“Someone Here can Tell Stories Very Well”

On the First Collection of Short Stories of László Darvasi

Abstract

László Darvasi’s first collection of short stories was published thirty years ago. One of the main trends of the critical discourse from those years was the opposition between story- and text-centered literature. This volume titled A veinhageni rózsabokrok [The Rose Bushes of Veinhagen] was the subject of several critical and scholarly debates, and many believe that it marked the return of the story to Hungarian fiction. The paper will present the views of the most relevant authors on the subject, and tries to reflect on the still unresolved issue. The conclusion of the partly narratological, partly cognitive approach is that the early Darvasi texts do not rely on the usual sense of story, despite the fact that the author is able to keep up the illusion of it through some purposeful poetic procedures.