By
Jay Fox
Brooklyn,
NY, USA
There are periods in history when
the ground beneath the feet of a nation suddenly shifts. The French Revolution,
the era following World War I, and the 1960s are all cogent examples of how
this seismic restructuring can disrupt the status quo and create a rift
between a stupefied generation in the process of inheriting the world of their
parents and a radical youth set on tearing that world apart.
This is not a phenomenon that is
unique to the modern, postmodern or post-factual era. One of the most salient
instances of such a cultural upending came during the time of Jesus. This is
clear in one of the most famous passages from the New Testament. In the Gospel
of Matthew, Christ says that he does not bring peace, but, rather, a sword.
While there is some debate about the meaning here, the controversy seems like
an issue of the theologian kicking up dust to complain she cannot see. Jesus is
not speaking of a real sword to vanquish an enemy; rather, he is hoping to use
the sword to sever the connections between generations. After all, the
following verse reads, “For I have come to turn 'A man against his father, a
daughter against her mother, a daughter in law against her mother in law—a
man's enemies will be the members of his own household'” (Matthew 10:35-36).
Jesus came to disrupt a world that was founded upon a tradition of heredity.
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| Jay Fox |
The Bible aside, there is no
shortage of literary works that focus on this rupture. Much of it focuses on
the relationship between the forward-looking child and the traditionalist
parent with the former cast as protagonist and the latter as antagonist. Love
stories during these best and worst of times are also popular. Magda Szabó,
however, focuses upon a very different familial relationship that abandons the
epic in favor of a more nuanced reading of how the aforementioned sword can
affect the nuclear family in her novel Iza's Ballad, which was
originally published in Hungary in 1963. Following the success of the
translation of Szabó's later novel The Door into English in 2015, Iza's
Ballad was translated by George Szirtes and published for the first time in
the United States in November 2016.
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| Iza's Ballad |
Set in Hungary in 1960, half of the
story takes place in Budapest, while the other half of the book is based in a
provincial town. There are also numerous trips down each character's memory
lane—though such proverbial meanderings sometimes prove difficult because the
younger generation's world seems to have been superimposed on top of the
landscape that the older generation had come to know. These reminiscences
stretch from the pastoral days of the fin de siècle to the end of World
War II. While these remembrances initially seem to only exist to flesh out the
characters of the book and to give readers a better understanding of their
motivations, it later becomes apparent that these histories serve another
purpose: They allow Szabó the opportunity to make critiques of the Soviet world
in which she inhabits without openly denouncing it.
However, such criticism is not in
favor of American-style capitalism; it is, rather, a more universal longing for
a more pastoral existence and a lament for the world that must be destroyed in
order for progress to triumph. The younger generation wants to embrace the
urban and the process of rapid industrialization and modernization, which
requires they cut ties with their rural past. However, there is substance and
authenticity in the rural past. This is something that the older generation
recognizes. To fully abandon it, Szabó suggests, demands a type of person
devoid of warmth or joy or humanity. One winds up alienated and hollow.
Iza's Ballad focuses on
both those who embrace the new and urban and those who remain attached to the
past, like ghosts. Though the primary focus is on the relationship between a
mother, Ettie, and her daughter, Iza, that gets cultivated in the aftermath of
the death of Vince—the husband of the former and father of the latter—once
Ettie moves into Iza's modern apartment in Budapest, the strongest moments of
the book examine the way in which Ettie recognizes that she is something of a
living relic, someone who has no real purpose and feels far too estranged from
the modern world to ever fully belong to it. Once she is in Budapest with her
Iza, she finds herself not only an inconvenience to her daughter, but almost
constantly in a state of suffocating boredom. Iza, meanwhile, feels overwhelmed
as she tries to give Ettie simple tasks to do so that her mother may feel
important, but even the most mundane chore somehow proves too difficult for the
old woman.
The character of Ettie is far more
than the familiar archetype of the bumpkin who can't make it in the city or the
aging widow reminiscing about bucolic days gone by. Iza is far more than the
familiar archetype of the cold, rational force of progress. This becomes all
the more obvious as the book progresses and the history of the family comes to
light. The novel also becomes more captivating and unique as the chasm
separating Ettie and Iza expands. By not focusing on the epic struggles against
fascism or pandering to a vision of bureaucratic benevolence favored by the
Soviets, the novel is allowed to speak to the more universal and existential
drama that arises when two people who love one another suddenly find themselves
left with nothing in common.
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Jay Fox is the author of The Walls and a regular contributor to Stay Thirsty Magazine.
