PREFACE POSTPONED

Perhaps the poet was always new. He only began where the unruly, despicable Executioner's Time had already encroached, and ended where the blindfold was closed over his head. His hand was constantly restrained. First the rough, restless years, then the scheming, false pushers, the vile little cheap Johns, the ever-more populous congregation of the Rise of Janchik. And while the elaborate, cultivated dance was going on, where they were celebrating the colour and flower of contemporary, modern literature among themselves, as if they had now deliberately forgotten the hidden or merely unknown Anonymus, who perhaps deserved the same justly baptised praise!

A crowd gathered in the former coffee-house. And while mainly poems and small prose passages were spoken in slightly whining, distorted microphone voices, some talented actresses seemed to have forgotten not only the manner of the accents, but also the emotional tones of the poems; how and how to say them! "If Latinovits were here now! Please, he knew how to put the gloves on someone!", some people said.

And while the reading evening, which was called a parade, was going on, it seemed as if everyone was sooner or later wrestling with a persistent feeling of longing in their ever eager, restless souls, as to when the Moderns and Innovators would finally come, whom, through forgetfulness or deliberate neglect, had not yet been honoured with a five hundred page volume of their own in the And while the reading evening, which was called a parade, was going on, it seemed as if everyone was sooner or later wrestling with a persistent sense of longing in their ever greedy, restless souls, as to when the Moderns and Innovators would finally come instead of the usual Ady, Radnóti, József, whom the faltering literary politics had not yet honoured with a five hundred page volume of their own, through forgetfulness or deliberate neglect!

The poet nowadays seems to be opportunistic. Either he sings silently to himself the uncertain foundations of his Fate, or he staggers about like a wisecracking peppery boy at prestigious awards and prizes. For the true free-spirit needs within himself to find that stubbornly-caracan spiritual Dac-power which enables him not to betray himself. And it is no longer at all a question of whether his tree will be Heaven or Hell! And so, day and night, every poet awakens thoughts and poses questions! There may come centuries when man will again fall asleep, and trample at his pleasure, but the free-thinking pen-turners will always write, write, even if the surface is nibbled at by industrious little moles, disgusting worms!