For the 73rd anniversary of the birth of Lajos Grendel 

Sometime in the early 1990s, we went on a longer drive with a dear friend of mine. At one point, we ran out of words and we turned on the radio. A monotonous male voice spoke as if grinding a boring lecture into the microphone. 
‘Writing literature is the author’s most personal private business, and the joy of success has nothing to do with the joy that writing itself can provide. A writer or poet, as Imre Páll did, can afford such freedom of abstractness to where few or no one can follow him.’ 
Being people who cultivate good relationships with books, we didn’t know what to do with the task. We looked at each other, and also missed a sentence or two. Who is Imre Páll? What kind of freedom is he talking about? Where can Páll’s poetry lead? 
‘His job is to resurrect Imre Páll, then write the fallen poems of Imre Páll, and as his great poetic predecessor, to create the legend of these poems too so that the journey that ends somewhere can be continued by another writer of another age. Only in this way can the boundaries of finitude be expanded and the time - that mercilessly deals with everything that emerges from the pre-existence obscurity and shows itself in return to renounce perfection as it was in non-existence - be defeated.‘ 
Little silence… 
Basics of Hermeneutics, tradition and its happening, temporality. Created out of secrecy… I tried to decode the position of the literary scholar. And as soon as it began, the nightmare was over. 
A hoarse female voice announced: 
‚You heard Lajos Grendel‘s Hungarian short story from Czechoslovakia...‘ 
We looked at each other as if we were scalded. We saw in each other's eyes the shame that we didn’t get it right, we did not recognize it. That we shouldn't have mimicked what crap this is. Páll Imre whatever... 
‚Well yeah, Lajos... ‘ 
‚The irony... And its loops...‘ 
‚As if it weren’t even literature…‘ 
We actually repeated the spiritual movement of Lajos' short story, only in reverse.

Hungarian short story from Czechoslovakia, vol. 2

In February 2020, a little more than a year after the death of Lajos Grendel, a reading room bearing the writer's name was opened at the headquarters of the Slovak National Museum - Museum of Hungarian Culture in Slovakia, in the Brämer Mansion in Bratislava. Thanks to Ágota Grendel, the widow and the Grendel family, a large part of Lajos Grendel's estate was deposited in the museum. It consists of personal items, awards, books, letters, manuscripts, various documents and photographs. They form the basis of the exhibition. At the same time, the institution also undertook the care of the legacy: Lajos Grendel's manuscripts, letters and diaries – his whole spiritual legacy is ensured by the museum's professional background and network. 
With the opening of the exhibition, an important and long-term process for Hungarian culture in Slovakia began. In addition to preserving, researching and presenting the physical and intellectual legacy and heritage of the Kossuth Prize-winning Hungarian writer in Slovakia, the museum also set out to build a multilingual social science library, process the writer's literary legacy, and build community. The idea of the project comes from the literary historian and editor Zsolt Beke and the literary historian and publicist Szilárd Sánta was involved in the professional work. The establishment of the reading room was granted by the Ministry of Culture of the Slovak Republic. The visual design of the exhibition was developed by Réka Szabó, with the help of Peter Baumann. 
Writing-desk, glasses, mobile phone, prizes, awards, wine glass - in this memorial room you can see Lajos Grendel's personal items and listen to his favorite music. The room houses the writer's works, their translations, a significant part of his home library consisting of hundreds of books, and lots of photographs - of Lajos Grendel in the presence of his family and fellow writers, in the editorial room and outdoors. Visitors are welcomed by a pleasant reading area, the first pieces of social science volumes can be taken to hand, and a scanner that digitizes texts is also available. On the screen, the writer expresses his thoughts on literature, the great events of his life, his hometown, and the issues of the Hungarians in Slovakia, Slovaks and Hungarians. A page where the narrator talks to Aunt Róza from the manuscript of Live Fire in the original Hungarian language is threaded into his typewriter on the desk. 
„ – Mister Narrator! Mister Narrator! – she twitters in a complaining, wailing tone. 
(Not that she’s forgotten the narrator’s proper, genteel name, but she calls him this only for the sake of more poetry.) 
–	Excuse me, Róza néni? 
–	Are you home? 
–	In spirit? 
–	No, dearie. That’s not what I meant. 
–	Then yes. 
Fleet, soaring silence.” 
These are important elements of Lajos Grendel's life, but also important elements of the memories of Hungarians in Slovakia. The reading room presents the visitor with experiences and memories that belong to all those who live in the region from which the writer drew his themes. The intellectual heritage that the writer left for posterity belongs to everyone. 
Unfortunately, the pandemic situation since 2020 did not favor the use of the reading and memorial room, as well as the continuity of the professional work going on in the background aimed at expanding the library and taking care of the legacy. However, by continuing the work and popularizing the oeuvre, we would like to continue to maintain interest, as well as involve the entire Grendel phenomenon in cultural public life, and keep it in continuous discourse both on the Slovak and Hungarian sides, at the level of the young and the older generation as well.

Lajos Grendel Reading Room

If we had to list authors who were able to become a factor outside the context of Hungarian literature in Slovakia, Lajos Grendel would certainly be among the first on such a list. In fact, we could say that three literary milieus felt him as one of his own at the same time: the Hungarian in Slovakia, the Hungarian literature in the broadest sense, and Slovak literature as well. Grendel became a part of these three literary contexts and remained a recognized author all along, when the frames, possibilities, and conditions of these contexts changed. 
	He was born on April 6, 1948 in Léva (Levice), in what was then Czechoslovakia. His hometown is an important location and point of reference for several of his novels and stories, even if it is not mentioned by name in most of the Grendel texts. The small-town milieu, bourgeois traditions, nationality and history basically determined Grendel's writing style, along with important works of Hungarian and world literature. 
	He began his university studies at the Comenius University in Bratislava, majoring in mathematics and physics (1966–1967), then graduated in the Hungarian and English major (1968–1973). In this connection, we can mention the important role of the Hungarian literary tradition in his works, especially the prose of Dezső Kosztolányi, Zsigmond Móricz, Géza Csáth, Viktor Cholnoky, László Cholnoky, Gyula Krúdy, Miklós Mészöly, to refer only to the names most often mentioned in connection with his novels and short stories. The orientation in world literature was equally important for Grendel. His writing was formed in the field of the American (Faulkner, Nabokov), French (Sartre, Camus, Robbe-Grillet, Ionesco), Latin American (Márquez, Borges, Cortázar), Russian (Dostoevsky, Bulgakov) and Central European (the Austrian Musil, the Czech Hašek, Hrabal, Kundera, Havel, Páral, the Polish Gombrowicz, Różewicz, Mrożek) literature, which greatly helped him to seek new, progressive forms. 
	Lajos Grendel's career began in the 1970s, which went down in literary history as one of the most significant and best-documented turning points in Hungarian literature. In particular, his first trilogy, Live Fire (1981), Galeri (1982) and Áttételek (Transmissions) (1985) brought success and a breakthrough. Since the 1980s, literary criticism and literary history have interpreted Grendel's novels as having played a significant role in the postmodern prose turn of Hungarian literature. His three novels stated above were mentioned alongside the prose of Miklós Mészöly, Péter Esterházy, Péter Nádas, László Krasznahorkai, Péter Lengyel, László Garaczi, and the poetry of Dezső Tandori, Imre Oravecz, Lajos Nagy Parti, Endre Kukorelly and Ferenc András Kovács, which significantly contributed to their canonization. It is no coincidence that a significant book on the work of Lajos Grendel was published in the monograph series Tegnap and Ma, edited by Mihály Szegedy-Maszák of Kalligram Kiadó, as early as 1995. In his monograph, Péter Szirák provides a comprehensive overview of his career, and comparing Grendel to Péter Esterházy, he notes that "Grendel, drawing from universal Hungarian literature and creating a fruitful connection with the literature of the then Hungarian prose turn, attempted to renew alternative traditions (including Krúdy and turn-of-the-century novelistics).” 
	Mainly, Live Fire and Galeri brought a poetic change. These two novels show that history cannot be told in a linear fashion, but can only be approached in fragments, like a mosaic, from conflicting points of view. Contradictory opinions, contradictory statements unsettle the reader - this is the famous postmodern skepticism of knowability, which is one of the important drivers of Grendel's novels. As a result, these novels consider the concept of a single reality to be unsustainable and cast doubt on the possibility of a single truth. Or, since they are works of fiction, they are perceived as fictions that do not exclude other perspectives and further fictions.
	Another driving force of Grendel's trilogy is being a minority, the nationality problems and expectations, which necessarily and forcefully confront historical questions. His writings confront not only with the injustices of the development of history, but also with the fate, twists and turns, heroism, compromises, and failures of ordinary people thrown into history. Edited by Tibor Gintli, in the so-called academic literary history, Gábor Schein, who deals with Hungarian literature after 1945, devoted an independent sub-chapter to Lajos Grendel's novel Live Fire, at the beginning of which he points out that "the reconsideration of the theme of minority existence, which is deeply burdened by political ideologies, first necessitated the use of more complicated, renewed narrative structures." The subsequent interpretation ends with the conclusion that "the narrative solutions used in the "historical reckoning" of Live Fire will serve as the basis for the renewal of the Hungarian historical novel at the end of the 20th century.” In other words, Grendel's view of history certainly significantly influenced the pseudo-historical novels appearing in Hungarian literature at the end of the 90s, the works of Zsolt Láng, László Márton, László Darvasi, Alfonz Talamon, János Háy and others. 
	In the period immediately before and after the regime change, Grendel continuously published his inventive books about great life knowledge. The story volumes Bőröndök tartalma (1987) and Az onirizmus tréfái (1993) were perhaps the most successful in this period. His novels Szakítások (1989), Theseus and the black widow (1991), Einstein's bells (1992) and És eljön az Ő országa (1996) also indicated that their author considered a poetic shift necessary too. This happened around the turn of the millennium in the so-called New Hont trilogy – Mass Grave (1999), In Our New Hont (2001), King Matthias in New Hont (2005) - in which he no longer uses the postmodern narrative methods known from the 1980s, instead he uses neorealist, minimalist and grotesque poetic elements. The real change was then brought by his late masterpiece, Four Weeks of Life (2011). This showdown novel can be related to works of Hungarian literature such as Mihály Vörösmarty's Foreword or Sándor Márai's poem Funeral Oration. The disintegrated world, the loss of the meaning of life, assimilation, the emptying of individual destiny, the unprocessability of changes to such an extent that the main character crumbles, appear in it. 
	Grendel Lajos, the fiction writer, Grendel Lajos, the editor, Grendel Lajos, the essayist, Grendel Lajos, the politician, Grendel Lajos, the literary historian. The writer's career cannot obscure the roles that also belong to the understanding of the oeuvre. This certainly includes Lajos Grendel's continuous presence in the field of literary talent management: he was one of the most important persons of the legendary Iródia generation of the 1980s, artists such as Alfonz Talamon, Zoltán Hizsnyai, Gábor Farnbauer, Anikó N. Tóth, and Zoltán Szászi were inspired by him. Grendel also had an impact on young literature later on, we can point out Pál Száz and Zoltán Szalay.
	An extraordinary turning point in Grendel's life was 1989, the Velvet Revolution, in which he became one of the important characters. Like other intellectuals of the region, he was also tempted by the possibility of politicization, which he successfully resisted in the end. In this regard, we can say that the regime change in the context of Hungarian literature in Slovakia was "conducted" by Lajos Grendel. We can think here of his famous speech to the writers' association, and also of the fact that he took over the post of editor-in-chief of the Irodalmi Szemle (Literary Review) after the revolution. He played a significant role in the founding of Kalligram Kiadó (Kalligram Publishing Company) in 1991, and then became the first editor-in-chief of the Kalligram magazine founded in 1992. His name was closely connected with the publisher and the paper, and he became one of its most important faces together with László Szigeti. Grendel also participated in the unprecedented success of Kalligram with his life work, connections and activities, which made it an intellectual workshop of significant importance on a pan-Hungarian and even Central European scale. 
	Starting from the 1980s, Lajos Grendel became a part of Slovak literature and Slovak literary processes too (perhaps it is not an exaggeration to say that he was the only one of the Hungarian fiction writers in Slovakia to achieve this). Not only the success of his first trilogy played a significant role in this, but also the fact that Karol Wlachovský accompanied his career almost from the beginning, and he almost immediately translated his most important volumes into Slovak language. As a result, Lajos Grendel's works have inspired contemporary Slovak prose literature, and we can speak of a significant reception in the Slovak language - reviews, studies, and doctoral dissertations have been written about his works. His first trilogy entitled Odtienené oblomky (Shaded Fragments) was published in 1985, and a discussion about the novel was published in the November 1986 issue of Romboid, one of the most important Slovak literary magazines of the time. As Judit Görözdi points out: “»Lajos Grendel (April 6, 1948, Léva) is a Slovak writer and publicist, an outstanding representative of Hungarian literature in Slovakia« - this is how the modest entry on Lajos Grendel begins on the Slovak Wikipedia. And even though Wikipedia cannot serve as a reference literature, it clearly illustrates how the Slovak community considers the author. Examples can also be given from works of literary history: Marčok's 2006 Slovak literary history or the academic anthology aimed at the reevaluation of contemporary Slovak literature after the regime change (Čítame slovenskú literatúru, 1998) also classify Grendel as a Slovak writer with the comment that he writes in Hungarian...” 
	In addition to Grendel the novelist, we cannot forget Grendel the essayist and literary historian. His volumes of essays entitled Elszigeteltség vagy egyetemesség (1991), Rosszkedvem naplója (1992) és Hazám, Abszurdisztán (1998) became popular at the time of their publication. In his book Prikk és Pantheosz – Valóság, fantasztikum, mágia (1999), he dealt with the short stories of the Cholnoky brothers, among other things, and in A tények mágiájában (The Magic of Facts), 2002 he interpreted the old age prose of Miklós Mészöly. His literary history as a writer, by his book called A modern magyar irodalom története (A modern Hungarian literature history) published in 2010, can be interpreted as the crowning achievement of his career as a literary historian. In the year of the publication of this book, he was already working as a university teacher, as an assistant professor at the Department of Hungarian Language and Literature of the Comenius University in Bratislava. 
	Lajos Grendel died on December 17, 2018 in Bratislava. However, his life's work is not finished. It is constantly being shaped in the translations of his works, in the reception, criticism, and works of literary history. And most of all in its influence on living literature.

Lajos Grendel, the classic of three literatures

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Látványterv és kivitelezés

A Grendel család, Karol Wlachovský, Fórum Kisebbségkutató Intézet – Bibliotheca Hungarica, Szigeti László, Pozsonyi Magyar Intézet, Pátria Rádió, Szlovák Rádió és Televízió