Alaine Polcz (1922-2007)

1. Alaine Polcz (1922-2007) A Wartime Memoir

2. Alaine Polcz images

3. Biography • 1922 Cluj/Kolozsvár, native Hungarian community • 1944 marriage to János, first husband • 1944 move to Hungary • 1949 Budapest:MA in clinical psychology, • 1949 marriage to author Miklós Mészöly • 1970 Children’s Hospital, Budapest, treating terminally ill children, pioneer of modern clinical psychological methods • 1981 setting up the first Hungarian Hospice Foundation, • Practicing clinical psychology after retirement, continues to champion the cause of hospices she had introduced • 2007 dies in Budapest

4. Bibliography • Psychology textbooks and studies: 1962-1999, focusing on death, terminally ill children, games as a tool of psychological treatment • Literary breakthrough: 1991 Asszony a fronton [Literally: A woman on the front]; translated by Albert Tezla as A wartime memoir (1998); One woman in the war (2002).

5. Other fiction • Largely autobiographical, recollections of meeting authors and literary editors: • Macskaregény[Cat Fiction], 1995 • Kit szerettem? Mit szerettem?[Who have I loved? What have I loved?], 2004

6. A wartime memoir 1991 • Strongly autobiographical narrative, discussing the author’s life between 1944 and 1948(?); including early marriage, serial rape during WW2 and subsequent hospital treatment- return to normality? • Trauma as central theme • Pioneering role in describing wartime rape; breaking two earlier taboos: the role and glory of the Soviet army during the occupation of Hungary in 1944-45 and the overall prudishness of communist aesthetics dominant until 1989 • Similar texts not published in Hungarian until the end of communism, uncommon since

7. Autobiography with a difference • The female autograph as performative agent • ‘One woman’ : standing for a communal, public experience in contrast with strongly individualised autobiographies • Subtitle: ‘One chapter from my life’: focusing on one particularly traumatic chapter • Lack of completeness suggests that the main intention is not the enfolding progressive development of subjectivity; rather, it is the trauma and its after-effects

8. Temporal units • Stage 1: from wedding until the arrival of Russian troops (Cluj, Transdanubia)- 55 pages • Stage 2: war abuse (Transdanubia)- 49 pages • Stage 3:after the war (Budapest, Cluj)-34 pages

9. WW2 in Hungary (1). Early October 1944 Kolozsvár/Cluj: quickly taken over by the Red Army, little bloodshed Green area: held by the Germans Red area: occupied by the Red Army

10. WW2 in Hungary 1944 (2). Date: October-November 1944 Csákvár: North of Székesfehérvár and West of Budapest, historically documented heavy battles The front Green area: territory held by the Germans Red area: territory occupied by the Red Army

11. Sexual abuse and rape: the public narrative • Less than half of the novel, but the most memorable and moving • War rape first examined in the 1990s, arguably in focus as one consequence of the Balkans war; differentiation between rape in peace (families etc.) as opposed to using it as a war weapon • Rape during WW2 in Hungary: between 10% to 60% of women

12. Sexual abuse and rape 2. • Rape is represented as a natural event in war • Factual description of a series of events • Dehumanising: the female body as currency (pp.106-111) • Emotional attitudes: indifference and dissociation developed deliberately • Final blow: family’s refusal to believe her after the war in Budapest-rape is incompatible with gentility

13. Before and after the war: the private narrative • Life in Cluj: expected to offer itself as a natural counterpoint: peacetime idyll • Events and authorial interpretation of events corresponds to this: wedding, family affection for the young bride as narrated, loving young couple, the narrator’s oft-repeated love for János

14. Before and after the war: a closer reading • Subtext: revelation of an unequal relationship between husband and narrator: lack of reciprocated affection; STD • Revelation of strange circumstances surrounding the marriage: wedding enforced, refusal to allow narrator to go to university • Narrator’s family of origin: initially represented as idyllic and affectionate, yet turns out to be dysfunctional, narrator maybe illegitimate? Father’s succession of mistresses

15. Narrator’s relationship to women • Mother: little support, maybe she is lower-class and not married to father? • Surrogate mothers: mother-in-law, maids in the household, silences

16. Narrator’s relationship to men • Love and devotion stated and but not shown • The objects of devotion: unreliable, irresponsible, philandering • Self-representation in the self-sacrificial mode: explains the contrast between oft-declared emotions and the unworthiness of male characters of that devotion

17. Summary • Tensions between the private and public narratives: arguably much historical accuracy in the public narrative, victimhood as historical fact • The private narrative is more complex and less reliable: internal tensions between emotions claimed and emotions shown; deliberate self-fashioning as self-sacrificing woman whose victimhood is a natural condition of femaleness

18. Bibliographical sources • Balassa Péter - Varga Lajos Márton.‘Az élet förtelme és szépsége. Kritika két hangra.’Jelenkor, Oct 1991. pp. 859-861. • Pócsik Anett. ‘A világtörténelem és a személyes szféra összefonódása-Az elhallgatott történet: a háború és házasság egy nő szemével.’ Szkoholion, n.1, 2008. http://www.szkholion.unideb.hu/content/rov/skhmap/09_1/bonc/11pocsik.pdf • Vasvari, Louise O. ‘The Fragmented (Cultural) Body in Polcz’s Asszony a fronton (Woman on the front).’ In Vasvári, Louise O. and Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek (eds). Comparative Hungarian Cultural Studies, Lafayette: Purdue UP, 2009.