Behold, my dear friends: our folk art is alive and well…

SoulShapes. National Salon of Folk Art 2023

As Ferenc Sebő has pointed out about our folk music, we should not deal with folk art out of piety, or even for the sake of preserving traditions. Our shepherds, fishermen and creative peasants of old, who used to carve images or make objects did not preserve tradition, but rather lived it amidst its indissoluble completeness. It was, for a reason and for a purpose, an integral part of their lives. If this reason and purpose disappear, if a community breaks with the mindset of its elders, it will certainly be lost. But if we understand, if we find the shapes of the community soul, the underlying worldview, faith and morality behind folk culture good and beautiful, it will seek and find its place, whichever way the wheel of time may turn.

Traditions should only be approached with respect and curiosity

My master, Gábor Lükő, has been painfully isolated both as a scientist and as a human being, especially since the mid-20th century. The main reason for this was that in a society that tolerated only conformism, he tried with all his might to preserve his bold independence and his unique (and we can now safely say universal) vision. He had learned all of this from his teacher and fatherly friend, Sándor Karácsony. With stubborn devotion he preserved and defended the agenda that he had developed for himself at a very young age, around twenty.
He always sought to see the unity, to look for the human being and the community deep within the heritage of language, music, folk art and cultural history.

When he first accepted my invitation, it was perhaps in 1988, I went to Budapest to meet him. We were on the train at Keleti, and as the train was pulling out of the station, he said, “It’s been a while since I was at home!” Yes, Békés was his home, and he kept talking about György Kohán, Andor Oláh, and Pista Béres, who was still a very young man in his memories. Even if the ten years he spent here felt almost like exile for him, when Sándor Karácsony and the Institute of Social Psychology in Debrecen were among the first to be eliminated by the emerging dictatorship. On the following day the three of us sat down for a coffee at the Reinhardt Confectionery in my hometown – I can’t be grateful enough for having been able to share the company of Rozó Koszta and Gábor Lükő at the age of just 25. They were talking about Ady, and I was mostly just listening. In Rozó’s slightly shaky voice, Ady’s words really burned into my soul: “More bitter is our weeping, / different the griefs that try us. / A thousand times Messiahs /are the Magyar Messiahs.”

But what is it that can be reconsidered in the light of Gábor Lükő’s fundamental idea about Hungarian community art? At one point, for example, he writes: “How wonderful would it be, however, if we learned once and for all that we should approach folk traditions only with respect and curiosity, and embrace them rather than seek to destroy them...”

I do believe that he was right! Ever since the inherent communal nature of human culture has finally faded, art, even the best of it, has necessarily become to some extent a tool of human weakness. A commodity at the mercy of the snobbery of those who consider themselves to be of a higher rank and superior.Instead of being the leaven of life, it legitimises the productive use of ‘free time’ and the slavish imitation of habits believed to be elite.

Elsewhere we can read from him: “In our academic and intellectual life, imperial and royal Bach-hussars are still in charge, and would send all Welsh singers to the stake, instead of giving their place to the Hungarian people in the spirit of compromise.”

Yes, in the rural communities, often deeply despised by those who consider themselves anointed representatives of high art, this process – now slowly coming to an end – has only started in the last 100-150 years. Notwithstanding the social tensions and injustices of the world of that time, we must also realise that this kind of community life is a fundamental human need. Without it, society will fall to pieces, and its members will be struck by loneliness of one kind or another and by all sorts of mental and physical illnesses as a consequence.

I hold in my hand an old battledore, carved by a love-struck lad from Méra for his sweetheart, and I read the lines of Gábor Lükő: “We are proud to refer to our folk poetry and folk art when it comes to it, but we don’t really understand any of it. It is as if the biblical curse had fallen upon us: ‘I will smite the eyes of this people, that they may look and not see; I will shut their ears, that they may hear and not understand’.” Yet here, on this carved battledore, the maker communicated his feelings in a universal visual language known to all members of the community, and since they were shared, the beautifully embroidered kerchief on the table delivered the answer. Everyone was an artist, a singer, a dancer, a poet, an actor, and of course a visual artist, a creator - and not just on any level…

“Let nature be your test and measure!”

It is a legitimate question to ask: what is the value of the works of our folk art in the almost completely globalised world of the 21st century? Certainly much more than we think. An artist, be he a writer, painter or sculptor, who is part of what is known as high culture, creates and writes a work of art so that as many people as possible can see, understand and admire it. These works are performed by musicians and actors, and exhibited in museums. If, for example, the delicate bullwhip-handle of a Doboz shepherd is placed in the hands of someone who, in the eyes of the world, appears to be educated, he will smile and assume that the naive work of an uneducated and heavy-handed master is nothing more than the constant and somewhat clumsy repetition of some ‘ancient form’. Let’s finally realise: this is something completely different. Whereas a poem by János Arany or Attila József can and should be read and recited only in the form in which the author wrote it, a work of folk art or folk poetry has no original form, only its patterns, versions and variations. Yes, in these seemingly simple creations, the imprint of creative infinity is materialised. Here the creator, the performer and the receiver are the same person. That is precisely the point, there is no artist and no audience at the birth of this group of objects. Artistic creation, performance and reception are all realised in the same person.

This is where we find an explanation for the inimitable and priceless value of our folk art heritage even in its simplicity, as well as its present-day role. Creating objects, singing songs, making community occasions more beautiful, more memorable, creating a living community with some kind of power received from above, putting everything in human life in its place, tension, joy, sorrow, disappointment or even grief. It is all there in these objects, the beginning and the end, the up and the down, the highs and the lows, the question is only whether we have the eyes to see and the soul to understand this incredibly precious legacy.

As Attila József’s Ars Poetica put it, “Let nature be your test and measure!” Yes, that is the only possible human alternative. We think about it, we look at this confusing, turbulent, lightless world, we read the poet’s words over and over again, and somehow, with an involuntary instinct, we cling to what we have. We are truly afraid of pain, loss, and death. Then there is this line of poetry and behind it the reality that without loss there is no change, and without change there is no life. According to our folk art, there is a mysterious harmony that links man to the order of creation.“Mankind is not yet grown, I’m saying. / But he aspires, and thus he’s wild. / His parents – thought, and love undying – / may they watch over their lost child.”

And the only way to get close to the soul is through its form, its culture

Let’s stick with Attila József for a moment! Not many people are aware of it, but he had a deep connection with living folk culture. He was barely 25 when he wrote: “We need to get to know the living Hungarian culture that we gaze at in the morgue of museums. How? Where? In the villages! [...] And the only way to get close to the soul is through its form, its culture. Not only do you become familiar with a rich ethnicity and the respective ethnic groups, not only some interesting, ‘exotic’ stuff in itself, but you also become familiar with your own kind, what you are made of – that is how you become Hungarian and human and not a mere natural phenomenon. Old toothless women tell you not only of witches and princes they have never met, but also of what goes on in your souls every day. They’ll say they heard it from this one, and that one from another one, – after all, it has no author, because everyone is sprucing it up, and it will become everyone’s story, including yours. You go into the house, you look at the furniture, the linen, the embroidery, the sewing, the pottery – there is hardly a village without some form of folk art, some curiosity. You inquire about shepherds and their carvings, about the potters – in every village you will find a different ingenious twist of the same spirit. You will find villages that are like ethnographic collections, and villages that are like towns, like slums of towns, of course. They wear rags, they have no songs, they live inhuman lives. They go to work in cities or far away in the countryside. But a slum village is just as interesting, just as important as the more affluent areas. You will find out how many places the family goes to earn its bread. You will find out what they eat, what the ‘ancestral health’ of the villages is like, how high the infant mortality rate is, whether they read, how educated they are, – how the capitalist order of our times has reduced their lives to the level of colonialism. […] But meanwhile, you too will change: you will no longer act like a saviour, you will become more mature, and you will continue to study the challenges of Hungarian society with more responsibility...”

“E füld uljan mint e csukmany…“ [‘Our world is like this hen’s egg’]

The main inspiration for our folk art is the beginning. The point when all existence in the world began, the point where everything is still in its place, according to the order of Creation. According to our incantations, the ancient source of water is the ‘well of the Jordan’. According to the traditional understanding of our people, water, which is now part of the order that makes up the cosmos, is a fundamental first principle, the physical and spiritual source of life. Our ancestors believed that the Earth was round and surrounded by great waters, and that the solid ground was nothing more than the back of one (or four) giant fish swimming in a global ocean of incomprehensible size. The Hungarian Changos of Moldova know that a “fűdingász”, or earthquake, occurs when this fish gets tired, readjusts and shakes itself. While this is what the ancient Greek and later Christian traditions also believed about the Earth, it is certainly remarkable that there are well-documented parallels to this concept in the East too. In Siberian mythology, for example, the Earth is also carried on the back of a large fish. Also, perhaps due to some ancient notion, or maybe the influence of the ‘modern’ world, one of my dear Moldavian informants in Balusest believed that the Earth is like a ‘csukmony’, i.e. a hen’s egg. The elders in Klézse, on the other hand, told me that the Earth is carried by four angels on their shoulders, standing in the waters of a global ocean. Trouble arrives, namely an earthquake, when the weary angels swap the load between them, so that the one who has been carrying the weight on his left shoulder now shifts it to his right. This concept has a clear Christian connotation, but one can’t help but think of the myth of the four ‘Guardians of the Directions’, which is an integral part of Tibetan, Mongolian and Altaic Turkish mythology. The great waters surrounding the Earth, also referred to as a river, sometimes appear specifically as the waters of the Jordan in incantations, healing practices, but also in rites of passage. Crossing it requires special preparations and skills. The motif of crossing the water is often found in our folk songs, but also in other works of folk art. We find it in our ballads, tales and sagas, and it often appears in laments. Its importance is demonstrated by the fact that the motif is a constant feature throughout our fiction, almost regardless of time and place. Yes, the main inspiration for our folk art is the beginning, and the image of a world organised into a cosmos as a result of this beginning.

Behold, my dear friends: our folk art is alive and well…

Looking at the works of this magnificent display of living folk art, I was reminded of the naively pure faith of our ancestors that Saint Stephen, Saint Ladislas, King Matthias or even Rákóczi are still alive. Our Lord, Jesus Christ was also proclaimed to be dead, but He is alive and will live forever, just as our heroic saints cannot have died, because they were sent by the Creator to his people to create a world, a home and a homeland out of chaos, and freedom out of slavery. Sometimes they may appear to fail, die or get sent into exile. But we always know they are alive and will come to our help when the time comes. Let the world think they are dead. We shall wait for them to return with stubborn faith, because faith in justice and freedom cannot die. For behold, my dear friends: our folk art is also alive and well…

Dated in Újkígyós, in 2023, on Epiphany day

Imre Harangozó
ethnographer