Hungarian Cultural Studies

Baráth, Magdolna and Nóra Szekér, eds. Ügynökhistóriák a Lajtán innen és túl: Hírszerzéstörténeti tanulmányok. Kronosz. 2020; Palasik, Mária and Nándor Pócs, eds. Titkos hidak: Az állambiztonság és az emigráció kapcsolatai 1945-1989. Kronosz. 2021.

James P. Niessen — 2024-09-12

Cserjés, Katalin, Márton Hoványi and Réka Varga, eds. A téboly menyasszonya: (Elme)betegség és terápia Hajnóczy Péter életművében – Interdiszciplináris Hajnóczy-tanulmányok [The Bride of Madness: (Mental) Illness and Therapy in the Oeuvre of Péter Hajnóczy.] Budapest: ELTE – MűGond. 2023. 199 pp.

Márton Bársony — 2024-09-12

Hartman, Jehuda. Patriots without a Homeland: Hungarian Jewish Orthodoxy from the Emancipation to Holocaust. Translated from Hebrew by Shaul Vardi. Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2023. 393 pp.

George Deák — 2024-09-12

Karikó, Katalin. Breaking Through: My Life in Science. New York: Crown. 2023, 336 pp. illus. [Áttörések - Életem és a tudomány. Translated by Fenyvesi Anna]. Budapest: Helikon. 2023, 304 pp. illus.

Katalin Bódi — 2024-09-12

Kunt, Gergely. The Children’s Republic of Gaudiopolis: The History and Memory of a Budapest Children’s Home for Holocaust and War Orphans Budapest- Vienna-New York: CEU Press. 2022. 236 pp.

Zsuzsanna Varga — 2024-09-12

Mozes, André E. ed. New Philosemitism Paradigm. Budapest: L’Harmattan. 2023. 446 pp.

Mária Réthelyi — 2024-09-12

Romsics, Ignác. Hetven év - Egotörténelem 1951-2021 [Seventy Years: An Autobiography 1951–2021]. Budapest: Helikon, vol 1. 2022, 435 pp.; vol 2. 2023, 492 pp.

Géza Jeszenszky — 2024-09-12

Evolving Hungarian-American Academic Relations

Christopher Ball — 2024-09-12

This article is a retrospective of the last thirty years of US-Hungarian relations with special focus on university relations. I do this by telling my story of moving to Hungary in 1994, then building new American-Hungarian academic programs over the last 20 years. I discuss the successes and struggles of each period as well as the particular challenges today. I conclude with thoughts on a path forward and argue that we need exchange programs and partnerships between our countries more today than ever. This is a written version of my keynote address given at the AHEA 2023 Annual Conference.

Remembering Paul Olchváry

Klara K. Papp — 2024-09-12

Remembering Paul Sohar

James P. Niessen — 2024-09-12

Paul Sohar (1936-2023) was a longtime member of AHEA. It was after he retired from corporate employment that he became active in literature and in AHEA. We are pleased to bring two original contributions in this tribute to our late colleague. Anne Dropick interviewed Paul at our Quinnipiac conference in 2023 and contributed his recollections about his flight from Hungary and settlement in the US. Paul Sohar worked with Zoltán Böszörményi on the translation of many of his works, including a novel that appeared in Paul’s 2019 translation as The Refugee. The novel recounts the flight and camp life of a refugee who could be a Hungarian in 1956 Austria.

'The American Spirit' [Az amerikai szellem]

Matthew Hanne — 2024-09-12

The composer and pedagogue Erzsébet Szőnyi (1924-2019), who studied with Zoltán Kodály, Nadia Boulanger, and Olivier Messiaen, is largely credited with advancing Kodály’s vision for music education around the world. In the second and third volumes of Szőnyi’s Biciniumok (two-part musical arrangements to be used pedagogically with children), the musician, educator, and translator László Lukin (1926-2004) provided Hungarian texts to twenty-four American folk songs. Lukin himself was a student of Lajos Bárdos and Jenő Ádám, who (along with Szőnyi) were pivotal in the development of Hungary’s system of music education in the early 20th century. This paper explores the challenges encountered when translating lyrics from English to Hungarian: navigating the idiomatic use of language in folk material; overcoming differences in prosody and its impact on both linguistic accents and musical meter; and differentiating between literal, cultural and artistic/creative avenues of translation. General patterns of word stress, syntax, and meaning will be addressed for all twenty-four of the folk song arrangements. Through a detailed analysis of four of the pieces (“Madarak”, “Bricskán Járok”, “Postaváró”, and “Ausztrál Tájak Felé”), the author will highlight the variety of approaches taken by Lukin regarding the process of translation.

The Pimpernel from Árkod

Orsolya Tóth — 2024-09-12

The paper focuses on the registered but barely discussed intertextual aspects of Magda Szabó’s prose, which can be linked to the popular culture of the first half of the twentieth century. The comparative analysis compares one of her most famous novels, Abigail, with Baroness Emma Orczy’s Pimpernel stories and the relatively late entry in the Pimpernel franchise, the 1941 film “Pimpernel” Smith, directed by and starring Leslie Howard. The paper concludes that The Scarlet Pimpernel may have influenced the story and characterization of Abigail, particularly the portrayal of the dual-identity hero, Mr. Kőnig. It is also suggested that the novel’s schematic historical representation can be linked to Magda Szabó’s choice of literary template.

Glances Backward — Glances Forward

Zsolt Bojti — 2024-09-12

The first openly gay detective novel, one of the first overtly homosexual fictions published by a British press, and possibly the most popular fiction in the 1950s about male same-sex desire, The Heart in Exile (1953), was written under the pseudonym Rodney Garland. The author’s identity has sparked debates since the very first publication of the novel. Although it seems to be the common consensus that the novel was written by Hungarian journalist Adam de Hegedus, there are disputes about the person of the real author and the authorship of the Garland series. This paper first addresses these questions of authorship. Then, it moves on to argue that the novelty of The Heart in Exile in the early 1950s was the juxtaposition of glancing backward and forward, with emphasis on the novel’s treatment and uses of prior literary discourse.

Frontátvonulás [‘Frontal Passage’]

Diana Senechal — 2024-09-12

The legendary songwriting collaboration between the writer Géza Bereményi (1946–) and the musician Tamás Cseh (1943–2009) led to twenty full-length albums as well as countless bootlegs, singles, and unreleased recordings. With its unique mixture of absurdity and suggestion, story and song, comedy and pathos, their work broke ground in its time and influences songwriters today. Little has been written about it in English; this article aims to introduce readers to Bereményi and Cseh’s opus through their Frontátvonulás [‘Frontal Passage’], a story-song show first performed by Cseh in 1979 and released as an album in 1983. Telling of the characters Vizi and Ecsédi and the miracles they incite at Budapest Keleti Station, and setting a plethora of other characters to song, this work is at least partly about ends and endings. After briefly introducing Cseh and Bereményi, this article examines Frontátvonulás in light of its four stages (disorientation, stagnancy, breakthrough, ending), treating the last as a key to the whole. The author calls Frontátvonulás “an album of no return” both because it emphasizes its own ending and because it confronts the audience irrevocably.

Ukraine and Hungary

Géza Jeszenszky — 2024-09-12

With the loosening of central control, the fifteen “Socialist Soviet Republics” started to (re)assert themselves. After the failed coup in August 1991, following the Baltic states, Ukraine declared itself independent. Even before that Hungary started to build special relations with its largest neighbor, and on December 6, 1991, signed a treaty with Kiev “on good-neighborhood and cooperation.” An integral part of the treaty was a Protocol on the protection of national minorities. That provided extensive political rights to the then about 200,000 strong Hungarian community of Sub-Carpathia, including education in Hungarian up to the age of 18. In the next decade, Hungary had most cordial relations with Ukraine. Due to the growth of Ukrainian national feeling, much strengthened by Russia’s seizure of Crimea and territories in the eastern border area, in 2017 Ukraine passed a new Law on Education. The new law restricted teaching in the language of a national minority only until the age of 10, above that making the required language of instruction Ukrainian. Hungary has been severely critical of the change, and retaliated by blocking Ukraine's western integration into the European Union and NATO. The conflict contributed to Hungary’s unfriendly policy towards Ukraine following Russia’s aggression in February 2022. Ukraine later modified the law so that instruction could continue in the languages of the national minorities. Since that change, there have been signs of a thaw in bilateral relations.

Selected English-Language Bibliography of Interest for Hungarian Cultural Studies: 2023–2024

Zsuzsanna Varga — 2024-09-12

This bibliography mostly straddles 2023–2024, covering the period since the summer 2023 publication of last year’s bibliography in this journal. Each year’s bibliography may also be supplemented by previously published items earlier not included. Although this bibliography series can only concentrate on English-language items, occasional items of particular interest in other languages may be included. For a more extensive bibliography of Hungarian Studies from about 2000 to 2014, for which this is a continuing update, see Louise O. Vasvári, Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek, and Carlo Salzani. “Bibliography for Work in Hungarian Studies as Comparative Central European Studies.” CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture (published by Purdue University) (2011): http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweblibrary/hungarianstudiesbibliography