Bibliographia Hungarica:
An Annotated Selection (1997) Part 1
ART
A boldog mûvész képeskönyve:
Molnár C. Pál (1894-1981).
[The picture book of the happy artist:
Pál Molnár C.]
Ed. Éva Csillag. Budapest:
Kossuth Kiadó, 1997. 189 p.
ISBN 963-09-3923-1
This amply illustrated book
is a daughter's homage to her painter father, Pál Molnár
C. A chronological account of his life is followed by paintings and drawings
interspersed with a generous selection of contemporary writing on and by
the artist. Renaissance-style figures and landscapes abound in Molnár
C's pictures. The attraction of Molnár C. to Mediterranean themes
is attributed to his French-born mother, Jeanne Contat, whose initial 'C'
the artist added to his name. In the 1930s Molnár C. was also drawn
to Surrealism. After attending the Budapest Academy of Fine Arts, he spent
periods of study abroad. His works--admired by the social and political
establishment of inter-war Hungary and dismissed as second-rate at best
by the modernist art establishment to this day, though still fetching high
prices--were frequently on show (participation in the Venice Biennale on
eight occasions), and he received a number of awards (e.g. the Gold Medal
at Milan Triennale in 1933; the Diplo^me d'Honneur at the Warsaw International
Exhibition in 1934 and the Grand Prix at the Paris World Fair in 1937).
He is perhaps best known for his illustrations for Rostand's Cyrano de
Bergerac. Molnár's numerous works in public places include the ceiling
of Saint Anne's Church in Balatonlelle and the altarpiece in the Ják
Chapel in the City Park.
Makovecz Imre mûhelye.
[The workshop of Imre Makovecz.]
Ed. János Gerle.
Budapest: Mundus Magyar Egyetemi Kiadó,
1996. 408 p.
(Magyar Építômûvészet.
1.)
ISBN 963-8033-19-3
This spectacular album documents
the work of the architect Imre Makovecz (born 1935). The material is arranged
in strict chronological order from his project in 1959 at the Technical
University Budapest to a picture of the Catholic Church at Száz
ha lom batta, one of his latest works. Makovecz's name is synonimous with
organic architecture and his buildings are instantly recognizable. All
across Hungary, hundreds of houses, churches, community buildings, department
stores, inns, cottages, mortuaries bear witness to his work. In an interview
in 1981 he claims to have been falsely categorized--a critic labelled him
"folk" merely because of his use of thatch on a building he had just finished.
Although he does draw on peasant architecture and the Hungarian folk tradition,
his work is more akin to that of Frank Lloyd Wright. He is inspired by
Rudolf Steiner and anthroposophy, perceiving nature and history as one
coherent whole. In 1991, Makovecz was commissioned to design the Hungarian
pavilion at the Sevilla Expo and his impressive seven-tower timber construction
was a resounding success. In June 1997 Makovecz was awarded the Gold Medal
of the Académie Française, the first ever Hungarian to have
been so honored.
MOHOLY-NAGY, László:
Látás mozgásban.
[Vision in motion.]
Budapest: Mûcsarnok-
Intermédia, 1996. 376 p.
ISBN 963-755-0941
The first Hungarian version
of a work originally published in English in 1946. Moholy-Nagy's earlier
New Vision drew on the educational methods of the Bauhaus, Vision in Motion
however--reflecting what Moholy-Nagy had been doing in the US--was designed
to feature the thinking and methods of the Chicago Institute of Design.
Form and content are highly innovative. With 440 superb illustrations,
this is a dynamic work uniting text and image. After fifty years the book
retains its full relevance for the computer-based art of today. Moholy-Nagy's
aim, as expounded in his Preface, was to integrate technology, art, and
science. The book testifies to Moholy-Nagy's unsurpassable skills as an
educator, allied to his genius as an artist.
EDUCATION
ANGELUSZ, Erzsébet:
Antropológia és nevelés.
[Anthropology and education.] Budapest:
Akadémiai Kiadó, 1996. 154 p.
ISBN 963-057345-8
Erzsébet Angelusz died
before this work based on her 1994 Ph.D. thesis was published. She discusses
issues on the borderline between anthropology and pedagogy. Her point of
departure is that demands of various human integrations such as the family,
religious communities, the state, the nation or humankind have enriched
as well as distorted the socio-historical aspects of educational activity.
Drawing upon the latest social science research she delves into the anthropological
determinants--the substructure--of education. In her quest for ways of
improving education she formulates the possible ways and conditions for
humanizing a child's life, and school activity. She lays stress upon the
issue of quality in education, as well as on the need for thinking on the
subject to include adult education within its scope.
HISTORY
KISARI BALLA, György:
Manó Kogutowicz: The great Hungarian
cartographer.
Budapest: [privately published.]
1997. 174 p.
ISBN 963-650-864-X
This is the English version
of a book published in 1995 on Manó Kogutowicz, the cartographer.
Kisari Balla has included many documents on the Kogutowicz family and on
his work. Born into a German-speaking Polish-Moravian family in Seelowitz,
Moravia, Emanuel Kogutowicz (1851-1908) chose to become a Hungarian--using
the Hungarian version of his Christian name after 1881. His was an Austro-Hungarian
success story. Following years of study in Vienna and a period of teaching
at the Lahne Institute in Sopron, Kogutowicz settled in Budapest in 1884.
His maps were soon in large demand. He was awarded a gold medal at the
Paris World Fair in 1900. His role in establishing the Hungarian Geographical
Institute is as significant as his role of pioneer cartographer. Included
here is a catalogue of Kogutowicz maps (in order of publication) now available
in scores of institutions and libraries in Hungary and abroad. The Library
of Congress holds his school wall map of the lands of the Hungarian Crown
(1906). Manuela, Manó Kogutowicz's granddaughter worked as a map
editor of the National Geographic Magazine in Washington D.C. from 1957
to 1977.
Rendôrségi napi jelentések:
1956. október 23- december 12.
[Daily police reports: October 23--December
12, 1956.]
Budapest: Belügyminisztérium--1956-os
Magyar Forradalom Történetének Dokumentációs
és Kutató Intézete, 1996. 571 p. (Belügyi iratok.
1.)
ISBN 963-8036-30-3
Volume 1 of the series of
primary sources entitled Documents from the Ministry of the Interior. Up
to 1989, the Department was associated in the public mind with repression,
coercion and secrecy. With the advent of the new order, the minister in
charge declared legal continuity null and void thus making possible the
declassification of pre-1990 papers. Pub lished on the occasion of the
40th anniversary of the 1956 Revolution the reports in this book were earlier
classified as top secret in the Department's archives. The places of origin
of these 303 telegraph reports sent in to the Interior Department were
police stations and county headquarters all over the country. Although
important periods, such as between October 24 and 25 and the period from
October 30 to November 5, are missing, the daily reports on police activity
add to our picture of the Revolution, with the new data casting light upon
its story and its immediate aftermath primarily outside Budapest. This
compilation gives an insight into the mechanism of power almost from the
start of the Soviet invasion launched to crush the two-week old democracy.
RÉVÉSZ, Sándor:
Aczél és korunk.
[Aczél and our age.]
Budapest: Sík Kiadó,
1997. 435 p.
ISBN 963-85520-3-4
The title implies that the
years of socialism are still with us. The author, however, does his best
to relegate that epoch to history and to put it in a proper perspective,
although many relevant documents (e.g. the Aczél papers) are not
accessible yet. The book makes fascinating reading, not unlike a thriller,
a product of the imagination, even if its contents are true. György
Aczél was a towering figure of the Kádár regime entrusted
with pacifying the intellectuals in the aftermath of 1956. As a boy and
young man, Aczél was active in the Young Zionist movement (Sho mer)
before he joined the Communist Party. A self-educated man, he was devoted
to learning, had a talent for acting and was an outstanding communicator.
Like many communists, he chose to abandon his original name (Henrik Appel)
and assumed another. Although the name Aczél (steel) evokes Stalin,
the likeness stops here. Révész's objective is to outline
Aczél's life and work and to look for clues and motifs behind Aczél's
actions while supplying pithy comments in passim. Apropos of Aczél's
arrest in 1949, Révész dwells on the show trials and the
weird confessions faithful communists made in public. The author argues
that the victimized communists lived through a specific form of cognitive
dissonance because their moral capital had been fully invested in the Party
myth. In recounting Aczél's post-1956 career, Révész
points out that in 1958 Aczél was not yet a member of the Political
Committee, which made the decision to execute Imre Nagy. For this he was
not directly culpable and presumably this may explain his acceptance--however
unwilling--by the intellectuals. He was culpable, however, for the subsequent
decades: the manipulation of intellectuals, the blackmailing of writers,
the infamous three T's, which translate as patronizing, permitting, and
prohibiting, the sticks-and-carrots policy by which Aczél held sway
over Hungary's cultural life for almost three decades.
SZIKLAY, Andor:
Vakmerô diplomácia.
Amerikai ultimátum egy magyar
szabadságharcosért.
[Daring diplomacy: The story of the first
American ultimatum.]
Budapest: Argumentum Kiadó, 1997.
248 p.
ISBN 963-446-040-2
This is the first Hungarian
edition of an original published in 1957 with a postscript by Aladár
Urbán. Andor Sziklay, or A. C. Klay (1912-1996) was an American
diplomat of Hungarian birth, the author of several books on literature
and diplomatic history. He was a tireless researcher into Hungarian-American
relations, an adventurous and elevated chapter of which Sziklay recounts
in this book. The background to this incident was Austria's repressive
rule over Hungary which was soon to cause friction between the US and Austria.
In 1851 Austria protested because President Fillmore had sent a naval vessel
to carry Lajos Kossuth to the United States. In June 1853, the Koszta affair
once again led to displeasure on the part of Austria. The incident was
a clash in the harbor of Smyrna, Turkey between two warships, one Austrian
and one American. Captain Ingraham, commander of the US sloop St Louis,
at the risk of a naval battle, freed Márton Koszta, who had served
as an officer in the Hungarian War of Independence, from the Austrian man-o'war
Hussar. Koszta, who had arrived in Smyrna from the United States, had already
applied for American citizenship by a declaration of intention although
he was not a de facto citizen. Captain Ingraham's words are commemorated
on the tablet in his memory: "Do you want the protection of the United
States? You shall have it!" This event was to establish a precedent in
international law: in the years to come a series of bilateral agreeements
were signed for a mutual recognition of refugee status. After the Smyrna
incident a small village in Iowa, originally Hoosier Grove, assumed the
name Koszta. Can there be a more imposing monument than this?
LAW
SOLT, Kornél:
Jogi logika.
A jog, a nyelv és a valóság.
[Logic in law.]
Budapest: MTA állam és Jogtudományi
Intézet--Seneca Kiadó, 1996. 2 vols. 286 + 562 p.
ISBN 963-8038-38-1
ISBN 963-8038-69-1
Solt holds a Ph.D. in philosophy,
and once studied under the philosopher of law Gyula Moór. The title
of this original and pioneering work refers not to the conventional meaning
of the logic of legal argumentation and rules of legal presentation--Solt
even fails to mention this in his work. His theme is rather the logic of
the status and application of law, that is, he explores the very fundaments
of his discipline with a truly modern perspective. Vol 1 is devoted to
the groundwork of law as a phenomenon of culture and the position of law,
given its language-based nature, is studied from the point of view of the
philosophy of language. Wittgenstein's categories are applied in the analysis
of law as language usage. He then proceeds to expound the logic of this
usage and to register the ontological status of law in practice. The author's
discussion turns from linguistic analysis to one based on mathematical
logic where the pragmatic side of language is manifest. Vol 2, closely
related to Vol 1, explores the systematic logical isses of deontics. He
states that the logic of norm creation deviates from the orthodox application
of classical logic. Solt's work is immensely important in its approach
toward the ontological question of law from the angle of logic.
LINGUISTICS
KLAUDY, Kinga:
A fordítás elmélete
és gyakorlata.
[The theory and practice of translation.]
3rd enlarged ed. Budapest: Scholastica,
1997, 417 p.
ISBN 963-85281-3-3
Traduttore, traditore (translation,
treason), says the Italian. Yet the importance of translation has for centuries
been acknowledged by Hungarians, who have wanted to promote their intellectual
achievements internationally and to place their literature (and other areas
of language) in the mainstream of world literature. To combat the peril
of sliding into provinciality, there has also always been a duty or cultural
mission to translate the great masterpieces of world literature into Hungarian.
Prominent writers have humbly volunteered for this duty. (Magnificent works
of art (e.g. János Arany's translations of Shakespeare) were thereby
produced and have become an integral part of the corpus of Hungarian literature.)
Kinga Klaudy is a linguist and the foremost authority on translation studies
in Hungary. She is an associate professor at Eötvös University
and Chair of Applied Linguistics at Miskolc University. Klaudy makes use
of her teaching experience and corroborates her findings with a wealth
of examples from English, German, French, and Russian. The first part sums
up the theory of translation in general as well as its links to various
subdisciplines (sociolonguistics, psycholinguistics) and discourse. Text
linguistics, following its neglect in the 1950s and 1960s, is now back
in the focus of the theory of translation and Klaudy refers to the oeuvre
of Sámuel Brassai (1800- 1897), an advocate of the importance of
text and the phrase and a great precursor of modern linguistics, whose
work is now being rediscovered. In the practical part the author presents
the practice of translation with English and Russian examples. She discusses
functions in translation (lexical operations, grammatical operations) and
presents their models.
LITERARY STUDIES
DARABOS, Pál:
Hamvas Béla - Egy életmû
fiziognómiája.
I. Terra incognita-a pálya kezdete
(1897-1926).
[Béla Hamvas--Physiognomy of a lifework.
Vol. I. Terra incognita--Early years of a career (1897-1926)]
Budapest: Farkas Lôrinc Könyvkiadó,
1997. 355 p.
ISBN 963-7310-23-1
Béla Hamvas (1897-1968)
was an enigmatic person in Hungarian literature and philosophy, a cult
figure of the 1970s and 1980s. His monumental experimental novel Karnevál
(written in 1951), another novel titled Szilveszter as well as a wide variety
of philosophic tracts and essays (eg. Scientia Sacra, Patmosz) were circulated
in manuscript in Hungary. Hamvas's way of thinking was absolutely alien
to the communist authorities, so the publication of Karnevál by
Magvetô in 1985 was a major feat. Soon after the collapse of communism
a series on his
oeuvre was started by the Szombathely-based
journal életünk and supervized by Antal Dúl. Pál
Darabos, the foremost scholar and exegete of the Hamvas corpus and a senior
librarian at the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences has now issued
the first volume of his monograph. Given the sheer size of the oeuvre,
Darabos's undertaking is daunting, even if many of Hamvas's works are lost
forever (burnt during World War II). The author's aim is a biography-cum-assessment
that includes a reconstruction of the lost pieces through Hamvas's recollections.
Vol. 1 concludes in 1926 when Hamvas was a journalist on Budapesti Hírlap
and his youthful writings, articles, reviews and short stories are studied
in detail.
GÖMÖRI, György:
Egy szigetlakó feljegyzéseibôl
[From the notes of an islander.]
Budapest: Cserépfalvi Kiadó,
1996. 161 p.
ISBN 963-8364-87-4
Poet, essayist, critic and
literary historian Gömöri was a university student in Budapest
in 1956. Anticipating impending arrest, he fled Hungary on November 17,
1956. He settled in England, where he finished his studies and has been
teaching at Cambridge University since 1969. The themes of this selection
of essays concern the Hungarian Revolution, in which he actively participated,
organizing demonstrations, editing pamphlets and publications (e.g. the
student paper Egyetemi Ifjuság). Gömöri's keen interest
in Polish literature since the early fifties is reflected in his mini-portraits
of major Polish writers (Tadeusz Nowak, Zbigniew Herbert, Witold Gombrowicz).
His flair for essay also shows in fine accounts and reviews of Hungarian
poets and writers (Ervin Sinkó, Attila József, Gyôzô
Határ).
In quest of the 'Miracle Stag': the poetry
of Hungary.
Ed. Adam Makkai.
Chicago--Budapest:
Atlantis-Centaur--Corvina--
M. Szivárvány, 1996. 964
p.
ISBN 0-9642094-0-3 (Atlantis)
ISBN 0-936398-87-6
(M. Szivárvány)
ISBN 963-13-4282-4 (Corvina)
This huge anthology of Hungarian
poetry in English covers eight centuries of verse from 1200 to the present.
It was issued in commemoration of the 1,100th anniversary of the settling
of the Hungarians. It originated in London shortly after the Les Éditions
du Seuil published an Anthologie de la poésie hongroise (1962) edited
by László Gara. Tamás Kabdebó, a poet, novelist
and essayist in both English and Hungarian, adopted Gara's method of forwarding
rough translations to established poets, including W.H. Auden and Ted Hughes.
The whole compilation starts and ends with a treatment of the miracle stag
which, as the editor puts it, "is a perennial symbol of an Oriental people
whose destiny it was to become European and to act as the guardians of
the West against the Tartar invasion in the 13th century." The first poem
is by the 19th-century poet János Arany: "The Legend of the Miraculous
Hind," and the last one is: "The Boy Changed into a Stag Clamours at the
Gate of Secrets" by Ferenc Juhász, who is still with us. The anthology
is divided into eight major chapters, from folk poetry and medieval linguistic
records (Funeral Oration 1200) to writers born in the 20th century. Each
chapter contains an informative yet terse summary of the epoch and each
poet is given a short presentation. The volume includes a major essay on
the poetry of Hungary by a master essayist, László Cs. Szabó.
György Buday, another celebrated emigré artist has produced
25 original woodcuts (portraits of writers) for this anthology. (Mention
must be made here of two parallel publications, Modern Hungarian Poetry,
Ed. Miklós Vajda, New York: Columbia University Press, 1977, 286
p. and The Anthology of Living Hungarian Poetry, Ed. István Tótfalusi,
Budapest: Maecenas, 1997. 401 p. ISBN 963-9025-28-3)
MÜLLER, P. Péter:
Central European
playwrights--within and without the
Absurd:
Václav Havel, Slavomir Mrozek,
István örkény.
Pécs: Janus Pannonius
Tudományegyetem, 1996. 114 p.
ISBN 963-641 468-8
Martin Esslin, a Hungarian-born
English critic coined the term absurd drama in his book The Theater of
the Absurd in 1961. This English-language study in comparative literature
is partly based upon the author's lectures at U.S. universities. Müller,
associate professor in the Department of Literary Theory at Pécs
University, selected three representatives of the absurd from Central Europe
and his analyses add new insights. In Central Europe, in the wake of the
overwhelming impact of Ionesco's The Bald Primadonna (1949) and Beckett's
Waiting for Godot (1952), the absurd flourished in the 1960s. Those years
saw the rise of the theater and film in the region's countries that yielded
new creative forms after the loosening of the noose of socialist realism.
The sucess of absurd drama, says Müller, was but natural in Central
Europe: it was strikingly similar to the bizarre theatricality that had
recently been experienced in the showcase trials. The playwrights selected
by Müller are masters of this genre, they depict the disintegration
of personality, the elimination of the individual. Concomittantly, there
is a debasement of language, the Party jargon and its sliding into a kind
of Orwellian Newspeak that cuts off language from reality. The works examined
are: The Police (1958), Tango (1964), Emigrants (1974) by Mrozek; The Garden
Party (1963), The Memorandum (1965) by Havel; and The Tót Family
(1967), Catsplay (1969), Blood Relatives (1974) by Örkény.
Symbolically, the theater of the absurd came to an end with Beckett's death
in 1989, a date that marks the liberation of Central Europe from an absurd
life.
SOCIAL STUDIES
Többség--kisebbség.
Tanulmányok a nemzeti tudat témakörébôl.
[Majority--minority. Studies on national
consciousness.]
Ed. Tamás Terestyéni.
Budapest: MTA-ELTE
Kommunikációelméleti
Kutatócsoport--Osiris Kiadó, 1996. 235 p. (Jel-Kép
könyvtár.)
ISBN 963-379-239-8
The studies center on the
theme of nation and ethnic minorities. Ethnic problems stifled for decades
were quick to break to the surface after 1989 but little exhaustive scholarly
work on the subject has been done so far. Issues addressed include the
role played by national or ethnic affiliation in public opinion, the stereotypes
or prejudices entertained by members of the majority in connection with
ethnic minorities, the generational shift or modification in the formation
of national consciousness. Guy Lázár (d. 1996) discusses
the national identity of the adult population as reflected in its relations
to the minorities. It is a comprehensive review and summary of sociological
research between 1973 and1993. Judit Lendvay writes on two major types
of thought that assume the nation as a governing concept: national images
and stereotypes. Ildikó Szabó and Antal Örkény
report on findings of an empirical study: the intercultural worldview of
15 to 16-year-olds.
SPORTS AND GAMES
KÔ, András:
Szemétbôl mentett dicsôségünk.
Volt egyszer egy Aranycsapat...
[Our glory salvaged from waste. Once there
was a Golden Team...]
Budapest: Magyar Könyvklub, 1997.
357 p.
ISBN 963-548-474-7
The Hungarian national football
team lost in the final of the 1954 World Cup to the West German team. The
loss was totally unexpected by the Hungarian public, which since 1949 had
seen the team undefeated, collecting Olympic gold in 1952 (hence the "Golden
Team"), and becoming the first foreign team to defeat England at Wembley
Stadium in 1953. This blaze of glory was in stark contrast to the general
mood in a Hungary reeling under oppression.
The team has never ceased to exert its spell
over the Hungarian public, reflected in dozens of books and a documentary
centerd around the return, in 1981, of the team's captain and greatest
player Ferenc Puskás--who had to receive a pardon since he was still
technically an Army deserter for leaving the country in 1956. The book
is anchored on the papers of Gusztáv Sebes, the team's coach, which
were rescued from a rubbish bin.
Compiled by ZSOLT BÁNHEGYI
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