NN - Georg Lucács.pdf

7/28/2019 NN - Georg Luccs.pdf

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Georg (Gyrgy) Lukcs (1885-1971)

Hungarian literary historian, essayist, critic, an influential andcontroversial figure in the Western Marxist tradition. Although Lukcssupported the aesthetic doctrine of socialism realism, most of his lifeLukcs was viewed with suspicion by Communist Party ideologists.Lukcs'sHistory and Class Consciousness (1923) was attacked by theRussian Communist Party leaders and Lukcs later regretted the"messianic utopianism" of this work. Lukcs's aesthetics that opposedpolitical control of artists was hailed by the New Left intellectuals in the1960s.

"In the writing of the Stalinist period, however, the real problems

were overlooked andas with economic subjectivismthecorrectness of particular solutions became a matter for dogmatism.

Literature ceased to reflect the dynamic contradictions of social life;

it became the illustration of an abstract "truth." The aesthetic

consequences of such an approach are all too evident. Even where

this "truth" was in fact true and not, as so often, a lie or a half-truth,

the notion of literature-as-illustration was extremely detrimental to

good writing." (from The Meaning of Contemporary Realism, 1962)

Gyrgy Szegedy von Lukcs (also known as Georg Lukcs) was born inBudapest into a wealthy Jewish family. His father, Jzsef Lwinger, wasa prominent Hungarian banker, his German-speaking mother AdeleWertheimer came from Vienna. The family Magyarized in 1890 its nameof Lwinger into Lukcs. Jzsef was ennobled in 1899.

Jewishness played little role in Lukcs's upbringing who was baptized a

Lutheran. He studied at the universities of Budapest and Berlin,receiving his Ph.D. in 1906 for his book on modern drama. After travelsin Italy, he lived in Heidelberg from 1912 to 1916 and studied privatelywith Heinrich Rickert. During this period he became associated with theGerman sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920), later developed Weber'sideal type methodology. In his early point of career Lukcs describedhimself as a "subjective idealist" and his writings showed interest inneo-Kantian thought, fashionable in pre-First World War CentralEuropean intellectual circles. From The Theory of the Novel (1920)Hegel remained for Lukcs a lifelong source of inspiration.

In 1917 Lukcs returned to Budapest, where he became the leadingfigure of The Budapest Sunday Circle, which included Karl Mannheim,the art historian Arnold Hauser, the writers Bla Balzs and AnnaLeznai, and the musicians Bla Bartk and Zoltn Kodly. Usually thegroup met at Balzs's elegant apartment or the Lukcs's country estateand discussed about the end of the liberal society. Most of the membersleft Hungary after the revolution of 1919. After conversion to Marxismand historical materialism, Lukcs dropped the honorific 'von' from hispublications. His undercover name in the Communist Party ofHungary (KMP) was 'Blum'.

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"If Faust could have two souls within his breast, why should not a

normal person unite conflicting intellectual trends within himself

when he finds himself changing from one class to another in the

middle of a world crisis? In so far as I am able to recall those years, I,

at least, find that my ideas hovered between the acquisition of

Marxism and political activism on the one hand, and the constant

intensification of my purely idealistic e thical preoccupations on the

other." (fromHistory & Class Consciousness, Preface to the New

Edition, 1967)

World War I had radicalized Lukcs's thinking and he joined in 1918 thenewly formed KMP, founded by Bla Kun. However, before thisdecision he had doubted that Bolshevism can bring any good out of evil.After changing his view Lukcs accepted that terror was legitimate in thesocialist context. During Bla Kun's short-lived government, Lukcsbecame Commissar of Public Education. When the HungarianCommunist Republic was overthrown by Romanian troops, Lukcs fledto Austria and Kun to the Soviet Union where he died in one of theStalinist purges before World War II. In his diary Balsz described

Lukcs's haunted appearance in Vienna he was "deathly pale, hollowcheeked, impatient and sad", and who went "around with a gun in hispocket," tracking down people who have disappeared with party funds.Lukcs was also portrayed by Thomas Mann in The Magic Mountain, inwhich the Jewish-Jesuit character, Naphta, was partly modelled on him.

Lukcs's marriage to Ljena Grabenko, a Russian emigrant who turnedhim into a nervous wreck, ended after some years, and in 1919 hemarried Gertrud Bortstieber, the daughter of a rabbi. From 1919 to 1929Lukcs lived in Vienna, where he publishedHistory and ClassConsciousness (1923), a collection of essays about literature and politics.

The work was born under a highly contradictory amalgam of theoriesfrom Kierkegaard to Hegel and from Marx to Georges Sorel and RosaLuxemburg. Lukcs argued that consciousness depends upon classposition: different classes have different forms of consciousness, butonly proletariat's point of view coincides with objectivity and truth. Infreeing itself, the proletariat frees mankind: its class interest convergeswith Hegelian teleology of history itself. Socialism would abolishalienation which Lukcs identified with objectification, particularly as asocietal category. Later in his preface to the new edition of the book(1967), Lukcs wrote: "...objectification is indeed a phenomenon thatcannot be eliminated from human life in society. If we bear in mind that

every externalisation of an object in practice (and hence, too, in work) isan objectification that every human expression including speechobjectifies human thoughts and feelings, then it is clear that we aredealing with a universal mode of commerce between men."

History and Class Consciousness was attacked by Lenin and GrigoryZinovyev (1883-1936) and other leaders of the Russian Communistparty; the seminal work wrecked Lukcs's political career. He repudiatedit in a public confession in the 1930s, the period of Stalin's show trials,and saved himself from the fate of Zinovyev who was executed in 1936.He was also accused of abandoning the doctrine of the 'dictatorship of

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the proletariat" and replacing it with the concept of a 'democraticdictatorship'.

When the Austrian government attempted to expel Lukcs, Mannpleaded for him to be allowed to remain in Vienna. Nevertheless, hedecided the leave the country. In 1929-30 Lukcs was associated inMoscow with the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute, run by David Riazonovwho was killed in Stalin's purges. Between 1931 and 1933 he lived in

Berlin, where he was a leading figure in the League of Proletarian andRevolutionary Writers (BPRS), which included such names as JohannesR. Becher, Anna Seghers, Friedrich Wolf, and Ludwig Renn. After Hitlerwas elected chancellor of German, Lukcs emigrated to the SovietUnion. He worked as a researcher at the Institute of Philosophy of theSoviet Academy of Sciences and wrote such studies asA trtnelmiregny (1937 The Historical Novel) andDer junge Hegel (1938, TheYoung Hegel). Though he supported Stalin's basic policies, even the theNazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of 1939, Lukcs was arrested and putin the notorius Lubyanka gaol after the German invasion of Russia.Before he was released, Lukcs wrote his autobiography.

After World War II Lukcs returned to Hungary. From 1945 to 1956 hewas professor of aesthetics and cultural philosophy at the University ofBudapest. He served as editor of the journal Forum and advocated"socialist humanism" in the arts. In 1949 opposition political parties wereoutlawed and the Hungarian Communist Party proclaimed Hungary aPeople's Republic. During the Rkosi era Lukcs focused mostly onscientific research. One of his major works wasDie Zerstrung derVernuft(1954), a book against irrationalism. In 1956 he demanded therenaissance of Marxism against Stalinist dogmatism in a speech he madein the Petfi-circle, which later has been called as "unintended initiator

of the Hungarian Revolution." Lukcs's writing did not gain the approvalof the new authorities and Jzsef Rvai, the chief ideologist of the Party,attacked Luccs's "bourgeois realism." In 1956, when the reformistprime minister Imre Nagy declared Hungary neutral, he was appointedMinister of Culture. However, Soviet troops destroyed the unplanneduprising in November. Some 200,000 Hungarians fled the country, Nagywas executed, and Lukcs was deported for a while to Romania. He wasallowed to return to Budapest in 1957, and after attacks on him in 1958he regained political favor in mid-1960s. Lukcs died on June 4, 1971 inBudapest, where he was buried with all due Party honors. His last majorwork wasZur Ontologie des gesellschaftslichen Seins (1971-1973).

Lukcs aesthetic theories have influenced Walter Benjamin(1892-1940), Frankfurt School, and the French-Romanian theoristLucien Goldman (1913-1970), who devised the method of literaryanalysis known as "genetic structruralism", which sought to identifyhomologies or structural parallels between literary texts and theworldviews of key social groups contemporary with the texts.

"Lukcs until his death clung to an ideology which seems more and

more utopian: a vision of a social paradise, of the end of the

alienation of man for which there is no evidence in any Communist or

other society. As a character in The First Circle remarks: "if you

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always look over your shoulder how can you still remain a human

being?" Lukcs looked or had to look over his shoulder all his adult

life and found solace only in a distant messianic hope." (Ren WellekinA History of Modern Criticism 1970-1950, vol. 7, 1991)

Lukcs's first important study of aesthetics was published in 1909 in theBudapest reviewNyugat. His early writings reveal the immense amountof reading, which he had undertaken from his youth. Lukcs was early

interested in theatre, he had read hundreds of plays and at the age ofseventeen he went to Olso to see Ibsen. He also translated Ibsen's playThe Wild Duck. Poetry did not interest him much, his main concernswere the drama and the epic.A llek s a formk(1910, Soul and Form),a collection of essays, established his literary reputation. Partly the workwas a result of his tragic love affair with Irma Seidler, who committedsuicide, but also is was a product of Lukcs's early friendship with MaxWeber and Georg Simmel. In the Kierkegaard-Regine Olsen relationshiphe saw connections to his own experiences with Seidler. Lukcs declaredin an essay on Kierkegaard: "There is no system in life. In life there isonly the separate and individual, the concrete. To exist is to be

different."Lukcs two lecture series for Heidelberg, Philosophie der Kunst(1912-1914) andHeidelberger Aesthetik(1916-1918) were born underthe influence of neo-Kantianism. Theorie des Romans, written in1914-15 and published in book form in 1920, showed Lukcs's interest inHegel, but also to Schiller's ber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung,which contrasts the ideal world, found in the ancient past, and themodern world.

In The Historical Novel, written in 1936-37, Lukcs started from SirWalter Scott's novels to show the historical consciousness in literature.Lukcs did not consider Scott a romantic but a great realist, whodepicted the conflict of classes. Thus the role of literature had politicalsignificance, too. After 1948 the historical novel declined but showedagain revival in the works of Anatole France, Romain Rolland, andHeinrich Mann.

In the 1960s Lukcs became interested in the works ofSolzhenitsyn andpraised his work as a "rebirth of noble beginnings of Socialist Realism."Although Lukcs was a supporter of the official Soviet aesthetic doctrineof social realism, he did not accept it wholeheartedly, but deloped hisown version known as "critical realism." Realism was not for Lukcs a

"style" but "the basis of every literature" (in Probleme des Realismus).He opposed modernism, and attacked such writers as Joyce and Kafkafor making technique an end itself and nearly all major avant-gardewriters in Western literature who deviated from nineteenth-centuryRealism. He also criticized Bertolt Brecht's dramatic theories in 1934and German Expressionism, which brought him in confrontation withother Marxists in Berlin. Brecht was greatly upset and answered withcryptic critique of Lukcs, playing with the connotations of 'realism','formalism' and 'popular': "If someone makes a statement which is untrue or irrelevant merely because it rhymes, then he is a formalist. But we

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have innumerable works of an unrealistic kind which did not become sobecause they were based on an excessive sense of form..." (Pictures ofReality by Terry Lovell, 1980)

"Today the primacy of the object and aesthetic realism are almost

absolutely opposed to each other, and indeed when measured by the

standard of realism: Beckett is more realistic that the socialist

realists who counterfeit reality by their very principle. If they took

reality seriously enough they would eventually realize what Lukcs

condemned when during the days of his imprisonment in Romania he

is reported to have said that he had finally realized that Kafka was a

realist writer." (Adorno inAesthetic Theory, 1997)

In his discussion of 'reification' Lukcs was among the first tore-introduce the idea of alienation as central to Marx's thought.According to Lukcs, the formal fragmentation of modernist textsparticipate in the process of reification. Realism is the only literary modecapable of representing the totality of society. Bourgeois thought isrepeated in naturalism and subjectivism. Naturalism is degraded form ofrealism and limits itself to description instead of narration. Subjectivist

art elevates art as the product of the superior subjective consciousness ofthe creative artist. "The goal of art is to provide a picture of reality inwhich the contradiction between appearance and reality, the particularand the general, the immediate and the conceptual, etc., is so resolvedthat the two converge into a spontaneous integrity... The Universalappears as a quality of the individual and the particular, reality becomesmanifest and can be experienced within appearance." (Lukcs in Writer andCritic, 1970, from Pictures of Reality by Terry Lovell, 1980)

For further reading: Georg Lukcs' Marxismby Victor Zitta (1964);Georg Lukcs by G. Lichtheim (1970); Georg Lukcs: The Man, HisWork and His Ideas, ed by G.H.R. Parkinson (1970);Against the

Self-Images of the Age by Alasdair MacIntyre (1971); Lukcs Conceptof Dialectic, with Biography, Bibliography and Documents by I.Mszros (1972); Georg Lukcs by E. Bahr and E, Kunzer (1972);Afilozfus Lukcs by T. Hank (1974); The Aesthetics of Georg Lukcs byB. Kirlyfalvi (1975); The Young Lukcs and the Origins of WesternMarxism by A. Arato and P. Breines (1979);Lukcs, Marx and theSources of Critical Theoryby Andrew Feenberg (1981); Four CriticsbyRen Wellek (1981); Georg Lukcs, ed. by Fekete and E. Kardi(1981); The Young Lukcs by Lee Congdon (1983); The Philosophy ofthe Novelby J.M. Bernstein (1984);George Lukcs and his Generation,1900-1918, by Mary Gluck (1985); George Lukcs and his World, ed. byErnest Joos (1987); George Lukcs, ed. by Judith Marcus and Zoltan Tarr(1989); Georg Lukcs: Life, Thought and Politics by Arpad Kadarkay

(1991);Georg Lukcs and Thomas Mann: A Study in the Sociology of

Literature by Judith Marcus (1994); The Young Lukcs by Lee Congdon(2009); Georg Lukcs: The Fundamental Dissonance ofExistence byTimothy Bewes and Timothy Hall (2011); Georg Lukacs Reconsidered:Critical Essays in Politics, Philosophy and Aesthetics by Michael J.Thompson (2011)

Selected works:

A drma formja, 1909 (dissertation)Entwicklungsgeschichte des Modernen Dramas, 1909 - TheSociology of Modern Drama (excerpts, in The Theory of the

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Modern Stage, edited by Eric Bentley, 1968)A llek s a formk. Ksrletek, 1910Die Seele und die Formen: Essays, 1911 (A llek s a formk) -Soul and Form (translated by Anna Bostock, 1974; introduction byJudith Butler, 2010)Eszttikai kultra, 1913 (Aesthetic Culture)Balzs Bla s akiknek nem kell, 1918Taktika s ethika, 1919 - Revolution and Revelation (ed., transl.,intr. by Victor Zitta, 1968) / Tactics and Ethics: Political Essays,1919-1929 (edited by Rodney Livingstone, translated by MichaelMcColgan, 1972)Die Theorie des Romans. Ein geschichtsphilosophischer Versuchber die Formen der groen Epik, 1920 - The Theory of the Novel(translated by Anna Bostock, 1971)Geschichte und Klassenbewusstsein. Studien ber marxistischeDialektik, 1923 - History and Class Consciousness (translated byRodney Livingstone, 1971)Lenin: Studie ber den Zusammenhang seiner Gedanken, 1924 -Lenin: A Study on the Unity of His Thought (translated byNicholas Jacobs, 1971)Moses Hess und die Probleme der idealistischen Dialektik, 1926A Marxista filozofia feladatai az j demokrciban, 1940Balzac, Stendhal, Zola, 1945Fortschritt und Reaktion in der deutschen Literatur, 1946Gottfried Keller, 1946Lenin s a kultra krdsei, 1946Irodalom s demokrcia, 1946Deutsche Literatur im Zeitalter des Imperialismus: eine bersichtihrer Hauptstrmungen, 1946 (3rd ed.)Az jabb nmet irodalom rvid trtnete, 1946Nagy orosz realistk, 1946Goethe s kora, 1946Nietzsche s a fasizmus, 1946Goethe und seine Zeit, 1947 (Goethe s kora) - Goethe and HisAge (translated by Robert Anchor, 1968)A polgri filozfia vlsga, 1947A trtnelmi regny, 1947 - The Historical Novel (translated byHannah and Stanley Mitchell, 1962)A polgr nyomban: a hetvenves Thomas Mann, 1947 - Essayson Thomas Mann (translated by Stanley Mitchell, 1965)Schcksalswende: Beitrge zu einer deutschen Ideologie, 1948Der junge Hegel: ber die Beziehungen von Dialektik undkonomie, 1948 - The Young Hegel (translated by RodneyLivingstone, 1975)Existentialisme ou marxisme?, 1948A realizmus problmi, 1948j maguyar kultrrt, 1948Karl Marx und Friedrich Engels als Literaturhistoriker, 1948Essays ber Realismus, 1948 - Essays on Realism (edited byRodney Livinsgtone, translated by David Fernbach, 1981)Schicksalswende. Beitrge zu einer neuen deutschen Ideologie,

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1948A marxista filozfia feladatai az j demokrciban, 1948Der russische Realismus in der Weltliteratur, 1949 - TheInternational Significance of Russian Democratic LiteraryCriticism [Der internationale Bedeutung der russischendemokratischen Literaturkritik]; Tolstoy and the Development ofRealism [Leo Tolstoi und die Entwicklunf des Realismus]; TheHuman Comedy of Pre-Revolutionary Russia [Maxim Gorki 2:Die menschliche Komdie des vorrevolitionren Rulands]; LeoTolstoy and Western European Literature [Leo Tolstoi und diewestliche Literatur] (partial tr. by Edith Bobe, in Studies inEuropean Realism, 1964)Thomas Mann, 1949Marx s Engels irodalomlete, 1949Studies in European Realism: A Sociological Survey of theWritings of Balzac, Stendhal, Zola, Tolstoy, Gorki, and Others,1950 (translated by Edith Bone)Deutsche Realisten des 19. Jahrhunderts, 1951 - German Realistsin the Nineteenth Century (edited by Rodney Livingstone,translated by Jeremy Gaines and Paul Keast, 1993)Balzac und die franzsische Realismus, 1952 (partial tr. in Studiesin Europen Realism, 1964) - Balzac ja ranskalainen realismi(suom. Seppo Rantonen, 1978)Puschkin-Gorki (Zwei Essays), 1952Nagy orosz realistk, 1952Skizze einer Geschichte der neueren deutschen Literatur, 1953Adalkok az eszttika trtnethez, 1953Beitrge zur Geschichte der esthetik, 1954Die Zerstrung der Vernuft, 1954 (Az sz trnfosztsa) - TheDestruction of Reason (translated by Peter Palmer, 1981)Probleme des Realismus, 1955Wider den missverstandenen Realismus, 1957 - The Meaning ofContemporary Realism (translated by John and Necke Mander,1963) / Realism in Our Time: Literature and the Class Struggle (tr.1964)Schriften zur Literatursoziologie, 1961 (edited by Peter Ludz)Werke, 1962-1981 (17 vols.)Die Eigenart des eshetischen, 1963 (2 vols.)Deutche Literatur in zwei Jahrhunderten, 1964Von Nietzsche zu Hitler; oder, Der Irrationalismus und diedeutsche Politik 1966ber die Besonderheit als Kategorie der esthetik, 1967Ausgewhlte Schriften, 1967-70 (4 vols.)Die Grablegung des alten Deutschland, 1967Schriften zur Ideologie und Politk, 1967Gesprche mit Georg Lukcs, 1967 - Conversations with Lukcs(ed. by Theo Pinkus, translated by David Fernbach, 1975)Solschenizyn, 1969 - Solzhenitsyn (translated by William DavidGraf, 1971)Writer and Critic, and Other Essays, 1971 (edited and translatedby Arthur D. Kahn)

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Zur Ontologie des gesellschaftslichen Seins, 1971-1973 (3 vols.) -The Onthology of Social Being: 1. Hegel; 2. Marx; 3. Labour(translated by David Fernbach, 1978)Political Writings, 1919-1929, 1972 (edited by RodneyLivingstone, translated by Michael McColgan)Marxism and Human Liberation, 1973 (edited by E. San Juan, Jr.)Heidelberger Philosophie der Kunst: 1912-1914, 1974 (FrheSchriften zur sthetik I)Heidelberger eshetik: 1916-1918, 1975 (Frhe Schriften zursthetik II)Politische Aufstze, 1975-1977 (3 vols.)Kunst und objective Wahrheit, 1977Essays on Realism, 1980 (edited by Rodney Livingstone,translated by David Fernbach)Entwicklungsgeschichte des modernen Dramas, 1981Gelebtes Leben, 1981 - Record of a Life: An AutobiographicalSketch (translated by Rodney Livingstone, 1983)Selected Correspondence 1902-1920, 1986 (translated by JudithMarcus and Zoltn Tar)Theory, Culture, and Politics, 1989 (edited by Judith Marcus andZoltan Tarr)The Lukcs Reader, 1995 (edited by Arpad Kadarkay)Chvostismus und Dialektik, 1996 (written 1925-26) - A Defenceof History and Class Consciousness: Tailism and theDialectic (translated by Esther Leslie, afterword by Slavoj iek,2002)Heidelberger Notizen, 1910-1913: eine Textauswahl, 1997 (editedby Bla Bacs)Autobiographische Texte und Gesprche, 2005 (edited by FrankBenseler, Werner Jung, Dieter Redlich)

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