István Örkény

• Born: April 5, 1912
• Birthplace: Budapest, Hungary
• Died: June 24, 1979
• Place of death: Budapest, Hungary

Other Literary Forms

As a writer, István Örkény is not easily categorized. In addition to dramatic works, he produced short stories, novels, and screenplays, several of which are adaptations of earlier works. Örkény’s Sötét galamb (dark pigeon) is a stage adaptation of his novel Glória (1957). Macskajáték (1966; catsplay, 1976) and Tóték (1964; the Toth family), two of Örkény’s most celebrated novels, were first conceived as film scenarios but were left unfinished when the original film projects were abandoned. The unused material was salvaged in the form of novels, which were subsequently adapted for the stage and finally recast as two critically acclaimed films: Macskajáték (1974) and Isten hozta, őrnagy úr! (1969; welcome, dear major). The difficulty of categorizing Örkény is further demonstrated by his Egyperces novellák (1968; One-minute Stories, 1994). These writings are sketches imbued with wit and concentrated meaning. As the title of the collection suggests, these stories are highly condensed, bearing a relationship to the conventional-length short story analogous to that of the terse haiku to lyrical poetry.

Achievements

István Örkény is, more often than not, labeled a writer of the absurd and grotesque. The sardonic and often understated wit that he brought to his writing makes his work unique and readily identifiable. He has been a favorite with many critics and, as far as Hungarian writers go, has enjoyed some commercial success as well. He was practiced and accomplished in several genres: drama, the novel, the short story, and the screenplay. His mature works are historical probes that reach back to retrieve and record the collective psychological plight of a nation—his native Hungary—in its difficult transition from a backward and semifeudal order to a Socialist state characterized by lofty ideals and Stalinist abuses of power alike. The distinctive ambience of Örkény’s plays and other writings is in no small part achieved by his terse, pared-down style, in which rhetoric and decorativeness give way to plain diction and simple syntax.

Örkény was twice the winner of the Attila József Prize (in 1953 and 1967), and in 1970, his The Tóth Family won the Grand Prize for Black Humor in France. In 1973, he was at long last the recipient of the most coveted award in Hungary, the Kossuth Prize.

Biography

István Örkény was born in Budapest, Hungary, on April 5, 1912. His father, a well-to-do pharmacist, was by Örkény’s account a generous man with his money, and through sheer improvidence he eventually lost all four of his Budapest pharmacies. A man of a dying age, he participated in no fewer than twelve duels. Örkény was, on his father’s side, of Jewish descent but was reared a Catholic, if not a particularly devout one. He attended the Piarist gymnasium in Budapest, where he studied Latin and Greek. By the time Örkény was graduated in 1930, he was conversant in German, French, and English as well. After an inauspicious two years at the Polytechnic University at Budapest, where he studied chemical engineering, in 1932 Örkény enrolled at the University of Arts and Sciences.

In 1934 he received his diploma, and in the same year he cofounded the short-lived periodical Keresztmetszet, of which he would also be main financier. It was in this periodical that Örkény’s first writings were to appear, but they did not yet bespeak any great talent. In 1937 he became involved with the liberal-radical periodical Szép Szó, where the first version of his short story “Tengertánc” (sea dance) was published. Also in 1937, Örkény married Flóra Gönczi. He spent 1938 in London and much of 1939 in Paris, eking out a living. In 1939, on Hungary’s declaration of war, Örkény returned home. That year he reenrolled at the Polytechnic University, earning his degree in 1941.

In 1942 Örkény was recruited into forced labor, was later transported (together with the second Hungarian army) to the Soviet front, and had to march on foot all the way from Gomel to the Don. Winter set in, and Örkény and his companions endured the cold in summer clothes. Örkény was eventually wounded and taken prisoner by the Soviets. During his long tenure as a prisoner of war, Örkény wrote three pieces: Voronyezs, Lágerek népe (1947; people of the camps), and Emlékezők (1945; those who remember), a drama and two reportages respectively.

Several years and three prison camps later, Örkény was set free in 1946. One of the first things he would do on his return to Hungary was join the Communist Party. At first Örkény shared the general enthusiasm for the future exhibited by the utopianists and party ideologues, and in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s he himself contributed to the building of that future with politically unassailable writings. With the publication in 1952 of the short story “Lila tinta” (purple ink), however, dogmatists and ideologues strongly censured Örkény, accusing him, among other things, of immorality.

In 1948, Örkény married Angéla Nagy, with whom he would have two children. From 1951 to 1953, he worked periodically as a dramaturge. In 1956, Örkény’s volume of short stories Ezüstpisztráng (silver trout) was published, signaling a new period for the writer. In the same year, the Hungarian revolt was suppressed, and Örkény, along with several other writers, would be practically unpublishable until the early 1960’s. He was divorced from Angéla Nagy in 1958, but in the same year he became acquainted with Zsuzsa Radnóti, a dramaturge, whom he married in 1965. In that decade, Örkény slowly rejoined Hungarian literary life, creating in succession works both profound and humorous. He died in Budapest on June 24, 1979.

Analysis

The œuvre of István Örkény is characteristically described as absurd and grotesque. The description is accurate, yet the world he depicted is also quite familiar, rendered with realistic details that readers or theatergoers—particularly if they are Hungarian—immediately recognize. At his best, Örkény presented the absurd as he found it in real life and did not go out of his way to manufacture the strange and bizarre. His ars poetica argues for clarity and brevity in the service of the truth as he saw it. Rhetorical devices have little or no place in the works of his mature years. His characters are on the whole likable and sympathetic. Yet though they breathe with life, they straddle the border between the realm of flesh-and-blood characters, on one hand, and that of the stereotype and archetype, on the other. The figures that inhabit the world of Örkény are happy to the extent that they are in communication with one another, but as a rule they seem barely to elude one another’s reach. Nevertheless, the possibility of establishing and securing bonds between people is affirmed and reaffirmed by Örkény. By the same token, historical forces seem to act as determinants, making the balance that he postulated between man and the controlling environment very delicate and tenuous indeed.

Artistic Development

Örkény’s earliest writings, which at most document the writer’s search for a voice of his own, do not offer interesting reading for anyone today but the specialist. In 1941, his first complete volume of short stories was published. Tengertánc (1941), named after the 1937 short story, signaled the arrival of a bona fide writer. The combination of realist and surrealist elements so characteristic of his mature years is already in evidence here. The collection is not without distinct left-wing political overtones, another recurring feature in Örkény.

Örkény’s next few works were written in prisoner-of-war camps in the Soviet Union. Voronyezs, Lágerek népe, and Emlékezők are clearly the works of a much maturer man than the Örkény who wrote “Tengertánc,” one who had since seen and himself suffered the hardships of war and prison. In the late 1940’s and early 1950’s, Örkény, who had in the meantime joined the Communist Party, produced writings heavily influenced by Socialist Realism. They were overly schematic and heavy-handed treatments of social and political issues that were, however, worthy of being addressed.

By 1956, Örkény had been writing seriously for two decades, yet he still found himself experimenting with subjects, themes, and forms alike. He had not yet found his own voice. In 1956—the year which saw a series of dramatic events in Hungary culminate in the earthshaking anti-Soviet revolt—important changes came for Örkény, too. Ezüstpisztráng, which appeared in that year, marked the beginning of Örkény’s truly mature period. This volume of short stories struck just the right balance between realism, on one hand, and the grotesque, on the other. It also signaled, according to Örkény, the end of a brief flirtation with colorful and rhetorical language and a return to the laconic and economical style of “Tengertánc.”

Örkény’s works of this period are all, in one way or another, reflections and commentaries on the peculiar conditions of post-World War II Hungary—indeed of all Eastern Europe—owing in part to, and characterized by, the peculiar “chemical reaction” of a fledgling socialism and a millennium of feudalism. This basically absurd world, fraught with terrible and seemingly irreconcilable contradictions, is starkly rendered by Örkény with language plain and direct. It is not merely the common rhetorical devices such as metaphor that Örkény shunned, it is essentially anything that might call attention to itself and distract the reader from the heart of the matter.

The world of Örkény seems at a glance too infected with humor to be taken seriously. Beneath the armor of wry wit, however, lurks a much darker dimension. Yet even this is a place less sad than it appears. Overcast though it may be, it is penetrated by a ray of hope. Örkény might well be called a realistic optimist. This basic orientation was, Örkény said, formed during his long tenure in the Soviet prison camps. It was there that he experienced how an apparently heterogeneous collection of people, comprising several different nationalities and social classes, can transcend the plane of mere coexistence to cohere into a genuine community. Örkény’s conviction that solidarity is the most that one can give to another derives from those years. Even in the contemporary world, where many writers seriously doubt whether real communication is possible, Örkény affirmed that true and lasting bonds can be formed.

As noted above, Örkény’s œuvre is extremely varied; he wrote novels, plays, reportages, and novellas without seeming to show preference for one over another. Nevertheless, the last two decades of his career were particularly rich in dramatic works, ones that won critical acclaim abroad no less than at home. When he died in 1979, he left behind him a body of published work neither very big nor very small. The manuscripts of his unfinished and discarded writings could fill several volumes. In reviewing his entire œuvre from beginning to end, particularly the works of his mature years, it is impossible not to notice the common themes, recurring motifs, and characteristic style that forge them into a grand unity.

Catsplay

Catsplaywas adapted by Örkény for the stage in 1969. Its epigraph reads:

We all want something from each other.It is only old people whom no one wants anything from.But when old people want something from each other, we laugh.

Catsplay is the story of two elderly sisters—the uncouth Mrs. Orbán and the distinguished Giza—and their relationship. It is set around the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, when the Iron Curtain, understood in a broad sense, still represented a serious barrier of communication between East and West. The déclassé Mrs. Orban is living in her native country, while Giza has for several years been living in the West, where she occupies an even higher position on the social scale than that which she enjoyed during her childhood years in Hungary.

The differences between them are substantial. Giza is an invalid confined to her wheelchair and is perhaps for that reason more willing than her able-bodied but unshapely sister to see that the sweet flower of youth is gone. It is perhaps their attitude toward aging and death that most distinguishes them from each other. Giza, by all appearances, accepts death as the inevitable and final stage of life; her sister jousts with it like Don Quixote with his windmill. The epigraph, like a musical theme that is varied and developed, appears in many guises and forms. Giza’s thoughts on old age recall, and at the same time amend, its message. The only way, she says, that young people can forgive the elderly their old age is if old people themselves show that they accept and are reconciled to their old age.

Though the sisters keep in touch by telephone and by letter, these imperfect means of communication prove insufficient to bridge the cavernous gap between them, caused by two diverse ways of life and thinking. Yet the fact that the sisters persevere, against great odds, to reestablish the bond that has been lost between them is courageous and portends some faint hope.

The Tóth Family

The Tóth Family, set during World War II, is the story of a certain visit paid one day by a certain major to a certain family. The family is temporarily without their son, who is away at war. The major who has come as their guest is the boy’s commander. Apparently intended as only a short visit, the major’s stay begins to look like one of indefinite duration. The family waits in vain to hear from their boy, while in the meantime the major takes over the house, issuing gratuitous and nonsensical commands. His favorite command, repeated with the frequency and force of a recurring nightmare, is that the family assist him in making paper boxes. This they do, with the assistance of a paper cutter that calls to mind the guillotine.

The village in which the story is set serves as a microcosm of the country as a whole, and the major’s dictatorial reign over the Tóths suggests the unequal relationship of the Fascists and the common people over whom they rule. As the country in the end deposes the Fascists, so the Tóths, on learning that their son is dead and has been for some time, oust from power the maniacal major, turning the force of the paper cutter against him. The overall effect of The Tóth Family is in no small part achieved by the balance Örkény strikes between absurdism and realism. Indeed, the very distinction between the realistic and the absurd becomes blurred. Örkény, here as elsewhere, does not so much invent the absurd as he discovers it in real life.

Stevie in the Bloodbath

Stevie in the Bloodbath (Pisti in the bloodbath) was finished by Örkény in 1969 but was not actually performed until a decade later, in 1979. Whereas The Tóth Family and Catsplay are small chamber works, set in a well-defined space and time, Stevie in the Bloodbath is a grand production encompassing all Central-Eastern Europe and the second third of the twentieth century. It is, particularly in comparison to other Örkény plays, highly experimental theater. It is characterized by lengthy discussions, thought fragments, and flights of the imagination. It is an epic of the absurd, the twentieth century counterpart of Imre Madách’s Az ember tragédiája (wr. 1860, pb. 1862, pr. 1883; The Tragedy of Man, 1933). Örkény, not wont in general to instruct or preach, does not assume an omniscient view of history but rather confides in his audience, as a patient might confide in his psychoanalyst, with self-revelatory statements connected only by the thread of free association.

Who or what is the Pisti of the original title? It is not a single character as such but, in Örkény’s language, the collective noun for the people or masses. “Pisti” in Hungarian is the diminutive form of the name István (Stephen). Its use therefore might suggest some condescension on the part of the playwright toward his subject, particularly when he uses the emphatic “pistipisti.” Yet such is not the case. Örkény, no doubt aware of the tendency in Socialist Realism and even Brechtian drama to idealize the “people,” bestowed on the subject of his sympathy a name of endearment rather than risk evoking the familiar image of the people as a race of native geniuses.

Pisti is no less the hero of Örkény’s play for his colloquial nickname. Like Christ, he tries to die, for a good cause, a martyr’s death. In the twentieth century, however, when the relativity of good and bad has overturned absolute morality, his well-meaning gesture looks absurd. Besides, Pisti can be different things at different times. Now he is a murderer, now a man at the gallows, now a tyrant, now Moses before the burning bush. It is not, however, the interchangeability of slayer and victim that interests Örkény. He merely demonstrates that even the people are only as good or bad, virtuous or wicked, as their historical circumstances will permit.

Blood Relations

Blood Relations debuted on March 28, 1974, and a year later appeared in book form. The characters are all railway employees and their wives, all going by the name of Bokor. They have a single passion in common: the railroad. If another subject by chance enters their conversations, it soon becomes apparent that this topic too has, in the minds of the Bokors, some association with the railroad. It would seem, therefore, that the railroad provides for its devotees a very strong bond, and so it does: It is the bonding force of the family, in whose embrace all is one and one is all. The members of the family seem, however, somewhat out of touch with one another, as though they occupy noncontingent planes. Their apparently common obsession is in fact experienced by each person differently and separately. It is as if, when any two of them stand on either side of the tracks or semaphore, they are cut off from each other no less certainly than if they were separated by Catsplay’s Iron Curtain.

Örkény would not be Örkény if behind the absurd and bizarre situations of the story there did not lurk a historical examination. One of the Bokors, the most likable of them all, is one day arrested for a crime he never committed, coerced into a phony confession, and eventually “rehabilitated.” The reference is to the Stalinist years of Hungary, the late 1940’s and early 1950’s, during which time such practices were all too common.

Kulcskeresők

In Kulcskeresők (the key hunters), Örkény probes into the Hungarian collective psyche, in doing so examining an ordinary character with few distinguishing features. At most, the psychoanalysis turns up these facts: Hungarians are a dreaming people whose best successes may well come from their worst failures.

The play is a return to the small-studio format, focusing as it does on a single character. It forms an integral part of Örkény’s œuvre, sketching in details omitted from other works. Just as Stevie in the Bloodbath studied the relationship between historical forces and the collective consciousness of a people, so Kulcskeresők examines the way a national character can shape the individual.

Bibliography

Bales, Ken. “An American Catsplay.” The New Hungarian Quarterly 19 (Spring, 1978): 198-202. A look at Örkény’s Catsplay.

Brody, Ervin C. Introduction to A Mirror to the Cage: Three Contemporary Hungarian Plays, edited and translated by Clara Györgyey. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1993. Introduction contains information about Örkény, in particular, his play Stevie in the Bloodbath, a translation of which is included along with translations of works by György Spiró and Mihály Kornis.

Heim, Michael Henry. Introduction to The Flower Show; The Toth Family, by István Örkény, translated by Michael Henry Heim and Clara Györgyey. New York: New Directions, 1982. Heim, in his introduction to two works by Örkény, provides valuable insights into the writer.

Riggs, Thomas, ed. Reference Guide to Short Fiction. 2d ed. Detroit, Mich.: St. James Press, 1999. Contains information on Örkény’s life and works, particularly with reference to his short fiction