The local council is paying for HUF 12 million of the renovation's costs and grants will cover HUF 10 million.
Babits and his wife Sophie Török bought the summer home in 1924, when it consisted of just a single room and a kitchen. They made several additions to the home, where Babits produced some of his most important works, among them The Book of Jonas, a soul-searching work about the terrors of fascism.
One of the curiosities of the home is a wall which contains the autographs of writers that came to visit Babits and his wife there. Babits's contemporary, the humourist Endre Nagy, alleged the couple touched up the autographs of the people they liked the best - among them Miklós Radnóti, Gyula Illyés, Frigyes Karinthy and Lőrinc Szabó - with paint, while they offered their less liked guests a soft lead pencil so their names could be easily erased.
The renovation is timed to be completed by November 26, the 125th anniversary of Babits's birth.
Source: Múlt-kor / Hungarian News Agency (MTI)
