TRADITION AND MODERNITY IN THE LIFE-WORK OF LÁZÁR ERVIN

Though Lázár Ervin was one of the most famous children book writers, it is interesting that mostly the novels – and not his famous tales – were analyzed by literature critics. Lázár Ervin created a new narrative form in his texts from the 1960’s which contained the elements of the traditional narrative forms, and – in some aspects – he transformed these forms both in structural and ethical points of view. I was interested in which texts could be found the stages of this new writing process, which led the writer from the realistic to the magical realistic literary mood. In the first chapter of my thesis I examine the writer’s early novels, the Illés Ézsaiás-texts and the novels of Csillagmajor. The early novels are about a special man with a special moral coming from a village community; he tries to find his place in the modern urban world, but this medium has a different moral, so he has no chance to assimilate. In the end, this special hero creates his own world, which is closer to fiction than to reality, and in this fictional world (Masoko Köztársaság) his special moral can be preserved. The most acknowledged part of the Lázár life-work is the Csillagmajor, in my essay I construct a magical realistic reading to this novels, and put the texts into the context of the writer’s childhood memories: how these memories can be recalled, how the memories change from realistic into fantastic. In the second chapter I analyze the modern tales of Lázár Ervin. In this part I describe the structural and the moral characteristics of the texts. Lázár Ervin uses the elements of the traditional fairy tales, but sometimes he changes the characters (fairy with 7 heads, the smallest witch), and this act also changes the structure of the tales. The writer uses the moral of the folk tales, but he also puts his own moral into the tales, which is very similar to the Christian moral. He plants the Christian meaning of love into his tales, which is very different from the usual love concept. In my thesis I try to find a unified viewpoint from where both the novels and the tales could be analyzed in the same way, with the same method. This viewpoint has two aspects: the narrative structures and the moral content. First of all I examine how the traditional narrative forms were transformed by the effect of the Hungarian folk tales, and how we can describe the structural characteristics of his modern tales. Although Lázár Ervin wrought conventional narratives, a permanent transformation can be observed in his prose, which leads from the realistic novels of the 60’s first to the magical realism, and later to the modern tales. In this new writing method the writer preserves the traditional narratives of the fairy tales – just to recall the original storytelling situation –, and above that he uses and transforms the ethics of the tales. The Lázár-novel and -tale is a mixture of fiction and realism, ancient and contemporary stories; the specific prototype of the Lázár-story is more than structure and traditional moral: it is about humanity.