Almost ten years passed before it was revived. This time it was an immediate and overwhelming triumph. Perhaps the wide circulation of the play in printed form had made its beauty and significance clearer. Perhaps the tragedy of the war had made Molnar’s public more sensitive to spiritual values. Whatever the reason, Budapest now accepted ecstatically what it had previously rejected, and Molnar was more of a popular hero than ever. From which it may be gleaned that Hungary takes its drama and dramatists more seriously, disapproves them more passionately and praises them more affectionately than we Americans can conceive. In Paris I once saw an audience rise en masse, because the sculptor Rodin had entered the auditorium, and remain on its feet cheering until he had taken his seat. Something of the kind greets Molnar whenever he appears in public, and nothing is more certain than that he is the hero, the oracle, the spoiled darling of club, salon and coffee house in which artistic Hungary foregathers.
But the years immediately following the first production of LILIOM were for him a period of eclipse. It was the first time that even the threat of failure had cast its shadow across his career. He became timid, wary of failure, too anxious to please his public. His subsequent plays were less original, less daring, more faithful to routine. Never again did he touch the heights of LILIOM; and some of his best friends aver that he never will again until he has banished the dread of failure that obsesses him.
An odd situation, truly, and in some aspects a tragic one. Genius lacking the courage to spread its wings and soar. A potential immortal bidding fearfully for the praise of a coffee-house clique. Is it vanity? Is it abnormal sensitiveness? Biographical data cast little light on the enigma.
Franz Molnar was born in Budapest on January 12, 1878, the son of a wealthy Jewish merchant. He graduated from the Universities of Geneva and Budapest. His literary career was begun as a journalist at the age of eighteen. He wrote short sketches and humorous dialogues of such beauty and charm that he became a national figure almost at once, and the circulation of his newspaper increased until it was foremost in Budapest. Then he married Margaret Vaszi, the daughter of his editor, herself a journalist of note. Two years later he was divorced from her, and subsequently he married an actress who had played rôles in his own plays.
For a portrait of him as he is today you have to think of Oscar Wilde at the height of his glory. A big pudgy face, immobile, pink, smooth-shaven, its child-like expressionlessness accentuated by the monocle he always wears, though rather belied by the gleam of humor in his dark alert eyes. His hair is iron-gray, his figure stocky and of about medium height. A mordant wit, an inimitable raconteur, he loves life and gayety and all the luxuries of life. Nothing can persuade him out of his complacent and comfortable routine. He will not leave Budapest, even to attend the première of one of his plays in nearby Vienna. The post-war political upheaval which has rent all Hungary into two voluble and bitter factions left him quite unperturbed and neutral. His pen is not for politics.
Yet it is a singularly prolific pen. His novels and short stories are among the finest in Hungarian literature. He has written nine long plays and numerous short ones. A chronology of his more important dramatic works is as follows:
1902 A DOKTOR UR (The Doctor).
1904 JOZSI.
1907 AZ ÖRDÖG (The Devil).
1909 LILIOM.