The First World War was not confined to the battlefields. It was also waged in the domestic affairs of the warring countries and even in people’s minds. A mere glance through Hungarian newspapers published after summer 1914 leaves no doubt as to how much the war shaped the tone of the press, the speeches of politicians, the output of artists and writers, and the programmes of cinemas and theatres. There was also an aestheticized discourse that emerged out of this ocean of warlike outpourings, based on mutual hatred and the ideology of violence. We may call this as the culture of war.
Lajos Kassák himself helped to formulate the culture of war in autumn 1914. In his articles for István Milotay’s magazine Új Nemzedék [New Generation], he divided the warring parties into the “good” (the Central Powers) and the “bad” (the Entente powers). In his culture-of-war-inspired writing, he portrayed the confrontation between the allies and enemies of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy through popular national metaphors and negative stereotypes.
Kassák reconsidered his attitude to the war in early 1915. Having studied the positions of foreign socialist movements, he became critical of the war and the war discourse. His views changed radically: from a formulator of the culture of war, he became a war critic. In autumn 1915, he opened up his own channel for anti-militarist ideas, the journal A Tett. This challenged the culture of war and became a target of indignation for pro-war intellectuals. The Hungarian press treated the journal and its editors as internal opposition. The war party publicly bracketed the anti-war avant-garde views of A Tett with Futurism and idea of “treacherous” Italy. In the public mind, A Tett was simply the journal of the “Hungarian Futurists”.
Literature Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau–Annette Becker, 1914-1918: Understanding the Great War, Profile, London, 2002; Eszter Balázs, Avant-Garde and Anti-Militarism: A Tett, in: Gábor Dobó–Merse Pál Szeredi (eds.), Signal to the World – War ∩ Avant-Garde ∩ Kassák (The Avant-Garde and Its Journals, Vol. 1), Kassák Foundation, Budapest, 2016, 12-51; Gábor Dobó, Imagining the War: ‘Frenzied Futurists’ and ‘Treacherous Italians’ Portrayed in Hungarian Newspapers of the 1910s, in: Gábor Dobó–Merse Pál Szeredi (eds.), Signal to the World – War ∩ Avant-Garde ∩ Kassák (The Avant-Garde and Its Journals, Vol. 1), Kassák Foundation, Budapest, 2016, 52-68.