Not surprisingly, for all writers under totalitarian regimes like in Eastern and Central Europe before the War, the relation between art and power was a constant preoccupation. Unable to speak truth to power, the anger grew underground and emerged only in disguise, transformed into irony, sarcasm or an icy calm from which it was hard to deduce the fury that lay concealed beneath it. All writing became a political act, a token of independence, an attempt to switch not merely the interest, but the whole focus of attention away from the ruling elite towards the mundane affairs of daily living. Like Stephen Dedalus in Jamres Joyce’s A Portrait of a Young Artist, the writer used his only defence, the only weapon he was allowed to use, “silence, exile and cunning.” This is what the Hungarian writer, György Faludy (1910-2006) did with his old classic, My Happy Days in Hell (Penguin Central European Classics, Special Indian Price, Rs 499) that had to wait for 25 years for the original Hungarian until the change of regime in 1989, though the English translation, now reissued, appeared as far back as 1962.
Faludy’s My Happy Days in Hell is a grim autobiography of his battle to survive tyranny and oppression. It is divided into five parts: France, Africa, the US and People’s Democracy, Arrest and Forced Labour Camp. Fleeing Hungary in 1938, after the Nazi occupation of Austria (he had little choice as a Jew) he lived in France for two years but again had to flee when the Germans marched into the country in 1940. He managed to escape to Morocco where he spent “the happiest days of my life”, first in Casablanca and then in Marrakesh.
Fearing persecution by the Vichy regime, he found refuge in US where he joined the American armed forces, serving with the Marines in the Far East. He returned home for a brief spell under the reformist Prime Minister, Imre Nagy but had to flee again after the revolution failed in 1956. He finally came home after the collapse of the communist regime in 1988 to be recognised as the grand old poet of Hungary. The book can be described as a history of dictatorships and their modus operandi with plenty of stories, political barbs and philosophical comments that makes it resemble a picaresque novel. The book is full of characters on the run from the tyranny of the state and could be read as much for entertainment because its truths are stranger than the wildest fiction.
‘Characters’ or odd-balls is what the book is peopled with, but that is not surprising because Faludy himself was one and must have attracted more of his own wherever he found himself, whether Casablanca, New York or Paris. In France, he runs into one of the many Hungarian exiles, Havas, a communist who like Faludy returns home after the World War II. But he is soon disappointed with the new “socialist order”, its corruption and nepotism and above all, the cronyism. He is arrested on trumped up charges for activities against the “people” as a foreign agent and beaten to death by the secret police.
Faludy also writes about the Rajk affair of 1949. Rajk, a former minister of the interior, was arrested on false charges in an anti-Titoist purge. He was hanged by his own comrades for crimes he had not committed.
What had happened really was that Rajk did something unprecedented among leaders of the colonial regimes: he failed to change with the change of the Party line in Moscow. He did not perform the prescribed ritual of self-criticism of his policy of liberalisation and did not endorse the new policy of tightening the screws. Faludy learned of this when sections of the press publicised his integrity by railing at him for refusing to renounce his “anti-people policies.”
Rajk’s material interests as well as his spiritual investment in his past beliefs — in the Russian leadership of communism, in communism itself — should have made him conform. He had done so in the past. He had beaten his breast before when Party policy required him to speak against nationalism and for collectivisation; all he needed to do was to repeat himself. Simply, all Moscow needed from him was words. Once Faludy learned that Rajk was set up and the evidence against him was forged, he knew he was “next”. It is Faludy’s descriptions of this atmosphere of dread, “of waiting to be plunged into the memory hole” that makes the book essential reading of what really happened at the height of Communist era.
During his imprisonment when he was denied paper and pencil, Faludy committed many of his poems to memory that he published when he was free. Poetry to Hungarians is what opera is to the Italians; it reached everybody and was highly appreciated. It was their life line; it is what they had instead of national self determination, free press, free speech. Here is a rough extract of Faludy’s The Execution of Imre Nagy:
He made his inventory at dawn, pacing under the vault of his cell; everything was in order, only his prince-nez was missing.
What made him so calm? Was it apathy, courage, character? Or did he know that halfway there he had solved the riddle of the century? And what made him great and beautiful? His faith? His intentions? His honesty? The end? Force of circumstances? I don’t know.
Faludy may have been a bit of a rake but his poems, were a magic chant that protected people from brainwashing.
