In my dissertation, I undertook to examine the early work of Gyula Krúdy, one of the most outstanding literary figures in Hungarian literature. The aim of the systematic analysis of the works written in the period 1894-1902 was twofold. On the one hand, I tried to draw conclusions about the intrinsic value of the works produced in this early period, while at the same time trying to find certain points of connection with the general features of the oeuvre.
My dissertation is primarily composed of analyses of writings that focus on religious phenomena and respond to transcendence. In my view, the results of the history of religion can make a major contribution to broadening the traditional framework of interpretation. The exploration of the types of structures and their poetic function of the spiritual contexts in Krúdy’s works has so far escaped the attention of the reception.
In my analyses, I wanted to point out, among other things, the poetic functions of the evocation of folklore myths, which Krúdy’s characters are based on, and which imply elusiveness. My basic assumption is that the schema of the identification technique that creates heroes with dispersed identities and ever-changing self-identities can also be recognized in the mutable, shape-shifting figures of folk legends.
My most important efforts were undoubtedly related to the figure of the traveller, a genre that had already been included in several early Krúdy texts as a prefigure of the travelling companion stories or even the Sinbad short stories.
Beyond the development and presentation of the method of reading Krúdy from an ethnographic or religious-historical perspective, the main lesson of the work was the recognition of this identification technique. At the same time, I consider it my own achievement to have pointed out the religious origin of the dimensional shifts that characterize the epic culture of Krúdy’s oeuvre and the syncretic nature of these descriptions in their montage of various religious behaviours and beliefs.