Cultural Studies paper by Szolláth, Dávid
Narrative Style and Gender Relations in the Creative Relationship of Miklós Mészöly and Alaine Polcz
Type of Abstract (select):Abstract (max. 250 words):
Miklós Mészöly (1921-2001) and Alaine Polcz (1922-2007) as a couple have a special status in Hungarian literature. Mészöly is one of the most important figures of postwar Hungarian fiction. His wife, Polcz, a therapist became an author at the age of sixty nine when her first book, a wartime memoir One Woman in the War (1991) gained attention. Polcz became famous when Mészöly was already past the height of his career and although she has been generally regarded only as an important "writer's wife" (írófeleség) and a middlebrow writer, even a dilettante, by the turn of the century she eventually became more popular than her husband. In this paper I will focus on a novel by Mészöly, Pontos történetek, útközben (Accurate Stories on the Road) published in 1970, based on Polcz’s tape recorded narration of her journeys to her native region, Transylvania, and to the Hungarian countryside, which she gifted to her husband. I pose two questions in the paper: The first is a question of style and narration, and the second is the question of gender. How can we grasp the characteristics of the narrative style of Mészöly by comparing his transcription to the text recorded on the tape made by Polcz? How was it possible for the husband to publish a novel exclusively under his own name from his wife’s ”raw material”, and how did the couple consider their roles as partners in marriage and in artistic creation? The consideration of these questions only becomes possible because of the publication, in 2017, of their four decades of correspondence, which I will discuss in detail.
Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
David Szolláth, Ph. D. (1975) is a research fellow at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Research Center for the Humanities, Institute of Literary Studies in Budapest. He is an editor of Literatura – theoretical journal of the Institute of Literary Studies, HAS and author of the “A kommunista aszketizmus esztétikája” [Aesthetics of Communist Ascetism] (2011), he is currently working on a monographic study on Miklós Mészöly, Hungarian writer.