When Opapa’s half-brother brother Laci died in 1992, Opapa gave a eulogy at his funeral. He began by describing three childhood memories of his older brother. I have already written about one of those memories: when Laci took Opapa out for ice coffee (probably Eiskaffee) at Gerbeaud’s sometime between 1929-1931.
Today, I want to write about a second memory that Opapa described in his eulogy. According to Opapa, this one took place a bit earlier than the trip to Gerbeaud’s:
My first memory of Laci - forgive me to me he will always be Laci -- was when I was about 10 years old. At that time he was a cameraman…and returned to Budapest on a production of a movie about the great Hungarian poet Petofi. So I became the young Petofy, my first and last movie role, riding on a stick that enacted a famous poem he wrote about a boy, himself, riding on a stick that is his horse.
George Gerbner, “Eulogy for Laslo Benedek,” 1992 (unpublished draft)
It’s too perfect. Opapa as the young Petőfi, the great Hungarian poet! In a movie, of all things.
Sándor Petőfi was — and is — revered as Hungary’s “national poet.” Born in 1823, Petőfi came of age as the Hungarian language — and the idea of a Hungarian nation — was undergoing a major transformation. Writing in Hungarian, rather than German or Latin, was a sign of emerging national pride, and Petőfi used Hungarian poetry to show his love and appreciation for the Hungarian landscape, villages, and people.
Beginning in 1846, Petőfi began to write more about politics in his poetry. He was a liberal revolutionary who longed for Hungary to be free from the yoke of the Austrian Empire which, at the time, extended through all of modern-day Hungary, as well as much of Romania, the Ukraine, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, northeastern Italy, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia, and Serbia.
In 1848, Petőfi wrote what would become his most famous poem, entitled Nemzeti dal, or “National Song.” It helped to inspire the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 by demanding freedom for all Hungarians. Here is the first verse of Nemzeti dal, translated by George Szirtes:
On your feet now, Hungary calls you!
Now is the moment, nothing stalls you,
Shall we be slaves or men set free
That is the question, answer me!
By all the gods of Hungary
We hereby swear,
That we the yoke of slavery
No more shall wear.
On March 15, 1848, Petőfi read Nemzeti dal to a large group of young revolutionaries, many of them students. He also co-authored “Twelve Points,” the demands of the revolutionaries. One of their demands was for a free press, and after reading both Nemzeti dal and “The Twelve Points”, the revolutionaries marched directly to a press to print both documents.
Petőfi fought — and died — in the 1848 revolution. He was killed in battle in 1849, just before the conclusion of the war. After his death, he was embraced as a martyr whose vision, art, and bravery made him an icon for the Hungarian nation.
Laci was working on the film about Petőfi in 1929, 80 years after Petőfi’s death. By that time, Petőfi and his poetry were part of the Hungarian nationalist canon. And Opapa, at age 10, was part of the production, playing the part of young Petőfi.
Unfortunately, I can find no evidence of the actual film! I’m not sure if it was ever completed or released. But I did find the poem that Opapa described in his eulogy to Laci: according to Opapa, when he acted as “the young Petofy,” his “first and last movie role,” he was “riding on a stick that enacted a famous poem he wrote about a boy, himself, riding on a stick that is his horse.”
I searched through translations of Petőfi’s poetry until I found this one, entitled Szülőföldemen, or “My Homeland.” It begins like this (translations by Wm. N. Loew):
This landscape fills my heart with thrilling joy;
Here years ago I dwelt, a happy boy;
Here was I born, in this fair village-place;
I yet recall my dear old nurse's face;
Her simple cradle song sounds ever near,
And "Mayfly, yellow Mayfly" still I hear.
The next stanzas recount Petőfi’s departure from his home as a young man, when he “went abroad to roam,” and then his return as an adult, when he “seek[s] his home.” He looks for his old friends, and then recalls his happy memories of childhood. The following stanza is the one Opapa described, in which Petőfi is riding around his room on a hobby horse:
Again I am a child, a happy child,
Roaming through pastures green and forests wild.
I mount my hobby-horse, and in delight
I ride about the room, with heart so light.
Forgotten is all grief, all care, all fear,
And "Mayfly, yellow Mayfly" still I hear.
How I wish I could find the film of this scene! My 10-year old grandfather, acting as the national poet in one of the earliest Hungarian films.
Alas, I am left to my imagination — and my analysis.
Opapa’s reenactment of the young Petőfi reinforces something I already knew: that Opapa’s admiration for poets was fostered in his youth.1 Opapa used to talk about how poetry was printed on the front page of the newspaper, and poets were considered to be as important, or more important, than politicians. As a teenager, Opapa aspired to be a poet, and he himself published poetry in Hungarian newspapers in the 1930s.
The story about Opapa playing the young Petőfi also offers more context for Opapa’s admiration of the 1848 revolutionaries. A few months ago, I published a post about a 1940 article Opapa wrote for the UCLA Daily Bruin, just after he arrived in the US. In it, he compared the treachery of student “activists” of the 1930s (who beat up Jews) to the brilliant vision of the student revolutionaries of 1848, who dreamed of freedom, liberation, and the abolition of serfdom. These were the poet revolutionaries he wanted to emulate: poets like Petőfi.
Opapa wrote about both of these topics — poets and revolutionaries — in 2005, when he was 86 years old. In the draft of the autobiography he was working on when he died, he described the rise of fascism in Hungary as well as the anti-fascist resistance, which was led by radical peasants, poets, writers, and artists:
The resistance assumed a nationalist and populist perspective. Its prime movers were, as in earlier Hungarian revolutions, the increasingly radicalized peasantry and poets, writers, and artists like Arany, Petofy, Kazinczy, Karinthy. They became my models and inspiration. Their poems were published on the front pages of daily newspapers. I wrote and published a small book of poems at age 19, in 1939.
George Gerbner, Unpublished autobiography draft (2005)
Here, Opapa explicitly connected his own poetry with the poet revolutionaries like “Arany, Petofy, Kazinczy, Karinthy.” They were his “models and inspiration.”
Opapa also wrote about Petőfi in his book of poetry, “Moods and Modes,” which was published in December 2005, just two days after his death. I hadn’t realized it before, but as I was looking back through his material, I noticed that Opapa offered his own translation of two lines from Nemzeti dal in the introduction to his teenage poetry from the 1930s:
Until uprooted from the country I loved, and whose poetry inspired a revolution that nourished a generation. As the poet Petofy writes: "Rise up Magyar, do not revel. This is the time now or never!" So my poetry, subversive is recreated in English in which I have been naturalized but never homogenized. George Gerbner, "Moods and Modes," p. 8
There is so much to say about all of this. It’s amazing to see how my grandfather literally integrated lines from Nemzeti dal into his own poetry from 2005. There are fascinating parallels between Opapa’s 2005 poem, in which he described how he was “uprooted / from the county [he] loved,” to Petőfi’s poem, Szülőföldemen (“My Homeland”), in which Petőfi wrote about his own nostalgia for his childhood home. The themes of homeland, yearning, and revolution unite the poems, and the poets.
But I want to end by ruminating on the themes of mass media and storytelling. Given Opapa’s later critique of industrialized storytelling, I think it’s important to dwell on these early influences in his life — and especially on the fact that one of Opapa’s first memories is of playing Petőfi, the great Hungarian poet, in a film.
It’s easy to fall into a teleological narrative about the role of mass media in society: we know how television and programming would develop in the later 20th century, and we know what Opapa’s critiques of mass media would be.
So instead, I imagine myself back in the 1920s, as the “moving image” is still in its infancy. In this formative moment of Opapa’s childhood, new media (film) was being put to use to tell a story about a poet revolutionary, one that my grandfather would admire his whole life.
Opapa, as a 10-year-old boy, experienced the production of a movie as an intimate process: it was a form of storytelling that forged his sense of identity and offered an opportunity to spend time with his older brother, Laci, who he greatly admired. What this means is that Opapa, even as a child, experienced mass media as a production that was done by people. Individuals made decisions about what stories to tell, how to shoot a scene, and how to craft a particular narrative. It was a powerful lesson.
***
Nuts to crack:
Did this film ever get made? What was its’ title? Opapa notes that Laci was a “cameraman” at that point, not a director. Who was the director?
Árpád, Opapa’s father, also loved Hungarian poets like Petőfi. I searched in Árpád’s writings, and found a passage he wrote about Petőfi in a short textbook he published 1937, entitled “The teaching of Hungarian composition and literary knowledge in the upper agricultural schools.” In the text, Árpád described the significance of Petőfi’s poetry for students in an agricultural school:
Petőfi's poems, 'Bolond Istók', and 'Fajun', convey the pure longing of the soul disillusioned with urban culture for the exhilaration of work in the open air, as do Arany's Toldi, and his poems, Vágy és Tájkép (Desire and Landscape), the countless excerpts from Jókai's works (The New Landlord, The Yellow Rose and others), and the many works of Hungarian realist fiction, from Vas Gereben, Mikszáth and Gárdonyi to the writers of our time, perhaps with even greater impact.
Árpád Gerbner, A magyar fogalmazás és irodalomismeret tanitasa a mezőgazdasági középiskolában, p. 6
For Árpád, Petőfi was able to “convey the pure longing of the soul disillusioned with urban culture.” His poetry captured the “exhiliration of work in the open air,” something that could “provide a bridge from the vocational skills” of an agricultural school and “the world of general literacy values.” In other words, farmers and other agricultural laborers stood much to gain from reading poetry like Petőfi’s. Once they realize that poetry is about “the world in which the students will live and work,” they will “take a keen interest in all the material they need to know from the works of these poets.”
I am obsessed with that 12-point Magyar document/poster. I wonder if it's possible to have it as a print?
So interesting, well constructed and written!
With, once again, new information about Opapa's life that I had no indling of.
Your conclusion, that "Opapa, even as a child, experienced mass media as a production that was done by people. Individuals made decisions about what stories to tell, how to shoot a scene, and how to craft a particular narrative. It was a powerful lesson." is brilliant.