SIX WRITERS
Kassák Sketches
by Ágnes Nemes Nagy
Lajos Kassák (1887-1967) was a one-man avant-garde movement in poetry and the arts, the proletarian writer, editor, painter and graphic artist who eschewed all that was traditional. His poetry influenced that of Ágnes Nemes Nagy (1922-1967), long recognized as a major poet and essayist. This is how she remembered Kassák, forty years her senior, during the last twenty years of his life.
The Horse Dies the Birds Fly Away
by Lajos Kassák
Kassák's most famous poem, written in 1922, is here translated by Edwin Morgan, now the Scots Makar or Poet Laureate of Scotland and himself very much noted for his willingness to experiment with new forms.
Oliver VII (Extract)
by Antal Szerb
Following the recent success of his Journey by Moonlight and The Pendragon Legend in Britain, this 1941 novel by Antal Szerb (1901-1945) comes out in English later this year from Pushkin Press.
"It is unashamedly playful. It touches on questions of philosophy and morality while reducing the reader to gales of laughter. Indifferent to questions of political correctness and intellectual fashion, it evades every category into which the critic might wish to fix it. And it has paid the price, spending decades in near oblivion.
So comments Len Rix, whose translations from Szerb have gained plaudits and prizes, in his article (Oliver's Return) accompanying this extract. He sets it in context with the other novels and with Szerb's interest in Pirandello.
Western Patrol: In the Lands of the Declining Sun
by Sándor Márai
This description of a 1936 journey to Paris and London concludes our selections from Márai's travel writing and journalism. In George Szirtes's translation.
This is accompanied by Closing Time, in which András Zoltán Bán sees the "novel of a travelogue" as an affirmation by Márai of his belief in Europe and his homeland and, at the same time, a farewell and closing of accounts.
Ruin: A History of Commonism (Extracts)
by Endre Kukorelly
A second, "revised and enlarged", edition of this scathing "history" has appeared. It incorporates some of the reactions (mostly indignant) to the first and is, again, an inimitable blend of anecdote, history, fantasy, vignette and what-have-you.
The extracts are introduced by their translator Tim Wilkinson as "a precise critical appraisal of life in Hungary (or Eastern Europe) over the last sixty years", with a commentary on the expansion of the original edition, on its reception and, not least, his own experiences of "Commonism" .
Kenyans (Short Story)
by Lajos Parti Nagy
From the author's new collection, translated by Tim Wilkinson.
(The collection is reviewed by Miklós Györffy.)
TWO CAPITALS
The two cities in question are Sibiu in Romania, which is currently European Capital of Culture, and Budapest, formed out of the unification of Buda, Pest and Óbuda in 1873.
SIBIU
Sibiu to Romanians, Nagyszeben to Hungarians and Hermannstadt to its German inhabitants, the city's mayor is a Transylvanian Saxon, its chief architect a Transylvanian Hungarian and its population is now almost entirely Romanian.
For centuries, a major centre of Transylvanian Saxon religious and intellectual life (the Hermannstadt accent was the most prestigious of German accents in the region), the city managed to preserve much of its past, and its medieval architecture is the most thoroughly catalogued in the region. Its past and present reflect the multiethnicity and multiculturism of Transylvania itself.
European Capital of Culture 2007
Szabolcs István Guttmann interviewed by Zoltán Tibori Szabó
"... it really is true that a city nurtures its inhabitants and they in turn, by representing that legacy, instruct those who come after them."
Here, Szabolcs István Guttmann, the city's Chief Architect, describes how the city's architectural heritage was lovingly documented and carefully renewed by its citizens and planners, boosted by its successful bid to become A European Capital of Culture. .
The Stones of Hermannstadt
Hurst Schuller interviewed by Farkas-Zoltán Hajdu
"When the Western press was going on about the street kids and corruption in Romania, Transylvanian Saxons in the diaspora tended to deny their identity. Now I can say with great pride that I come from a European Capital of Culture."
In a companion interview Horst Schuller, a Transylvanian Saxon who has spent many years in Sibiu and Braşov as a teacher and journalist, describes this identity and the role Sibiu has played in the history and culture of the Transylvanian Saxons.
These interviews are accompanied by colour illustrations of Sibiu.
BUDAPEST
Two articles discuss aspects of the formative history of the capital in the last two centuries and we also publish a review of a photo and video project that invites consideration of the capital as an emblem for a national community.
The Making of a Capital
by László Csorba
Robert Nemes: The Once and Future Budapest.
De-Kalb, Northern Illinois University Press, 2005, XI + 247 pp.
The historian László Csorba, Director of the Hungarian Academy in Rome, reflects on a book which enjoyably examines the influence of Hungarian nationalism on the history of Budapestfrom the end of the eighteenth century up to 1890. He takes issue with the author's treatment of some aspects of nineteenth-century nationalism, arguing that the book is "construing a historical alternative that the people of a given time could not have been aware of."
Narratives of 1956
by Nicholas T. Parsons
Paul Lendvai: Der Ungarnaufstand 1956: Eine Revolution und ihre Folgen. München, C. Bertelsmann Verlag, 2006, 320 pp. Illustrated. (English edition forthcoming from Princetown University Press.)
Bob Dent :Budapest 1956: Locations of Drama. Budapest, Európa Könyvkiadó, 2006. 432 pp.
Katalin Bogyay: The Voice of Freedom: Remembering the 1956 Revolution. True Stories of personal experiences from those whose lives were changed forever.
London, Hungarian Cultural Centre, 2006, 128 pp. Illustrated.
Ibolya Murber, Zoltán Fónagy (Eds): Die ungarische Revolution und Österreich 1956. Vienna, Czernin Verlag, 2006. 544 pp.
"One remarkable aspect of the 1956 Revolution in Hungary is that it lacks a Bastille or Winter Palace image, not least because the cathartic deliverance that such an image would have symbolized was delayed for thirty-three years. During that time the levers of propaganda were firmly in the hands of those who were anxious to portray the participants as no more than a mob."
The author, who has written extensively on Hungary and Central Europe, draws on four of the many books published last year to examine the 1956 Revolution and the narratives emerging from this climactic event. He focuses on two Budapest locations that Bob Dent's remarkable book highlights, Köztársaság tér and Korvin köz, which have become central to these narratives. He questions the narrative that is "wedded to the liberal consensus", namely that "1956 was all about 'reforming' or even 'rescuing' socialism."
He offers parallels in post-war (and pre-war) Austrian politics to suggest a dominant strand in the Revolution and how Hungary might have moved had the Revolution been successful.
So Near, Yet so Far Away
by András Bán
Péter Szábó's Photo and Video Project
The photographer Péter Szabó travelled around villages remote from the capital, bringing with him a large blown-up photograph of the Chain Bridge, the very emblem of the capital, and invited country folk to pose in front of it, "allowing his models to make believe they were fulfilling an unachievable dream or overcoming a long-standing fear."
Each photograph was paired with another that recorded the circumstances under which the first was taken and the pairs were mounted on the Chain Bridge itself. The exhibition invited viewers to consider their sense of common identity.
Illustrated with colour plates.
"It is not a Kodály School, but it is Hungarian"
by Anna Dalos
Anna Dalos, whose new book on Kodály is at press, traces the history (and meanings) of the term "Kodály School" from its first appearance in print in the 1920s. Initially, and sparingly, it used to refer to Kodály as teacher, and it gradually came to stand for the synthesis between European music and the Hungarian tradition that the composer and his great contemporary Bartók had achieved. She follows the polemics and debates conducted in the music journals, indicating the societal and political backgrounds both before the war and under the new "political correctness"of the Communist regime.
