On Multilingualism in the Works of Dezső Kosztolányi and Danilo Kiš

Abstract

This paper presents the multicultural, multilingual milieu of Hungarian literature in Vojvodina, focusing on the works of Dezső Kosztolányi and Danilo Kiš. The multicultural milieu of Subotica is important for both authors, but they do not have the multilingual experience of the Subotica milieu, the couleur locale. In Kosztolányi’s case, the assimilationist linguistic approach prevalent during the Monarchy, but in Kiš’s case, the cultural politics of Yugoslavia determined the representations of multilingualism. The paper poses questions about the changes in literary language in the wake of historical events in the twentieth century, the way multilingual literature gains legitimacy, and the ideological constraints it was subjected to in the Yugoslav context, additionally addressing the question whether there is any monolingual literature at all.