József Kiss, poet, was born on 30 November 1843
His father was a poor Jewish village shopkeeper, his mother the daughter of a Lithuanian Jewish cantor teacher who fled to Hungary to escape the pogroms.
He was introduced to literature in Serke, Gömör and Kis-Hont counties, with the help of the Reformed priest Sámuel Balogh Almási. His parents wanted him to become a rabbi, but he escaped to Vienna at the age of 13. Later he returned home, attended a grammar school for a few years, but due to lack of funds he gave up and became a wandering teacher. In 1867, when the Hungarian Parliament passed the emancipation of the Jews, he moved to Pest, in the hope to have his poems published.
From 1890, he was the founding editor of the journal “A Hét” (The Week), one of the forerunners of the periodical “Nyugat” (The West). Among other things, it was thanks to this journal that the history of modern Hungarian literature began. He was elected a member of the Petőfi Society and later of the Kisfaludy Society.
At the beginning of his career, he wrote ballads depicting the life of the village Jews. Later, the city and the modern man became his main themes. The tone of his poems ranged from the solemn to the tragic. Several of his works have been filmed: a film version of his ballad Simon Judith was shown in 1916, and his poem Jehovah was filmed in 1918.
He wrote poems for all Jewish holidays. These poems were first published in 1888 in a volume entitled Ünnepnapok (Holidays), by Révai Brothers Press.
This volume contains his poem Prayer (Ima), with which the poet greets Pesach. Here it is, unfortunately only in Hungarian.
| Ima A páska-ünnepre |
| Rabszolganépet vittél a pusztába, Nyakas, hitetlen, léha tömeget, S nevelted őket győzelmes csatákra, Hogy megvehessék igért földedet. Elhullott mind, ki homlokán viselte És lelkében a rabság bélyegét, De támadt új sarj, a mely megismerve, Híredet egy világra vitte szét. |
| Múló dicsőség, nyári éjnek álma Volt tűzhelyünk a Jordán mentiben Nemzeti létünk napjai számlálva, Trón s hatalom odalett — de mi nem. Az omladékok felcsapó lángjából, Mely nyaldosá szentélyed ó falát: Egyet menténk meg a nagy pusztulásból: Téged, uram! javaink legjavát. |
| S mikor a vihar szétszórt a világra És lettünk a vadnál védtelenebb — És a hontalanság keserű átka Bölcsőtől sírig ránk nehezedett: Mikor rettegés volt az űzött álma Véres, villámos, hosszú éjszakán: Akkor tűntél fel teljes glóriádba’, Meg akkor ismerénk csak igazán. |
| Hogy nagyságod nem oltárkövön épül, S nem templomok márványán az erőd, Ó, hogy te nagy vagy minden jelkép nélkül S eltörpül tér, idő színed előtt. Hogy mit népednek szántál örökségül, Nem elmúló, veszendő földi kincs, Nem láng, mely elhuny, nem jog, mely elévül, De hűséged, melynek határa nincs. |
| Leborulok ím előtted a porba, Fönségnek istene! te hű vezér! Akinek nagyságán se folt, se csorba, S halandó mérték hozzád fel nem ér. Vezess, vezérelj tovább is bennünket A lét harczában, a mely végzetünk Míg szemeink bízva terajtad csüggnek, Egy világ üldhet – el nem veszhetünk! |
József Kiss first published his main work, Legends about my Grandfather, in 1911, and later added new parts to it. There were still some chapters planned, but not written or finished. Its only complete edition was published privately by the poet’s sons in 1926, in 500 copies. Only one library copy of the incomplete edition of 1911 and two copies of the complete edition of 1926 are known to exist in the Hungarian National Public Catalogue (MOKKA).
An interesting detail of the private edition is that it was made possible by contributions also from prominent citizens of Győr who loved culture. Several of them fought for their country in World War I, and many of them later died as victims of the Holocaust. A few names from the list of Győr donors: Dr. Miklós Pfeifer, Kálmán Áldor, Lipót Eisenhartz, Dr. Pál Anhalzer, Dr. Miksa Dukesz, Dr. Vilmos Nobel, Dr. Pál Dezső, Béla Radó, Mihály Fried, Dr. Zoltán Bánki, Jenő László.
The poet was succeeded in his literary career by his son Jenő Sándor Kiss (1885-1944), writer and journalist. He was the editor of the private edition mentioned and wrote a magnificent foreword to the volume. A shocking detail about him: Jenő Sándor Kiss’s daughter Éva, who lived in Caracas, once said that her father was a proud man; when on 16 October 1944 police took Jews away from protected houses (in Budapest – ed.) and he was told to stay because the relevant decree did not apply to people over 60, her father pulled out and said: ‘I am only fifty-nine years old’. They never heard from him again.
In 1913, József Kiss was nationally celebrated on the occasion of his seventieth birthday. The jubilee celebration was organised by the Petőfi Society in the Great Hall of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. The celebrations were attended not only by a large number of Jewish representatives, but also by liberal-minded Christians. Mezőcsát, his birthplace, gave the poet the title of honorary citizen. Endre Ady (a highly recognised poet of the early 20th century – ed.) wrote in Nyugat that the life of the 70-year-old poet was prophetic, even messianic. “In him was expressed and foreshadowed the significant, prophetic and fateful role that fate later assigned to Hungarian Jewry in this backward little country. With his paper, A Hét, he nurtured new writers and new readers. Proud and revolutionary, we fly a flag in our old master’s honour.”
The poet-prince died on 31 December 1921; his resting place is the Budapest Kozma Street cemetery.
His memory was erased by banning his works and shredding his books during the Holocaust. On 15 June 1944, Mihály Kolosváry-Borcsa, State Secretary, who was executed as a war criminal in 1946, had delivered a speech dressed in a decorative costume of former Hungarian aristocrats in the First Hungarian Cardboard Factory in Budafok, over nearly 500,000 volumes:
“This festive act, which we are witnessing here, marks the end of an unhealthy process that has been going on for more than half a century: the domination of Jewish mentality over the Hungarian spirit. This process began in Hungarian literature with József Kiss, who made the first attempt to penetrate Hungarian literature in the late 1860s, but this conquest has always been far removed from the Hungarian spirit and has always remained alien. …
I took on the role of the book-burner, so often condemned and described as barbaric by the liberals, because this literature must be torn out of Hungarian intellectual life. The first step is to smash the books carried here and simply destroy some 500 000 Jewish books. In this way … we will also fulfil a serious national economic task, … [these books] will again become raw material, paper, the raw material of Hungarian intellectual life.”
Kolosváry-Borcsa stressed that the work of cleansing was far from over, since the bookshelves of every Hungarian home must be cleansed of poisonous literature, and then he read a short excerpt from the “race-conscious” Legends of my Grandfather by József Kiss, and threw the volume into the heavy crushing rollers, on which the workers shovelled the other “Jewish worms”.
Today, only a few public squares, streets and statues preserve his memory, and his poetry is awaiting to be rediscovered.
Compiled by András Krausz
Sources:
All the poems of József Kiss, Singer and Wolfner Budapest, 1920
Arcanum: Hungarian literature in the last third of the 19th century – József Kiss
Országos Széchenyi Könyvtár: József Kiss
Új Hét: József Kiss died a century ago
zsido.com: 100 years after the death of József Kiss, the Jewish poet, by Viktor Cseh