THE “POETICS” OF NECESSITY

Abstract

Nándor Gion wrote his novel Testvérem, Joáb [My Brother, Job] for the novel writing

competition of the Forum Publishing House in 1968, and was awarded first prize for it. The publication of the novel was preceded by a literary policy debate, as the Board of the Forum Publishing house asked for a rewrite due to references to current political issues, while Gion’s contemporaries protested against the suppression of creative freedom. In the end, Gion left out or rewrote the problematic passages. We know about the changes and compromises he needed to make for the novel to be published only from his statements (although he never mentioned specific examples). The contemporary reception did not compare the manuscript with the published text. The first excerpt from the novel appeared in the January issue of Új Symposion [New Symposion] in 1969. The three-page long text was from the yet uncensored manuscript submitted to the novel competition. The original text and the corrected version in the published novel differ in some passages, but the rewrites which happened due to censorship are obvious only by comparing the manuscript with the published text. The incomplete manuscript of the novel is in the Manuscript Archive of the National Széchényi Library under the Gion Legacy Fond 583/6. The paper compares the manuscript with the published text, maps out and analyses the deletions and rewrites done under duress, and compares the problematic contents justified by censorship.