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The Aesthetics of György Lukács
By Béla Királyfalvi PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 1975 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-07205-0
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
The active writing career of György Lukács (18851971) spans the first seven decades of the twentieth century. An unusually prolific writer (his published works total nearly forty volumes), at the time of his death he was still engaged in writing a "truly definitive" philosophical work on Marxist ontology. He was eighty-six. The changes in convictions, the revisions and rejections of earlier works, and the frequent self-criticisms that punctuate his long career are attributed by him to the necessary ideological development of a non-static thinker guided by the dialectical method and the "objective march of history." Inseparable from his striving for ideological maturity was his objective to interpret Marx correctly and to show that Marxism is a unified and consistent doctrine as well as an effective and viable method in the field of aesthetic theory. Lukács does not claim to have fully understood Marx until 1931 and his definitive work in aesthetics was not completed until 1963. The theoretical works written during these thirty years (lived in difficult political circumstances) show a remarkable consistency. After the reorganizations of concepts and needed clarifications and refinements, the main ideas finally emerge logically solid and clear.
Influenced by the example of Lenin, Lukács never was an ivory-tower theorist; on the contrary, he always sought thorough involvement in the crucial events of his times. His political life was colorful, packed with accomplishments and failures as well as personal crises resulting in important moral and tactical decisions. Each of these had significant effects upon the formulation of his theories. In light of these factors, it is the purpose of this introduction to give a brief biographical sketch of Lukács' life, focusing on the most important influences, associations, and political and creative actions. My purpose is not so much to help the reader know Lukács the man — there are critical and expository biographies available for that — but to outline the philosophical environment from which Lukács emerges and to begin the establishment of a frame of reference for the reader not familiar with him. For the same reason, the second part of the introduction, dealing with the significance of Lukács' works in aesthetics, is not a final evaluation, but an orientation and preview.
Biographical Sketch
Lukács was born on April 13, 1885, in Budapest into a wealthy Jewish capitalist family. His father apparently enjoyed a very high social status, but young Lukács was unable to enjoy the material and social benefits of upper-class life. In his writings he frequently mentions his early dissatisfaction with upper-class life style, and says that even as a child he "felt strong urges of opposition toward the whole of official Hungary." He had an intense dislike for the exclusive high school he attended, where the atmosphere was reactionary and unfavorable to learning. The literature that first influenced him was mostly extracurricular, including the poetry of Shelley, Keats, and Baudelaire, and the dramas of Ibsen, Hebbel, and Hauptmann. He read the Communist Manifesto rather superficially, but it was enough to introduce him to Marx. Aspiring to become a creative writer, he wrote some poetry and several critical essays (viewed disapprovingly by his teachers) in imitation of the impressionistic writings of Alfred Kerr.
Lukács' association with the Thália Theatre in 1905 brought an important turning point in his life. The Thália was formed as a result of the influence of Antoine's Théâtre Libre in Paris, and in one respect it had similar objectives: to give adequate expression to the dramas of Ibsen, Strindberg, Gorky, and others. But the Thália was also a theatre for the people; playing at union halls it brought theatre to the workers until the authorities in an ironic declaration branded the enterprise a fire hazard. For Lukács this short experience was a time of learning. Functioning as assistant director and dramaturg, he learned the relationship between drama and stage. But, more importantly, it was here that he discovered that he had no talent for creative work in literature. This discovery, however, was coupled with a newly aroused, fervent interest in criticism. Consequently, he began a period of serious philosophical study, because he "soon realized that without scientific (sociohistorical) and philosophical bases no credible criticism can exist."
During the ensuing five years Kant's philosophy influenced him most, although many of the Kantian ideas did not come to him unfiltered. Georg Simmel's sociological neo-Kantianism attracted him; in a distorted way, it took him closer to Marx. Even Marx, whom Lukács now studied relatively thoroughly for the first time, was seen by him "through the glasses of Simmel." Wilhelm Dilthey and Max Weber, whose sociological approach to literature was vaguely related to Marx, also influenced him at this time. Lukács ' works written during this period reflect this diversity of influences. The Soul and the Forms (1910), a work in dramatic theory that gives the first sign of his serious inclination toward philosophy, shows the influence of Simmel and Kant, while The Metaphysics of Tragedy, written in 1911 after he read Hegel's Phenomenology of the Mind, includes a strong flavor of Hegel. A more important influential factor of this period was the poetry of Béla Balázs and Endre Ady. His acquaintance with Ady's poetry gave his anti-capitalistic feelings a lasting spiritual core, implanting in him a revolutionary bent that only Marx could match much later. Not even Hegel, whose dialectic later brought Lukács a long way from Kant toward Marx, could match it. After all, as Lukács liked to point out, one of the basic tenets of Hegel's philosophy is "Versöhnung mit der Wirklichkeit." Ady would not compromise. His poetry is an expression of the stubborn, painfully logical persistence of a human being. His questions come from the depth of human conscience; there can be no compromise in the answers.
The second decade of the twentieth century, up to 1918, when Lukács joined the Communist Party, was a period of intense "inner conflicts of contradictory world views" for him. Through his writings in these years he attempted a scientific understanding of the main lines of social development as well as the philosophical problems of literature. His two-volume work, The History of the Development of Modern Drama (1911), is such an attempt, and The Theory of the Novel, written in 1914-1915, shows the rejection of the neo-Kantian subjective idealism in favor of Hegel's objective idealism and, in particular, the influence of the Phenomenology of the Mind. Lukács wrote essays for two Hungarian periodicals, West and Twentieth Century, a collection of which were published as Esztétikai Kultúra in 1913. Despite his association with the two leading Hungarian literary journals, he felt an outsider among Hungarian intellectuals and artists, with the exception of his affinity for Ady and his friendship with Balázs. The feeling of ostracism, coupled with his "romantic revolutionary" attitude, colored most of his work during these years. He later considered all of his pre-World War I literary criticism defensive, a protest against the distorting and destructive effects of the life style into which he was born and from which he felt alienated. This is the source of Lukács' affinity at this time with Ibsen and Thomas Mann, who were engaged in similar rebellion against their own bourgeois environments.
Between 1918 and 1930 Lukács was more actively involved in politics than in any other period of his life. In 1918-1919, after reading some of Rosa Luxemburg's writings and Lenin's State and Revolution, he wrote an important work in political theory, Tactics and Ethics, and joined the Hungarian Communist Party. He now knew where he belonged, finding his friends among the communists, whom he judged most capable of carrying through a true cultural revolution. During the existence of the Hungarian Soviet Republic, which after a few months of rather remarkable independent reign was finally crushed in August 1919, Lukács served in the government as Minister of Education and Culture. His many activities in this post have been described by one of his biographers as extremely naive, and Lukács himself admitted that several of his government's policies (not excluding his own) were erroneous, mainly because the leaders were ideologically unprepared and did not understand the Marxist-Leninist method. Although the reign of brutal terror that followed the fall of the Hungarian Soviet Republic was particularly vicious toward Jews and communists, Lukács stayed in Hungary for several weeks to help organize illegal underground work, going in September to Vienna, where he became chief editor (19201921) of the leftist publication, Kommunismus. Vienna at this time was a hub of exiled but active communist leaders from various European countries. Lukács was one of the most energetic men among them, writing his controversial book, Geschichte und Klassenbewusstsein (1923), and being involved in a number of debates over tactical and theoretical issues. Geschichte und Klassenbewusstsein, by Lukács' own admission, was an expression of "messianic sectarianism," an idealistic doctrine asserting the imminence of socialism as a result of a gradual but inevitable historical change from capitalism. His later works, however, are enriched by conclusions derived from his practical experiences during the events of 1919, a deeper understanding of Marx, and a newly gained familiarity with some of Lenin's writings. By the end of the 1920's his Marxism was stronger than his idealism. The "Blum theses" (1929), labeled after Lukács' pseudonym at the time, reflected much more political realism and maturity, stating in essence that "the Party cannot have two strategies, republic when in legality, proletarian dictatorship in illegality." The controversy over this work ended Lukács' political career, but he never ceased to consider it an important step in the development of his ability to derive theory "from the correct observation of direct reality."
In 1930 Lukács went to Moscow, where he studied at the Marx-Engels Institute and began a period of working partnership with Mikhail Lifshitz. The two agreed that there was a need for a unified Marxist aesthetic as an organic part of the Marxist system. In Moscow Lukács studied the newly published philosophical works of Lenin and the young Marx, among them Marx's Economic-Philosophical Manuscripts in which, in addition to a complete critique of Hegel, Marx clarified such questions as man's alienation in capitalism and the stages of communism resulting in humanism. Lukács began a massive reformulation of his Marxist philosophical foundations, rejecting, among other works, his Geschichte und Klassenbewusstsein, or, at least, admitting its methodological flaws. In 1931 he went to Berlin, but after Hitler's coming to power he returned to Moscow and decided to change the focus of his work from political theory to literary theory and criticism. He started the building of "the theoretical foundations of socialist realism" in constant but disguised opposition to Stalin's cultural policies.
The decade of the 1930's in the Soviet Union was a difficult one for most intellectuals. Lukács recognized that literary activity during this time required some tactical adjustments because of the dangerous political climate due to the Stalinist purges. Commenting on this in 1967 he wrote: "I believe that I wrote nothing during this period without inserting a few Stalin-quotes. Of course, today's unprejudiced reader perceives what the censor then did not notice, that these quotes have very little to do with the real, essential contents of these articles." As a result of the adjustments, Lukács escaped the purges, though he was many times in the center of controversy. By 1940, however, when the magazine he worked for was officially closed, he had been stopped from publishing in the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, prior to this date he wrote or published several significant essays on the essence of realism. The Historical Novel (written in 1936-1937) stands out as the major achievement of the period.
In 1945, after twenty-six years of political exile, Lukács finally returned to Hungary to enjoy three years of free intellectual activity. He held an important position in the governing body of the Hungarian Academy and was appointed professor of aesthetics at the University of Budapest. He delivered many lectures on cultural-political subjects, some of them popularized versions of his more fully developed theories. A major work in philosophy, The Destruction of Reason, was written during these years, though its publication was delayed until 1953. He once again flirted with political activity, but in 1948 an overt attack upon his views by the party's chief cultural spokesman, József Révai, prepared the way for his complete withdrawal. The "self-criticism" that followed the Révai debate was purely a matter of formality, but the decision that he would "strive to serve the cause of communism exclusively as a theorist/' speaking only for himself, was made by him in earnest and with some inner satisfaction. Now he had time to begin a systematic composition of his aesthetic views.
Lukács ' more or less voluntary withdrawal from active public life remained in effect from 1948 to 1956, during which time he started work on The Peculiarity of Aesthetics and published Specialty, as a Category of Aesthetics. The events of 1956, however, brought him back into political activity once more, first by expressing his opposition to the Stalinist Rákosi regime, then by participating in the ephemeral revolutionary government of Imre Nagy. After the revolt had been crushed, Lukács was deported to Romania. He returned to Hungary in April 1957, only to be expelled from the Communist Party. Party intellectuals continued to attack him sporadically until 1967, when he was readmitted to membership in the party, to enjoy grace until his death in 1971. Evidence indicates that no work by Lukács was published in Hungary during 1957-1967, but there was a flood of publications in 1969 and 1970.
It was during the years following his expulsion from the party that Lukács completed and published his major two-volume work in art theory, The Peculiarity of Aesthetics (1963)." Having done this, he put aside further work in aesthetics and concentrated on working out ontological problems in order to create the Marxist foundation for his proposed work in ethics. About this he wrote in 1969: "However paradoxical it may sound today, well past the age of eighty, the writing of my truly definitive works is still ahead of me." Death, two years later, prevented the completion of these works, but an essay published in 1969, "The Ontological Bases of Human Thinking," gives at least a sketchy picture of the proposed ontology. True to the essence of a materialist and dialectic thinker, Lukács carried on a re-examination of theories throughout his life, bringing to them the riches of new discoveries from practical reality. At the end of his life he was convinced that after the failure of two opposing ideologies — the Stalinist dogma and the American way of life, both of which esteemed themselves as final solutions — Marxism, which had been considered obsolete for decades in the bourgeois world and which "Stalin's teachings declared official while in reality withdrew from use," had once again become timely and relevant.
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Excerpted from The Aesthetics of György Lukács by Béla Királyfalvi. Copyright © 1975 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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