ALWAYS AT THE WRONG TIME IN THE WRONG PLACE?

Abstract

Loránd Daday (Beszterce, 1893 – Dés, 1954) due to the drastic changes of the 20th century reflected in his works, never seemed to be in the right place at the right time. He never managed to keep up with the changes in the world around him and hence for ideological reasons, his moral and political attitude was always reproached in one way or another. His noms de plume indicates different poetic processes. His first writings were signed under his real name, the novels Zátony [Shoal] (1930) and Csütörtök [Thursday] (1935) were signed under the name Mózes Székely, his short stories in the columns of the journal Korunk under the name Mihály Derzsi beginning with 1936, and after the Second World War, his writings were published in the weekly Utunk under the name Bálint Kovács. His career and his afterlife were also turbulent: he was a war prisoner in the First World War, a political prisoner in the Kingdom of Romania, a school inspector after the reunification of Northern Transylvania with Hungary, the mayor of the town of Dés after the transfer of sovereignty at the end of 1944, then a teacher, to become a politically persecuted person once again. Long after his death, on the centenary of his birth, the inauguration of the memorial plaques by his family on his apartment block was prevented - on the basis of some trumped- up charges. A comprehensive interpretation of his life and work still awaits. The present study attempts to do this by mapping the external contexts of Daday’s works.