BÉLA HAMVAS: THE LAND OF THE FIVE GENIUS (1940)

Since Béla Hamvas's beginnings, and indeed from his first published writing, his interest in Hungarian destiny questions or one or another of their intellectual aspects (especially the literary) can be said to be continuous. "Knowledge of Hungarian destiny has grown unnoticed until today into what it is: the most important factor in our spiritual life, and the spirit living in Hungarian land had to clarify this and only this issue first and foremost," he says in one place.
The Land of the Five Geniuses (1940) attempts to outline the elementary world of the "cultural landscapes" of Hungary. While reading this book, we walk through the Hungarian landscape, sometimes glancing at the ideas, sometimes looking at the ground. Hamvas knows and loves this landscape. And the mood swings of the work, the waves descending from the ode to the curse, and then from the tragic to the hopeful, shape his work into a characteristic Hungarian rhapsody. The hurried breathing is expressed here in the most important places, which we know so well from Wesselényi's writings. From Kemény's novels, from the death of Buda, from Ady's poetry. In Béla Hamvas' world of thought, questions of national destiny are important metaphysical elements.
He talks about the antecedents of his work like this: "Seriously, there are very few subjects:
book is affected. Ottó Hermann is a bit schooly, flat and outdated. But it wasn't very important before. Later, Károly Pekár experimented with Hungarian national aesthetics based on Taine, but very much in an epigonic manner. Only Lajos Fülep, Frigyes Riedl, Lajos Prohászka, Gyula Farkas and György Trócsányi are indispensable. Why? In the works of these authors, the question starts to burn and become a wound. The whole thing is starting to get to one's skin, and one cannot tolerate any more respite. Fülep writes about art, but he uses the occasion to get to the root of existence. Riedl makes hasty notes, but these sentences are the most experiential and therefore the most profound among all texts written about Hungarianness. Here you start to understand that
how pathetically shallow any word is that someone does not suffer. Lajos Prohászka's book compared to Riedle's: it is not as existential, but its perspectives are much clearer and its metaphysics is broader. After Riedl, this topic could not and should not be approached with sheer professionalism, it was no longer a scientific problem to be solved. An existential question cannot be solved, it can only be experienced and grown out of. Prohászka's book is the first unified and complete experience of destiny. But the author only experienced it, he didn't grow out of it. In his literary history, Gyula Farkas presents basic ideas about the Transylvanian, Great Plain and Transdanubian landscapes. György Trócsányi clarified essential concepts in several studies. We can thank him for what to think about as a nation. These works are the indispensable antecedents of the teaching about the Five Geniuses." This first draft of Béla Hamvas's work written during 1940-41 - later written under the title The Five Geniuses (1959), completely revised - is now seeing the light of day for the first time after eighty years.