Where the poet found ‘respite’
The story of Mihály Babits’s house in Esztergom
MúzeumCafé 10.
Three months before its scheduled opening in May, the renovated Mihály Babits Memorial House in Esztergom has no display cabinets. Nor are there any photographs on its walls. There are some items of furniture, though only one piece was originally in the house. Some others have been moved here with the help of the Petőfi Literary Museum. Needless to say, they used to belong to the poet. Nevertheless, the renovated building still evokes strong feelings. Franciska Tóth of the Balassi Bálint Múzeum which looks after the Babits House also has an unsual title – she is a literary museologist and at the same time a teacher of Hungarian literature. As we pause on the porch and she immediately has something to offer: “The panorama of the house on Elő Hill inspired Mihály Babits to write poems like his Song about Esztergom Basilica.”
Castle Hill, the Basilica and the Danube can be clearly seen from the hill, as can the former Hunagrian countryside over the river, which had become part of another country just a couple of years before Babits arrived in Esztergom. The porch wall has the signatures of Hungarian writers, poets and painters – they were all guests here – Zsigmond Móricz, Milán Füst, Dezső Kosztolányi, Árpád Tóth, Frigyes Karinthy, László Németh, Lőrinc Szabó, Gyula Illyés, Sándor Weöres, Miklós Radnóti, Ödön Márffy, Aurél Kárpáti, Endre Gellért, Gábor Halász, Pál Ignotus and Dezső Keresztury. The list is impressive. The entrance of the house opens to a glass veranda, the scene of boisterous dinners and discussions. It’s also the place where the poet prefered spending time alone. Then comes the bedroom, separated from the study by an arch decorated with plant patterns painted by the former manager of the Savings Bank, Ferenc Einczinger. An icon-like Madonna by Edit Basch is in Babits’s study and its pair, a Madonna with child, is upstairs above the bed of his wife, Sophie Török. “While on holiday in Dömös,” says Franciska Tóth, “the poet and his wife were invited to Esztergom by Aurél Kárpáti of the journal Nyugat . They arrived by boat and first saw the town from the Danube. The former royal seat fascinated Babits. Moreover, the lanscape reminded him of the Szekszárd hills where he was born. He immediately wanted a house here. It was merely a question of money. “However, he fortunately received a large sum from his publisher for the translation of Dante’s Paradise, though it was not enough for a house. Babits gave the fee to invest with lawyer Zoltán Nagy, who himself published poetry in Nyugat. The poetic lawyer drew in the manager of a bank’s stocks department. Being cautious the latter invested the money in the safest shares. Yet, miraculously they doubled in value from one day to the next. After some incredible developments on the stock exchange the large sum became even larger. In the end Babits and his wife were able to buy the small house, consisting of a kitchen and a room on a plot of 700 square metres, for 35 million inflatory crowns.” The project of the ‘carers’ of the Babits house gives an answer to a former newspaper’s question: how can posterity repay an artist’s work? The building recalling the past also includes some modern living space – not for display cabinets but for the creative activity of contemporary artists.