The number of the readers from Csíkszereda and Hargita County broke a record this year: about 4000 people from the country’s 20 institutions and nearly 19000 people on 60 settlements of the county are going to read out on the marathon. This year, the cross-border event is going to be organized for the 8th time, with the support of Harghita County Council. The opening ceremony has started at 10 o’clock in the morning in the lecture hall of the Kájoni János County Library of Harghita, where an exhibition of Áron Tamási’s works welcomed the participants.

The groups of the local schools alternate between each other in the lecture hall of the Kájoni János County Library of Harghita, the students of the Petőfi Sándor Elementary School were the first to come. After the speech of librarian and organizer, Edit Török, Gábor Szarka was the first to greet the participants on the behalf of the Hungarian Consulate General of Csíkszereda. He expressed his joy on the Consulate General’s attendance at the marathon, and he also highlighted the importance of reading through which we can develop our Hungarian language skills and the vocabulary.

László Lázár Lövétei, who is a poet and the editor in chief of the Székelyföld journal, started the read out and was grateful to the organizers for choosing Áron Tamási’s works to be read out this year, and he also mentioned, that the works of the writer was published in six volumes of the Székely Library series of a publisher, called Hargita Kiadó.  He read out the Rézangyal short story by Tamási, which is the writer’s initial story in his volume entitled Helytelen világ that was published in 1931. At the end of the read out he added: „I agree with the main protagonist, Lázár Galambos, that less passwords, some kind of voices, mottos are required; rather working and reading quietly, and maybe the result will unfold.”

Surprisingly, Áron Tamási’s voice was heard, as the participants played a recording that can be found in the archive of the Petőfi Irodalmi Múzeum (Petőfi Literary Museum). The recording contained a part of the writer’s tale, named Cinciri Hám.

László Balog, the library director of the Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania continued the marathon with one of Tamási’s letters. The Consul Consulate continued with the reading. Gábor Szarka picked an excerpt from Tamási’s Abel in America, which evoked the memory of the writer’s parents. Gyöngyi Szarka-Dobi also read an excerpt from this volume that has become Tamási’s famous proverb.

“‘Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home,’ I kept saying to myself and my heart was being filled with great and indefinite warmth, my soul with the calmness of serene time and my eyes with the dew of the dawn.”

Éva Takács was reading the Okos szekér short story from the volume entitled Rügyek és Reménység (1931), then Csaba Balássy read the Bánffy Miklós writing, where Tamási depicted the portrait of the famous Transylvanian patron writer.

The 4^th grade students of the Petőfi Sándor Elementary School continued with the A hazug sün tale. Other groups arrived from the Nagy Imre Elementary School, the 5^th-6^th grade students read out different excerpts from the novel entitled Ábel in the Forest, then the 7^th grade students continued with the Ördögváltozás Csíkban short story. The students of the Venczel József Secondary School also read out.

The groups read out one after the other in the lecture hall of the library, be it children or elderly, nearly three hundred read out the great writer’s works during the public reading, that lasted for 8 hours. The groups quoted the works with pleasure, the public reading outside the school was a real experience for the reading students through reading a great Hungarian writer’s works.

The read out was a special experience for the adults as well, it was a great opportunity to leave the everyday behind. In the afternoon mostly adults read out in the lecture hall of the library, among them the members of the Hargita Népe newspaper, the Németh Géza Cultural Association and the members of the library’s readership, individuals, families and children as well.

During the read out, everyone picked a work that was close to them the most. The Tamási short stories was read one after the another, so were the excerpts from the novels, letters, autobiographical writings, a number of well- and lesser-known pieces of the writer’s rich oeuvre.

The excerpts deriving from the Ábel-Trilogy and the Bölcső és Bagoly were picked more often during the day, though, the Szülőföldem, Ördögváltozás Csíkban, Erdélyi csillagok, Rendes feltámadás, Hajnali madár, Angyalok éneke, Igaz ember, igaz festő were also popular. People also picked works from Tamási’s journalism, such as the Jussomat ne vitassátok and the Az erdélyi magyar irodalom körül (1923).

The organizers of the Áron Tamási reading marathon are grateful to the readers all over the world, who joined the public reading, be it within institutions, groups or at home alone for promoting the joy of reading this year as well!

We received a lot of reports, images and summarizations on Facebook from other settlements and institutions beyond and within the borders as well.

Thank you all for sharing experiences on the joy of reading! We are especially grateful to the media and the staff of the press, who made us reports on several locations of the marathon.