MINORITY LIFE STRATEGIES IN GYÖRGY SPIRÓ’S BOOK OF SHORT STORIES ÁLMODTAM NEKED (I HAVE DREAMT FOR YOU)

Abstract

Although György Spiró’s collection of short stories Álmodtam neked (I Have Dreamt for You) belongs to the author’s most popular books (it has been published in three editions so far), the critics are not keen to put it along with the great, determining works of the writer. Nevertheless, it is probably Spiró’s most autobiographical, most confessional piece of work. These short stories, put in a chronological order, could be read as chapters of a contemporary Bildungsroman of a certain kind. While describing the process of becoming an artist, the narrator uses different minority life strategies; this paper attempts to highlight and discuss these strategies. The strategies themselves could be roughly divided into three different types. The first type includes the fluctuation between youthful rebellion and the acceptance of social mimicry, which comes from the narrator’s status, i.e. the fact that he belongs to the second generation of Holocaust survivors as well as the way in which he processes his personal share of post-memory. The second type of minority life strategy would be the narrator’s committed and hard-acquired multilingualism and multiculturalism, which aptly made him realize the minor status of his own Hungarian language and literature within the context of world cultures. Finally, the third type of life strategy feeds upon the narrator’s realization that the existence of a member of the “aristocracy of spirit” is an extremely fragile one, but that it is an extraordinarily rich form of existence and it is a unique privilege.