DÉRY (Deutsch), TIBOR

DÉRY (Deutsch), TIBOR (1894–1977), Hungarian author and poet. Déry's early work, which was naturalistic and romantic, was published in the journal Nyugat ("West"). He joined the Hungarian Communist Party in 1919. He left the country in the following year and eventually settled in Vienna, where he published verse influenced by the activist-surrealist school. His first major work, Szemtől szembe ("Face to Face"), atrilogy of interrelated short novels, was published in the early 1930s. In 1933 Déry began writing his trilogy Befejezetlen mondat ("Unfinished Sentence"), which depicts the problems of a young man of bourgeois origin seeking the road to Communism. As a result of his involvement in the workers' uprising of 1934, Déry was forced to leave Vienna and finally returned to Hungary, where he was forbidden to publish most of his work. He went into hiding during World War ii, but when his works were published after the war, he won recognition both in Hungary and abroad. The works which he wrote between 1955 and 1956, short stories entitled Szerelem ("Love") and a short story, "Niki," were designed to expose the evils of the "cult of personality." For his part in the short-lived 1956 revolution, as a prominent member of the Petőfi Writers' Club, Déry was sentenced to nine years' imprisonment. He was released in 1961 and, after a short interval, was allowed to resume the publication of his work.

bibliography:

Magyar Irodalmi Lexikon, 1 (1963), 250–1.

[Itamar Yaos-Kest]