'In the beginning was the garden': Anna Lesznai and Hungarian modernism, 1906--1919.

摘要

Anna Lesznai (1885-1966) grew up in the village of Kortvelyes in northern Hungary (present day Slovakia). Taking her artistic pseudonym from the neighbouring town of her childhood village, Lesznai symbolized the importance of the manor house and garden of her childhood to her overall aesthetic and philosophical outlook. It was in the garden that she saw a concrete model of transformation capable of destabilizing the deeply entrenched social, political and cultural 'backwardness' of her contemporary milieu and counteracting the tragic alienation plaguing the modern individual. Her quest for a more 'harmonious' existence led her towards a multi-disciplinary aesthetic and intellectual output, which included poetry, himzes (traditional Hungarian embroidery), book cover design, illustration, the mese (folk/fairytale), scholarship and autobiography, as she forged critical networks of affiliation with prominent artists and intellectuals across disciplines (Endre Ady, Oszkar Jaszi, Gyorgy Lukacs, Bela Balazs, Robert Bereny). Between 1906 and 1919, Lesznai played a crucial role in the struggle for social, political and cultural regeneration of Hungary alongside her peers. As such, her work betrays some of the dominant conceptual pre- occupations of her generation and perfectly captures the particular mood of restlessness and frustration running through their work, as they constantly stumbled against the material and metaphysical obstacles of their present.