Hollandia: A Hungarian Account, 1620

by Márton Szepsi Csombor

Another extract from Europica Varietas, the first travel book published in Hungarian and written by a young man in his early twenties who, after completing his theological studies, set out to see as much of Europe as he could. This section covers his visit to Holland, a natural destination for a Calvinist minister. He comments on all and sundry, from the food (unappealing) to the girls (appealing), and provides portraits of the towns he passes through. These include Amsterdam, where he describes a hospice for "depraved boys who, paying no heed to their fathers and mothers, run to all manner of evildoing" ; he visits the jail in Leyden and attends two lectures at the university; on board ship to Zealand he is introduced to herba Nicotiana and discovers the usefulness of this grass; finally he takes passage to England from Flushing, where he is cheated at the inn.

For his entertaining report on England, see HQ 171, Autumn 2003.

 

Poems

by Ádám Nádasdy

Ádám Nádasdy is an elegant, cooly observant poet and linguist, whose new translations of several Shakesperean plays are now in the repertoire.

These poems appear in David Hill's translation.

 

Poems

by Mónika Mesterházi

Well known as a translator of Irish, British and American poetry, Mónika Mesterházi has so far published three volumes of her own poetry. She now writes full time after spending several years teaching. She has also translated and published a selection of Katherine Mansfield's letters and a recent selection of Mansfield's short stories contains several in her translation.

These poems have been translation by David Hill. translation.

 

In the Rose Garden

The Art of Ilka Gedo. 1921-1985

by Géza Perneczky

István Hajdu and Dávid Bíró: The Art of Ilka Gedô (1921-1985). Budapest Gondolat, 20003, 256 pp.

As a young woman of twenty-three, Ilka Gedo produced series of drawings in the Budapest ghetto which later made her name. In 1949 she gave up working in the visual arts and only resumed painting and drawing after sixteen years. In this review article the art historian Géza Perneczky traces the career of an artist, which in its second stage was that of a superb colourist. He singles out the two contributions written by her husband, the biochemist Endre Biró, in this volume (brought ought to anticipate the major exhibition at the Hungarian National Gallery), one an inventory raisonné of the trivia and impedimenta she had collected over the years, the second a description of her working techniques as a painter and an enquiry into why she abandoned art around 1949.

Her abandonment and resumption he places into the context of the society and the social milieu in which she lived.

This article is illustrated with four of her drawings and twelve of her paintings.

 

Parallel Lives

Günther Grass and Imre Kertész in Conversation

with György Dalos

In 1945 one eighteen-year-old future Nobel Laureate in literature was taken prisoner of war by the Americans, the other sixteen-year-old future Nobel Laureate was liberated from Buchenwald concentration camp by the Americans. At a public discussion in Budapest moderated by Gyôrgy Dalos, the Berlin-resident Hungarian writer, Günther Grass and Imre Kertész trace their reactions to the very different worlds in which they came of age and became writers. (Imre Kertész: "Around the time when Mr Grass was beavering away on political commitment, I was beavering away on why a writer should not commit himself politically. That's very characteristic, and indeed it is obviously tied up with the one-party system versus a democracy.")

 

The Great Literary Pigsticking Event

by Julian Schöpflin

Long resident in England, the author (who has just recently died at the age of 94) describes how he and and his friends decided to form a Pig Committee, whose Aims and Purposes were to be: "The procurement, purchase, rearing and eventual slaughtering of two pigs, of Welsh origin, Hungarian adoption and English education. " The friends concerned were other prominent members of the Hungarian diaspora, hardly noted for their agricultural skills: the humorist George Mikes, Emeric Pressburger the filmmaker and the author Arthur Koestler.

 

Contemporary and Kindred

An Exhibition at the Hungarian National Gallery

by Krisztina Passuth

Krisztina Passuth is an art historian who has published widely on László Moholy-Nagy and other figures in the Hungarian and Central European Avant-garde. Here she writes on a major exhibition recently mounted in Budapest. "The real surprise comes not from the individual prints or drawings, but from the chance encounters, reverberations, analogies and historical connections unveiled by the preliminary research and the work of organizing the exhibition." Apart from detailing some of these encounters and connections, the author outlines the history of the Hungarian National Gallery's acquisitions and the disfavour in which the Avant-garde was long held in by the 'official' cultural authorities here before 1989.

 

Fairy Vale, or Riddles of the Human Heart

Excerpt from the Novel

by Endre Kukorelly

Endre Kukorelly's novel (2003) of this title has been seen as a significant fictionalised autobiography, involving growing up in Kádár's Hungary.

In Tim Wilkinson's translation.

 

Even if They Do Look Inside

by Gábor Németh

An excerpt from Gábor Németh's latest work, the novel Zsidó vagy? (Are you Jewish?), published this year and translated by David Robert Evans.

  

A Slap in the Face of Europe

Paul Lendvai on the EU Elections

An Interview with Eszter Rádai

P aul Lendvai is the Hungarian-born political commentator and editor of the Vienna-based journal Europäische Rundschau. He believes that the surprisingly low turnout in the European elections has discredited the European Union and the very idea of Europe. This, he suggests, is likely to increase political tensions within the Union. From now on it will be more difficult to reach consensus on economic policy. Furthermore, he observes, there is reason to fear that tough decisions which leaders have been putting off will continue to be put off indefinitely or watered down. He looks at the ramification of the electoral results for the main Hungarian political parties and remains, in spite of all, optimistic: "The story of the EU is still the greatest success story of the twentieth and (let's hope) the twenty-first century."

 

A Final Chapter on Churchill

by John Lukacs

Describing this as his last word on Churchill, the Hungarian-American historian, author of seminal books on Churchill's role in the Second World War, here writes on his own youthful reactions to the Prime Minister. Professor Lukacs proposed that a statue of Churchill be erected here in Budapest; he describes his role in this and the ceremonial unveiling, to which he accompanied Lady Soames, Churchill's surviving daughter.

 

Dohnányi's 1956 HMV Recordings

by Alan Walker

Some unpublished correspondence in the EMI archives, Hayes, Middlesex, U.K.

At the age of seventy-eight Ernst von Dohnányi made a triumphant return to the U.K., performing at the Edinburgh Festival. He was also contracted to spend two gruelling weeks in EMI's London studios to record two of his own works for piano and orchestra and two LPs of his own piano works. Before the orchestral recordings were released, stereo had arrived and the solo piano LPs were only released in the U.K. Alan Walker traces and comments on the history of this episode through the correspondence (published here for the first time) between his New York agent and EMI. "Dohnányi's recordings had been caught in the middle of both a management and a technological shake-up, and suffered accordingly."

 

Dohnányi Plays Dohnányi

by Zoltán Kocsis

Dohnányi plays Dohnányi. The Complete HMV Solo Piano Recordings 1929-1956. Appian Publications & Recordings APR 7038.

Pianist, conductor and composer, Zoltán Kocsis examines the significance of the recordings made by Dohnányi the performer of his own music over almost thirty years. He reflects on the significance for performers of being able to hear a composer interpreting his own works (drawing on examples such as Bartók and Grieg as well) and provides telling insights into Dohnányi's pianistic style, viewed from the vantage of his career as a whole.

 

 

Music-Making Begins with Articulation

Péter Eötvös in Conversation with Zoltán Farkas

"When I conduct a piece by Bartók, I sing the articulation and stresses in certain passages for the benefit of non-Hungarian musicians, after which they start playing in an entirely different manner ... I reckon I can discern a Hungarian quality of articulation in the music of Ligeti and Kurtág, as well as in my own pieces."

Péter Eötvös, who is soon to move back from Holland to Hungary, also outlines the conducting seminars he has organised since 1992, and describes the genesis of some of his own works. He provides some fascinating details on Steine and, in particular, Atlantis and IMA, among others.

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