ABSTRACT: The article examines the relationship between Ervin Sinkó, writer and co-founder of the Department of Hungarian Language and Literature in Novi Sad, and a group of young authors associated with the neo-avantgarde journal Új Symposion. The journal’s poetics, critical discourse, and engagement with contemporary Yugoslav, European, and world literature disrupted the provincial Hungarian literary scene in Vojvodina. Sinkó was among the few senior intellectuals who publicly and convincingly defended these emerging authors.

KEYWORDS: Ervin Sinkó, Új Symposion, students’ literary journal, anti-provincialism, Yugoslavia, socialism, dynamic cultural system

SUMMARY: The article examines the relationship between Ervin Sinkó, writer and co-founder of the Department of Hungarian Language and Literature at the University of Novi Sad, and a group of then-emerging authors associated with the Novi Sad–based neo-avant-garde literary journal Új Symposion, published in Hungarian. The poetics of the newly founded journal – its critical column, as well as texts taken from the contemporary Yugoslav, European and world literature – fundamentally shook up the small and provincial literary and cultural Hungarian milieu in Vojvodina. The journal’s editorial board, led by Ottó Tolnai, István Domonkos, János Bányai, István Bosnyák and others, was subjected to fierce criticism in the local press. These criticisms stemmed from a parochial and provincial desire that the literature of Vojvodina Hungarians should not open up to the world, but rather continue to inherit the so-called “poetics of local color”. One of the few members of the older generation who came to the defense of these “young titans” with well-founded arguments was their university professor, Ervin Sinkó. He saw in them the potential to step out of the framework imposed by their place of birth and to achieve far greater literary and artistic accomplishments, rather than languish on the margins of Hungarian literature. He believed that this was possible primarily due to their openness to modern and neo-avantgarde artistic tendencies, and to Yugoslav culture as an intermediary between them and the world.