Narrative structure in Lajos Szabolcsi’s Mirage

Unlike most of the texts in Souls and Secrets, which have a simple storyline, Szabolcsi’s stories are characterized by the use of mise en abyme or metadiegetic narration as a narrative

43 „És mi úgy éreztük, mintha reb Sájeban a mese-mester reb Avrumele lelke élne és mi annak a reb Zisenek az unokái volnánk, és azért kellett ezt a mesét az utolsó percben hallanunk, hogy mi is elősegítsük a nagyapánk lelkének mennyei megtisztulását...” Ibid., p. 116.

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technique, the storytelling within the story. The anecdotic form, the sententious, consistent and compendious manner of traditional Hasidic storytelling is not followed. In Mirage, there are seven Hasidic stories, significantly less than in Souls and Secrets, but texts in Mirage are much longer. The main narratives are divided into 3-4 episodes. Some of these episodic semi-chapters contain a full-length story told by one of the characters. These subordinated narrative levels and mise en abyme-structures play a key-role in understanding the extradiegetic narrative, so the main storyline, because it informs about previous events, which determines the whole story and in a way is the core of the interrupted (intra- or extradiegetic) story.

In the second chapter of the story Nefelejts (Forget-me-not) the character hidden in the title Akit üldöz a Sátán (Who is Chased by Satan) tells his life-story (autodiegetic narration) until the moment when he starts his storytelling like Odysseus in the court of Alcinous. In A leveleki menyegző (Marriage in Levelek) the mysterious and incomprehensible deeds of Taub Eizik (choosing a bride for the groom to be married) become clear (which is a very familiar motif in Hasidic stories), thanks to the tale-like metadiegetic story (which informs us about the fate of characters in their previous life) told in the end of intradiegetic narrative. In the story A három kártyás (The Tree Gamblers) Reb Taub tells a story (metadiegetic narration) about unsuccessful temptation to gamblers, who are playing cards in an inn during Shabbat night. The storytelling here is a remedy for the sinners, which thanks to the story, and the realization that the main character in the story was their grandfather, turn to a right path. Thus the role of storytelling is the act of Tikkun, the perfection of the world.

b. Textual view: The identity of texts, or between universalism and regionalism

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In the first part of Szabolcsi’s Mirage the reader finds a prologue A kállói szent pap meséi (The Tales of the Holy Priest of Kálló) which introduces him into the cultural and regional context of following narratives. It could be read as a lyrical local history, because the entire first cycle of the collection Mirage is set into the region Szabolcs and Nyírség (nowadays North-east Hungary), which maps the Jewish history of the region from the earliest evidences (the archeological discovery from Rakamaz and the khazar-hypothesis) as well as modern times (the blood libel trial of Tiszaeszlár 1882-1883). The text continues with mapping this region and counting the villages and its characteristic Jewish figures (here there is also mentioned author’s father from Nyírtura as a yeshiva boher)⁴⁴ whose memory maintained the still living local oral tradition – with these places and figures reader also meets in the stories.

The depiction of landscape of the region, the symbol of earth and the range of place and time suggests to view the prologue as a poetic local topography, or a ‘geo-cultural narrative’.⁴⁵ Finally, portrait of the main character of the stories is described, the Kalever Rebe, Eizik Taub, the holy priest of Nagykálló, who joined the shepherds and village people, roamed the fields, and his outlook is portrayed not as a Jewish rabbi in kaftan (from which he differs), but as a Hungarian shepherd or “kuruc captain”.⁴⁶ As the writer highlights: “He is

44 Another personal relation (whether fictive or not) could represent the last short story A debreceni vásár (Fair in Debrecen), if the protagonist, Chaim Weinstein is by name identified as author's ancestor.

45 The term is borrowed from Kornélia Faragó, see her A viszonylagosság alakzatai: komparatív poétikák, viszonylati jelentéskörök, Újvidék/Novi Sad: Forum, 2009 and Térirányok, távolságok:

térdinamizmus a regényben, Újvidék/Novi Sad: Forum, 2001.

46 Lajos Szabolcsi, Délibáb. Zsidó legendáskönyv, Budapest: Egyenlőség, 1927, p. 11.

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a poet. Poet by Gods mercy. And Hungarian. Hungarian as only the Szabolcs country can make his Jewish sons.”⁴⁷ Author’s statement about his aim, to elaborate the Hungarian Hasidic stories could be interpreted as an intentio auctoris.

The distinction of the domestic or regional and alien or universal Hasidic tradition is clearly shown in titles of two cycles of Mirage and can be read as a viewpoint which defines otherness. The first part bears the title A Tisza partján (On the Edge of Tisza), while the second (which among the non-Hasidic stories contains stories about Baal Shem) Idegen misztikusok (Foreign Mystics).

Taub Eizik, the first representative of the Hungarian branch of Hasidic movement, is included also in some foreign Hasidic story collections, such as Marin Buber’s Tales of Hasidim or Jiří (Georg) Mordechai Langer’s Nine Gates to Hasidic Mysteries. A couple of these story motifs originate from a religious Hebrew folk book which contains legends, among others, about another Hasidic master, Eser Tsahtsahot.⁴⁸ In each of these stories – as a rare, but not entirely unique legendary motif about masters of Hasidim – there are described rabbi’s features different from ordinary depictions of Hasid rabbis common with the gentile Hungarian features of his surroundings. Some of these stories are adapted also by Patai’s short story, A nótás szent (The Saint Who Loved to Sing). But in the collection of Szabolcsi these story-motifs could not be found. Although his stories came from another source (author alludes to the local oral tradition accessible thanks to the origin of his family), the characteristic of a rabbi’s figure full of signs of Hungarian folk culture – his outlook, he speaks and prays (!) in Hungarian, borrows the songs of shepherd, and is in close contact with

47 Ibid.

48 Published in Piotrkow, 1910 – see Nigal, The Hasidic Tale, p. 42.

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gentiles – are extremely over-emphasized. Patai, while using these elements inherited from his sources, is not much interested with the ʻHungarianessʼ of rabbi.

When comparing the two collections from the viewpoint of otherness and geographical setting of the stories they seem extremely different, and have no common ground, except for the figure of Taub Eizik. Most of Patai’s stories are set into a Polish or Ukrainian town in which some Hasidic rabbi lives.

Except Taub Eizik and the author’s masters (the texts analyzed above) there is only one other representative of the Hungarian branch of Hasidism, Moshe Teitelbaum from Sátoraljaújhely in short story Az újhelyi messiásváró (The Tzaddik Who Craved the Messiah). Patai does not deal with depictions of interreligious or inter-ethnical contacts. His Hasidic world is closed into itself, more precisely, to the independent universality of the Hasidic world. Without knowledge about author’s identity and background, the collection could be considered as a translation of a foreign Hasidic story collection comparable with similar ones written by Martin Buber, Jiří Langer, Stanislaw Vincenz, Elie Wiesel, etc.

In the case of Szabolcsi, the identity of the text is in the opposite situation. The universality of Hasidism as a religious movement in Patai is filtered with signs of national identity.

For instance, Baal Shem, the founder of Hasidism, joins foreigners (in the second cycle) and local legends appear as independent folk-cultural tradition of Hungarian Hasidism, having more in common with surrounding gentile peasants as with Hasidic Jews abroad. This difference of two Hasidic story collections is clear, if the setting and topography is visible – see Fig. 4 and 5.

Not only intercultural relations (like the example of cultural exchange in the case of gaining the song Szól a kakas már… (The Rooster is Already Crowing…) from a shepherd mentioned by

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almost all of the sources about Taub Eizik),⁴⁹ or poetic descriptions of countryside and landscape (as the iconic picture about the great Hungarian Plain) are clothed with national stigmas. There is also a view of intertwined history of Hungary and Hungarian Jewry. As a perfect example of this is the meeting of Taub Eizik with a representative of Hungarian Jacobin revolutionary movement, Ferenc Szentmarjay, later a martyr, in the cell of Nagykálló during the times of blood libel.

Here there is also mention about the role of Jews in the Hungarian Revolution in 1848/49, which after the emancipation of Hungarian Jewry (1867) in the times of dualism became a topos of Hungarian-Jewish history.

Certainly, among the stories, as a negative phenomenon of these kind of relations are narratives dealing with persecution of Jews (blood libel accusation of Tiszaeszlár) or their forced conversion (Mayerl, the fictive son of Taub Eizik after the forced conversion in early age lives as a count and at the end of his life he returns to Jewry).⁵⁰

Because of these intercultural contacts, mixing of elements of Jewish religion and folklore with stigmas and symbols of national identity inherited from interpretation of national

49 See authors study: Pál Száz, “A ‘kállói szent pap’ dala. A Szól a kakas már dalszövege, és a dal megvételéről szóló történetmotívum hagyományozódása az allegorizáció, a bricolage és a hibridizáció tükrében” [The song of ‘the holy priest of Kálló: The lyrics and the tradition of story-motif about its buying/purchasing in the mirror of allegorization, bricolage and hybridization.], Ideológiák, identitások és önreprezentáció multikulturális térben ed. Zoltán Csehy, Katalin Misad, Bratislava: Univerzita Komenského v Bratislave, 2016, pp. 89-112.

50 This story-motif is quite similar to late Hasidic story about Baal Shem’s son kidnapped and converted in early age, who became a Christian priest. This story was adapted by Szabolcsi in the second cycle of his book, A lembergi titok (The secret of Lemberg).

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history of romanticism, and also a geocultural limits, the prose of Szabolcsi could be studied from the aspect of the theory of post-colonialism. This “in-between” cultural situation can be seen as an example of the term of Homi K. Bhabha, the third space of enunciation and the occurrences of intercultural exchange (the mentioned song The Rooster is Already Crowing…) as cases of cultural hybridization.⁵¹

Fig. 4. Map of spread of Hasidism. Red dots and underlined names of places signify localities in which Patai’s Hasidic stories of Souls and Secrets (Lelkek és titkok) take place. In the lower left corner is Gyöngyöspata, author’s birthplace.

51 Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, London and New York:

Routledge, 1994.

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Fig. 5. Map of part of Szabolcs country from the turn of century, where Lajos Szabolcsi’s Hasidic stories contained in first cycle of Délibáb [Mirage] take place.

Purple: places where certain short stories take a fixed place.

Yellow dots: Places mentioned in proses.

Blue line: rout of wandering in the story: A három kártyás [The three gamblers] (Nagykálló → Nyíregyháza) and Mayerl (Tiszalök → Tiszaeszlár)

Green line: rout of wandering in the story: Nefelejts [Forget-me-not]

Green frame: Nyírtura, from where Szabolcsi/Weinstein family originated.

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