EUROPEAN CULTURAL CONTEXT IN GEIZA FARKAS’S NOVEL A FEJNÉLKÜLI EMBER (THE HEADLESS MAN)

Abstract

The starting point of the study on Geiza Farkas’s novel A fejnélküli ember, published in 1933 in Subotica, today mostly mentioned only in literary historical texts, initiates – according to re- searchers – an intercultural and intertextual motif which reaches far beyond the regional Hungar- ian minority literature, not only in a geographical but also in a cultural sense. The novel features motifs from various legends: the one on Dullahan (the evil fairy), on the Eastern German hunter with a hornet, and on the Scandianavian headless rider on a white horse – in the character of a headless demon pursuing the main protagonist. Nevertheless, this story known in Western Euro- pean cultures did not come from the world of myths and legends to European literature and cin- ematography, but from America. According to the obtained findings, the widespread popularity of this motif in the media stems from a collection of short stories published in 1830 – Washington Irving’s The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent more precisely the ghost story in the collection, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Apparently, Washington Irving, who lived in England for many years, transferred a legend recorded by the German author Karl Musäus into this latter story. Furthermore, in the USA it is a popular tale of the Headless Horseman who is said to be the ghost of a Hessian trooper who had his head shot off in the American Revolutionary War. The aim of this study, amongst others, is to find out how this Western European legend found its way into the literary work of this writer with a family background and local ties with Budapest, Wienna, and Elemir in Banat.