what is Hungarian literature?
The Hungarian language is a strange element on the linguistic map of Europe. It is a relatively ancient tongue; as it is believed, it differentiated from other Ob-Ugric languages as early as 1000 BC. Yet no literary testimony of those remote beginnings reached our times. The country converted to Christianity under king Stephen I, around the year 1000. This is why the oldest Hungarian writing was in Latin, used between the 10th and the 14th century to relate the details of the 10th-c. conquest of Hungary and transmit some Hungarian legends. This is how we get medieval chronicles, such as the anonymous Gesta Hungarorum and the Gesta Hunnorum et Hungarorum written by Simon of Kéza (13th c.).
The Golden Age of Hungarian culture coincides with Renaissance and Baroque. Hungarian humanism flourished under king Matthias Corvinus (1458-1490).
Yet another Golden Age coincided with the Enlightenment that penetrated into the Hapsburg domains through Vienna. One of the ambitions of the new era was a linguistic reform, capable of transforming Hungarian into a tongue of modern ideas and technology. Its maker was Ferenc Kazinczy. Overall, modern Hungary participated in the fate of the great Austro-Hungarian empire, even if, from the cultural point of view, it may be seen as minor in relation to the powerful strands of German-speaking expression. On the other hand, the end of the empire in 1918 was both a catastrophe and the moment of the emergence of national existence. The second world conflict brought implication of the country on the Nazi side, which proved to be that of the losers; this is why Hungary as a contemporary country is considerably minor in relation to the cultural area; important Hungarian minority lives in Romania; this is where important Hungarian memory places are to be found. Also, Hungary entered the period of the Soviet dominion of Eastern Europe as a vanquished nation. This is why the post-ww2 era was traumatic and destructive in many ways.
The Golden Age of Hungarian culture coincides with Renaissance and Baroque. Hungarian humanism flourished under king Matthias Corvinus (1458-1490).
Yet another Golden Age coincided with the Enlightenment that penetrated into the Hapsburg domains through Vienna. One of the ambitions of the new era was a linguistic reform, capable of transforming Hungarian into a tongue of modern ideas and technology. Its maker was Ferenc Kazinczy. Overall, modern Hungary participated in the fate of the great Austro-Hungarian empire, even if, from the cultural point of view, it may be seen as minor in relation to the powerful strands of German-speaking expression. On the other hand, the end of the empire in 1918 was both a catastrophe and the moment of the emergence of national existence. The second world conflict brought implication of the country on the Nazi side, which proved to be that of the losers; this is why Hungary as a contemporary country is considerably minor in relation to the cultural area; important Hungarian minority lives in Romania; this is where important Hungarian memory places are to be found. Also, Hungary entered the period of the Soviet dominion of Eastern Europe as a vanquished nation. This is why the post-ww2 era was traumatic and destructive in many ways.
I have readPéter Esterházy, Semmi művészet | Not Art (2008)
Imre Kertész, Sorstalanság | Fatelessness (1975) |
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I have written... nothing ...
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a country of tenebrous travels
It is strange that I keep so few memories connected to Hungary. It was one of the first countries that I visited, very early in my life. It was almost the end of Communist period, when the borders started slowly to open, and there started to be such things as youth camps organized in other countries of the Warsaw Pact (a travel to western Europe was still excluded, for both ideological and financial reasons). But I vaguely remember that, at the age of perhaps 15 or 16, I have been for a summer camp in Szeged. At the time, at the age of 16, I could receive a sort of temporary document that was not a real passport, but it permitted to cross the borders between the countries of the Warsaw Pact. Nonetheless, I had no cultural clue on how to travel, of what a travel actually is, what is the reason why you go to any distant place. It may be quite surprising how little curiosity we had, we were trained to have. Till the present day, I often speak of the "world blindness" of the Poles, their essential incapacity or cultural unwillingness of exploring and searching to understand. The attitude to which I was educated in my family and in the general social context was that of despising and rejecting whatever I might see. So, in a group of teenage girls, we despised and rejected whatever was put in front of us. For example the food we didn't know, that differed in any way of what we used to eat. Although Hungarian cuisine is not without its enchantments, it was all too novel, all too strange for us to digest.
No wonder that I brought few memories from that travel, even if, as I delve in it for the first time in many years, I start to recover some glimpses, some images, some facts. But I search the Internet in vain for any familiar view of the city. Probably we lived in some featureless youth centre in the outskirts, and our visits to the city centre gravitated around the existing shopping opportunities rather than cultural monuments. Petty trans-border trade was a great novelty of that epoch; it was the golden era of East European bazars that played an important role all along the difficult period of economic transition that happened around the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union, and of the whole world order in which we lived before. This is why the only thing I remember is that I sold my shampoo to a person from the centre's service. The shortages of the time were tremendous; other girls, in spite of our tender age, had more stuff to sell (things like toothpaste or spare towels), making some tiny profit; later on, on our way back, they were proud of the clothing items they were able to acquire. This is what I remember, and the clumsy bus in which we travelled. Of the country itself, its landscapes, I remember nothing. Nothing but the sheer fact of having been to Budapest, that we probably visited just circling with our bus, seeing buildings through its windows. What stuck to my mind was a single image of a river, and the building of the Parliament, like on a postcard.
Later on, I crossed Hungary I don't know how many times during my travels to the Balkans, but the geographic proportions of the route are such that it was always by wee hours of the night that I was in Hungary, in order to arrive early morning to more attractive and vacation-like destinations such as the coast of Croatia. The era of Orbán had already begun; at some moments, it crossed my mind that if I really wanted to know the country, I should go now, before it closes again. But somehow other places always appeared as priorities. The country stands to my mind as a space of tenebrous past, chilling my bones as I think about it even today. Perhaps due to the fact that I actually visited it at the time when a simple passage of a border was still a gruesome experience. Even in my modern, borderless EU-travels, I was happy to open my eyes when we already were on the opposite shore, somewhere in Slovenia or Romania. Those fears will die with me.
This is why there is such a hole in my knowledge of Europe, furnished only with some bottles of Egri Bikavér (the so called bull's blood, an intense dark red wine produced in Eger region) and some Renaissance reminiscences, some notions of the existence of a Matthias Corvinus. The country might interest me greatly, if one day I break my fear, and the History gives me respite to study its history, its literature, its sculpted stones... Meanwhile, I have crossed the country again, at wee hours, during my recent travel to Greece. We were not kept long at the Hungarian frontier; in some 30 or 40 minutes it was over. But I heard stories about buses that had been immobilised for 12 hours. A woman in my group counted stories of humiliations, of luggage being opened and searched. I dismissed her narration as a vain attempt at catching our attention; many ignored, elderly women behave like this; they try to heighten the tone. But on my next trip across the Balkans, I shall know that those fears that would die with me are not exclusively mine. And perhaps they have a reason.
Neuville-sur-Oise, some time in May 2021 - Kraków, some time in October of the same year.
No wonder that I brought few memories from that travel, even if, as I delve in it for the first time in many years, I start to recover some glimpses, some images, some facts. But I search the Internet in vain for any familiar view of the city. Probably we lived in some featureless youth centre in the outskirts, and our visits to the city centre gravitated around the existing shopping opportunities rather than cultural monuments. Petty trans-border trade was a great novelty of that epoch; it was the golden era of East European bazars that played an important role all along the difficult period of economic transition that happened around the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union, and of the whole world order in which we lived before. This is why the only thing I remember is that I sold my shampoo to a person from the centre's service. The shortages of the time were tremendous; other girls, in spite of our tender age, had more stuff to sell (things like toothpaste or spare towels), making some tiny profit; later on, on our way back, they were proud of the clothing items they were able to acquire. This is what I remember, and the clumsy bus in which we travelled. Of the country itself, its landscapes, I remember nothing. Nothing but the sheer fact of having been to Budapest, that we probably visited just circling with our bus, seeing buildings through its windows. What stuck to my mind was a single image of a river, and the building of the Parliament, like on a postcard.
Later on, I crossed Hungary I don't know how many times during my travels to the Balkans, but the geographic proportions of the route are such that it was always by wee hours of the night that I was in Hungary, in order to arrive early morning to more attractive and vacation-like destinations such as the coast of Croatia. The era of Orbán had already begun; at some moments, it crossed my mind that if I really wanted to know the country, I should go now, before it closes again. But somehow other places always appeared as priorities. The country stands to my mind as a space of tenebrous past, chilling my bones as I think about it even today. Perhaps due to the fact that I actually visited it at the time when a simple passage of a border was still a gruesome experience. Even in my modern, borderless EU-travels, I was happy to open my eyes when we already were on the opposite shore, somewhere in Slovenia or Romania. Those fears will die with me.
This is why there is such a hole in my knowledge of Europe, furnished only with some bottles of Egri Bikavér (the so called bull's blood, an intense dark red wine produced in Eger region) and some Renaissance reminiscences, some notions of the existence of a Matthias Corvinus. The country might interest me greatly, if one day I break my fear, and the History gives me respite to study its history, its literature, its sculpted stones... Meanwhile, I have crossed the country again, at wee hours, during my recent travel to Greece. We were not kept long at the Hungarian frontier; in some 30 or 40 minutes it was over. But I heard stories about buses that had been immobilised for 12 hours. A woman in my group counted stories of humiliations, of luggage being opened and searched. I dismissed her narration as a vain attempt at catching our attention; many ignored, elderly women behave like this; they try to heighten the tone. But on my next trip across the Balkans, I shall know that those fears that would die with me are not exclusively mine. And perhaps they have a reason.
Neuville-sur-Oise, some time in May 2021 - Kraków, some time in October of the same year.
lovers of the barbed wire
(he chose to live in the beautiful Konzentrationslager Buchenwald)
I bought this book after the Nobel prize was given to Kertész in 2002; some time after, when it was already put on sale in my favourite shop with books at a reduced price. Certainly, yet another novel about concentration camps would awake a fleeting and short lived attention, at best. Even if there was a Noble prize. We had enough of this; one was formed on such books since one's childhood. There was Proszę państwa do gazu, and U nas w Auschwitzu, and who knows what else. I avoided such literature since my earliest time.
Kertesz wrote his KLsroman in 1975. It was not a fresh topic, to be sure. Yeah, the novelty might consist in choosing a young boy as a hero; it is the common denominator of many beloved books about the Holocaust; think about the diaries of Anne Frank. But do Noble prize winners work on such simple recipes?
Certainly, it was extremely provoking to speak about the happiness of concentration camps. About the human capacity of adaptation; resilience, eventually. But there is a dark side of it, at least something deeply perturbing, as the boy sees beauty, the beautiful essence of the human being, precisely in his well groomed tormentors. Not in his own decadent body, nor those of his companions. It is very easy to make him believe they are inferior and guilty.
But there is something else, something I do not find in the usual interpretations of this novel. Perhaps I read it like this because of my own experience of Eastern Europe. Be that as it may, all along my reading, I was under the impression that the concentration camp was merely a metaphor, and Kertész wanted to speak about something he couldn't name openly. The beautiful Konzentrationslager, with its well cured flowerbeds at the entrance to the gas chambers and its dreamy name, stood for the communist Hungary. This is why it was absolutely crucial for him to write this novel in 1975, in the heyday of the so called Goulash Communism that brought about the illusion of well-being and cultural freedom. The well-being of a Jewish boy who suddenly got a pillow well stuffed with straw and covered with a clean pillow-case with a Waffen-SS stamp on it. Is it an exaggeration? After all, during János Kádár's era, slightly over 20 000 were imprisoned and only 400 killed. That would make, at best, "a rather provincial concentration camp" (there is such an expression in the novel). Be that as it may, we used to refer the countries of the Warsaw Pact as "barracks" (if one who was lucky to travel to any of them, we used to say he pojechał do sąsiedniego baraku, "visited the neighbouring barrack"). I'm not sure if the expression also existed in Hungarian; it seems probable to me. Thus, admitting this simple interpretation, all the comfort of the Goulash communism would be translated by that image of a pillow stuffed with straw and decorated with a Waffen-SS property stamp. You feel a relief, you are almost happy. Yet we really, really need to talk about the happiness of concentration camps...
The teenage budapestanian Jew chose to live in the beautiful KL Buchenwald, because otherwise he would die in the camp's hospital. But there is yet another, perturbing layer of meaning, if we suppose that his resilience stands for the ease with which the Hungarians adapted to the new conditions. In the end, the prisoners were liberated externally, by the foreign armies that came to their camp. But they did not liberate themselves internally from its beauty, they felt nostalgy of Buchenwald, just as the boy admits quite plainly, with the sincerity of his youth. This is how they lost their fate, and found no freedom; they remained in between, in the interstice of the binomial condition of man in history. They had learned to be happy. They still are.
Imre Kertész, Sorstalanság [1975]. Read in a Polish translation: Los utracony, trans. Krystyna Pisarska, third edition, Warszawa, W.A.B., 2010.
Kraków, 12.10.2021.
Kertesz wrote his KLsroman in 1975. It was not a fresh topic, to be sure. Yeah, the novelty might consist in choosing a young boy as a hero; it is the common denominator of many beloved books about the Holocaust; think about the diaries of Anne Frank. But do Noble prize winners work on such simple recipes?
Certainly, it was extremely provoking to speak about the happiness of concentration camps. About the human capacity of adaptation; resilience, eventually. But there is a dark side of it, at least something deeply perturbing, as the boy sees beauty, the beautiful essence of the human being, precisely in his well groomed tormentors. Not in his own decadent body, nor those of his companions. It is very easy to make him believe they are inferior and guilty.
But there is something else, something I do not find in the usual interpretations of this novel. Perhaps I read it like this because of my own experience of Eastern Europe. Be that as it may, all along my reading, I was under the impression that the concentration camp was merely a metaphor, and Kertész wanted to speak about something he couldn't name openly. The beautiful Konzentrationslager, with its well cured flowerbeds at the entrance to the gas chambers and its dreamy name, stood for the communist Hungary. This is why it was absolutely crucial for him to write this novel in 1975, in the heyday of the so called Goulash Communism that brought about the illusion of well-being and cultural freedom. The well-being of a Jewish boy who suddenly got a pillow well stuffed with straw and covered with a clean pillow-case with a Waffen-SS stamp on it. Is it an exaggeration? After all, during János Kádár's era, slightly over 20 000 were imprisoned and only 400 killed. That would make, at best, "a rather provincial concentration camp" (there is such an expression in the novel). Be that as it may, we used to refer the countries of the Warsaw Pact as "barracks" (if one who was lucky to travel to any of them, we used to say he pojechał do sąsiedniego baraku, "visited the neighbouring barrack"). I'm not sure if the expression also existed in Hungarian; it seems probable to me. Thus, admitting this simple interpretation, all the comfort of the Goulash communism would be translated by that image of a pillow stuffed with straw and decorated with a Waffen-SS property stamp. You feel a relief, you are almost happy. Yet we really, really need to talk about the happiness of concentration camps...
The teenage budapestanian Jew chose to live in the beautiful KL Buchenwald, because otherwise he would die in the camp's hospital. But there is yet another, perturbing layer of meaning, if we suppose that his resilience stands for the ease with which the Hungarians adapted to the new conditions. In the end, the prisoners were liberated externally, by the foreign armies that came to their camp. But they did not liberate themselves internally from its beauty, they felt nostalgy of Buchenwald, just as the boy admits quite plainly, with the sincerity of his youth. This is how they lost their fate, and found no freedom; they remained in between, in the interstice of the binomial condition of man in history. They had learned to be happy. They still are.
Imre Kertész, Sorstalanság [1975]. Read in a Polish translation: Los utracony, trans. Krystyna Pisarska, third edition, Warszawa, W.A.B., 2010.
Kraków, 12.10.2021.
mother
I have no idea why Péter Esterházy's novel, Semmi művészet, has this title (Not Art in English translation, Niesztuka in Polish one; I have no idea if it's the exact rendition of the Hungarian expression). What isn't art? Football? In any case, it is all about a mother and, as I see it, about Hungarian history in the communist era. The mother must have been a sort of aristocrat, I deduce this by her will of extravagant clothing, by her yellow hat. Sort of last reminder of something. When the man is no more, "taken", as we used to say in Poland (zabrali go, imprisoned, bitten; or simply unable to stand up for anything, broken). This is when the female stands for everything, for a tradition, for a lifestyle, for a continuity. The last line of defence.
There is nothing aristocratic in the message of this mother; it's all, so to speak, reversed, an argumentum a contrario. She wants her son to become a football player. A plebeian hero.
Péter Esterházy, Semmi művészet | Not Art (2008). Read in Polish translation: Niesztuka
Kraków, 12.10.2021.
There is nothing aristocratic in the message of this mother; it's all, so to speak, reversed, an argumentum a contrario. She wants her son to become a football player. A plebeian hero.
Péter Esterházy, Semmi művészet | Not Art (2008). Read in Polish translation: Niesztuka
Kraków, 12.10.2021.
