Béla Hamvas
1897–1968 · Hungarian writer, philosopher and social critic, the first to introduce René Guénon's Traditionalism to Hungary
Béla Hamvas (1897-1968) was a Hungarian writer, philosopher and social critic, and the first thinker in his country to introduce the Traditionalist School of René Guénon. His work, which spans essays, translations and fiction, belongs to the tradition that looks to ancient religions and wisdom traditions for a knowledge deeper than modern life can offer.
He was born in Eperjes, in the Kingdom of Hungary, today Prešov in Slovakia, the son of a Lutheran pastor. He studied in Pozsony (Bratislava) and was sent to the front during the First World War. Afterwards he worked as a journalist and then as a librarian at the main library in Budapest. In the 1930s he became the leading Hungarian follower of the Italian Julius Evola, sharing his call for an undemocratic regime run by an enlightened elite, and he co-founded the Sziget circle with Károly Kerényi. After the war the socialist government barred him from publishing and removed him from his library post, and he earned his living as a night watchman and as an unskilled worker in power plants.
His thought holds that spiritual truth has been passed down through ancient traditions, from the Upanishads and the Tao Te Ching to European mysticism, and that modern society has lost its sense of the sacred. He wrote Scientia Sacra, Magyar Hüperion and Patmos, as well as the novel Carnival. His influence came mainly after his death: after 1989, Traditionalist groups inspired by his teachings appeared, and in 1990 he was posthumously awarded the Kossuth Prize. Some critics argue that his sympathy for elitism and for Evola complicates his reputation as an anti-fascist writer.
Key ideas
- Primordial tradition: a shared spiritual knowledge has been handed down across cultures and can be found in ancient and Eastern texts.
- Crisis of modernity: the contemporary world has lost its sense of the sacred, which Hamvas saw as the source of its disorientation and materialism.
- Comparative wisdom: he read the thought of the Far East, European mysticism and the Kabbalah side by side, looking for what they share.
- Spiritual elite: he held that true knowledge belongs to a small minority able to grasp it, an idea that brought him close to Evola's elitism.
Curiosities
Never reached the front
Sent to the front in western Italy, he never reached the battlefield: the train he was travelling on was hit by a shell, and the wounded Hamvas was discharged.
From librarian to night watchman
After his clash with György Lukács over surrealism and abstract art, he was removed from his post and forced to work as a night watchman.
Original Filopedia text based on Wikipedia (en) and Wikidata.