. Nyugat (The West),2-^ Lukács had no wish to be identified with the literary views of that journal. With his friends, he took a pride in not belonging to the coterie attached to Nyugat and was therefore delighted when one of his closest friends, Leó Popper, wrote to him on his own initiative: "There is no question of any comparison between you and Nyugat. Your style is completely different, and whatever you discuss, the music comes from the depths of your heart - the writings of Fenvo2^ and company also come from below, but from somewhat further down.""-''
Lukács constantly protested at the principles observed by the editors; he regarded the journal as positivist and acstheticising and refused to recognize its progressive and - by Hungarian standards - cultural revolutionary stamp.
In Nyugat, several articles about and by Brandes were published. Generally speaking, it took on the task of popularizing Scandinavian literature in Hungary.
Lukács' relationship to the politically radical, scientifically forward-looking Huszadik Század was just as ambivalent. Although he was on good terms with the editor, Oszkár Jászi, Lukács denounced the positivist stance of the journal. To his great chagrin, the circle around Jászi did not notice the sociological angle in his first book of criticism, A modern dráma fejlődésének története (A History of the Development of Modern Drama).2^
This was, if anything, an even greater source of disappointment to Lukács, since Huszadik Század's special field of interest was modern sociology and the relationship between literature and society. Lukács writes:
...ich blieb sowohl im Kreise der Nyugat als in dem der Huszadik Század eine isolierte Erscheinung. Vergebens schnitt meine Dramengeschichte zahlreiche gesellschaftliche Fragen an, bei der positivischen Einstellung der ungarischen Soziologen erweckten diese kein Interesse.2^
Huszadik Század published an article about Brandes' controversial book F0r og nu. To tragiske skœbner (Past and Present. Two Tragic Fates), under the tendentious title, "The Unprecedented Reactionary View".2**
Lukács could not avoid seeing Brandes' name or writings in A Hét,
Magyar Salon a n d Jövendő either. For example, Sándor Bródy's Jövendő published Brandes' essay on Arthur Görgei, the famous general in the W a r of Independence; and in the same year it published Lukács' article on Herman Bang. It was virtually impossible for Lukács not to be reminded of Brandes' existence. But Lukács regarded Brandes as a front man for a circle of admirers for whom he had no time. Thus József Diner-Dénes and Béla Lázár, who both played a leading part in Brandes' reception in Hungary and who had corresponded with the Danish critic for many years, were simply dismissed as "fools" in a letter to Leó Popper,29
T o Lukács and his circle, Brandes' liberalism, broad-mindedness and his fight for individual freedom and freedom of thought seemed 'unthreatening' and not very original. On the whole, Brandes was not an accepted topic of conversation for the members of such radical philosophical societies as Társadalomtudományi Társaság (The Sociological Society), which changed its name to Galilei Kör (The Galilei Circle) in 1908, and the exclusive Vasárnapi Társaság (The Sunday Circle). In addition to those already mentioned, the art historians Lajos F i i l e p , ^ Arnold Hauser, Charles de Tolnay and the philosopher Karl Mannheim were also members of the society, immersing themselves in Kant, Kierkegaard, Meister Eckhart, Dostoyevsky, Dilthey, Símmel, Lask and Max Weber; to name but the most important of the intellectual influences. We can only guess at the full extent of the spiritual inspiration. At the same time, it marked a decisive break with positivism and with bourgeois culture. Lukács writes of this time of fermentation:
Im Winter 1911-12 entstand in Florenz der erste Plan einer selbständigen systematischen Ästhetik, an deren Ausarbeitung ich mich in den Jahren 1912-14 in Heildelberg machte. Ich denke noch immer mit Dankbarkeit an das wohlwollend-kritische Interesse, das Ernst Bloch, Emil Lask und vor allem Max Weber meinem Versuch gegenüber zeigten.^ '
T h e years around the publication of his book on drama (1911) gradually ushered in a new phase of Lukács' intellectual development: together with his friends from the Sunday Circle, he studied metaphysical, ethical and religious issues. They translated the writings of Meister Eckhart and Plotinus, among others. The members of the Society felt themselves closely bound together in an intellectual fellowship that manifested itself in romantic, anti-capitalist attitudes and in an irrational, idealistic view of the world. Together with Lajos Fülep, Lukács founded the periodical A Szellem
(The Spirit), where he published his new essays, already conceived in the new spirit, which pointed in a new direction away from "the stylistic chaos of
i m p r e s s i o n i s m " . ^ The entire development showed that Lukács and his
intellectual friends could not do otherwise than reject Brandes' broadly based critique. They could not forgive Brandes' either for retaining his original belief in liberalism and for defending it at a time when the liberal society had parted company with the political and cultural ideals.
In the late of the 19th century, things had looked very different. The enlightened, liberal middle class were enthusiastic about Brandes because they saw him as their man, as the person who could fulfil the expectations of their class. Both the readers and the listeners felt that they received confirmation of their beliefs: Brandes said precisely what they themselves thought and wanted to say. A break had to be made with the isolation and provincialism of the past, the fresh winds blowing from the major European cultures should be allowed to blow through Hungary. "Like a huge gust of wind, a literary wave had swept down from the North, bringing fresh, intellectual air,"33 wrote Stefan Zweig, pointing out in the same piece that it was Georg Brandes, the intellectual leader, who provided this freshness. The iiterary wave referred to by Stefan Zweig not only swept over Germany, its
In the late of the 19th century, things had looked very different. The enlightened, liberal middle class were enthusiastic about Brandes because they saw him as their man, as the person who could fulfil the expectations of their class. Both the readers and the listeners felt that they received confirmation of their beliefs: Brandes said precisely what they themselves thought and wanted to say. A break had to be made with the isolation and provincialism of the past, the fresh winds blowing from the major European cultures should be allowed to blow through Hungary. "Like a huge gust of wind, a literary wave had swept down from the North, bringing fresh, intellectual air,"33 wrote Stefan Zweig, pointing out in the same piece that it was Georg Brandes, the intellectual leader, who provided this freshness. The iiterary wave referred to by Stefan Zweig not only swept over Germany, its