Margit Kaffka
Born	( 1880-06-10 ) 10 June 1880 Nagykaroly , Kingdom of Hungary
Died	1 December 1918 (1918-12-01) (aged 38) Budapest , First Hungarian Republic
Resting place	Farkasreti temet?, Budapest, Hungary
Nationality	Hungarian
Spouse	Bruno Frohlich Ervin Bauer
Children	Laszlo Frohlich

Margit Kaffka (10 June 1880 ? 1 December 1918) was a Hungarian writer and poet.

Called a "great, great writer" by Endre Ady , she was one of the most important female Hungarian authors, and an important member of the Nyugat generation. Her writing was inspired by Jozsef Kiss , Mihaly Szabolcska , and the writers' group of the periodical Het .

Personal life [ edit ]

Margit Kaffka was born on 10 June 1880 in Nagykaroly (today Carei , Romania ) into a family of minor Hungarian nobility (see her family's genealogy in Records of the Totosy de Zepetnek Family ). Her father was a public prosecutor , but died early and the family lived under reduced circumstances. She received a scholarship to study at the Sisters of Mercy teacher's training college in Szatmar and in return she taught for one year in Miskolc . She studied in Budapest , receiving a teacher's diploma from the Erzsebet Girls' School. She returned to Miskolc, where she taught literature and economics in a private girls' school, beloved by students. This is the period when her first writings, poems, and novels appeared. She subsequently became a full-time contributor to Nyugat , the most important periodical of the era.

She married Bruno Frohlich, a forestry officer, on 17 February 1905. In 1907 her husband moved to the Ministry of Agriculture, enabling Kaffka to move away from Miskolc, a town she did not like. However, their marriage became stressed after a few years, and ended in a divorce. Kaffka worked as a teacher in Budapest between 1910 and 1915. During this time, she published her best known work, Szinek es evek (1912) (Colors and Years). She married for the second time in 1914 to Ervin Bauer , the younger brother of Bela Balazs . At the beginning of the First World War she left her teaching job to focus full-time on her literary work. She died in the 1918 flu pandemic along with her young son.

Literature [ edit ]

Her works dealt mostly with two main themes: the fall of the gentry , and the physical and spiritual hardships of the independent women in the start of the 20th century. She often wrote about her personal memories of great national crises, the glaring oppositions of the anachronistic society in Hungary.

Her literary career can be divided into three chapters, from 1901 to the start of Nyugat in 1908, the second ending in the start of the war in 1918, and the third marked by the hard years after the war ending in her death.

The year 1912 marked the release of her first, and most important novel, Szinek es Evek ( Colours and Years ) dealing with the fate of the gentry class and women. Her second most famous work is Hangyaboly ( The Ant Heap ) collecting her memories from the years at the Sisters of Mercy; it was published in 1917.

Major works [ edit ]

• Versek (1903)
• Levelek a zardabol (diary novel, 1904)
• A gondolkodok es egyeb elbeszelesek (narratives, 1906)
• Csendes valsagok (narratives, 1909)
• Kepzelet-kiralyfiak (meseregeny, 1909)
• Csendes valsagok (narratives, 1910)
• Csonka regeny es novellak (narratives, 1911)
• Tallozo evek (poems, 1911)
• Utolszor a lyran (poems, 1912)
• Supped? talajon (narratives, 1912)
• Szinek es evek ( Colours and Years ) (novel, 1912)
• Maria evei (novel, 1913)
• Szent Ildefonso balja (narratives, 1914)
• Ket nyar (novel, 1916)
• Allomasok (novel, 1917)
• Hangyaboly ( The Ant Heap ) (novel, 1917)
• Kis emberek baratocskaim (collection of early works, 1918)
• Az elet utjan (poems, 1918)
• A revnel (narratives, 1918)

Sources [ edit ]

• Czigany, Lorant. "Women in Revolt: Margit Kaffka." The Oxford History of Hungarian Literature . Oxford: Clarendon, 1984. 333?36.
• Bodnar, Gyorgy. Kaffka Margit . Budapest: Balassi, 2001.
• Borgos, Anna, ed. A te szined el?tt. Kaffka Margit szerelmei . Budapest: Holnap, 2006.
• Foldes, Anna. Kaffka Margit: Palyakep . Budapest: Kossuth, 1987.
• Fulop, Laszlo. Kaffka Margit . Budapest: Gondolat, 1988.
• Horvath, Gyorgyi. "N?i irodalom a magyar szazadel?n. A n?i irodalom szerepe Kaffka Margit Szinek es evek cim? regenyenek kritikai megiteleseben". Sarkanyf? 4 (1999): 54?66.
• Kadar, Judit. "Feminista nez?pont az irodalomtudomanyban". Helikon 4 (1994): 407?16.
• Nemeskurty, Istvan, "Kaffka Margit." Diak, irj magyar eneket. A magyar irodalom tortenete 1945-ig . Budapest: Gondolat, 1985. Vol. 2, 698?701.
• Karpati, Bela. Miskolci irodalom, irodalom Miskolcon . Miskolc, 1989.
• Simon, Zsuzsanna, ed. A lelek stacioi. Kaffka Margit valogatott levelezese . Budapest: Nap, 2010.
• Totosy de Zepetnek, Steven. "Margit Kaffka and Dorothy Richardson: A Comparison." Hungarian Studies 11.1 (1996): 77?95.
• Totosy de Zepetnek, Steven. "Kaffka Margit prozaja. Az irodalmi feminizmus kezdete Magyarorszagon". Regi es uj peregrinacio. Magyarok kulfoldon, kulfoldiek Magyarorszagon . Ed. Imre Bekesi, Jozsef Jankovics, Laszlo Kosa, & Judit Nyerges. Budapest: International Association for Hungarian Studies, 1993. Vol. 2, 1185?94.
• Totosy de Zepetnek, Steven (斯?文·托托西演). 文??究的合法化: 一?新?用主? ·整?化和?主 ?文??文化?究方法 (Legitimizing the Study of Literature: A New Pragmatism and the Systemic Approach to Literature and Culture). Trans. Ma Jui-ch'i (?瑞琪?). Beijing: Peking University Press, 1997. 171?93.
• Genealogy of the Kaffka de Tarczafalva Family IN: Totosy de Zepetnek, Steven. Records of the Totosy de Zepetnek Family . CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture ( Library ) (2010-): < https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweblibrary/totosyrecords >.
• Totosy de Zepetnek, Steven. "Women's Literature and Men Writing about Women". Comparative Literature: Theory, Method, Application . By Steven Totosy de Zepetnek. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998. 174?214.
• Wittmann, Livia K. "Desire in Feminist Narration: Reading Margit Kaffka and Dorothy Richardson." Canadian Review of Comparative Literature / Revue Canadienne de Litterature Comparee 21.3 (1994): 399?415.