His father, Eduard Kiš, had though luck survived the Novi Sad massacre, which killed hundreds of Jews in 1942. The son later describes the massacre as the "start of his conscious life" (Thompson, 2013, 82). The family subsequently managed to relocate to southwest Hungary, but Kiš's father was deported to Auschwitz in 1944 from which he never returned. After the end of the Second World War, Kiš's mother Milica Kiš moved with her two children to the Montenegrin town of Cetinje where Danilo Kiš graduated from high school in 1954. Due to his family heritage, Kiš said of himself that he is an "ethnographic rarity". His background influenced his worldview, which is reflected greatly in his literature.
Kiš spent a major part of his life between Yugoslavia and France. During one such stay in France, Kiš wrote his most important novel, Grobnica za Borisa Davidoviča [A tomb for Boris Davidovich], which brought the writer many problems. The scandal that followed disrupted the Yugoslav literary scene, and essentially marked the fate of Kiš and his creative endeavours. The novel was released in 1976, and the author was immediately accused of plagiarism. Kiš stated, "Let us not be fooled! The controversy around the novel “A Tomb for Boris Davidovich” was primarily political. Who has been behind all this, we can see right now, although I have been aware where it comes from, from the very beginning." (Kiš, 2012, 270).
Kiš found himself in the unpleasant situation of having to defend his artistic and moral integrity, which he did by publishing the polemical book Čas anatomije [The Anatomy Lesson] in 1978. In the book, he responded to attacks over the previous two years. However, it only provoked new controversy: the book’s publication brought him to court, where he stood trial for defamation (more in featured item).
"[...] what is important for me is that I have not sought to persuade, to argue or to convey an ideological message, despite the polemical spark that inspired the creation of this book. Otherwise I would write essays or articles in newspapers. For me it was essential to find, in my domain, fiction, fictional place, my obsessions and hidden polemics with the totalitarian world and thought. I thought, moreover, that it is my moral duty, because in some of my books I wrote of the Nazi terror, to approach, in literary form, the second most important phenomena of our century which represent the Soviet concentration camps." (Kiš, 2012, 207).Kiš was acquitted, but nevertheless, feeling disappointed and misunderstood, he left for voluntary exile to Paris, as a kind of displaced person "in the “ambiguous” sense of the word" (Kiš, Gorki talog iskustva, 161). Kiš left Yugoslavia for the last time in 1979 and from then onwards lived in France, where he taught Serbo-Croatian and worked as an editor for the rest of his life. During that time, he wrote the novels Noć i magla [Night and Fog], Homo poeticus, and Enciklopedija mrtvih [The Encyclopedia of the Death]. In 1986, the French government made him a Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters (1986). In 1988, he was elected as a corresponding member of SANU.
In 1989, nearing the end of his life, Kiš took part in an important television documentary series Goli život [Bare Life]. This consisted of a series of interviews with Eva Nahir and Ženi Lebl, two female Jewish political prisoners who were interned at the Yugoslav "Goli Otok" labour camp. Kiš used the series to raise questions on the camp and made comparisons on different totalitarian systems. In this way, he completes his way of dealing with the topic of the camp, which represents an important field of investigation in his writing. According to Kiš, the camp is a distinct twentieth-century invention. Kiš interpreted and analysed this phenomenon internationally. Towards the end of his life, PEN America (the US branch of the international literary human rights organisation) awarded him the Bruno Schulz Prize in 1989. Danilo Kiš died in Paris in 1989 and was buried in Belgrade at his request.
Kiš's books have been translated into about thirty languages. In the mid-1980s, he was considered for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Milan Kundera acclaimed Kiš as "great and invisible", and Mark Thompson described Danilo Kiš as "the writer who turned the Stalinist terror, the struggle against Nazism, and the Holocaust into great poetry […]" (M. Thompson 2013, xi).
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Adresa:
- Belgrade, Serbia
Gábor Klaniczay (1950-) is a medievalist historian and professor at the Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) and Central European University (CEU). In the 1970s and 1980s, he participated in the movements of intellectual opposition groups, and he was an author and distributor of samizdats.
As the son of Tibor Klaniczay, the distinguished literary historian and member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (HAS), he took an interest in the humanities already has a child. For instance, he wrote a homework assignment on a medieval topic as a primary school student. He studied History and English, and he graduated from ELTE in 1974. After that he worked as an editor of the Journal Világosság. Four years later, he was transferred to the Institute of History of HAS as an assistant research fellow. He has worked in education for decades. He taught the sociology of fashion at the University of Applied Arts between 1978-85 and history at ELTE and CEU. He was also the rector of the Budapest Collegium from 1997 to 2002 and in 2008. He completed a Doctor of Science (DSc) degree in 2005.
Gábor Klaniczay was one of the few young men in the late 1960s in Hungary who had an opportunity to remain in Western Europe for a longer period of time. When his father was visiting professor at the Sorbonne, he spent one year in Paris and then some further months in the French capital thanks to scholarships and friendships. During this period, he discovered Western oppositional culture, which framed this generation’s objection to their parents’ values and the world of consumer society.
Influenced by the student movement, Klaniczay joined the Hungarian cultural opposition. First, he was a curious outsider. Later, he became more than a reader of samizdats and a member of the audience at concerts and lectures: he was one of the active participants in that the oppositional world as a writer and distributor of illegal brochures.
The oppositional attitudes were part of a generational phenomenon, according to him. His first relevant experience was the student movements of 1968. Klaniczay interpreted the demonstrations which took place on 15 March in the 1970s and 1980s as resurrecting this spirit in many ways (by shifting ways in which the Hungarian Revolution of 1848/49 was interpreted). He was in Paris in 1968, but he had to travel home in May to take final exams at school, but he saw demonstrations and barricades and he learned the slogan of the French students: “on a raison de se révolter” (“we have enough reason to revolt).
He recognized similar gatherings at the university as well: the rebellious faculty meeting in 1969, reform-KISZ (Hungarian Young Communist League), and the Studium Generale study groups. He and his fellow members of the growing opposition were impressed by reform-Marxist trends, i.e. ideas which criticized the communist system from the left and which were open to social sensitivity. The position in opposition to the state was a given, natural standpoint for him and his friends and colleagues. This attitude included a rejection of the constraints of the state, which made everyday life difficult through its rules and restrictions. Furthermore, the invasion of Czechoslovakia was a crucial experience for him, because he had to join the army at the time. This repressive military action of the communist countries confirmed his political and cultural opposition to the regime.
Klaniczay regards these years as an active, exciting, and stirring period of his life. He had a vibrant social life, and he collected a lot of information about actual issues and opinions through personal connections, meetings, and events with help of samizdats. As a historian, Klaniczay was interested in marginalized, oppositional communities, for example, the groups of people dubbed heretics. In his first book, he wrote about how the oppositional movements of his age shaped his interests as an academic: “I did research on a topic which has helped me understand my conflicts and problems in the 1970s.” (Klaniczay Gábor: A civilizáció peremén: kultúrtörténeti tanulmányok. Budapest, Magvető, 1990)
Numerous elements of the oppositional culture had an influence on Klaniczay: jazz, rock, “psychedelic” beat, punk, trends of New wave in music life; modern art, the avantgarde, neo-Dadaism, happenings in the art sphere, new leftist movements, guerrilla resistance symbolized by the figure of Che Guevara, and movements for civil rights and emancipation in political life in the East and the West. There were “non-official gurus”, crucial relevant groups, cult sites, and clubs with performances in a diversity of genres. Moreover, he and his friends tried to create an alternative lifestyle and establish a commune after having completed university. They saw similar examples around them, for example the commune of the Orfeo art group. (Orfeo was a reference point for Zsuzsa Hetényi, too.)
All of this was combined with an oppositional/underground consciousness and way of life. They lived in an inner world of their own, on the “islands of freedom”. They tried not to deal with the system, but they had to react when the regime took sanctions against them. He was first persecuted at university, when he supported his undergraduate fellow students who organized a protest against the severity of the laws concerning abortion.
In these years, every act had a political meaning: how somebody looked (long hair, old-fashioned folk or Indian clothes from the flea market), interior design (a burlap curtain, mattress on the floor, brick and board design bookshelves), where they drank, how they travelled (as hitchhikers), etc.
It was clear for them that in scientific and cultural life many things were possible, but in political life, there were many prohibitions and taboos. This view is well summarized in the samizdat book by Adam Michnik. According to Michnik, it was impossible to reform the system through official socialist public spaces. Instead, resistance had to create its own institutes, clubs, seminars, and press, and they could thus live their own cultural life and discuss political issues.
By 1976, more and more political movements had emerged. The first samizdats were published and the borders slowly disappeared between culture events and political acts among the alternative groups. One of the oppositional places was the Library of HAS, which was the “unofficial” workplace of the oppositional philosophers János Kis and György Bence. Samizdats changed hands here. Klaniczay played an active role in the distribution in the Historical Institute of HAS and at ELTE. We find Klaniczay’s name among the subscribers of Chater 77, and he participated in the writing of the intellectuals’ collective Diary (Napló) samizdat. His father’s prestige and his boss, György Ránki, who though a party member, also tolerated intellectual freedom, offered him some protection.
In Klaniczay’s interpretation, the concept of oppositional behaviour meant a cultural practice and political discourse organized in the informal social sphere. He and his colleagues were aware that they were under the surveillance of the secret service, so they had to conspire. The consequence of going underground was having to create and participate in a closed “tribal culture” of the oppositional movement.
In the second part of the 1980s, people had more opportunities to act. Klaniczay took part in the demonstrations and meetings of the democratic opposition. He joined the Social Democratic Party to create its cultural policy strategy, but in 1990 he abandoned politics and worked as a historian and professor. He remains active as a historian and scholar today.-
Adresa:
- Budapest, Hungary
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Adresa:
- Budapest, Hungary
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Adresa:
- Budapest, Hungary
Edgaras Klivis (b. 1974) is a Lithaunian theatrologist. He obtained an MA in art history and criticism from Vytautas Magnus University in 2000, and in 2004 he defended his PhD thesis. He has been working as an associate professor since 2006, and as head of the Department of Theatre Studies in the Faculty of Arts at Vytautas Magnus University since 2015. He is a member of the International Federation for Theatre Research. Klivis is a co-author of three books on the development of theatre in Lithuania, and author of a number of research articles. In his research, he pays much attention to the history of Modris Tenisons’ troupe, about which he has given a number of public lectures. Klivis argues that Tenisons’ troupe was the only one that was really avant-garde. In 2012, he organised and curated the exhibition ‘Nebyli komuna: Kauno pantomima 1966-1972’ (Blind Commune: Kaunas Pantomime in 1966-1972). He still has items from this exhibition in his private papers.
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Adresa:
- Kaunas Muitinės gatvė 7, Lithuania 44280