Writer, translator of literary texts, journalist, academician.
He was born in Timisoara; according to his confessions, his parents are Hungarians made up of five nations. The original name of Méliusz is Nelovánkovits. The Reform religious poet Szombati-Szabó István and his adolescent readings make him choose the Reformation religion instead of the Catholic one. He graduates from the high-school in his native town, then he goes to the Art University in Budapest, but he interrupts his studies. After that, he continues his theological reform studies at Zürich, Berlin and Cluj. He is a journalist, writer and editor for more than a decade.
Between 1947 and 1948 he is an art mentor at Cluj, between 1948 and 1949 he is the organiser and later, the director of the Hungarian State Theatre. In the meantime he becomes the main secretary of the Romanian Hungarian Union of Writers. In November 1949 he is arrested and sentenced because of his political concepts and in 1955 he goes to prison. After he is released, he is not accepted in Cluj, he goes to Bucharest and between 1958 and 1959 he is the vice-president of the literary publishing house in Bucharest. In 1968 he is appointed as the vice-president of the Romanian Writers’ Union.
His first writings are published in Korunk, 1930, whose editor he becomes. He is also the editor of the Brassói Lapok. His literary career develops already in the 30s within the frames of the Korunk; he’s also influenced by the revolutionary „left-sided” literature. As the direct co-worker of Gaál Gábor, he accepts a significant part of the editorial activity. His activity as a literary editor improves a lot after 1945. He is the editor of Utunk, a literary weekly magazine, which is firstly published in 1946 at Cluj, he gets an important role in the national management board of the Hungarian Public Alliance, between 1945 and 1948 he is the main secretary of the Romanian Hungarian Union of Writers. He also accepts to participate in the publications’ promotion and he organises the Library of the Hungarian Public Alliance in Timisoara. He is also present as an editor during the most relevant editorial period of time. His poem, Ének 1437-ről, he had already written in 1937, is published simultaneously with the Sors és jelkép in 1946 at Cluj, a description of a travel to South Transylvania, a situation reflecting the Hungarians’ lack of rights, the diary of the advanced intellectuals’ destiny, desires, ideas and conceptions. A document regarding the king’s dictatorship, the strong advance of the fascists, it is a book which had not been accepted neither in libraries nor in the public opinion for a long time.
Besides his prose writings, his avantgarde poetry is also significant. Its special product is Horace Cockery darabokra tört elégiája – here he illustrates his anticommunist perspectives within the prism of an imaginary Irish poet, Horace Cockery’s writings. Méliusz József’s prose rises to the highest level of the Transylvanian literature, due to his memories. His novel, Város a ködben Town in the Fog (1969), is written between 1938 and 1940. He highlights the context of his family, town (Timisoara) and classmates, he illustrates the office workers’ lives, which were deprived of material problems, he describes the war circumstances and the civil people’s natural history.
His publicist writings published in 1961 as the Kitépett naplólapok reveal that his notes do not emphasise an idyll. In his articles, memoirs and political literature analysis he strongly supports the Korunk, the revolutionary literature. He edits A Korunk költészete -The Poetry of Korunk (1967), and elaborates introductory studies on the poems of József Attila, Radnóti Miklós, Komját Aladár, from Kassák, he writes about Sinkó Ervin and, on the occasion of Ady’s anniversary, he writes about the power of the mother tongue and internationalism with a great pathos. His literary editorial activity between the two World Wars is underlined by his collections of essays and articles: Az illúziók kávéháza – The Illusions’ Coffe-House (1971), as well as its continuation, Kávéház nélkül -Without a Coffee-House (1977) – a „personal spiritual diary” and “the volume regarding the civil confessions.”
After 1990, as a writer of the Hungarians, considered a minority group, on behalf of the European conceptions related to freedom, he becomes the editor of the Zsilava nem volt kávéház -Jilava was not a Coffee House (2003). Méliusz writes a number of polemics regarding the conservative literary conceptions, by approaching the attitude of the self-justified writer, which is occasionally emphasised in his memoirs: he illustrates his experience and personal dramas from epical viewpoints. His desires regarding the artistic creation of forms and stylistic experience are as powerful in the case of Méliusz, as the declaration of truth itself.
The beliefs and ideology Méliusz highlights are radical and occasionally unexpected, his life and career are either very satisfying, or decline a lot, being severely limited. One of his most essential stages is marked in 1974 when he becomes the correspondent of the Romanian Academy.
He is buried in 1995 in the Bellu cemetery, Bucharest.
