From Marginalia to Bookends: Industrialization, Capitalism, and Advertising in Hungary’s Modern Literary Journal, Nyugat

Abstract

This study focuses on Nyugat [West], a literary journal that came to symbolize the best of modern literature in Hungary. Generally published bimonthly between 1908 and 1941, Nyugat contained both the latest works by twentieth-century literary greats as well as the essays, critiques, debates, artwork, and music originating from Hungary’s varied intellectual life. Given the staggering wealth of texts that appeared in Nyugat throughout its nearly four-decade career, my analysis will mainly concentrate upon the marginalia (advertisements, notifications, bulletins, eulogies, etc.) that were published in the journal’s early period between 1908 and 1914 before concluding with a brief foray into 1925. I contend that examining the presence of texts such as these is a possible method for mapping the links between a periodical’s editors and its editorship. In this case, Nyugat’s editorship can be extended to include the mainly Jewish factory owners who were members of GyOSz, an industrial lobby organization that strove to modernize Hungarian industry between 1902 and 1948. Tracing the relationship between Nyugat and GyOSz via the network of means that connected the two organizations allows for a new perspective upon how a periodical formation interacts with and adjusts to a non-literary influence.