Imagine a politician standing in front of a crowd and instead of chewing on platitudes about national pride and GDP growth, he suddenly blurts out the names of two serious writers.
Here, in a small, cozy Slovak village, we have become accustomed to a certain standard – civil servants only read account statements, maybe even the hunting calendar.
For them, literature is something like an embroidered tablecloth – a useless thing that needs to be dusted from time to time, so that it is not said that we are uncultured barbarians. We are.
When he suddenly wins an election here in the neighborhood Péter Magyar and in the first speech after the elections, among other sentences, a sentence will be heard in which he did not mention the successful Hungarians as just some trophies on the mantelpiece, but as reference points of a world that has depth. I was surprised and pleased when he mentioned Péter Esterházy and Sándor Márai.
It wasn’t bragging about other people’s feathers. It was a signal that he knew and that somewhere in addition to the noise around politics there was also the silence of the library that shaped him. Those two names were a hit with all Slovak non-readers.
I realized that a politician who reads is not a luxury at all, but a basic hygienic requirement.
Not that we haven’t seen other European leaders who are close to literature and culture in general, but we somehow got used to the fact that we, former socialist countries, put up with third-rate politicians who have “more important” duties than perhaps reading books.
If a politician reads, it means that he admits the existence of a conscience other than the party conscience. And that is a provocation in our latitudes.
Marai and Esterházy
Magyar pulled out names that are not just textbook items. He cut directly into the Central European soul.
Sándor Márai was the embodiment of bourgeois integrity at a time when the world around him was crumbling into primitive slogans. He wrote about a world where word and honor had weight, and he watched with disgust the rise of barbarism, which masqueraded as the “will of the people”. When Magyar mentioned him, he was not talking about one “famous Hungarian”, but about an individual’s resistance to power.
For Slovakia, where culture and integrity are considered a suspicious “gentleman’s antics”, Márai’s presence in a political speech is a clear message: “We who refuse to be the masses are still here.”
We suddenly see that such a cultural code can be a weapon against populism. Those who read Márai cannot easily get drunk on a cheap roll.
The Central European reality is, among other things, an old story about the search for decency between two millstones – a cynical power and a resigned public. With this gesture, Magyar made it clear that politics without reflection on literature is just dull governance. And that is the parallel that so unpleasantly disturbed us, the readers, and at the same time aroused our curiosity.
Immediately Péter Esterházy’s name was heard. Péter Magyar seems to have thrown a grenade into the living rooms of uptight nationalists and dry officials. Esterháza’s postmodernist made a kit and “ass” out of history.
For us, who still know what the pages in the book are for, this name is crucial for two reasons: Esterházy in his work Harmonia cælestis and the following Corrected Edition did something that no one could do in our country. He admitted that while he was writing about the nobility of his family, his father was an informer for the secret police.
This parallel with the present is frightening. We live in a region where the past is painted pink, where files are locked in safes and where collaborators become national revivalists.
By mentioning Esterházy, Magyar seems to be saying: “We know about our dirt, we know about our fathers, and we know that the truth is thicker than the party manual.” Esterházy’s sentences twist, he mocks authorities, he quotes classics in absurd contexts and above all – he is free.
The Slovak politician uses language as a blunt instrument to drive nails into the coffin of critical thinking. Esterházy and Magyar, if he really reads it, uses the language like a living organism. It is a contrast between the monologue of power, which tolerates no resistance, and the polyphony of literature, where even the last has a voice.
Mentioning Esterházy in a political speech is like bringing expensive wine to a village dance. It’s a gesture that says: “I reject the black and white version of the world. I reject hatred because I read someone who taught me to smile ironically even at my own tragedy.”
