Károly Kerényi (1897–1973), the centenary of whose birth coincided with the twenty-fifth anniversary of his death, remains the only Hungarian classical scholar whose work has exerted a vital influence upon international intellectual life beyond the confines of the discipline. In periods of exponentially growing overproduction in scientific quarters, and especially when such surplus is aggravated by the burden of sweeping paradigm change, twenty-five years are usually more than enough to bring about oblivion—if only in the sense that, with increasing frequency, the name of an innovator is silently dropped from references to his ideas. This is a particularly likely scenario whenever there are no political or institutional interests at work behind the perpetuation of a scholar’s memory. As even a cursory familiarity with his biography will explain, no political faction has been particularly eager to claim Kerényi’s heritage as its own.
Having realized the dangers of rampant nationalism and the futility of his isolated fight against it, Kerényi emigrated to Switzerland in 1943. Although he returned to Hungary in 1947, very soon it became abundantly clear that he could no more count on the favor of the left than formerly on that of the right, so he settled for good in Switzerland. Yet academics in Switzerland refused to take note of his ideas, indeed, they did so even more reluctantly than previously their colleagues in Hungary. After the war, Kerényi would not teach in Germany (excepting a brief visiting professorship in Bonn a decade later) and he declined American invitations with the quip that he had no idea what to do in America as long as there were landscapes in Greece that he had not seen yet. Without institutional affiliations, he spent the last thirty years of his life as a private person, an “itinerant humanist” residing in Ascona on the shores of the Lago Maggiore, which he regarded an extension of his beloved Italy. It was apparently in respectful observance of this attitude that Kerényi’s family refused to follow the commemoration industry of our days and decided to refrain from initiating any form of public commemoration.
It is all the more remarkable in light of such reticence that several major dailies took note of the anniversary, including the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, the latter of which featured a page-long article by Fritz Graf, one of the most outstanding scholars of ancient religion. Five scholarly conferences paid hommage to Kerényi’s achievements: first, the January sessions of the Society for Classics in Budapest; a six-day conference in Ascona in February; the session devoted to him at the Hungarian Academy in Rome; an international lecture series lasting for two days in October in Milan; and a commemorative session in November in Pécs, organized by the Kerényi Károly College.
The more than fifty papers delivered on these occasions can be divided into roughly four groups. In the first we find discussions of Kerényi’s role and reception in a particular country or culture. Contributions belonging to the second category examined Kerényi’s relationship to prominent contemporaries. Other papers focused on particular works of Kerényi and raised the question of their relevance today, judiciously considering pros and cons. Finally, there was a group of discussions which took up suggestions implicit in Kerényi’s work to unfold their consequences or to apply the method inherited from him to topics not treated by him.
As one might have expected, most of the new material derived from the discussions of the first group, and only to a lesser extent from the Hungarian scholars participating in it, since Kerényi’s activities in Hungary have already been examined from a number of angles in the past two decades. Imre Monostori’s paper, delivered in Ascona, which limited itself to reception history, drew on many of these sources. The Ascona lectures focusing on Kerényi’s relation to Switzerland and Italy, respectively, contained a wealth of carefully assembled material. Laura Gemelli Marciano traced the history of Kerényi’s reception in Switzerland from the consolidation of his friendship to Hermann Hesse (1938) to the first years of exile. She gave a compelling account of Kerényi’s struggles against the conservatism of his Swiss colleagues and the echoes his work found in the wider, non-academic intellectual circle of his new home. Based on Kerényi’s unpublished correspondence, Natale Spineto talked about the personal relationships in which Kerényi’s longing for Italy manifested itself after its inception during his first trip to Italy at the age of seventeen. He discussed the changes in Kerényi’s relationship to the Italian schools of history of religion, led by Pettazzoni in Rome and Pestalozza in Milan, his attempts to settle in Italy, as well as the lasting and profound influence of his work on Italian philosophers. Both contributions refer us to the other, until now less clearly illuminated side of the story: Kerényi’s relationship to Hungary from his voluntary exile in 1943, which he meant to be temporary, until his ultimate exclusion from Hungarian intellectual life in 1949. (This story can be gleaned from the commentary supplementing the Hungarian translation of Spineto’s lecture in the April 1998 issue of the Hungarian monthly Beszélô.) Of particular interest was R. Dottori’s report in Rome on the philosophy conferences organized annually by Enrico Castelli, the central topic of which was the interpretation of the notions of myth and demythologization between 1961 and Kerényi’s death.
Prominent in the second group, not always sharply distinct from the first, are two lectures: Zsuzsa Szônyi’s recollections of the decades of her and her husband’s friendship with the Kerényis, and Vincenzo Tusa’s similarly personal acccount of Kerényi’s visits to Sicily during Tusa’s term as archaeological supervisor in Palermo and Kerényi’s discoveries in Western Sicily, especially in connection with the ancient monuments found in Selinunte. Professor Volker Losemann of Marburg, renowned for his book on the relation between Altertumswissenschaft and National Socialism in Germany, analyzed the scholarly aspects of the unsteady friendship between Kerényi and Franz Altheim, the historian of antiquity who taught in Frankfurt and Halle. In Ascona, Hellmut Sichtermann, former deputy director of the German Archaeological Institute in Rome, discussed the lessons of their joint archaeological field work, supplementing his already published recollections (Arcadia 11, 1976. pp. 150–177) with excerpts from his own journal. Several contributions at the Ascona and Milan conferences illuminated the origins and affinities of particular phases of Kerényi’s work, focusing on his relationship to Thomas Mann
(M. Edler), Lipót and Peter Szondi (Chr. König), Freud, Jung, Gershom Scholem (M. Treml), German philosophy in general (Chr. Jamme), Walter
F. Otto (C. Sini), Otto and Heidegger (G. Moretti, A. Magris, L. Arcella), and Frobenius (L. Vajda). On the periphery of this group, two lectures in Ascona focused on Frobenius’ theory of cultural morphology and his notion of paideuma (H. J. Heinrichs) and the activity of the Eranos circle (B. v. Reinitz), without directly relating these issues to Kerényi himself.
The majority of the Rome sessions belong to the third category. The most consequential contributions in this category were made, however, in Ascona. Of the two scholars from Paris, J. Scheid searched for points of contact between Kerényi’s understanding of ancient religion and structuralism, while J. Bollack pointed out that the effort to identify “primordial images”, manifested in the early works, is an anticipation of the later encounter with Jung. Of the three outstanding German scholars of ancient religions, A. Henrichs spoke of the novels of Greek antiquity and argued that the young Kerényi’s 1927 monograph had a pioneering role in the interpretation of novels in terms of the history of religion. Stressing the groundbreaking significance of Kerényi’s work, Henrichs discussed the ways in which papyrus texts discovered after the completion  of the book have modified Kerényi’s ideas. He assessed the value of Kerényi’s method, which treats the novels as documents of secularized mythology, by comparing it to Merkelbach’s study of novels as religious texts. Walter Burkert, professor emeritus in Zürich and generally recognized by his peers as the most knowledgeable expert of Greek religion contested Kerényi’s interpretation, offered in his book on mysteries, of the representations of the so-called Lovatelli-urn, a Roman marble vase in the Museo Nazionale of Rome. Fritz Graf, disciple of Burkert, professor at the University of Basle, gave one of the best talks of this years’ conferences. He talked about the Kerényian interpretation of Greek and Roman mythology. He was the only one to discuss the influence of Malinowski’s works on Kerényi’s understanding of myth. He also underscored the extent to which this conception of mythology was inspired by contemporaneous political events and by Kerényi’s intention to sharply demarcate his notion from the pseudo-mythology propagated in contemporary Germany. He discussed the ethical motivations behind Kerényi’s hostility to Wilamowitz’s line of inquiry (he repudiated Wilamowitz as the “last dictator” of classical studies), and made an attempt to account for his ostracization from “the guild of classical philologist”. What was particularly remarkable, especially in comparison with Graf’s above-mentioned commemorative article, was the essentially positive valuation of Kerényi in his lecture, as Graf said, due to his re-reading of the correspondence with Thomas Mann.
Aldo Magris from Triest, whose 1975 monograph to Kerényi’s conception of the history of religion, (Carlo Kerényi e la ricerca fenomenologica della religione, Milano 1975) gave a detailed analysis of the affinities of Kerényi’s thoughts on the divine “coming to pass” (Ereignis) of being with some of Heidegger’s writings which had not been published until 1989. In Ascona, R. Seaford from Exeter, in Milan, G. Antonelli and P. Pisi from the La Sapienza University of Rome analyzed Kerényi’s image of Dionysos and his stance, by no means uncritical, toward Nietzsche’s Die Geburt der Tragödie and Otto’s Dionysos monograph.
Two lecturers dealt with the role of fine arts in Kerényi’s work: In Ascona Margot Schmidt discussed Kerényi’s interpretation of mythological vase paintings from Southern Italy, stressing the pioneering significance of some, without, however, underplaying the problematic character of others. Cornelia Isler-Kerényi in Milan gave a complex analysis of the function of interpretations of figural representations in Kerényi’s works on mythology. She emphasized the fundamental importance of visual perception in Kerényi’s works: he regarded the testimony of images as equal in significance to that of texts, as living matter which keeps metamorphosing in the vase painters’ hands.
It would be difficult to keep these contributions apart from those of the fourth group, which consisted mainly of lectures continuing a particular line of though or work of Kerényi’s. The above-mentioned lectures on Dionysos belong to this group, in a sense. Kerényi’s Labyrinthos studies (Labyrinthstudien, Amsterdam–Leipzig 1941; 1950, 1966) furnished the point of departure for a lecture each in Rome and Milano, the latter of which, by A. Carotenuto, examined the connections between labyrinths and initiation rites.
Th. Köves-Zulauf (Marburg), who had been Kerényi’s student in Budapest, focused on Kerényi’s interpretation of the Ion of Euripides as an example for the problematic character of his method. In Pécs, István Tóth used a work by Kerényi as his point of departure to discuss the cult of Silvanus in the province of Pannonia, and Róbert Somos talked about Kerényi’s interpretation of Platonism. A lecture delivered in Hungarian in Budapest and in Italian in Milan by the author of these lines on Religio Academici, the study with which Kerényi won Hesse’s friendship, identified  Kerényi’s ethical attitude toward scholarship as his lasting heritage. The exegetic possibilities opened up by an organic continuation of Kerényi’s method of myth analysis were demonstrated by Géza Komoróczy’s interpretation of a passage from the Old Testament in his lecture in Rome.
The diverse statements occasioned by this year’s dual anniversary, representing different, indeed often conflicting, directions of research, furnish abundant material for assessing which parts of Kerényi’s heritage are likely to remain alive and how they will continue to exert an influence on contemporary scholarship. Already the themes of the three international conferences are suggestive of possible answers to this question: “Humanism and Hermeneutics” was the title of the conference in Ascona, “Existential Philology” in Rome, “Facing the Divine” in Milan. Given these titles, it is hardly surprising that classical scholars in the strict sense of the term were almost completely absent from the ranks of the lecturers.
With this observation we have touched the heart of the “Kerényi question”. Kerényi studied with the leading scholars of the golden age of historicism. The rigor of his schooling, the immense breadth and depth of his erudition are evidenced by his first book on the novels of antiquity,
(Die griechisch-orientalische Romanliteratur in religionsgeschichtlicher Beleuchtung. Tübingen, 1927) whose significance has been generally acknowledged by philologists and has not been overshadowed by later developments in scholarship; its third edition appeared in 1973. After all, even in the epochal debate between Nietzsche and Wilamowitz, no one accused either of the contesting parties of insufficient expertise (indeed, their teachers in the Schulpforta Gymnasium, which both Nietzsche and Wilamowitz attended, considered Nietzsche’s knowledge of Greek superior to that of Wilamowitz). Even the best disciples of Wilamowitz who rebelled against their master under Nietzsche’s banner remained within the confines of their discipline, however far they may have expanded these confines. Kerényi, on the other hand, strove to overstep such boundaries from the beginning, and not only by virtue of the content of his works. He sought an appropriate form for his thoughts, one which could convey them to an audience beyond the confines of his discipline. It is perhaps no exaggeration to say that a considerable part of Kerényi’s labors was devoted to the struggle for such a form. Thus it is understandable that one of the most animated debates in Ascona was occasioned by the question concerning the genre of Kerényi’s works and the legitimacy or injustice of the old accusation that they are “too literary for science but too scientific for literature”. When such accusations are made, it is often difficult not to suspect the secret jealousy harboured by a writer of insipid scholarly prose or a stylist lacking substance. To be sure, sometimes the eloquence of Kerényi’s expression relegates his scientific argument to a less conspicuous role, and his aversion for the mandatory blandness of scholarly writing often takes the form of a reluctance to provide the scholarly apparatus which would be necessary for sufficient validation of his claims. We find a paradoxical reconciliation between these contradictory requirements in the work sometimes thought to be least typical of Kerényi, namely, his two books on Greek mythology (The Gods of the Greeks, first English edition: London: Thames and Hudson, 1951 and many new editions in 1958, 1960, 1961, 1974 etc.; The Heroes of the Greeks, first English edition, London: Thames and Hudson 1959). In a thoroughly unobtrusive manner, which never interferes with the outsider’s reading, Kerényi manages to intertwine his exposition with the kind of apparatus that is indispensable for the specialist. Recondite references, suggestive of an immense knowledge of the ancient literary tradition and leading directly to the primary sources, combine with the testimony of images from antiquity. Such a highly impressive presentation of philological and archaeological materials is an incontestable scholarly accomplishment and it can justifiably lay claim to being recognized as such. At the same time, the author seems intent on preventing his readers from pigeonholing his writing as a specialized study for a limited group of scholars. His avowed objective is to speak to mature readers and to inspire the poets of the future. Having left behind the youthful illusion of writing literature and science at the same time, Kerényi makes it quite clear that, given the inevitability of choice, he writes as a “scholarly writer”. Yet there can be no doubt that one of the strongest motivations of his work on Greek mythology is the desire to express his life-long love of the novel, of large-scale epic prose, the ambition to write the narrative work. In the wake of his earlier role models—Lawrence, Powys, Thomas Mann—Kerényi wants to continue along the path of the development of narrative art since Virginia Woolf.
Kerényi finds a point of contact to the modern novel, especially to Woolf’s Orlando, as he writes in the Preface to The Heroes of the Greeks, in its fragmentation of the continuous surface of linear narration. In fact, this modern affinity of Kerényi’s practice of juxtaposing storytellers of antiquity who lived in different periods brings us to one of the most frequently made charges of his critics, the objection that Kerényi lifts out sources from their historical context and underplays their historicality. This objection does not apply, of course, to papers in which Kerényi offers interpretations of a particular work—such as “Eternal Antigone” in Dionysos und das tragische in der Antigone (Frankfurt am Main, 1935) or the interpretation of Plato’s Phaedo in “Immortality and Apollo Religion” (Apollon, Amsterdam, 1937) or his later studies devoted to single monuments of classical antiquity. Where the force of the objection cannot be ignored is in regard to Kerényi’s preoccupation in the Thirties with the history of religion, in the course of which he found points of contact with ethnology as practised by Frobenius and psychology. Certainly Fritz Graf was right in his lecture in Ascona when he identified a crucial reason for Kerényi’s professional ostracization in the suspicion with which traditional classical scholars responded to the incursions of psychology into their field.
There is also little doubt that the writings from the last thirty years of Kerényi’s life cannot be viewed as instances of classical scholarship traditionally understood. Nor was it Kerényi’s intention, however, to participate in the discourse of the discipline.  When, shortly after his arrival in Switzerland, the editors of Museum Helveticum, which represented the most conservative trend in classical philology, justified their rejection of Kerényi’s article with this critique, Kerényi made little effort to publish in other scholarly journals. There were few exceptions, to be sure: his critical reviews in the 1956 issue of Gnomon of a book by Otto and of Graves’ mythology (The Greek Myths, London, 1955), the second of which plagiarized the basic notion of Kerényi’s own mythology, as well as the articles he published regularly in respected archaeological journals until 1969. The grounds for this mutual estrangement are inherent in the very foundation of Kerényi’s work. He carried on the rebellion against Wilamowitz which was unleashed under the banner of Nietzsche to free inquiry from the narrow and artificial confines of a discipline so that it can finally address the problems emerging from the scholar’s own personal existence—the problems of a universal science of humanity, epitomized in the Greek anthropologia and in the Latin humanitas. Hence Kerényi first expanded the circle of the traditions under consideration until it comprized every known civilization, and then set out to find the roots of these traditions within the soul. His version of the comparative study of myth and religion was thus essentially a religious psychology, which ultimately led to a philosophy of religion. During three decades of multifaceted activity in Switzerland, his most significant and most widely influential works concentrated on two issues: the project of defining the primordial images of human existence, most accessible to Kerényi through the Greek gods, and the basic philosophical problems of the hermeneutics of mythology, regularly addressed in the lectures that he held at the conferences organized by Enrico Castelli.
At the first conference held in 1961, organized around “the problem of demythologization”, Bultman’s opening address was followed by Kerényi’s lecture, titled “Theos and Mythos”. This address was deliberately juxtaposed by Castelli with Bultman’s as the most important and most influential antipode of theologically inspired demythologization. These conferences were regarded as the most important events of Italian intellectual life, and it is a measure of the significance accorded to Kerényi’s participation that his lectures were published in a separate volume in 1993, twenty years after his death. (K. Kerényi, Scritti italiani, a cura di
G. Moretti. Naples, 1993) As R. Dottori, a highly respected participant of the Rome conference said in his opening address, in which he stressed Kerényi’s direct influence on Gadamer: “Karl Kerényi is undoubtedly one of the most important figures in the study of classical religion and, together with M. Heidegger, R. Bultmann, H. G. Gadamer, E. Levinas, P. Ricoeur, J. Piaget, and M. Eliade, one of the most fascinating personalities one can find in the Central European intelligentsia.”
Of course the potential to be either historical or phenomenological is characteristic of comparative ethnology and comparative religious studies as well. Indeed this was the point at which the paths of Kerényi and his favorite disciple Brelich diverged. Brelich placed the works of his master in the phenomenological category of religious study, perhaps too rigorously demarcating historical forms of research from ahistorical ones in subsuming all forms of research into religion under these two alternative categories. The totality of Kerényi’s own research cannot be characterized in such limited terms; all the less so as his career was shaped by interferences among various factors, some of which were transient, others permanent. His openness, his perpetual search for something new was deeply rooted in his sensitivity to the most pressing questions of contemporary history and in his ambition to formulate answers which were valid with respect to his present. In Hungary after Trianon, it seemed that this answer would be scholarship of a kind which was up to international standards. During the Thirties, nationalist isolation had to be countered with the universally valid values of classical antiquity, and soon enough the protection of humanity itself became high priority, calling for a definition of what is human in man in the face of rampant inhumanity. Nor did this calling lose its appeal to Kerényi when the very same values were violated by the occupying Soviets.
By the Thirties Kerényi had left behind the philology of irrelevant minutiae, while on the other hand he carefully distinguished his position from the one-sided classicism and superstitious irrationalism of W. F. Otto, whom he continued to respect personally (he did not resolutely distance himself from Otto until after the latter’s death, in Wege und Weggenossen II, 1988, pp. 246–247, 251). Similarly, Kerényi demarcated his line of research from Jung’s biologistic conception (in a comprehensive manner in Eleusis, Archetypal Image of Mother and Daughter, 1967, XXIV–XXXIII, and especially in Wege und Weggenossen II, p. 345). It is important to point out his critical attitude toward these two figures, for it has been, and still is, a matter of course to mention the names of Kerényi and Otto, Kerényi, and Jung in the same breath.
The features of Kerényi’s work which these conferences have shown to be still relevant are those which persisted throughout his entire career, despite changing themes, emphases, and formulations: commitment to the sources, the primacy of thought over the vain perfection of the philological apparatus, faith in the paradigmatic value of classical antiquity, the perpetual quest for the human import of scholarship, resolute opposition to inhuman ideas and acts even at the cost of risking his own safety. All these virtues were summed up in the brief text   under the photograph to accompany the article in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung: “classical scholar, mythologist, humanist, clear-sighted witness of his times”. Kerényi himself, however, prefered to put it differently in one of his last statements printed in the Budapest Catholic monthly Vigilia: “My chief occupation is the study of Greek antiquity” (1971, p. 125).
All of which is not to say that the scholarly questions raised in connection to Kerényi’s work can be evaded. Kerényi remained virtually unaffected by the sociological interests which were emerging in classical studies and the study of religion simultaneously with his work. Indeed he always attempted to free his thinking about a particular work or a cultural phenomenon from the historical circumstances under which it came into being and was handed down. While this approach undoubtedly underplayed the historical significance of his subject-matter, it was Kerényi’s hope that this shortcoming would be amply compensated for by its power to inspire individuals who are able and willing to think, and even artists. That this hope was justified is evidenced by Kerényi’s correspondence and informal exchanges with Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, Martin Buber,  Gershom Scholem, and other prominent intellectuals of the time.
The bulk of these letters is still gathering dust in the archive maintained by his wife. There is hardly any significant work in English, German, and especially Italian, on the religion of classical antiquity which lacks references to Kerényi. Many of the basic categories on which his work was based have become problematic in recent years. In the eyes of some scholars, his definition of religion cannot be applied to non-European cultures (Brelich, Storia delle religioni, perché? 1979. p. 230). On the other hand, others have doubts about the applicability of Kerényi’s concept to Greek religion (as Dario Sabatucci has in his Ascona lecture). Yet others criticize the concept of myth as an Enlightenment construct and hence irrelevant to non-European cultures (F. Graf, Greek Mythology. 1993,
pp. 55–56). But the general truth that the latest is not necessarily the best is also valid in the realm of scholarship. Even those whose line of inquiry differs from the one proposed and pursued by Kerényi acknowledge the exceptional significance of his work for twentieth-century religious studies and recognize the impossibility of ignoring his ideas. The lectures of such scholars at the centenary conferences as well as the large number of recently published writings on Kerényi seem to vindicate the writer, literary historian, and friend Antal Szerb’s prediction, made with a characteristic loving irony, that “for the future historian of religion, Kerényi himself as a unique phenomenon of the history of religion will be more instructive than his findings in the history of religion” (in the journal Apollo, 1937–1938. p. 193)
A few words, finally, on the relation between Kerényi and Hungary. In its 1948 June issue, the social science journal Társadalmi Szemle published György Lukács’ critique of the Hungarian edition of Kerényi’s Töchter der  Sonne  (Zürich, 1944). The book appeared without the translator’s name, an absence which was meant to indicate that the cards had been stacked and the decision made from the beginning. According to Lukács, “Noone wants to suggest that Kerényi as a person is an adherent of Fascism, or even a political reactionary,” but, he continued, Kerényi’s writings “point in the direction of the darkest forces of reaction, supporting as they do an extreme irrationalism with the distorted images of an arbitrary philology that has degenerated into a pseudo-science. For, regardless of one’s intentions, the atmosphere of mythology has already once proven to be the atmosphere in which the ideological preparation for Fascism took place.” Apart from a few specifics of the book that Lukács clearly misconstrued on purpose rather than from mere ignorance, Lukács was cautious enough to refrain from contending with Kerényi’s major scholarly claims. To Lukács’ mind, Kerényi’s attempt to evoke the atmosphere of mythology was the most salient aspect of his book, and one which showed Kerényi in worrysome proximity to Klages, the favorite philosopher of National Socialism. Indeed, wrote Lukács, “Kerényi’s ratiocinations [...] are even more irresponsible than those of Klages”. Hence the verdict: “Whether Kerényi knows it or not, his book actively participates in the ideological demonstration of power led by today’s reaction. And this is a fact whose every consequence has to be observed by us within the domain of ideology”.
Lukács must have been well aware of the difference between the ideas of Kerényi and Klages. Having quoted passages from the correspondence between Thomas Mann and Kerényi, he could not have possibly overlooked the letter—indeed he turned it inside out—in which Kerényi voiced his opposition to Klages in the most emphatic terms as early as 1934 (and even more resolutely in the journal Sziget (2, 1936, p. 13). Similarly, Lukács’ clearly disregarded the preface to the second, 1941 edition, of Apollon on purpose. In this one finds, among other things, this passage: “The present author [...] knows that understanding the essence of actual mythological figures is different from delivering freshly invented mythologies to gullible irrationalists and equally gullible rationalists—such as mythologies about the Spirit as the enemy of the Soul, or about Logos and Mythos as contrary forces at war one with the other”.
Instead of continuing the endless list of distortions, falsities, and self-contradictions, we should point out that the main junctures of Lukács’ article correspond precisely and often word-by-word to the polemical claims made in a brutal attack on Kerényi published on September 4, 1946 in the short-lived periodical Köztársaság. Nor is it difficult to see that Lukács articulated his views in an entirely different register and on a different level of sophistication in his 1947 book Nietzsche és a fasizmus (Nietzsche and Fascism) and in his 1954 opus Az Ész trónfosztása  (The Destruction of Reason). The explanation is obvious enough: the article was meant to formulate a judgment passed in advance from above, without bothering to ask the question (proven meaningless by the experience of the long years Lukács had spent in exile) whether the charge would justify the verdict, which was primarily directed against a person rather than serving a cause.
In Hungary the Lukács’ article was generally regarded as Roma locuta. A brief vulgar book appeared in 1949 whose preface cited Lukács’ argument in its portrayal of Kerényi’s work; for the following twenty years, not a single study approving of Kerényi’s work was to appear, indeed, references to his name or writings had all but disappeared from Hungarian scholarly literature. The first occasion on which his work was recognized at all was the obituary published on the pages of Antik Tanulmányok [Studies in Antiquity], a periodical published in three-hundred copies.
In the the milder political climate of the autumn of 1953, following Stalin’s death and the recent rise to power of Khrushchev in the USSR and Imre Nagy in Hungary, I had dinner in a Sofia restaurant with György Alexits, an outstanding mathematician, who had been secretary of state between 1945 and 1948. Alexits turned out to be amiably open in conversation and asked me about the state of classical scholarship in Hungary. I replied that the forced exile of Kerényi and András Alföldi meant an irreparable loss, and, having expressed my incomprehension that two world-renowned scholars with impeccable records of anti-Fascism were barred from getting university chairs at a time when academic positions were lavished upon mediocre scholars with a chequered or dubious political past (I did not mention names), I finally posed a question which I had meant to be rhetorical: “Who could possibly have arranged things this way?” Alexits’ reply was to the point: “It was me.” he said and went on, “Look, the others didn’t really pose a problem, but we would have been unable to cope with Kerényi and Alföldi. To keep them silent by force was unimaginable in view of their international reputation, but, knowing their work and their temperament, we knew: we could neither hope to win them over, nor that they would keep silent about their critical observations. At the same time we also knew that there was noone we could have deployed in debates who would have stood a chance against them”
Further conclusions can be drawn from the centenary conferences held in Budapest and Pécs. After all, the question concerning Kerényi has arisen in a different form in Hungary than abroad. In the international arena, it has become clear that Kerényi’s oeuvre signals a crucial moment in the history of religion by virtue of critically going beyond previous scholarship and introducing the new paradigm which has been unfolding in the past twenty-five years. For Hungarian scholars of antiquity, by contrast, Kerényi has symbolized certain vitally important alternatives: an attention to the needs of national culture in the broadest sense in the face of disciplinary tunnel-vision; the readiness to think in universal terms within an international horizon in the face of confinement to narrowly conceived national goals; a willingness to face the ultimate problems of human existence in the face of contentment with mere professional competence; the ethically committed life of the mind in the face of a professionalism which aspires for titles and positions of material power and influence, using publications as mere means to these ends; and an active opposition to the anxious precaution of those scholars who would disguise their cowardice and indecision with the mask of scholarly objectivity to justify their refusal to take a political stance. This is why in the Thirties Kerényi was “a source of inspiration and a stimulant” for youth and others in of Hungarian intellectual life, within which he managed to endow the study of antiquity with a hitherto unprecedented importance. Never repudiating his position as a specialized scholar, his writings and lectures nonetheless enjoyed such a wide reception and provoked such heated discussion as noone else’s before or since in classical scholarship in Hungary. Consensus was complete in this respect even among those judging his work in diametrically opposed ways. To be sure, Roman sources tell us that there had always been a handful of households which kept the statues of emperors exiled from the public memory of Rome. Forcing Kerényi to leave Hungary and commiting his name to oblivion was, however, to deprive younger scholars of the opportunity to continue the tradition whose foundations had been laid down by him.
Especially in the past two years, Kerényi’s name has come up in publications with increasing frequency. Some of his works once again became available too. After three decades of enforced amnesia, it is understandable that most of the studies on Kerényi are apologetic in nature—a notable exception being the series published in the past ten years by Éva Kocziszky, which is virtually the only significant attempt in Hungary to assess Kerényi’s work in the light of contemporary philology and philosophy. Conspicuous is the widespread indifference in classical studies, which seems to perpetuate the hostile atmosphere of the professional climate in the Thirties as well as the anathema pronounced by Lukács in 1949 and confirmed many times since then. The majority of recent publications would seem to confirm the observation that classical scholars in Hungary have thus far preferred the direction imposed on them in 1949 to the one proposed by Kerényi (not that the latter has no positive alternatives). A different testimony is offered, however, by the young audience of the Budapest conference, and by the enthusiastic response to the commemorative sessions in Pécs. No doubt the thread of the tradition created by Kerényi’s work in Hungary has been so brutally cut that one might believe the flower which used to blossom at the famous Friday evening lectures to have turned to dust. And yet, it seems reasonable to hope now that sooner or later someone will come who, like Paracelsus in Borges’ short story, utters the word which has the power to make the flower shoot up again from the ashes.

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