July 16th, 2016
Commentators across the political spectrum mourn Péter Esterházy as a great writer whose death is a huge loss for Hungary.
Esterházy died of pancreatic cancer on Thursday. He was a moderate liberal critic of the current government. Yet, according to a tribute to him on the government’s website, Esterházy ‘said something new to contemporary and future generations’.
In 168 óra, political analyst László Lengyel writes that ‘a whole culture is extinguished with Esterházy’s death’.
Magyar Idők quotes Eszterházy’s own sarcastic words, predicting the pompous obituaries which would be written about his death.
On Mandiner, Gellért Rajcsányi tries to complete a sencence left open by Esterházy, who asked his readers whether they were able to complete it. But instead of a solution he can only come up with questions about our ability to solve the problems of our societies: ‘Do we have time? Will we have time?’
In Népszabadság, art critic Péter György writes that while Esterházy’s death is irreversible, ‘it depends on us whether he will stay with us forever’.
Tags: Esterházy, literature
