Tombstone of László Dobos, writer

Born in Királyhelmec on October 28, 1930. ; After graduating from the Királyhelmec elementary and civic school, he was a student of the Sárospatak teacher training college in 1945–1949. He taught in Királyhelmec in 1950–1951. From 1951 to 1955, he was a student at the Bratislava Pedagogical College, majoring in Hungarian, history, and civic education. From 1955–1960, he was an assistant professor at the Bratislava Pedagogical College. ; In 1956–1958, as secretary of the Hungarian section of the Slovak Writers' Association, he played a decisive role in the establishment of the Literary Review. From 1958–1968, he was the editor-in-chief of the Literary Review. In 1967–1968, he was the head of the Hungarian Plant of the Tatran Publishing House. Between 1968 and 1971, he was the president of the Csemadok. From 1 January 1969 to 28 April 1970, until his replacement, he was a minister without portfolio of the Slovak Socialist Republic. ; from August 1970, he was the director of the Madách Publishing House, from 1972, he was the head of the technical, fine arts and production department, from 1 January 1990, he was its director again. From 1994, he was the managing director of Madách-Posonium Kft.. From 1989, he was the honorary president of the Csemadok. From 1989 to 1991, he was the co-president of the World Federation of Hungarians, from 1992 to 1996, he was its vice-president representing the Carpathian Basin, and from 1996 to 2000, he was the regional president. From 1990 to 1994, he was a member of the National Assembly as a candidate of the Együttélés political movement. ; He was a member of the Hungarian Academy of Arts from 2007. ; He died in Pozsony on July 25, 2014, after a long illness. ; ; He began his career by writing textbooks on literary theory, but by the end of the fifties he had become known as a critic and literary organizer. László Dobos played a very important role in the fact that Hungarian literature in Slovakia grew out of schematism and provincialism during the sixties. He organized the Literary Review and directed it for a decade. He turned it into a high-quality, broad-minded journal. ; In his works of fine prose, he renewed the realist epic with reflexive elements. His first three novels, which form a trilogy, present the history of Hungarians in Slovakia in an ever-expanding space and time. In his novels, the Hungarian man in Slovakia appears vividly, who despite his circumstances tried to remain honest in the often changing history, but only got a “bad story”, became a victim of foreign interests, and was held accountable for the sins of his enemies. ; In his memoir novel The Stars Were Far Away, he presented the ordeal of the Hungarian man in Czechoslovakia who was forced into war in the form of an internal monologue. ; Földönfutók is a presentation of the period of discrimination of the Hungarians in Czechoslovakia after World War II. He unfolds the life stories of the “tolerated and humiliated” from blocks reminiscent of ballads and mosaics of film-like sequences. He elevates the fate of this nationality, also expressed in the title of the novel, into a parable with Eastern European validity. He emphasizes the necessity of confronting the lessons of history by alternating juxtapositions of time planes and motivic editing. It vividly depicts the cruel events of history, the agony of vulnerability and the demoralizing effect, but it also shows the facts from a higher perspective. With its artistic authenticity and problem-solving courage, this novel first drew attention to the fate of Hungarian national minorities. ; The third book of the trilogy, In a Single Shirt, is a synthesis novel that encompasses the entire history of Hungarians in Slovakia. It undertakes to survey the entire Hungarian past and present in space and time. One of its planes shows today's man, who has changed from villager to city dweller, from peasant to intellectual, trying out the model of national life of the small peoples of Central and Eastern Europe, almost like a report, and the other, through his awareness and experiences, deals with the history of Hungarians in Slovakia from 1918 to the 1950s. Thus, the past and present of the Slovak Hungarians, village and city, peasant and intellectual lifestyles confront each other in the world of the novel. Epically, the writer, who appears in the role of medium in the novel, connects myth and report, past and present. He simultaneously utilizes the tools of the traditional epic and modern prose that shifts time planes. ; These novels are behaviorally shaping, self-awareness-raising accounts of the Slovak Hungarians: they lead from the intellectual discussion of an unworthy fate to its denial and the demand for the right to shape history. ; The Snow Blanket is also a book of struggle, but what the trilogy examines in a historical framework appears in this contemporary existential situation. In the drawing of the existential struggle of a lonely teacher, he draws the process of spiritual and moral ascension, the creation of a sense of human dignity. He creates a balance between the soul and the image of society through intellectual analysis. His hero is plunged into grave danger by hopelessness, and he lifts himself out of physical and mental misery and self-destruction by consciously creating an “inner landscape”. ; In his novel Sodrásban, he presents the contradictory situation, naive faith and stumbling of the Hungarian intellectuals in Czechoslovakia in the 1950s in a strongly autobiographical and self-ironic confessional presentation in a rapidly changing history. ; He collected his stories in his volume Engedelmévél: despite their characteristic minority stigmas, his heroes carry universal lessons. By combining understanding and irony, this volume of stories comprehensively and critically assesses the new challenges of the Hungarian intellectuals in Slovakia. ; His selection of studies, critical and journalistic writings (Book of Concerns) is a reflection of his consistent work for the “literariness” of Hungarian literature in Slovakia. His children’s novel The Little Viking was inspired by his grandson born in Norway. The main problem of this fairy tale is the double homeliness and double statelessness of a child born from a mixed marriage. The psychological consequence of the influences received from two opposing directions. ; After 1968, not only did László Dobos miss out on twenty years of political action to safeguard the fate of the Hungarians in Slovakia. The turn for the better in the fate of the Hungarians in Slovakia was also delayed. This sense of lack, this forced loss of time, encouraged László Dobos to choose direct political action again in 1989. He felt that if the Hungarians in Slovakia missed the opportunity for historical action that had opened up, they would lose an opportunity that would never return. Therefore, he re-entered the arena of political action, assuming representation in the Slovak parliament. As co-chairman and regional president of the World Federation of Hungarians, he worked to strengthen the awareness of the spiritual and moral unity of the Hungarians. Of his two professions, politics again came to the fore. He felt that immediate action was needed. That is why he re-entered politics, but as a politician he remained a man of the spirit. He attributes a great role to culture in shaping the fate of the Hungarians in Slovakia. He is convinced that Hungarian cultures beyond the border can play an important role on the path from national dispersion to a unified nation. László Dobos has been an unwavering representative of this aspiration for half a century, both as a writer, editor, politician and public figure. ; From the beginning of the nineties, all his time was taken up by politics and book publishing, and public involvement. He did not appear with a new work of fiction, he published a volume of his journalistic writings (Creative Struggle, The Power of Year Rings). As a fiction writer, he was only present with new editions of his previous works. ; ; Important awards and recognitions: ; ; 1964 – Madách Award; 1968 – Nationality Award of the Czechoslovak Writers' Association; 1985 – Alföld Award; 1988 – Award of the Hungarian Art Foundation; 1990 – Order of the Star with a Gold Wreath of the Republic of Hungary; 1991 – Gábor Bethlen Award; 1994 – Kossuth Award; 2003 – Pribina Cross (the highest Slovak state award); 2003 – Medal of Merit of the President of the Republic;

András Görömbei