Béla Just

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Béla Just (* 1906 in Budapest ; † July 7, 1954 in Mallorca , Spain ) was a Hungarian writer who wrote novels with a Christian background (including priestly novels ).

Life and meaning

Born in Budapest, Just left his homeland after the communist seizure of power because of his Catholic faith and convictions. In 1946 he was the editor of Hungarian literature at the Universities of Grenoble and Lyon. After 1949 (in that year Hungary adopted a constitution based on the Stalinist model) he asked for asylum in France and lived entirely with his literary work. Until his death he lived in exile in France and most recently on Mallorca. The use of penicillin became necessary due to sepsis caused by stepping on a sea urchin . Just was highly allergic to penicillin and died of anaphylactic shock . He was buried in Palma de Mallorca.

In the 1950s and 1960s Just was widely read, especially Enlightened Toren (about the difficulties of founding a monastery of a reforming order of the Cistercians or Trappists by Alexis Presse ), The Porter of God (about a worker priest ) and Der Mondfischer (description of an unfulfilled passion). Several works are set in France, Allegro barbaro in Hungary, while others have no clear spatial allocation, which was undoubtedly intended by the author. According to the publisher's reports, some of the novels are autobiographical (for example, the protagonist of God’s porter is also an exiled Hungarian).

The German translations from the 1950s are linguistically more brittle than the French original; Unfamiliar German translations such as toasted bread instead of toast or rental cars instead of taxis are annoying here.

Just's works can only be understood against the background of his personal faith, his Christian worldview. His style is reminiscent of François Mauriac (whose novel Ce qui était perdu he translated into Hungarian) but is sometimes ironic. He vehemently castigates hypocrisy and pseudo-Christian double standards. It is assigned to the Renouveau catholique .

Works

  • A modern francia katolikus irodalom (La littérature catholique moderne en France), a Pázmány Péter Irod. Társ. Kiadása, Budapest, (1935)
  • Le Forçat [Mindszenty] accuse [texts imprimé de Joseph Cardinal Mindszenty]. Texts choisis et présentés par Béla Just. Préface du cardinal Saliège. (Paris 1949)
  • Un procès préfabriqué: l'affaire Mindszenty [texts imprimé] (Paris 1949)
  • Les Illuminés. (Paris 1948 Éditions du Seuil, translated into French by Henri Bonnel) German and T. Illuminated gates. (Nuremberg 1950 German, Turin 1954 Italian)
  • Allegro barbaro. German and T. At the gates to hell. (Düsseldorf 1951)
  • Pêcheur de lune. German ud T. The moon fisherman. (Nuremberg 1951)
  • Le Portefaix de Dieu (Tours) dt. Ud T. The porter of God. (Bonn 1953 German)
  • Gortstrasse III. Floor. (Würzburg 1954) (translation based on the Hungarian manuscript by Tibor von Podmaniczky; about a priest accompanying those sentenced to death) (Dutch Antwerp no year)
  • Viktor left without a tie. (Würzburg 1956)
  • Masks. (Recklinghausen 1958 German) (Dutch Antwerp no year)

Reviews

to: The burden of God : “God's burdens are heavy. On whom he burdens them, threatens to break under them. A young priest who fled from his native Hungary before the communists takes on himself the grave misery of suffering and the torment of conscience as a cross. As a porter at a Paris suburban train station, he earns meager bread after he has turned down a benefice as a well-appointed chaplain. This novel is on an equal footing with the works of Bernano , Julien Green and Paul Claudel in modern Christian literature in France. ” (From the blurb of the Bonn book community)

to: Masken : “This is his work: full of emotions and yet free of sentimentality. (...) His realistic depiction of social and moral distress, true to the environment, reveals human abysses without unnecessarily provoking evil. Behind the dark and painful things in life is the knowledge of the meaning of sacrifice, of salvation and faith in God. " (From the blurb of the Paulus Verlag)

to: At the gates of hell : “Based on his own experiences, Béla Just shaped the fate of his people and thus every people who come under communist rule. It is about freedom in the human and religious sphere. (...) (The protagonist) gets caught up in the machinery of the political secret police, is dragged through the prisons and subjected to all degrees of diabolical interrogation techniques, until only a willless ruin remains, as became known from the trials against Cardinal Mindszenty and other clergymen is. In the end there can only be a human tragedy, which culminates in a martyrdom that includes the promise of future victory. (...) Masterful description of the siege of Budapest (...) Literarily valuable, in the language clear and convincing. " (From the blurb of the Bastion-Verlag)

to: Der Mondfischer : "A love story of particular tenderness and passion." (From the blurb of the Glock und Lutz publishing house)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See entry in Magyar Elektronikus Könyvtár or Hungarian Electronic Library . In Hungarian language. Retrieved August 23, 2013.
personal data
SURNAME Just, Béla
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Hungarian writer
DATE OF BIRTH 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Budapest
DATE OF DEATH July 7, 1954
Place of death Mallorca