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The sixth book of his life work series spring from an assumption that an artwork hardly examinable in itself, unseparatable from it's mode of existance, it's always gets into new contexts and changes because of this.
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Why is the oldest surviving fragment of Hungarian literature only 800 years old? After all, scholars have discovered that the Hungarian language became independent about three thousand years ago, and it was clear that already then myths, legends, tales, and songs existed in the language. It was a long road, however, that led to a writt en literature. We have only traces of ancient poetry – to which writt en allusions were made later – but no original texts have survived. And even when we consider the 800 years of writt en literature in Hungarian, it was only later – with the advent of the Enlightenment and, even more so, the Romantic period – that this extremely rich material, the surviving ancient poetry, which had presumably changed a great deal compared with the original, was collected, recorded, and integrated into the literary culture.
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Why is the oldest surviving fragment of Hungarian literature only 800 years old? After all, scholars have discovered that the Hungarian language became independent about three thousand years ago, and it was clear that already then myths, legends, tales, and songs existed in the language. It was a long road, however, that led to a writt en literature. We have only traces of ancient poetry – to which writt en allusions were made later – but no original texts have survived. And even when we consider the 800 years of writt en literature in Hungarian, it was only later – with the advent of the Enlightenment and, even more so, the Romantic period – that this extremely rich material, the surviving ancient poetry, which had presumably changed a great deal compared with the original, was collected, recorded, and integrated into the literary culture.
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The present study focuses on two writers of Hungarian origin who have been awarded the Adelbert-von-Chamisso Prize. Established in 1985, this literary prize honoured, until 2017, outstanding German-language authors from other cultural backgrounds, whose work was shaped by cultural shifts. The choice of authors therefore proves that linguistic and cultural dimensions in literature transcend borders. Writers such as György Dalos (awarded in 1995) and Terézia Mora (awarded in 2000 and 2010) are representative for the phenomenon of crossing and overlapping cultures, creating through their literature a space in-between. Identity formation – individual or collective – is a key aspect of their novels (Alle Tage from T. Mora, Die Beschneidung from G. Dalos), and our paper will argue which significant – spatial or, more important, mental – geographies are present in the two authors’ works. Refusing to be labelled under the peripheral or minority term, the novels show how universal the message of literature is.
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In my paper, I wish to reveal some astounding similarities between the ways how contemporary Northern Irish and Transylvanian Hungarian poets encounter silence. Along centuries of their different histories, silence has been engrained into the identity of these two nations. Expression of confusion, awe, grief, pain, anger, and shame, their silence is inevitable self-torture. An evil that must be endured with responsibility, and transformed into sweetness and light despite reality, a final resource, an ultimate human response to evade moral disintegration. In my study, the themes, motives, genres, poetical attitudes, and responses of several Northern Irish and Transylvanian Hungarian poets are being compared. There are poems with exactly identical titles. Moreover, the silence of certain poets leads from self-guilt to the fruitful regeneration of both the poets and their audience.
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In the years of preparation for his public activity, Széchenyi was faced with the issue of language use, and during the elaboration of his reform programme he was forced to address this complex, complicated, multifaceted question in much more detail. As a politician, he had to deal with the issue of plurilingualism and multilingualism, as well as the status of the Hungarian language; as a writer, he explored the possibilities of linguistic expression with a new approach as he planned writing taking into account the aspect of the norms of expectations of the recipients (the readers). He approached the question from the issue of the success of communication: in the first case, he explored the problem of “we do not understand each other” from the aspect of plurilingualism and multilingualism. In the second case, he analysed the possibilities of text creation based on the recognition that meaning outlined in the text does not necessarily coincide on the level of the writer and on that of the recipient.
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This is the first monograph in Polish devoted to Hungarian-Jewish Holocaust literature from the years 1944-1948. The theoretical part of the publication presents the situation of this literature in its heyday, models of Jewish biographies in Hungary, the evolution of texts focusing on the Jewish question, and the metaphor of being a Jew in the Danube lands in interwar essays and prose. The interpretation section presents selected literary works by authors such as Terez Rudnóy, Miklós Radnóti, Erno Szep, Istvan Órkeny, and Istvan Vas, as well as ghetto literature. The texts subjected to meticulous analysis represent the successive experiences of writers of Jewish origin: forced labour in Serbia and on the Eastern Front, concentration camps, large ghettos, international ghettos, internment camps. The interpretation part uses contemporary research methodology (e.g. gender and ecocritical reading). What is also of significance is the fact that the author of this book is Polish, has authored another important and widely commented work, Świadomość zwrócona przeciwko sobie samej. Imre Kertesz wobec Zagłady (Consciousness Turned Against Itself. Imre Kertész Versus the Holocaust), is a Polish scholar, translator from Hungarian (including Kertesz's prose), essayist and poet. All her competences intertwine tightly in her latest work and become the basis of a book that will attract the non-professional reader and be of outstanding scientific value.
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Based on the novel by Zoltán Danyi published in 2015, the study focuses on the experience of the Yugoslav Wars in the 1990s as a crisis experience. The novel’s protagonist is an anonymous former Hungarian soldier from Vojvodina who, 10–15 years after the events, recalls the war and his post-war years in a stream of consciousness. The protagonist’s unconcealed, tormenting physical reactions are depicted in unusual detail in the novel, which also uses raw, vulgar, and explicit language. The first part of the analysis shows, through selected scenes, a number of divisive mechanisms at social and individual levels that give rise to radicalization. In the second part, it asks about the possibilities of a way forward for the physically and mentally burdened protagonist.
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A part of László Darvasi’s prose, but mainly the novel entitled A könnymutatványosok legendája (The Legend of the Artists of Cry), is usually interpreted as magical realism. In this paper, I will prove that a volume of short stories published in 2000, so right after the mentioned book, can also be read as magical realism; however, short stories are barely taken in consideration when speaking about this genre (or writing method, as Tamás Bényei and I understand it). This volume entitled Szerezni egy nőt (Getting Hold of a Woman) presents weird love (or erotic) stories having the Yugoslav War in the background. I believe that the typical magical realist narrator’s attributes are perfectly appropriate to handle such a difficult situation when you have to speak about love (or erotic human relations at least) and war at the same time but still keep the stories somehow easy-going.
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The novels of Andrea Tompa, a writer born in Cluj-Napoca, depict the turning events of the recent past in Transylvania. The story of the autobiographical novel A hóhér háza. Történetek az aranykorból [The Hangman’s House. Stories from the Golden Age] (2010) presents the last stage of the communist dictatorship. The novel Fejtől s lábtól. Kettő orvos Erdélyben [Head to Feet. Two Doctors in Transylvania] (2013) describes the first decades of the 20th century, and Omerta. Hallgatások könyve [Omerta. The Book of Silences] (2017) depicts the atmosphere of the fifties. The last work, entitled Haza [Home] (2020), is focused on migration processes presented with the help of various narrators. This essay examines the personal and collective traumas depicted in the works, the system of how the heroes were reduced to silence, and their attempts to escape.
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The unique life of Ferenc Herczeg, who was a forbidden author between 1945 and 1980, can be summed up in a nutshell as follows: how the German-speaking boy from the Banat Swabian region becomes the Hungarian playwright who put Hungarian drama on the path to European success, a committed writer of national endeavours, and the creator of a successful Hungarian prose and dramatic oeuvre. The subject of the research is to explain where and how Ferenc Herczeg’s “language programme” became so successful, since “There was no other native speaker who learned Hungarian so well as Ferenc Herczeg” (Hegedűs). Examining the language path, the research may explain the adaptation considered to be the key to success and the contribution of the author’s bilingualism to the foundation of success. In the case of Herczeg, social, cultural, and linguistic assimilation is so successful that it gives rise to countless speculations. The majority of criticism seeks the social adaptation and reflects less on linguistic assimilation. My aim is to prove that Herczeg, a German-speaking boy of Swabian descent, became Hungarian because of literature-centric Hungarian culture.
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The dynamic development of the book publishing network, the institutional background of Hungarian literature in Yugoslavia/Serbia was gaining momentum in the second half of the 20th century. The intention to educate the working strata as readers was the dividend of a state-run, socialist-based book culture. This endeavour was aided by appropriate book publishing or distribution structures and reader event movements (book months, literary evenings, book presentations). The social crisis of the turn of the century and the crisis of the 1990s shook the position of both books and reading. The structure of Hungarian book publishers in Serbia was largely supported by subsidies from the motherland, and the development and sustainability of reading habits wavered. The digital “prosperity” of the turn of the century has also weakened the position of books and reading in this region. The question arises, should one talk about the crisis of the book, or perhaps of a slowly changing environment, due to the fact that, e.g., the e-book has appeared, albeit sporadically, as opposed to the more expensive, cumbersome, and less easily accessible printed document. The aim of the study is to provide an answer to the question posed in the title.
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The paper attempts to interpret the literary representations of the refugee crisis based on the relevant texts of Ottó Tolnai. The author’s works constantly reflect on current social phenomena, so the refugees who are still present on the Hungarian–Serbian border also play an important role in his volumes entitled Nem könnyű [Not Easy] and Szeméremékszerek [Pubic Jewellery]. Tolnai generally interprets things in unusual ways, so in these works he views migrants as an opportunity rather than a danger. Building on postcolonial theories, the paper deals with issues such as migrant, stranger, border crossing, refugee literature, and migrant literature. Furthermore, the study compares the analysed texts with relevant works of Hungarian and world literature from the perspectives of refugee issues.
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Ghost in Lublo (1893) is a typical novel from Kálmán Mikszáth. The edited and arranged text of the novel is referred to itself and it becomes the main characteristic feature besides that the approach and frame of reference are inco-ordinate relation, instead of being predominant, to the detriment of each other. The fact that there is no tangible verdict or sentiment means the lack of the absolute and undisputed standpoint in the fiction allowed by the unreliable narrative structure. (Similar novels in regard to it are: Black Town, Speaking Gown, St. Peter’s Umbrella, and Siege of Beszterce.) The interpretation of the novel stays unfinished as we cannot decide whether the novel is a detective story or a ghost story. The importance of dialogue is emphasized through the novel in numerous linguistic features, cultural and literary references, and the several possible interpretations of the novel.
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The study is an introduction to a research into the processes and phenomena of genre formation in the Hungarian literature in Vojvodina. It analyses the aspects of the linguistic constitution of canal-, town-, family-, and cultural historical novels, principally the multicultural identity and phenomenon of translinguistic experience. It looks closely at accounts, essays, short stories, novels, poetic accounts, and emblematic poems that reflect on and elaborate this phenomenon.
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Károly Kisfaludy’s work Tihamér belongs to the Hungarian heroic novels written under the influence of German chivalric novels, at the same time being “the first modest attempt in Hungarian historical novels” (Heinrich 1907: 23.) as well as “the best Hungarian historical short story before Jósika” (Szinnyei 1911: 152). From the aspect of our study, the purposeful choice and literary structuring of the historically authentic framework (the expedition against Naples by Louis the Great of Hungary) bears great importance since with this framework – a sentimental account common and conventional in the epics of the period – novelty was introduced into contextual reading. By choosing this historical period and by its projection onto the chivalric story, it not only presents the recipient with definite genre-interpreting instructions, but it also influences the secondary levels of semantics by comparing the age of Louis the Great and the actual time of the narration: it mobilizes one of the important genre-creating aspects of the historical novel, the past-related “questioning with relation to the present”.
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My study tries to call attention on the connection of "pantheonization" (that is the lingual and non-lingual rites accompanying the admittance of an author in the national pantheon) and its visual representation which is regulated by the community. The reception of the idea of pantheon in Hungary in the 19th century illustrates the connection between great authors and their cult as great men, the institutional ceremonies dedicated to their memory, the idealization of their portraits.
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This article is an attempt to present János Kodolányi's worldview as a novel writer, based on his works covering topics related to Mesopotamia and the Bible.
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Sándor Reményik's poetry was subject of cult already in his lifetime and got to be rapidly canonized. His cult revived following the poet's sudden death in 1941. Babits's early study emphasized the ethical, collective values of his work. However, these values are not of aesthetical nature. After 1947 the poet was rejected vehemently by the so-called class-conscious internationalism. His works were republished after 1980 by religious publishers, and found his way back to general acceptance in the nineties. Nevertheless, his entire oeuvre hasn't been published so far.
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