The role of 'Nyugat' in the accomplishment of modern Hungarian literary style

The most influential Hungarian literary review, entitled 'Nyugat' (The West), was founded a hundred years ago. This paper tries to find out whether there was a more or less unitary style that that periodical pursued, whether there is such a thing as 'the style of Nyugat'. The author approaches this issue by taking the most important trends of stylistic development in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries into account. He discusses symbolism, impressionism, and 'art nouveau', with an eye on how much these trends came across in the style of 'Nyugat', and how much they are thereby suitable for characterising it. The upshot of the inquiry is that the most appropriate historical category in terms of which the style of 'Nyugat' can be described is 'modernity' or 'classical modernity'. The author highlights six main properties of that style in the areas of versification, word stock, collocations, syntax, stylistic devices, and imagery. In conclusion, the author points out that 'Nyugat' had established a stylistic norm that determined literary discourse in this country for almost a century; what is more, it also determined the forms of thinking and communication within Hungarian intellectual life as a whole.