Dostoevsky’s Influence on Géza Gárdonyi’s Short Novels Géza Gárdonyi: Every Jack has a Jill

Abstract

All the monographs on Géza Gárdonyi’s oeuvre repeat the same information about the birth and sources of the writer’s short novel written in 1918, Every Jack has a Jill (Ki-ki a párjával): the short chapter that collects facts about the writing process of the book is quoted, which was written by József Gárdonyi, than recall the main recognitions of the short novel’s first review. Lajos Hatvani wrote the following about the posthumus book in his review entitled Géza Gárdonyi’s Last Novel in Nyugat 1923/22: “Every Jack has a Jill is compatible with the best works of János Arany and Sándor Petőfi, also consistent with Gottfried Keller’s village Romeo and Juliet and Flaubert’s great novel about the simple-hearted maid (Hatvani, 1923)”. With this statement Hatvani classifies Gárdonyi’s work in a special literary historical context. On the one hand, Gárdonyi’s short novel gets ranked into the conservative tradition of Hungarian literature (romanticism and late romanticism). On the other hand, two comparative directions are offered: it is worth to read the Hungarian short novel from Gottfried Keller’s A Village Romeo and Juliet (1856) and Flaubert’s A Simple Heart (1877) point of view. Although both statements have partial truths, actually both of them are very disputable and hard to verify by text interpretation. After 100 years, it is time to suggest a new interpretation. In my paper I would like to demonstrate that it is the reading of Dostoevsky’s The Idiot that influenced the writing of Every Jack has a Jill the most.