Magyar-román kulturális kapcsolatok a 19. század második felében. Értelmiségtörténeti keret
Intelligentsia and Romanian–Hungarian Cultural Contacts in the Second Half of the 19th Century

Author(s): Tímea Berki
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies
ISSN: 2068-309X
Published by: Erdélyi Múzeum-Egyesület
Keywords: history of literature; relationships history
Summary/Abstract: The paper deals with the Romanian-Hungarian literary contacts in the late 19th century and early 20th century, the last decades of the Austro–Hungarian Monarchy. The extensive bibliography, which legitimized the concept of “Monarchy-literature” about the term Central and Eastern Europeanism, marginalizes or does not include the cultures of Romanians in Hungary, considering partially this literature. This influenced me in defining the topic and thesis of the problems.History of meaning and concept of national literature becomes the central issue of the thesis, as the period studied gives us many examples that go beyond national character of the literatures. The book is not a comparative monograph, not a history of reception, but wants to be an experiment in study of the contacts that enriches both thematically and through new documents the history of Romanian-Hungarian translations from the late 19th century.The reception of the Romanian literature is represented by sporadic translations made by intellectuals, published in various periodicals. I think that their interpretations operates on a double scale, but this book tries to contextualize gestures of the translators to better understand their synchronic perspective, not from a later point of view of the aesthetical concept of literature.The analysis of the reception is starting from the debut of Romanian poet Mihai Eminescu, from his first polemical texts appeared in the Romanian literature of the Austro–Hungarian Monarchy. There are two studies in Hungarian, written as doctoral dissertations in 1895. There are positivist monographies, but also gives us interesting parallels in the context of Hungarian and foreign literature (Lenau, Schopenhauer, Petofi).This dissertations are very interesting in terms of language, namely, is a work of a Romanian author (the future Patriarch, Miron Cristea, Ph.D., University of Pest) presenting the Romanian literature, but from the perspective of the language used in the dissertation, is a Hungarian work, and becomes part of the Hungarian literature. This fact holds reception anomalies, unquestioned so far, and the study of this dissertation and its context will make arguments about the use of Hungarian language not as an individual decision, but as an obligation imposed by the power of language in the University of Pest.Exploring the context of translation can reinterpret our knowledge about the Hungarian periodicals of the time, because the translations of Romanian poetry appear in local newspapers, which until now were only listed in the press history, without recognizing their value in Hungarian and Romanian literatures contact.The poems of Eminescu translated into Hungarian are published for the first time in the special issue (Christmas 1885) of Kolozsvári Közlöny, and in the feuiletton of the Szilágy-Somlyó newspaper (1889–1891), representing a claim or requirement on the part of press-publishers, on another part of the – multicultural, knowing many languages – readers from Transylvania, and not least the translation and practice of intellectuals discernible in the use of two languages (the politician, the organizer of institutions, József Sándor; the theologian Laurenţiu Bran). Their translations are the results of the literary preoccupation from the special literary circles of the religious boarding schools, attended by translators. With everything that Sándor and Bran deal with translating Eminescu’s poetry, their work gives us interesting examples of studies of the contacts and cannot be classified by the same criteria.This period is characterized by modern society, the concept of the Hungarian state in contrast with the reality of the Austro-Hungarian Dualist Monarchy. The canonization of the concept of the literature is laid to the Hungarian national political process, deepening the distance between the Hungarian nation and the ethnic communities.The second half of the book link to see that methodological issue which sees experience in different cultures as a result of the process of socialization, legitimated by the multicultural and multilingual reality of the Monarchy. Identifying students of the Faculty of Letters at the Royal Hungarian University, later named Franz Joseph, deals with the Romanian side in this study of intercultural contacts and reveals the issue of the national identification of the students and also defines that the Romanian department of the university attract only Romanian students. This reality also explains the lack of professionals between Hungarian translators of Romanian literature, the foreign character of the Romanian language persist until the first decades of the 20th century, against the existing translations. The book contains a chapter that reinterprets the literary contacts from the perspective of intellectual careers, representing the different concepts of the cultures, of their characteristics defined by language, by nationality; that implicitly reveals the different policies of cultural transmissions.Brassai Sámuel and Hugo von Meltzl are editors of a comparative and interdisciplinary multilingual magazine, approaching to cosmopolitanism, universalism, bringing arguments to a supranational identity. Moldovan Grigore passed abandoned publicizing in Romanian, becoming a Hungarian writer true to the Hungarian national state: as a Hungarian citizen with Romanian nationality, he was loyal to the Hungarian state, and was considered a traitor from the perspective of his ethnical community. Became a problematic figure of the Romanian nation and for the Hungarian also, and his hybrid identity of this view seemed inaccessible.Sporadic translations of this period, the different conceptions of translators of the Romanian poetry, show the way pieces of Romanian literature are looking for their place in the Hungarian literature. The most important issue of the thesis is that the Romanian–Hungarian literary contacts, the case studies of dissertation cannot be differentiated on the basis of national character, because since the late 19th century the concept of the nation, state, national literature and national culture were still just developing.

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