The noted Hungarian-French political scientist and specialist on Eastern Europe argues that the West bears serious responsibility for the crisis that post-communist countries in Eastern Europe now find themselves in: it sanctioned Stalin's conquest of Eastern Europe by signing the Helsinki Agreement in 1972, it supported and thereby lengthened the lifespan of the communist regimes of Eastern Europe by its Ostpolitik and by providing generous loans and credits, and it refused to help these countries, when emerging from the ruins of Soviet socialism, with an aid programme along the lines of the Marshall Plan when it was clearly in a position where it could do so.
A Sentence About Tyranny
Poem, translated by George Szirtes
Gyula Illyés
and
A Few Words About a Single Sentence
The Story Behind an Illyés Poem
Mátyás Domokos
The poet Gyula Illyés (1902-1983), also a leading essayist, translator, and editor, one-time Vice President of International PEN, author of the modern classic People of the Puszta, was also, among many other things, a master of that most delicate and difficult genre, the political poem. A Sentence About Tyranny, written in 1950 but published only in a weekly in the heady days of the 1956 Revolution and then suppressed again for decades, is a powerful outcry of pain and indignation in the form of a single sweeping sentence of 180 lines. It describes in harrowing detail how tyranny penetrates not just all public and private life, but all human relationships and emotions as well, from cradle to the grave, and how it manages to get under your skin and even between you and your conscience. This new English translation by George Szirtes, done for The Hungarian Quarterly, follows after the version, long out of print, by the Welsh poet Vernon Watkins as the second one by a noted British poet. The essay by Mátyás Domokos follows the twisted publication history of the poem. For years the communist dictatorship dreaded the power of the poem and its reputation, and people caught spreading type-script copies of it were sent to jail. Then, with characteristic cynical impunity, as the dictatorshilp mellowed, it was discovered that the poem was "our poem", written in defence of real socialism, and should therefore be published. Illyés, how- ever, refused permission. And so it was only in 1988, in a posthumous volume of Illyés's poems that it first appeared in this country in book form.
László Somfai, a leading figure of Bartók reasearch and Director of the Budapest Bartók Archives, speaks about the ups and downs of the composer's popularity abroad, the state of world-wide Bartók research today, the pitfalls of some approaches in analysis and why there is still no definitive Gesamtausgabe of Bartók's oeuvre.
György Kroó, Professor of Musicology at the Liszt Academy of Music, writes about the French influence in Bartók's music and especially that of Paul Dukas who, like Bartók was to do some time later, composed and opera on the theme of the Barbebleu legend in 1907, based on a libretto by Maurice Maeterlink. After pointing out numerous similarities both in approach and musical character, the article pinpoints some concrete thematic links and concludes by saying that, "On the anniversary of Bartók's death we ought to place a flower on Dukas's grave as well."
Tibor Tallián and László Vikárius, members of a younger generation of musicologists engaged in Bartók reasearch, both deal with the genesis of the Cantata Profana. Tallián examines evidence to be found in the form of scribblings, notes, markings, underlinings in the margins of pages of the numerous Bibles in various languages in Bartók's possession, to see if the Gospels had had any influence on the text of the Cantata, while Vikárius compares the extant original versions of the text Bartók himself wrote on the basis of an ancient Romanian folk ballad and then translated into Hungarian and English.
Hungary and the Problem of National Minorities
György Réti
When, in the aftermath of the Great War, the AustroHungarian dual monarchy disintegrated, it was Hungary that, as the heaviest loser, shed two thirds of its original territory and more than half of its population. This created a situation where all countries bordering on Hungary (now numbering seven) had sizable Hungarian populations within their territory. Before the split-up of the Soviet Union, the 2 million Hungarians in Transylvania, Romania, constituted the largest ethnic minority in Europe. (Now this is far outnumbered by the 25 million Russians living outside Russia.) The author, a diplomat and Counsellor at the Hungarian Embassy in Rome, discusses the situation of Hungarian minorities in each of the neighbouring states, the state of human rights, collective rights, educational opportunities, use of the native language, legislation, etc., concerning minority rights, and applies accepted EU norms and other binding agreements in his examination.
Under Western Eyes
Fifties Cultural Policy in British Diplomatic Dispatches
Melinda Kalmár
This is a highly interesting selection from confidential British diplomatic reports on the debates and ideological battles fought in the Hungarian communist press and at various official gatherings in the fifties. The British observers -- obviously relying on well-placed Hungarian informants -- recognized the importance of these debates and saw how they reflected the power-struggle that was being fought within the Party and eventually led to the 1956 Revolution. The author, a specialist of the period, guides the reader through the documents with an informative introduction and notes.
Katalin Sinkó, who has published extensively on the national and political aspects of art, here provides an extensive treatment of the changing emphases and meanings that accreted to the images of Saint Stephen /1000-1038/, the founder of the Hungarian kingdom, and Árpád, the leader of the Hungarians at the time of the Conquest. In particular, she describes the adoption of the two as icons for opposing political positions over the course of the nineteenth century. She provides many illustrations to reinforce her argument.
István Nemeskürty writes about a recently discovered film by the enigmatic Hungarian-American director Paul Fejos (1898-1964) and the most famous cameraman of the time, Peverell Marley (1899-1964), who worked with Cecil B. De Mille, among many others. Sentence of the Lake, based on a folk theme popular around Lake Balaton, and shot there in 1931, was thought to have been lost and is missing from the Fejos filmography.
Éva Forgács, an art historian and author of a book on the Bauhaus, documents the fanatical belief László Moholy-Nagy felt in the technical progress of his time that would lead to a grand future for mankind, and his innovative approach to the new art form: the film. The issue of The Hungarian Quarterly is illustrated throughout with stills from MoholyNagy's own films.
John Cunningham, an Englishman who teaches in Hungary, reviews a book on Emeric Pressburger, a Hungarian who went to England where in the mid-thirties he became a leading screenwriter and founded, with Michael Powell, his own film production company, The Archers. Famous films like The Spy in Black, 49th Parallel, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, One of Our Aircraft Is Missing, among many others, where based on his scripts. The book is by Kevin MacDonald, his grandson.