{"id":1617,"date":"2018-06-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-05-31T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/staging.newyorkcafe.hu\/new-york-muvesz-paholy-krudy-gyula-vegletek-kozott\/"},"modified":"2026-11-06T13:41:24","modified_gmt":"2026-11-06T12:41:24","slug":"new-york-muvesz-paholy-gyula-krudy-between-extremes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newyorkcafe.hu\/en\/new-york-muvesz-paholy-krudy-gyula-vegletek-kozott\/","title":{"rendered":"New York M\u0171v\u00e9sz P\u00e1holy \u2013 Gyula Kr\u00fady \u2013 Between Extremes"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"abstract\">\n\n<strong>The writer and poet\u2019s prolific output is astonishing; thousands of writings, novels, sketches and short stories have flowed from his pen. To this day, no one can understand how he found the time for all this, given that he constantly spent his time in small pubs, caf\u00e9s and restaurants. He worked tirelessly; legends circulated about his physical strength, his appetite for love, his passion for the culinary arts and fine wines, and his unrestrained revelry. He had experienced wealth, yet he died in near-poverty in 1933.<\/strong>\n\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"newsCenterCol\">\n\nThanks to his parents\u201e very different social backgrounds, Kr\u00fady was familiar with both the world of poverty and that of wealth, and this left its mark on his literary work. He inherited his vivid imagination from his mother, and perhaps even more so from his grandmother, M\u00e1ria Radics; his bohemian streak certainly stemmed from his grandfather, a veteran of the 1848 Hungarian Revolution and a legendary womaniser. His father was a lawyer who led a sober life and brought up his children with strictness but also with love. He would have liked to see his son follow in his footsteps, and could never quite come to terms with the fact that his son had become a writer. His grandmother was a sort of 19th-century esoteric jack-of-all-trades; she practised the high art of dream interpretation, palmistry, healing and quackery, and Kr\u00fady published her dream interpretations in his book on dreams.\n\nHe was born on 21 October 1878 in Ny\u00edregyh\u00e1za. He was not yet twenty when his first collection of short stories (*The Nest Is Empty and Other Stories*) was published. He was a contributor to numerous periodicals, including *Nyugat*. The *Sinbad* series and his novel *The Red Post Coach*, published in 1913, brought him national fame and genuine popular success.\n\nGyula Kr\u00fady frequented almost every restaurant and caf\u00e9 in the capital; he was just as much at home at the New York or Gundel as he was in the small pubs of \u00d3buda. For Kr\u00fady, with his distinctive voice and lifestyle, even a simple stew was a feast. It remains an eternal mystery how, amidst his turbulent life, he managed to write more than fifty novels, some three thousand short stories, and several thousand articles, sketches and seven plays. He adored women (including his wives) and his children, and harboured a nostalgic longing for a quiet life, but this remained merely a wish. He was captivated by an insatiable craving for delicacies, eating and drinking, social life, card games and literature.\n\nAccording to historian No\u00e9mi Saly, seventy identifiable business names can be found in the pages of Kr\u00fady\u2019s works, from K\u0151b\u00e1nya to \u00d3buda, and from the outer Kerepesi Road to Krisztinav\u00e1ros. It is all too easy to pigeonhole Kr\u00fady as a chronicler of small pubs and taverns \u2013 yet he paints by no means as distinctive a picture of these as he does of the coffee houses. In the former, it is mainly the eating and drinking that matter; in the latter, however, it is the place itself that is of interest \u2013 with its patrons, the barista and the waiters. It is true that, unlike many of his contemporaries, Kr\u00fady neither lived nor wrote in coffee houses, yet he still provides a comprehensive overview of them.\n\nCountless recollections have been written about the New York Caf\u00e9, but what Kr\u00fady writes about it does not paint a particularly favourable picture.  If there was one thing he detested, it was the pretentious pomp, the noise and the showiness. There was, however, one person whom Kr\u00fady certainly held in genuine affection: Gyula Reisz, the most distinguished literary ma\u00eetre d\u201d of all time, who \u201ecalculated down to the last detail just how much credit he could grant to which young writer, who would go on to make something of themselves out there in the world, and who would remain here, stuck in some backwater, helpless and unproductive\u2026 But the main thing is that every young writer was granted a certain amount of credit; they did not have to wander the streets at night without shelter if they happened to have a falling-out with their landlady: many slept in the caf\u00e9\u2019s private rooms during stormy days\u2026\u201d\n\nThe historian also recounted a morbid yet elegant prank that Kr\u00fady played with Gyula Reisz:\n\nAfter a night of card-playing that had resulted in a crushing loss, four young journalists popped into the \u201eNyeh\u00f3\u201d with Kr\u00fady, who ordered breakfast for all of them; Mr Reisz, however, was only willing to put it on credit for him. Kr\u00fady set off towards the telephone box with dignified composure\u2026 It was perhaps not even a quarter of an hour before a huge cart pulled up in front of the New York\u2019s wide-open windows. On the cart were ornate and less ornate coffins, which three burly lads carried into the caf\u00e9 with dizzying speed. The early-morning patrons choked on their food in horror. Uncle Reisz, the landlord and the waiters in their white coats rushed desperately towards the coffin bearers:\n\n\u201eHave you gone mad? What on earth were you thinking? Bringing coffins here? Take them back at once!\u201d\n\n\u2018To hell with it,\u2019 replied the lads, \u2018we\u2019re just glad to have unloaded them\u2026 They\u2019ve been ordered here, so they\u2019re staying here, end of story.\u2019\n\n\u2018What do you mean, \u201cordered here\u201d? Who ordered them here?\u2019\n\n\u2013 The honourable writer, Mr Gyula Kr\u00fady.\n\nUncle Reisz rushed over, and the whole army of waiters threw themselves head over heels at Uncle Gyula\u2019s feet, who sat motionless in his seat. They pleaded in unison:\n\n\u2013 Dear master\u2026 Take the coffins away\u2026 Don\u2019t ruin the caf\u00e9\u2026\n\nUncle Gyula pointed at us with a single, sluggish gesture: \u2013 Will there be breakfast?\n\nMr Reisz ordered, loudly and briskly, in a commanding tone we\u2019d never heard before\u2026 from the quietest diplomat in the caf\u00e9s of Pest. Not one, but three waiters came running with breakfast: frothy coffee for the four of us, butter, jam, ham, salami, rolls, white bread\u2026 Uncle Gyula had beer for breakfast, beef goulash reheated from the previous evening, green peppers, rye bread, followed by a glass of black coffee with water.\n\nUncle Reisz didn\u2019t even have to ask. Kr\u00fady beckoned to the three lads and called the coachman in as well:\n\n\u2018Thank you, lads,\u2019 he said. \u2018Mr Reisz will pay for the fare and the tip \u2013 five crowns each. Now go on, God be with you.\u2019\n\nHe shook hands with each of them, then tilted his head to one side, resting it in his palm, and closed his eyes\u2026 Perhaps Sinbad was now setting off on a new journey\u2026 We were wrong. Uncle Gyula suddenly shouted:\n\n\u2018I\u2019ll pay!\u2019\n\nWe couldn\u2019t believe our ears; Uncle Reisz nearly collapsed from the shock. It wasn\u2019t the volume of the shout that surprised him, but rather its content\u2026 and the large pile of crumpled banknotes that had been taken from Kr\u00fady\u2019s pocket and placed on the marble table. Ashamed, he handed the bill to Kr\u00fady. Uncle Gyula glanced at the note and handed it back:\n\n\u2018I said the whole lot! Every last penny, including the old debt the lads owe.\u2019\n\nUncle Reisz settled down at the neighbouring table, dug out the old receipts, and after half an hour of calculations, somewhat flustered and very humbly, handed over the final bill. Kr\u00fady swept the whole pile of money towards Uncle Reisz with a single sweep of his hand:\n\n\u2013 The rest is yours and the waiters\u2019.\n\nHe smiled sleepily at me, slowly got to his feet, and set off towards the exit with sluggish steps. Then he suddenly stopped and came back to our table:\n\n\u2018Doesn\u2019t any of you happen to have two crowns?\u2019 he asked. \u2018I need them for a tram.\u2019\n\nIt was at the New York Caf\u00e9 that the common term \u2018F\u0151\u00far\u2019 first came into use: in 1902, the Hars\u00e1nyi brothers, out of a sort of philanthropic goodwill, took on a down-and-out aristocrat, Ern\u0151 Walburg, whom the guests then addressed, half in jest and half with the respect due to his rank, as they called him over to the table with the cry, \u2018My Lord, I\u2019ll pay!\u2019.\n\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The writer and poet\u2019s prolific output is astonishing; thousands of writings, novels, sketches and short stories have flowed from his pen. To this day, no one can understand how he found the time for all this, given that he constantly spent his time in small pubs, caf\u00e9s and restaurants. He worked tirelessly; legends circulated about his physical strength, his appetite for love, his passion for the culinary arts and fine wines, and his unrestrained revelry. He had experienced wealth, yet he died in near-poverty in 1933.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1271,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-muveszek"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newyorkcafe.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newyorkcafe.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newyorkcafe.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkcafe.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkcafe.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1617"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkcafe.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1617\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3920,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkcafe.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1617\/revisions\/3920"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkcafe.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newyorkcafe.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkcafe.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkcafe.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}