Katalin Kemény (1909-2004) philosopher, essayist, writer, poet, literary translator

Abstract

Katalin Kemény (1909–2004) graduated from Pázmány Péter University with a degree in Hungarian-French and philosophy. She began her academic career with an excellent study on Transylvanian memoirists (1932), reviews, and studies on progressive education. Her 1936 translation of Rabelais catapulted her into literary life, with at least 10 reviews appearing, from Béla Hamvas to Miklós Radnóti. At the same time, hers was a typical female career path. She married in 1937. She was editor of the estate of her father and then her husband, Béla Hamvas. In 1947, they could still publish their book Revolution in Art: Abstraction and Surrealism in Hungary, written jointly with Béla Hamvas. Hamvas and Kemény spoke in almost indistinguishable voices here. During the period of silencing (after 1948), Kemény taught at an elementary school and was a daycare teacher. Only a few of her translations and studies were published, and she also completed a degree in Chinese, but she wrote works of fiction with her own unique voice without hope of publication. Like Hamvas, she was unable to publish, but unlike her husband, she was not surrounded by myth, whose undeniably enormous body of work had been circulating in samizdat since the mid-1960s. Although “it is impossible to separate Hamvas from her,” following in the footsteps of essayist Katalin Kemény, I will attempt to find her “individual” “female” voice.