Intelligence as Class in Middle Europe, Caught in Ideology and History - Seen through literary works

Introduction

The question of one’s own identity is a main motives in literature. Identity is defined by one’s self perception but also much by the perception of others. For both sides, the individual and his surrounding, are determined by the environment. In the case of Central Europeans the environment is determined by specific factors, being absent or of less importance in other regions.

Before writing about these specific Central European features I want to make some remarks to Central Europe. This geographic expression can hardly be defined neither by physical nor political geography. In the Centre of Europe are no specific physical borders visible defining a dividing line, where we think Central Europe could end. Political geography is less helpful in an area where for many generations the borders were shifted, where countries disappeared and emerged? So there must be something else in the that makes us so sure that there is a “Central Europe“ or a “Mitteleuropa“ at all. In my opinion it is these people, their common culture, their common experiences and their common hopes for the future that makes them attached to this area and let them say we are “Central Europeans“.

The identity of intelligentsia as a specific class is a very specific Central European feature. It should not be mixed with the intellectuals in the West. The intelligentsia includes all kind of specialists, the university professors, bureaucrats, engineers and the artists. “ Since fate of millions is often most apparent in those by profession note changes in themselves and in others “ ¹ This gives the writer, the poet, the bard the special role in this class and therefore in the whole society. Writers are also the seismographs of to record the eruptions inside the Central European society. Literature is even more than just a description as a picture of the situation. As “ literature -poetry - is a defence against barbarism and that even if it may not “ ennoble our sentiments “ it does do some good: it does give meaning to the vanity of existence. “ ² In the works one can find a common mixture of harmony and disharmony, a common sprit readable in these works were we assume that Central Europe lies. This common themes are missing going further to the East, South or West. This common mood of these works is visible on the main motives of the novels. The main motives (especially after the 2 World War) are beside the general human motives of meaning of live and dead, love and sex very specific motives: - the struggle with the system and the role of history in everyday-life.

To be or not to be Central European The captivated inteligentia

The novels and essays I base my paper on are not pure fiction, they have very strong autobiographic features and they can be taken as patterns for the different lives of many intellectuals. Three of these authors are from Poland (Milosz, Szczypiorski, Brandys), three from Hungary (Konrád, Dalos, Kertész), two from Yugoslavia or to be more precise from the Vojvodina (Kiš, Tišma) and one from the Czech Republic (Kundera). It is also important to mention that four of them are of Jewish origin. Their biographies and their works show the ambivalence of struggle with totalitarianism, history and their ethnicity. “ Since even the awareness of belonging to a culture known as Central is ultimately an act of dissidence, writers whom theirs call Central European or who define themselves as such generally live in exile or are marginalised and appear in samizdat or are in prison “.³

The Central European intelligentsia captivated in ...

The intelligentsia stood in the first row to create a “New Poland, New Hungary, New Yugoslavia, ...“ inhabited by the “new man“ and giving all their creativity and power for it, more than the workers (and peasants) in which name the state was created and ruled. They were not aware or they did not wanted to be aware of building their own prison. This taking actively part in the construction of the communist regime, was later also followed by them standing in the first row with their weapons, the pen, the film, the printing press, ... to fight it. As in this part of the world, were the freedom of acting in the present was so limited. History or better its presentation became a powerful tool - used by the rulers, used by opposition. Historic myths were created by the one side and often enough dismantled on the other side. It was also a field were one could retreat to and dream of the “good old days“ which never existed. This changes of behaviour of the intelligentsia it was not just a product of this stormy era. This ambivalence - which is felt painfully in most of the works and the writers’ biographies. - is for me a is a specific Central European feature. As Marthe Robert states: “K ... (the initial for Kafka’s in his work) ... can stand for any Central European writer. K. is a sign for eternal ambivalence “ ⁴

To be or not to be Central European The captivated inteligentia

... the system

The struggle of the individual with the totalitarian system “system“ is a main motive. This system is not only the abstract dictatorship of a party state over the society “they against us“, but also the network of human relations. This every day small scale collaboration, the interactions with the neighbours, the colleagues at work and also inside of the family, which are all infected and poisoned by the totalitarian system. Why did the intelligentsia commit it self so much with this system they tried to brake out from?

After the war the countries were devastated. Centres of Central European life were destroyed, Warsaw was a moon like landscape. Even those areas which were physically not demolished, like the Czech Lands had so deep blows in the psychological landscape. The old system, the ancient regime of “weak democracies“ and the lands of “little dictators“ was discredited among the most young members of the intelligentsia. Their will to serve the future, the rising of ones countries out of the ashes, serving the social revolution was very much welcomed by the most of the inter-war intelligentsia which mostly already sympathised with Marxism but not with Bolshevism.⁵ The Western countries which were the partners and the hope sold the countries in Jalta out to Stalinism. With this fact set by the “Big Three“ the Communists and the Soviets to the only real existing partner for the rebuilding of the country. Those becoming mature in the times of the war there was a “anger against the losers“ that let them be so deeply committed to the new line. The energy of these so called pimple faces which their juvenile energy was able to give water on the mills of the new system. The participated in the “ historical optimism of the victorious class, a solemn an ascetic joy, in short, Joy with capital J “ ⁶ It was not really the ideologies these young enJoyed, it was the cultivation of anti-bourgeois culture, a protest against their parents and power, power of the other students and older people. As the system was introduced so smoothly and so much freedom was allowed it was even as a patriot acceptable to collaborate with the Muscovites. The intelligentsia was given all resources needed to fulfil their projects. Books were printed in previously unknown numbers, workers and farmers could afford them and authors could travel through the country and speak about their works.

When the centre in Moscow ordered to change the situation step by step in their “salami tactic“. Socialist realism as the only possible form of art was introduced, the dialectic thinking and expression

To be or not to be Central European The captivated inteligentia became the only way allowed to think, the first people disappeared in the prisons different ways of adaptation to this system were taken. The majority stayed in their position. They did not risk their life or their position. Playing this game accepting that the list of non-existing persons, facts and history, the non existing reality was getting longer and longer. That they had to substitute the reality they saw with their eyes and their hearts with the prescribed “socialist reality“. By doing this the poet becomes to a writer as Kiš puts it. As a writer you deal with your own obsessive topics and as a writer you write for the masses.⁷ Like a talent in the west that has to be pleasant to read to be a best-seller, the poet has to become “ the respectable prostitute “ ⁸ and had to forget his art to fulfil the duty . The authors became “case workers“, they had to fulfil their plan. When you are a writer and want to keep your flat, your dinner in the writers canteen, go travelling you have to produce your piece of art per year.

But just to lie was not enough one had to change ones personality to change the writing. You could not go to the limits and leave the streamliners of your work to the censor, who officially did not exist. It could lead to be not published, but what does a writer writes for? Censorship made the life more difficult, it created inconvenience for the editor, the publisher. So one had to write in a way that it would be passed by the censor. This meant looking on the work with the eyes of the censor. But the author can find the hidden information, the message between the lines much better than the censor, so he was much more brutal than the censor. “ The fight against censorship is open and dangerous and thus heroic, while the battle against self-censorship is anonymous, lonely and unwitnessed - a source of humiliation and shame for the collaborator “ “ In refusing to admit to self-censorship, the author yields to lies and spiritual corruption. “ ⁹ The case worker is becoming a person in a bureaucratic system, he keeps running. “ The case worker only administers the life of his customers. He sells ‘ normality ’ to the abnormal. “ ¹⁰ He is not becoming aware of his guilt person, because he has only a very small defined task in the totalitarism.

Not everyone was able to go this way, to lie to the world by leaving out of important things and force oneself to think dialectically - they were not able to lie to them self in their work. They wanted to stay

To be or not to be Central European The captivated inteligentia poets. There were those which the millstones of totalitarism left back as chaff - broken and alone. A poet like Erno Szép who was writing in his poems about flowers, the love and was able to fill a universe with a little sparrow in a park, was not able to stand this pressure. He sad about him self: “ I was Erno Sz é p “ , “ ... as all possibilities which once allowed Erno Sz é p to be Erno Sz é p, were removed, liquidated and socialised. It is this simple, put in three works description of the contemporary state of reality (of the catastrophe), which knows nothing anymore of wisdom and comfort “ ¹¹

It took the intellectuals not long to see the prison they were helping to create. The process of waking up, often ignited by the people coming from the political prisons in the time of the thaw in 1953- 1956, was very painful for most of them. As Kazimerz Brandys, one of the few great talents of the Polish literature of socialist realism, expresses it: “ The true answer should have been different. I had my doubts from the very beginning, the stronger they became, the more and more I suffocated them in me, the more I ignored them. Every doubt was against the logic and ethic of the premise, which I accepted, and I burdened my self with guilt .. Maybe this is the function of the system, called communism, a double one, self- imitation and self-denial. “ ¹² Also deeply rooted Communists were confronted with the horrors of Stalinism and criticised the party in most of its aspects. “ ... in fifty-six when there was all that talk about Stalin ’ s crimes, and people went wild and began rejecting everything, saying our papers were a pack of lies, nationalised stored didn ’ t work, culture was in decline, ... and the worst of all was that even Communists went talking around like that,... “ ¹³ Also the political effect of 1956 was so different in all of the countries the tie between the authors and the party was damaged. After becoming aware of their doubts, they also became also aware of their role of members of the intelligentsia for the nation, as it was for the intelligentsia in earlier times.

There were different ways of adaptation to the new situation. A few openly rebelled, but the system was merciless in its reaction. “ Oppositional behaviour either political or metaphysical is enough to isolate them. The became victims of historic processes and trials. “ ¹⁴ Either they decided to leave the country or you were send to prison like Vaclav Havel or to mental hospitals as György

To be or not to be Central European The captivated inteligentia Konrád. For many of those the situation was unbearable emigration was the only way out of the system. Also Czech, Polish or Hungarian communities awaited for them abroad and welcomed the newcomers, for an author it was a difficult step leave. Either they were deprived of readers, when they continued to write in their mother tongue, only having the émigré as audience or they had to use a foreign language in which they could not utilise their full artistic abilities. From the Western intellectuals they were treated as writers from the cultural periphery, were no great writers came from or rather those were little known. As Central Europeans they were seen “ homo politicus “ and not “ homo poeticus “ as the Westerners perceived themselves. “ While those, srb-krk., well, when they deal with their sensitive issues, when they poke fun at their leaders and their system, when thy write about political scandals in picturesque settings -then they ’ ll have a literature of their own, ... Why don ’ t they stick to their politico-exotico-Communitski problems and leave the real literature- the maid of all work, the sweet servant of our childhood - to us. “ ¹⁵ But even in this niche it was difficult for them to write, because not living in their countries anymore, the criticisms lost more and more blood and energy. It became just a repetition of the previous motives.

Those staying in the country who did not rebel openly arranged with the system. They have to accept this double life between small scale collaboration with the system and the self-limited rebellion. Criticisms has to be hidden in parables or had to be placed in historic settings. In hundred of cases on has to arrange one self with the system to undertake one little rebellion in the works or in ones life. György Dalos shows this kind of double living very clear with his figure Tomás Cohen in “The hide and seek player“. He eats once a week at his uncle a local party leader and plays the good boy there just to have one warm dish a week, because he not willing to give up his non-conform life which makes it impossible for him to work as a Russian interpreter. In other times he uses the income of conferences were he interprets Marxist materialist philosophers to finance his coffee-house dissident rounds.¹⁶ This way of living does not give a free and un-burdened the consciousness, the mild forms of the system after the Stalinist period are bearable This “little stabilisation“ with the refrigerator, TV

To be or not to be Central European The captivated inteligentia stets, Trabants, Zastavas and Maluchs is much more poisonous for the intellectual.¹⁷ He looses the ground for his rebellion, he him self is afraid to loose his privileges and also he criticised for his dissent from ordinary people to not because they were afraid of repression but just they were afraid become worse again. This life is hard to live between the lines it is an inner struggle as Konrád describes it in the following phrase: “ I feel like the ageing clerk who, after smiling at his companions and greeting his superiors in the front ranks, is just about to slip away from the May Day parade, when someone thrusts a heavy banner into his hands. Now he can ’ t leave, his cumbersome banner holds him fast; it is tiring, it ’ s ridiculous, but has to carry it; he can ’ t palm it off on one ... unless somebody volunteers. He looks around for someone to take it, but nobody does,; and so, grimly bidding good-bye to the hoped-for day of rest, he trudges onward on swollen ankles, the heroic banner waving over his thinning hair. “ ¹⁸

A last possibility was just to retreat into private life, to write for one self and the closest friends. This life of “inner emigration“ or as Kertész describes as “a life underground“ excluded made one to a non-existing person. The writer just wrote for his closest friends or for his drawer. The non-existing writers with their non-existing works were not missed, because the system produced enough “half- poets“, which produced “half-novels“ engaged “half-journalists“ for “half-cultural debates“. This layer makes the impression of an existing cultural life like in the West.¹⁹ But in the 1980’s the underground literature was flourishing. Underground publishing houses were set up and loopholes in the legal system were used to write and publish at all. Therefore the Westerner and even the people in Central Europe were surprised about the number of great writers appearing on the surface as the system broke down.

... in history

In Central European life history played a much more important role than in the Western countries. This orientation toward the past can also be found in the literary works. This should not be understood that historic novels were the main theme, it was rather a permanent mingling of present events and problems with historic parallels. Milosz describes one of his figures in his novel “ Captive Mind “ even “ Gamma, Slave of History “ ²⁰. For understanding Polish, Czech, Hungarian or

To be or not to be Central European The captivated inteligentia Yugoslavian literature a sound knowledge of history and history of literature is necessary. In his “Warsaw Diary“ Brandys describes his attempts to teach Polish literature in France. It was a nearly impossible undertaking to explain the specific Polishness of literature. It drove him so far that he invented Polish authors and literature which were free from this historic burden in his novel “Pomysl“.²¹ This very specific feature has in my opinion several different reasons and therefore also different aims. The first derives from the Communist system rewriting the past for their goals. The intelligentsia, especially historians and writers wanted to keep the memory on the non-existing events or the “true history“ alive and tried to write about it. As a second each of the nations had a “Golden Era“ and very heroic acts of European importance often enough expressed in the national epos produced in the time of romanticism. In a time of lacking of freedom, lacking of goods and decline of society this golden past was an area to retreat.

Marxism-Leninism based on the historic determinism it was obvious that history plays an important role for the ideology. As the history was not show all the wanted signs of victory of Communism and an eternal friendship between the people of Central Europe with the Soviet Union in the future as well in the past. Historic events like Polish-Soviet war in 1920, Hitler-Stalin pact and Katyn²² and the Russian intervention in Hungary 1849 became non-existent. They disappeared from the official historic books and from the teaching of history. Historic events were reinterpreted in another way and used for creating new enemies. The cult of Grunwald was not to commemorate the victory of the Polish kings against the Teutonic Knights. It was to show who the real enemy of Poland was. It was not Russia it was Germany. Also the traditional anti-Semitism in Hungary, Poland and Yugoslavia was used for political events to draw the peoples attention to other facts. History as a political tool was expressed in many second rate literature. So history became a battlefield in literature. Critical writers tried to bring events not allowed back into memory. The goal was not to recreate a “true history“ in the work it was rather a counter-history to oppose the system.

On of the main motives which can be found in the works of many writers is the stress of the difference of Central Europe and Russia. Brandys goes back in antic history. He describes the battle between the democratic Greek city-states against the vast Persian empire. The Greeks fought for the freedom and their values in the battles of Marathon and Salamis. The description are given clear the idea that similarities of the small Central European states beside the vast Soviet-Russian Empire. In

To be or not to be Central European The captivated inteligentia this description he hopes that the Poles can defeat the Centre in battle for their values like the Greek did.²³ A second popular feature used to express the Central Europeanness is the drawing of a border towards the East. Culture, history and religion are used to include one self in to the West. The West formed by humanism, renaissance, enlightenment and baroque against the Byzantine, Asian and despotic East. When Szczypiorski in his “The Beautiful Mrs. Seidenmann“ gives a long description of the behaviour of a Prussian (in this case even Gestapo) civil servant. That he is only enacting orders, that he respects the rules and is reliable to the end, also his work might be the destruction of Poland. He shows that this mentality is much closer to the Poles and therefore easier to deal with than the Muscovite civil servant. He shows him in love for little presents, exaggerated compliments and he deals to fulfil a higher virtue, which is higher than the rules and laws enacted.²⁴ Not only between Russia and Poland (or others) this border is drawn. The Hungarians are obsessed to exclude the orthodox nations like the Romanians and Serbians from Europe proper as well. The description of Romanians and their bureaucracy in comparison to the Hungarians in Transylvania in Dalos’ book makes this border very obvious.²⁵

In contrast to this “historic determinism“ of the eternal foe of Central Europe stand those writers which grew up in a mixed culture. Where Orthodox people live beside the Catholic or Protestant. The understanding of Europe there is another and expressed in another way. For the writer Tišma from the multi-national Novi Sad the terror of local Svabians joining the SS, the massacres of Hungarian Arrow-Cross members is as barbaric in the motives and acts as those atrocities done by Chetniks or Titoist partisans. But not only in the bad there is so much similarity between these in my opinion constructed hemispheres of European culture. For him friendship, braveness, cowardliness and corruption are as common between Jews, Serbs, Croatians and Germans and not determined by their ethnicity and their culture.²⁶ Also Danilo Kiš a half magyarised Jew and half Montenegrin sees the Schism not as the main dividing line of Europe to explain why Central Europe is Europe. “ If only on the strength of this anthropological fact, then, we belong to the family of European

To be or not to be Central European The captivated inteligentia nations, and have as much right as they or more - given our Judeo-Christian, Byzantine and Ottoman tradition - to membership in the European cultural community. “ ²⁷

During the hardships of the socialist state, where the people were deprived of freedom and the nation of sovereignty, only in history the nation could be great and stand in the limelight of European history. Many nations stressed their position as the bulwark of Europe. The battles of Kosovo and Belgrade, or Mohács and Nandorfehérvár ²⁸, or the battle of Vienna became a main part of national myth for each nation. These myths did not only play their role for the past, their parallels were drawn to the present. On the one side the authors liked to remember the role of the nation in the European concert, but on the other side the over-exaggerated self-perception provoked their reaction. “ The sacred, blaspheme Polishness, that dared to call it self Christ of Nations, has also bred snarks and informers, careerists and idiots, hangmen and takers of bribe, it has raised xenophobia to the level of patriotism and clings to the handle of the door, to kiss the hands of the tyranny in servile manner the hands. “ ²⁹ as Szczypioski puts it, who was also in the concentration camp of Buchenwald for his patriotic activities during the occupation.

Where will be Central Europe?

As an answer to the question “To be or not to be Central European“ the Hungarian author Meszölyi writes: “ Once there was a Central Europe “ and wants to say that the Soviet domination destroyed the common features and understanding in these countries he is maybe wrong. In my perception the Central European self-image was never so strong as in the last 50 years. In present Central Europe is undertaking the transformation and transition process on many levels in economy, politics but also in culture. The reintegration into Western Europe wanted for such a long time is already going on. Now being free the has are turned to the West and as it seems only the West. The East which also was always culturally connected with Central Europe is lost out of sight. Also the neighbour countries of Central Europe, one felt connected in solidarity against the Centre are less neighbours in the map of the mind than Germany, Britain or even the US.

To be or not to be Central European The captivated inteligentia The system changed and democracy is becoming more and more the realty in life. The fight against the government in the old “we against them“ is becoming ridiculous. In a time the future lies not anymore in the hand of an omnipotent centre but in ones own hand, the future is substituting the past as the main direction of orientation. The modernisation or one is tempted to say the postmodernisation of society is dissolving the old class system. The number of blue-collar workers and peasants is diminishing and also the intelligentsia as class is losing its role. They are challenged by professional politicians in their political role and by entrepreneurs as the leading figures. The artist will form into the group of intellectuals like in the West.

To the question if there is a Central Europe in the intellectual map of Europe can be answered, when the works of young writers will be recognised in the West and analysed if they still have common motives which one can not find in the neighbouring regions.

Bibliography

Kazimerz Brandys, Warschauer Tagebuch, translated by Friedrich Giese, 1996, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/Main

György Dalos, Der Versteckspieler, translated by György Dalos and Elsbeth Zylla, Insel Verlag, Leipzig

Aleksandar Tišma, Der Gebrauch des Menschen, translated by Barbara Antkowiak, 1998, Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, München

Imre Kertész, Die englische Flagge (1991), translated by Kirstin Schwamm, in: Die englische Flagge

- Erzählungen, 1999, Rowolth Taschenbuch Verlag

Danilo Kiš, From the Anatomy Lesson (1978), in: Homo Poeticus (eds. Susan Sontag), 1995, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Danilo Kiš, Homo Poeticus, Regardless (1980), in: Homo Poeticus (eds. Susan Sontag), 1995, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Danilo Kiš, Censorship/Self-Censorship(1985), in: Homo Poeticus (eds. Susan Sontag), 1995, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Danilo Kiš, Variation on Central European Themes (1986), in: Homo Poeticus (eds. Susan Sontag), 1995, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

György Konrád, The Case Worker, translated by Irving Howe, 1998, Noran Books, Budapest Milan Kundera, The Joke, 1992, faber and faber, London

Czeslaw Milosz, The Captive Mind, 1985, Penguin Books, London

Andrzej Szczypiorski, Die schöne Frau Seidenmann, translated by Klaus Staemmler, 1991, Diogenes Verlag, Zürich

[...]

¹ Czeslaw Milosz, The Captive Mind, 1985, Penguin Books, London, pg. 82

² Danilo Ki, Homo Poeticus, Regardless (1980), in: Homo Poeticus (eds. Susan Sontag), 1995, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, pp. 78-79

³ ibid. pg. 111

⁴ Danilo Kiš, Variation on Central European Themes (1986), in: Homo Poeticus (eds. Susan Sontag), 1995, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, pg. 114

⁵ Czeslaw Milosz, The Captive Mind, 1985, Penguin Books, London, pp. 99 -103

⁶ Milan Kundera, The Joke, 1992, faber and faber, London, pp. 31-32

⁷ Danilo Kiš, From the Anatomy Lesson (1978), in: Homo Poeticus (eds. Susan Sontag), 1995, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, pg. 55

⁸ Czeslaw Milosz, The Captive Mind, 1985, Penguin Books, London, pp. 109

⁹ Danilo Kiš, Censorship/Self-Censorship(1985), in: Homo Poeticus (eds. Susan Sontag), 1995, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, pp. 91-92

¹⁰ György Konrád, The Case Worker, translated by Irving Howe, 1998, Noran Books, Budapest, pg. 88

¹¹ Imre Kertész, Die englische Flagge (1991), translated by Kirstin Schwamm, in: Die englische Flagge - Erzählungen, 1999, Rowolth Taschenbuch Verlag, pg. 28

¹² Kazimerz Brandys, Warschauer Tagebuch, translated by Friedrich Giese, 1996, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/Main, pp 134-135

¹³ Milan Kundera, The Joke, 1992, faber and faber, London, pp. 31-32

¹⁴ Danilo Kiš, From the Anatomy Lesson (1978), in: Homo Poeticus (eds. Susan Sontag), 1995, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, pg. 46-47

¹⁵ Danilo Kiš, Homo Poeticus, Regardless (1980), in: Homo Poeticus (eds. Susan Sontag), 1995, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, pg. 75-76

¹⁶ György Dalos, Der Versteckspieler, translated by György Dalos and Elsbeth Zylla, Insel Verlag, Leipzig, pp.128-129, 144

¹⁷ Kazimerz Brandys, Warschauer Tagebuch, translated by Friedrich Giese, 1996, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/Main, pp 122

¹⁸ György Konrád, The Case Worker, translated by Irving Howe, 1998, Noran Books, Budapest, pg. 183

¹⁹ Kazimerz Brandys, Warschauer Tagebuch, translated by Friedrich Giese, 1996, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/Main, pp 67-68

²⁰ Czeslaw Milosz, The Captive Mind, 1985, Penguin Books, London, pp. 136

²¹ Kazimerz Brandys, Warschauer Tagebuch, translated by Friedrich Giese, 1996, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/Main, pp 216-218

²² Kazimerz Brandys, Warschauer Tagebuch, translated by Friedrich Giese, 1996, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/Main, pg. 130

²³ ibid. pp. 63-64

²⁴ Andrzej Szczypiorski, Die schöne Frau Seidenmann, translated by Klaus Staemmler, 1991, Diogenes Verlag, Zürich, pp. 143-146

²⁵ György Dalos, Der Versteckspieler, translated by György Dalos and Elsbeth Zylla, Insel Verlag, Leipzig, pp.172-173

²⁶ Aleksandar Tišma, Der Gebrauch des Menschen, translated by Barbara Antkowiak, 1998, Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, München, pp. 138-139, 154-156

²⁷ Danilo Kiš, Homo Poeticus, Regardless (1980), in: Homo Poeticus (eds. Susan Sontag), 1995, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, pg. 79

²⁸ The battle of Belgrade between the united Hungarian-Serbian armies became for the Hungarians (with the Hungrian name Nandrfehérvár) and the Serbs part of the national myth.

²⁹ Andrzej Szczypiorski, Die schöne Frau Seidenmann, translated by Klaus Staemmler, 1991, Diogenes Verlag, Zürich, pg. 212