“If we look at it from the perspective of eternity, then I also believe that things make sense, or as he says, balance out,” said András Visky in response to our suggestion that the story of suffering he experienced and wrote in Displacement in the novel, fate compensates in some way through recognition and reader feedback.
“This may not be a matter of course for our everyday life, since I knew people whom I respected and loved very much, but they did not even experience the regime change, let alone receive social rewards. They were recognized by the community, and lived out their lives under a resounding sky—happily, I observed; but this, I think, is not as simple as in Hungarian folk tales. True, they don’t always end here either, but on the other side of time.”
A unifying novel
When asked whether this recognition is also for them, those who are not given the ability or the opportunity to write, András Visky answered: “I feel this even more strongly, since the book not only brought my father and mother before me, to whom I dedicated the book to my brothers and sisters, with whom I have been in constant conversation ever since, but also to acquaintances and strangers who have become part of the public discourse, and I consider this very important,” said the writer, who also considers it an amazing gift that the novel unifies the country turned out to be a book.
“We live in a rather fragmented culture – this is a trend most noticeable in Western culture – and this book has traveled from one side to the other and back,
he did not allow himself to be appropriated in any way.
This is perhaps the greatest gift for me, this unifying event that happened and is still happening around the book. I feel the same way about the Kossuth Prize: I’m not sure that my life’s work deserves it, but I try to accept it and take it in such a way that it’s not actually mine, and I immediately pass it on spiritually and morally to those who deserve it in every way.”
The wall of the unknown
As an artist living and creating in Transylvania, András Visky earned the highest honor in Hungary. “Several people have received this recognition in recent years, important and excellent writers and theater people who are from Transylvania, but self-evident characters of universal Hungarian literature and Hungarian culture,” said the writer. – Receiving a Kossuth award is not an everyday event in Transylvania, but not in Hungary either. It is accompanied by special attention, but in recent years it has been taken for granted that a Hungarian artist or writer from across the border receives this or other very high recognitions.”
He told how he found out about the Kossuth award:
All of a sudden I received a letter that was completely unexpected, because I saw no sign that the Displacement it draws attention to the fact that as a playwright I was and am present in many languages on different stages in Hungary, Romania, Europe and overseas. In this sense, theater or playwriting is a closed activity, rather the professional public knows about it, but this book reached a lot of readers. I met many thousands of people at book launches, writer-reader meetings, traveled the country, and the invitations are still coming in all the time. The book broke through the wall of ignorance and put me in a different situation. It changed my life.
Our book, our story
In the meantime, András Visky makes a great effort to maintain the silence and concentration necessary for the continuation of the work, for the next book, in which he “keeps the awards from himself”. “Maybe this is the sixth or seventh recognition since the book was published. I had a lot of joy in connection with the book, my last joy before the Kossuth Prize was that we signed the contract, and the book is expected to be published in German next year.”
When asked what kind of feedback he received during his tour of the country, András Visky answered: “Displacement has very personal readings, and I had to hear many times what surprised me at the beginning: “Thank you for writing our book.” They call it “our book” or “to our history”, not only in Hungary, but also in Transylvania and Southern Region, and soon I will also go to Felvidék for a book launch. But – thanks to the generosity of the Liszt Institute – I also met readers in Helsinki, Brussels and The Hague.”
History is not written by the victors
At these meetings, András Visky learned about shocking family stories, for example about the Swabian resettlement in Hungary or the population exchange in the highlands.
The other day I met a very nice couple who told me that they are third-generation descendants of this terrible population exchange. People can be amazingly creative when they want to cause suffering, because the exchange of population as an institution is terrible, an amazing wound of history that needs to be processed. Memoirs have been written, but fiction is still indebted to the processing of these stories.
The processing of fiction is important because it becomes accessible to everyone, the reader to some extent, he can identify himself with the situations written in the book, with the vulnerability. “With the vulnerability of a single mother, for example, whose husband disappears into a legendarily terrible prison, which the DisplacementI wrote it in I have come across many similar stories, and the way the faces of the losers light up is always a great moment. I’m always on the side of the losers, so I don’t believe that history is written by the strong, the winners. I believe that history is still written by those who do not betray their humanity and do not turn it into betrayal.”
(Cover photo: András Visky on September 13, 2022. Photo: Réka Szabó / Index)
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2024-03-15 13:12:16