I care too

Three yellowed booklets and a few torn pages, filled with letters so characteristic of Tibor Szobotka, in italics. It is in this form that the diaries of the writer, which testify to the years 1953-1961, were recently unearthed and can now be obtained for the first time in the book I also regret it. But can the past be questioned? And what happens if more than one person wants to speak? Turning Tibor Szobotka's diaries, one can easily feel that reading one's notes is actually dialogue. A dialogue in which the writer, the reader, and the writer's wife talk to each other. Szobotka also subsequently corrected his own texts, carefully deleting or redrawing some parts. But after the death of her husband, Magda Szabó also provided marginal notes. “You’ve erased this in vain, I remember that,” the writer writes in one place. Comments like this, and questions written at the top of each page, make the text really alive. The writer initially sought to factually record the events of the day, and through his notes we can be known as a teacher, university lecturer, translator, and literary historian. Over time, however, as a result of the difficult, troubled living conditions, commentaries and reflections on events become more frequent, from which the emotional roller coaster that followed his entire injustices can be traced throughout his life. Of course, his wife, Magda Szabó, is constantly present in the records as a character. One of the most important periods of his work, the process of becoming a prose writer, unfolds before us, as does the network of relationships, the spiritual-cultural medium to which the couple belonged. The characters of the contemporary art life show up, and we can get a perceptible picture of how the everyday life and celebrations of the writing couple went in the fifties. Thus, the diaries of Tibor Szobotka are both personal and age documents that take us back in time. This is how this volume will be an invitation to the past, which Tibor Szobotka sent us.