Paul Banyai, Munels

* Bánya, March 24, 1901 – December 14, 1943. / writer, publicist. ; ; His father was a liquor manufacturer, but B. came into conflict with his family as a young man. In the second half of the twenties, as a functionary of the communist party, he led strikes and demonstrations in many places in Slovakia, and was therefore persecuted. He studied fine arts for a short time in Vienna and Prague. Before the Czech translation of his novel Ballotted Lands (1936), it is said that he published his drawings and studies on modern art in Vienna. From the end of the twenties, several communist-minded newspapers (DAV, Naše doba, Korunk, Tvorba, Az Út, the American Új Előre) published his writings. Several of his articles and reports were published in the Hungarian newspaper of the CSKP, Munkás. In the late thirties, he lived in Prague, where the German occupation overtook him. After his return to Bánya-Biszterce, he was interned in Illava. He later escaped to Bp., where he died of pneumonia. ; – His first book, the short story Felsőgaram(1934), belongs to the category of realist literature, depicting the difficult life and struggles of Slovak workers in a report-like manner. Its characterisation and plot are anemic, serving mainly to emphasise the ideological message, and its language is also flawless. Its structure is characterized by the film-like alternation of individual chapters and the montage technique that interrupts the connections. In 1936, his second novel, Fakó földek, was published by the Humanitas Publishing House in Poznań (probably in its own edition, because we do not know of the operation of such a publisher). The work was translated into Czech by Evžen Klinger in 1938 under the title Šedivá zemì. This is also a Slovak subject, and in addition to Slovak workers, it presents the fate of the “Slovenian Negroes” and the Gypsies, and its goal is realized at a higher literary level than Felsőgarámé. There are no general propositions about capitalism in this work, the writer’s interest is focused on human destinies. In the structure of the work, balladically dark images alternate, its plot is choppy, sometimes naturalistic, and not free from templates and other errors of experimental socialist novel writing. According to the note written for the Czech edition of the novel, the writer also wrote another novel and a drama in Prague, but these are hidden. ; – A new, joint edition of his two novels: Fakó földek, 1966. ; ; Literature: Zoltán Fábry: What are you singing?, K 1935/2. = ÖÍ 4., István Szegedi: B. P.: Felsőgaram, Ny 1935, 339, Rezső Szalatnai: B. P.: Felsőgaram, MF 1934, 170–172, Sándor Csanda: First generation, Po.–Bp. 1968, Zoltán Fónod: Message, Bp. 1993, Po. 2002. ;

Cs. S.