„Gide és alpapjai, Green és a többiek”. Márai Sándor és a francia „meleg irodalom”

Zoltán Csehy

IN: Partitúra Irodalomtudományi folyóirat, Volume XVII. , Issue 2, 2022, p. 15-34, ISSN 1336-7307

DOI: 10.17846/PA.2022.17.1.15-34

Abstract:

This essay is part of a larger project that explores Márai’s relationship to otherness, homosexuality and queer phenomena, drawing on his „complete” and „incomplete” public and private diaries. The project aims to capture the exciting rhetorical interplay between the often almost „anarchic” openness and the dissociation that results from individualism, but also to mark Márai’s place in the queer discourse of Hungarian literature. Márai is not only a witness to the emergence of this topic as a relevant literary discourse, but also a critic, and probably the only Hungarian writer to have followed the rise of gay emancipation movements (especially in the US) with relative interest, and their development into political, public and even artistic factors. This paper examines only one segment of this complex world: the diary entries relating to the ‚gay’ writings and gayness of Gide, Proust and Green. The ‚complete’ diary is, of course, also the genre of the moment: accordingly, one cannot always draw a ‚standpoint-like’ thesis from the entries, yet the dynamics that unfold between tolerance and intolerance, between literary and human, ethical and artistic comfort zones, can be important. Nor is it irrelevant how these movements resonate in the often rather coy or rather uninteresting Márai literature on the subject, or emerge in primary fiction. Nor do issues of sex and otherness feature prominently in the diligent and extensive review literature that accompanies the diary entries, or in larger-scale studies.

Keywords: Sándor Márai, discourses of otherness, French modernism, diary literature, gay literature, André Gide, Julien Green and Marcel Proust’s reception in Hungary

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Partitúra is a Hungarian literary journal published in Slovakia twice a year. The first edition was issued in 2006. From 2007 to 2014 its publishers were the Faculty of Central European Studies at The Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra in cooperation with Sambucus Literary Society. Since 2014 the Faculty of Central European Studies at the CPU in Nitra became the sole publisher.

The journal releases peer-reviewed scientific articles, literary studies and art reviews of both Hungarian as well as world literature. It is also a forum for essays on several other arts and intercultural relations. Furthermore, special attention is devoted to the Central European literature and literary studies; the magazine not only publishes the reviews of such studies, but also provides the arena for reflections about them. The journal aims to give an account of the contemporary Hungarian literature of the Hungarian minorities as well as to serve as a cluster for discourses.

As for the structure of the paper, it is usually divided into three main sections. The first part generally deals with the translation of an important foreign abstract literary study. It is followed by the heading of Scientific Studies and the Columns of Critical Analysis. Partitúra regularly publishes thematic abstracts by authors, genres, as well as a literary and artistic phenomenon in focus.