Margit Kaffka

The native form of this personal name is Kaffka Margit. This article uses the Western name order.

Margit Kaffka

Margit Kaffka (10 June 1880 – 1 December 1918) was a Hungarian writer and poet.

Called a "great, great writer" by Endre Ady, she was one of the most important female Hungarian authors, and an important member of the Nyugat generation. Her writing was inspired by József Kiss, Mihály Szabolcska, and the writers' group of the periodical Hét.

Life

Margit Kaffka was born on June 2, 1880 in Nagykároly (today Carei, Romania). Her father was a public prosecutor, but died early on, so the family lived in poverty. With a scholarship, she learned in the Sisters of Mercy teacher's training college in Szatmár; in return, she taught for one year in Miskolc. She studied in Budapest later on, gaining a teacher's diploma in Erzsébet Girl's School. She returned to Miskolc, where she taught literature and economy in a private girl's school, beloved by students. This is the period when her first writings, poems and novels appeared, and she became a full-time contributor to Nyugat, the most important periodical of the era.

She married Brúnó Fröhlich, a forest officer, on February 17, 1905. In 1907 her husband was placed to the Ministry of Agriculture, so Kaffka was able to disconnect from Miskolc, a town she did not like. However, their marriage became stressed after a few years, and ending in a divorce. She was working as a teacher in Budapest between 1910–1915, marrying a second time on August 18, 1914, to the younger brother of Béla Balázs, Ervin Bauer. In the beginning of the First World War, she left her teaching job to live only for literature.

After the war, she became victim to the 1918 flu pandemic along with her young son.

Literature

Her works dealt mostly with two main themes: the fall of the gentry, and the physical and spiritual hardships of the independent women in the start of the 20th century. She often wrote about her personal memories of great national crises, the glaring oppositions of the anachronistic society in Hungary.

Her literary career can be divided into three chapters, from 1901 to the start of Nyugat in 1908, the second ending in the start of the war in 1918, the third marked by the hard years after the war, ending in her death.

1912 marked the release of her first, and most important novel, Színek és Évek (Colours and Years) dealing with the fate of the gentry class and women. Her second most famed work is Hangyaboly (The Ant Heap), collecting her memories from the years at Sisters of Mercy, published in 1917.

Statue of Margit Kaffka at Budapest

Major works

• Versek (1903)
• Levelek a zárdából (diary novel, 1904)
• A gondolkodók és egyéb elbeszélések (narratives, 1906)
• Csendes válságok (narratives, 1909)
• Képzelet-királyfiak (meseregény, 1909)
• Csendes válságok (narratives, 1910)
• Csonka regény és novellák (narratives, 1911)
• Tallózó évek (poems, 1911)
• Utolszor a lyrán (poems, 1912)
• Süppedő talajon (narratives, 1912)
• Színek és évek (Colours and Years) (novel, 1912)
• Mária évei (novel, 1913)
• Szent Ildefonso bálja (narratives, 1914)
• Két nyár (novel, 1916)
• Állomások (novel, 1917)
• Hangyaboly (The Ant Heap) (novel, 1917)
• Kis emberek barátocskáim (collection of early works, 1918)
• Az élet útján (poems, 1918)
• A révnél (narratives, 1918)

Sources

• Czigány, Lóránt. "Women in Revolt: Margit Kaffka." The Oxford History of Hungarian Literature. Oxford: Clarendon, 1984. 333-36.
• Bodnár, György. Kaffka Margit. Budapest: Balassi, 2001.
• Földes, Anna. Kaffka Margit: Pályakép. Budapest: Kossuth, 1987.
• Fülöp, László. Kaffka Margit. Budapest: Gondolat, 1988.
• Horváth, Györgyi. "Női irodalom a magyar századelőn. A női irodalom szerepe Kaffka Margit Színek és évek című regényének kritikai megítélésében". Sárkányfű 4 (1999): 54–66.
• Kádár, Judit. "Feminista nézőpont az irodalomtudományban". Helikon 4 (1994): 407-16.
• Magyar életrajzi lexikon. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1967.
• A magyar irodalom története 1905-1919. Budapest, 1965.
• Nemeskürly, István, "Kaffka Margit." Diák, írj magyar éneket. A magyar irodalom története 1945-ig. Budapest: Gondolat, 1985. 2, 698-701.
• Kárpáti, Béla. Miskolci irodalom, irodalom Miskolcon. Miskolc, 1989.
• Tötösy de Zepetnek, Steven. "Margit Kaffka and Dorothy Richardson: A Comparison." Hungarian Studies 11.1 (1996): 77-95.
• Tötösy de Zepetnek, Steven. "Kaffka Margit prózája. Az irodalmi feminizmus kezdete Magyarországon". Régi és új peregrináció. Magyarok külföldön, külföldiek Magyarországon. Szerk. Imre Békési Imre, Jankovics József, Kósa László, Nyerges Judit. Budapest: International Association for Hungarian Studies, 1993. 2, 1185-94.
• Tötösy de Zepetnek, Steven (斯蒂文·托托西演). 文学研究的合法化: 一种新实用主义 ·整体化和经主 义文学与文化研究方法 (Legitimizing the Study of Literature: A New Pragmatism and the Systemic Approach to Literature and Culture). Trans. Ma Jui-ch'i (马瑞琪翻). Beijing: Peking University Press, 1997. 171-93.
• Tötösy de Zepetnek, Steven. "Women's Literature and Men Writing about Women". Comparative Literature: Theory, Method, Application. By Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998. 174-214.
• Wittmann , Livia K. "Desire in Feminist Narration: Reading Margit Kaffka and Dorothy Richardson." Canadian Review of Comparative Literature / Revue Canadienne de Littérature Comparée 21.3 (1994): 399-415.