As we have seen, there was widespread knowledge of Brandes' activities, not only because of the reviews in Hungarian periodicals but also because of what appeared in German and Austrian journals.
Moreover, the constant appearance of his name and of quotations from his writings, whenever the 'daring' problem plays of Ibsen were being discussed, played a not insignificant part in how Brandes' position in the debate on sexual politics was perceived. In Budapesti Szemle (The Budapest Revue) the reviewer thought that by referring to Brandes, the great authority, he had a solid foundation for his opinions. Almost triumphantly, he wrote to all anxious guardians of bourgeois morality: "When a Shakespeare specialist such as Brandes raises his pen to defend the reputation of Ibsen, the opponents should really keep their mouths shut."40
Similar statements helped create the impression that Brandes had a special understanding of the perspectives on sexual morality which Ghosts, A Doll's House etc. delineated and that he himself was a supporter of equal rights for both sexes. He was therefore regarded by the readers/recipients as the epitome of the emancipated individual who tended to attract and repel simultaneously. His thoughts on freedom had already made a stir in 1873 when his youthful work Emigrant Literature was introduced to the Hungarian public. That this work is important in a feminist context, too, is due to the fact that Brandes also advocates the cause of women in this work.
In addition to its concern with "free thought and free humanity", the book considers a third concept of freedom, viz. "free passion".^' Brandes puts a lot of effort into describing this aspect of freedom. He deliberately contrasts
"thought" with "passion" - reason with emotion. Pil Dahlerup describes it as
"the principle of reality and the principle of desire".^ in Brandes' own version it is expressed as follows:
In my description, I have as far as possible extracted from the emigrant literature the healthy parts or at least the works in which
the reaction has not yet subjected itself to authorities, but represents the natural, legitimate assertion of emotions, the soul, passion and poetry, in contrast to cold reason, precise calculation and a literature tied down by rules and dead traditions.^
Here, "emotions, soul, passion and poetry" denote femininity, from which innovation will come to the rescue of the "literature tied down by rules and dead traditions". The largely negative male principle of reality is unfavourably compared with the feminine principle of desire. Brandes concludes that there is an inner connection between femininity and an instinctive desire for freedom. He provocatively includes a female author, M m e de Staël, in a long list of male authors in order to show that
It is this woman whose figure dominates the entire group. Her writings contain everything that was legitimate and noble in the works of the Emigrants: the reactionary and the revolutionary tendencies which divide the various efforts and works of the other writers are drawn together in her works into one endeavour, which is neither reactionary nor revolutionary, but reformatory^
In Mme de Staël, "consciousness, spirit, passion and will, active c h a r a c t e r " ^ are singled out as qualities that belong to "the new breed of womcn".46 The same could be said of the Hungarian, female intelligentsia.
This "new breed" of Hungarian women were certainly acquainted with Brandes' Emigrant Literature, as we know from letters between him and his women correspondents.^ The book did not actually figure on the traditional list of accepted female reading, but in it the subject was presented in a lively way, with originality and a degree of daring, and it captivated the female reading public. T h e Romantic classics were suddenly seen in a new light, and in describing the natural passions Brandes deliberately introduced erotic overtones. There was an excitement in his account that strongly appealed to the imagination of his readers. His audiences experienced the same, strong radiance when they listened to his lectures. He had an 'electrifying' effect both as an author/lecturer and as a man.
He fascinated the Hungarian women recipients because he was a type of male rarely found in Hungary. He took them seriously, answered their letters, listened to what they had to say, advised them and encouraged them in their various artistic and cultural pursuits. But he did not forget that he was writing to women, usually beautiful women. In her thesis, Pil Dahlerup shows how Brandes would sometimes play the part of patriarchal critic,
sometimes that of the sexualised man in his dealings with Scandinavian women writers.4^ This dual attitude must also have been in evidence when Brandes visited Hungary and came face to face with his women readers. This was a by no means inconsiderable circle of well-informed, literary women who themselves took the initiative to become better acquainted with the distinguished Danish visitor.
This female reading public was no less knowledgeable about his writings and no less interested in Brandes as a person than the male public. They read him with sympathetic insight, commitment and a down-to-earth sense of reality. This can be seen clearly in the more than fifty surviving letters that form our source material for one important aspect of the history of Brandes' reception in Hungary: his reception seen from a gender-specific point of view. We must listen to these letters which, like old phonographic cylinders, have captured the voices of a bygone age. They are human documents that contain a great deal of information about the background to Brandes' reception.
Generally speaking, the period in question is the one from 1900 to 1907.
It was between these years that the correspondence was at its liveliest and that most of the letters were written. The overriding criterion for selection has been the comprehensiveness of the exchanges of letters since connected series are of most value when examining reader reactions. If one tries to analyse the course of the reception in a historical past, however, one is often faced with the problem of having insufficient material. But there are three correspondents - Mari Jászai (1850-1922), Hedda Lenkei (1878-1924) and Elza Szász (1875-?) - whose correspondence with Brandes is interesting both from a quantitative and a qualitative point of view. The letters, which derive from one particular social milieu, viz. the bourgoisie and the gentry, give some insight into the world of these women. All three correspondents are representatives of the "new breed" of emancipated women. All three were creative artists, who succeeded in practising their vocations on a professional basis. All three played a role in the public cultural life of Hungary: Jászai and Lenkei were actresses, while Elza Szász was a writer. Admittedly, the 'space for expression' available to women lay within the confines of the male cultural institutions, but the stage and translation work were both forms of expression where women's creative urges could find an outlet without hindrance.
Like the men, the female intelligentsia tried to protest against traditionalism and hypocrisy. In this struggle Brandes was the undoubted leader, from whom many sought guidance and a form of spiritual awakening. Thus Mari Jászai wrote to Brandes as follows:
Ich bete zu Ihnen, weil Sie der erste Lehrer sind, von dem ich wirklich gelernt habe ... Ihre Bücher sind mir aber wie dass gute Brot dass uns die herrliche Sonne g a b !4 9
Pil Dahlerup observes the same kind of ecstasy in the Scandinavian women writers. The parallels are particularly striking if one views the Hungarian example in the light of the correspondence between Amalie Skram and Brandes, where the young writer plays on Brandes' fatherly feelings for all she is worth.-^ Her letters reveal the same candid admiration for the critic and are laced with the same, generous slice of flattery as those of the Hungarian woman.
In Det moderne gennembruds kvinder (The Women of the Modern Breakthrough), Amalie Skram's attempts to achieve an intellectual rebirth via a father figure are attributed to a Pallas Athene c o m p l e x . ^ This involved a voluntary placing of herself in a filial position, subordinate to Brandes' paternal authority. This same father-daughter, teacher-disciple relationship can be observed in the letters from the Hungarian women. The passage cited above uses certain formulations that also occur in Pil Dahlerup's material; for example, the grovelling admiration for the great master and the voluntary acceptance of a position of intellectual subordination. But this very subordination indicates that guidance and encouragement are required from the paternal authority figure. There are thus clear typological resemblances between the attitudes expressed in the Scandinavian and in the Hungarian source materials and which stem from certain socio-psychological traits that many women at the end of the last century had in common.
No literary critic can have been the focus of so much personal interest from women readers as Georg Brandes. His much discussed 'Don Juanism'^^
cannot be the sole reason for this. As the letters clearly reveal, it was often the women who took the initiative in these platonic or erotically tinged relationships, and Brandes had enough emotional reserves to enter into and sustain the relationships; in fact, he simply could not stop himself from doing so. This must be one reason why, over many years, he was able to correspond with women pen friends in Moscow, Warsaw, Prague, Budapest, etc. As J0rgcn Knudsen eloquently puts it, Brandes was always so very generous, always ready to give freely from his own r e s e r v e s . - ^ But it must also be admitted that Brandes needed the admiration of these women. And as far as the Hungarian women intellectuals were concerned, contact with one of the great Europeans of the age was at the same time both a responsible act
and something of an aphrodisiac.