Eastern or Central Europe? [Volume: 7(1988), pp. 253-269]

258
ENDRE BOJTAR
to risk everything, even to be willing to drive everything into annihilation,
than to listen to a single word about some secondary fortune without
nationality and constitution."
This practice of double vision-on the one hand the facts, reality,
that lacks principles, lacks morality; on the other hand the principles
that can only lead to the senseless sacrifice of blood, thus it is best to suppress them within ourselves-this double vision that, through the generations, has become a fundamental trait, renders the public consciousness
mendacious, hypocritical, and precisely in the matter declared to be the
most crucial: the matter of national independence.
Here is just one example, quoted from the Polish literature, to illustrate the extent of the silence. I chose Polish literature because with the
exception of the Russian-due to its traditions-this is the outstanding
literature of the 19th century, and since Polish territories belonged to
three different empires, the spiritual processes at least could be observed
under laboratory conditions. Well, two outstanding writers of the last
third of the century, the realist Boleslaw Prus and the naturalist Wladyslaw
Reymont hardly mention the fundamental question of the era, while the
art nouveau (secessionist) artist of Krakow, Stanislaw Wyspianiski, whose
hands were not tied by censorship, states in every one of his dramas, with
fanatic stubbornness, the necessity of being liberated from the Russians
and the reuniting of Poland, so much so, that after the first performance
of "The Wedding," in 1901, he was justly considered the first new national
bard following the romantics.
Beside double vision-the distorted view of the question of national
independence-Eastern European national development has another
peculiarity that leads to the problem area of social development-which,
of course, is inseparable from the former. This might be called the lack
of national reality. In this respect there is a crucial difference between
the Russians and other eastern European nations. The Russian national
framework did exist: it was never in question. Elsewhere, to use the
beautiful words of Mickiewicz, "the government of souls" ruled. Yet, it
is difficult to govern the souls where the majority of people is illiterate:
in 1910, in Hungary 33%, in the Balkan countries 70 to 80% was the rate
of illiteracy. In comparison, the illiteracy rate in England was 1%. In
the West, national consciousness is given birth by the civic national state,
and is accompanied by a feeling of "I am proud"; in our land, national
consciousness arises from the lack of a civic national state, and is accompanied by a feeling of "I am envious," the logical consequence of
which is self-delusion, the extolling of national character. This was readily
supplied, from the second half of the previous century on, by the romantic
historical novelists such as Jokai, Vazov, Sienkiewicz, Jirasek. This is what
they supplied, instead of description of reality. Characteristically, this
literary trend that carried the description of reality on its flag, this realism