Megjegyzések Szerdahelyi István A neoavantgardista stílusdiktatúra esélyei című írásának utóéletéhez
Remarks on the Afterlife of István Szerdahelyi’s article: “The Chances of a Neo-Avant-Garde Dictatorship of Style”

Summary/Abstract: István Szerdahelyi was a philosopher of aesthetics, editor, and one of the most prominent figures of literary politics in the Kádár era. This study analyses articles on literary politics published by Szerdahelyi in the eighties. These writings attacked from a conservative perspective the increasingly popular postmodern trends of the time, primarily the writer Péter Esterházy, and the historians of literature Mihály Szegedy-Maszák and Ernő Kulcsár Szabó. After the end of socialism, Szerdahelyi lost his high positions and joined the Nagy Lajos Társaság, a society of left-leaning literary scholars sympathetic to the preceding system of János Kádár. In this forum he gave voice to his opinion that his career did not fall victim to the change of political systems, but to the “Esterházy mania” and the postmodern “maffia of critics” worshiping Esterházy. This story unfolds from Szerdahelyi’s writings on literary politics and from a biographical interview with Szerdahelyi conducted by Erika Lajta, and it is an interesting, even if bizarre, part of the reception of postmodern trends in Hungary.

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