Hungarian Cultural Studies

03/06/2024

It took some seventy years after World War II for the educated part of the Hungarian public to obtain comprehensive information on the double tragedy of Hungary’s participation in the German military campaign against the Soviet Union. Not only was the army’s defeat at the Don River in the winter of 1942/43 an unmitigated catastrophe, but as Krisztián Ungváry demonstrates, the Hungarian honvéd forces, performing occupation duty in Ukraine and a part of Belorussia, committed atrocities against the civilian population which nearly equaled those of the German occupiers. Moreover, the ill-equipped Hungarians’ main dilemma was a nefarious entanglement in local ethnic and nationalist conflicts, in which the Soviet Partisans played only a limited role.

Read the full article here: https://ahea.pitt.edu/ojs/ahea/article/view/326

07/05/2024

07/05/2024

This article focuses on the English translation and reception of a major contemporary Hungarian novel, Ádám Bodor’s The Sinistra Zone. A fairly slim book, The Sinistra Zone was first published in 1992, established Bodor as a major writer and inspired a considerable amount of critical literature in Hungary. The article first gives an overview of the position of The Sinistra Zone in contemporary Hungarian literature and highlights some issues discussed by critics that are relevant for the discussion of the English translation and reception. After reviewing the American reception of the book, Orzóy examines how specific features of Bodor’s prose are rendered in Paul Olchváry’s English translation by discussing some translational choices and analyzing how these choices may modify possible interpretations of the novel. It is also suggested that besides the interpretive potential of the English translation, expectations towards translated novels may be a reason for the divergence of opinion between Hungarian and American reviewers and critics.

Read the full article here: https://ahea.pitt.edu/ojs/ahea/article/view/325

04/05/2024

10 new items added to shared album

03/05/2024

This study explores popular responses to communist rule in Hungary and the role of Western media in the years leading up to the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Most scholars to date have focused on the guiding role of the intelligentsia and the influence of Radio Free Europe. While these were indeed necessary ingredients in the revolutionary stew, Brown argues that the roots of the revolution are more complex. Hungarians from all social strata listened to many Western radio stations; as a result, many of them adopted critical and informed perspectives on the propaganda directed at them from both Moscow and Washington. As Hungarians listened in on the West, their discussion of news and politics generated a shadow public sphere, in which Radio Free Europe came to occupy a preeminent role despite its biased and propagandistic tone. The shadow public sphere incubated the postwar dream of an egalitarian and democratic Hungary until open political discourse became possible once more in October 1956.

Read the full article here: https://ahea.pitt.edu/ojs/ahea/article/view/324

01/05/2024

This article elaborates on Herta Müller’s Gulag novel, Atemschaukel"" (2009; published in English under the title of "The Hunger Angel" in 2012), in the historical, political and ethical contexts of twentieth-century forced migrations by placing the novel among those exodus narratives that have unfolded the parallel history of Romanian-German and Jewish communities during and after the Second World War. Given the fact that the memory of forced migrations and of the Gulag is a “soft memory” (Etkind 2004), there are no consensual remembrance policies in any concerned East or East-Central European country regarding their history. In the absence of official ownership, the legacies of these colletive and individual traumas became predominantly text-based (rather than image- or monument-based). One must therefore study those aesthetical forms by which literature is able to encode the physical, psychological, moral, social-political conditions of any totalitarian rule—and thus, attempt to establish the perceptional and sensational frames on which the universe of the Gulag can be re-constructed. Accordingly, this paper gives an amplifying view of the tendencies by which Müller’s Atemschaukel both preserves and subtly re-orchestrates the conventions of the genre of the Gulag novel. One of the main achievements of her (politics of) aesthetics consists in re-creating the image of the labor camp through an ethically grounded conception of literary testimony, which, at the same time, gains and fulfills a mediative (mimetic) function.

Read the full article here: https://ahea.pitt.edu/ojs/ahea/article/view/323

29/04/2024

Two Hungarian authors, Sándor Márai and Péter Nádas, seem to have one thing in common: their attraction to triangular relationships. Written between 1935 and 1942 and portraying human relations in pre-World War II Hungary, Márai’s two novels and one drama all turn on a very specific triangular structure between two close friends and the woman whom they both love(d). Now they conduct a painful tête-à-tête to decide on the final ownership (or simply fate) of the woman. Written in 1979 and portraying human relations in communist Hungary, Nádas’s play has only two actors on stage, a woman of aristocratic descent and a young man, the son of a high-ranking communist official, the woman’s long dead lover. This exchange between the two characters opens into an encounter of three, where the woman and the young man each use the other as a mediator to reach the third, the lover/father. Bollobás argues that the triangles displayed by the two authors represent two distinct types: the former is informed by fixed, hierarchical, subject-object power relations, while the latter by fluid, non-hierarchical, subject-subject relations.

Read the full article here: https://ahea.pitt.edu/ojs/ahea/article/view/321

26/04/2024

The 48th Annual AHEA Conference is going to be held in-person between May 2-4, 2024 at Rutgers University. For updated program, venue, registration please check out the conference website at https://sites.google.com/stmarys-ca.edu/2024-ahea-rutgers/2024
Visitors are welcome!
DAY PASS for VISITORS only: $25/DAY (lunches and Saturday Ball not included)

26/04/2024

The Hungarian populist writers Gyula Illyés and Lajos Nagy visited the Soviet Union together during the summer of 1934 as guests of the Union of Soviet Writers. Upon their return to Hungary, Illyés and Nagy published their impressions in separate travelogues. Although they both stressed that they strived for objectivity in their travel reports, they did not fully succeed in their efforts. Their perspectives were colored by a feeling of cultural superiority carried over from their experiences in the Hungary of the 1930s. Their writing was also tainted with anti-Semitism, as evidenced by their reflections on the life of Jews in Russia and Ukraine. Although their hosts took them to model institutions on a government-designed grand tour, they were not won over to the communist cause and failed to become fellow travelers.

Read the full article here: https://ahea.pitt.edu/ojs/ahea/article/view/320

24/04/2024

Christian denominations generally viewed the social and ideological changes that occurred throughout the nineteenth century as crises and therefore perceived modern literature as a manifestation of decadence. Due to their diverse rootedness within Hungary’s social and political life, each denomination reacted distinctively to the phenomena of the modern. This paper describes the different reactions of the Catholic and Protestant Churches and examines their social background by analyzing the denominational and literary conditions of Hungary at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. Obviously, both the Catholic and Protestant Churches needed to modernize their social and cultural institutions in order to regain their former social bases: until 1920, however, this effort yielded no valuable results, primarily because their attempts to create a denominational version of modern literature was subordinated to the requirements of religious morality and thus was not capable of achieving artistic autonomy.

Read the full article here: https://ahea.pitt.edu/ojs/ahea/article/view/315

22/04/2024

Used as a predominant covering material in Central and Eastern Europe throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, plaster’s malleable characteristics also enabled its efficient utilization as a material for imitating decorative features traditionally made from stone and marble. Instead of looking at plaster as an imitation material, this article proposes studying it as a material archive containing unintentionally preserved traces of the past that may include fragments of advertisements, graffiti, bullet holes, or virtually any inscription in plaster that would otherwise be bound to disappear. Plaster archeology is a mode of looking at plaster less as a conduit of architectural form and more as a material surface involving depth. As a discipline, plaster archeology entails a set of practices that allows one to attend to these surfaces, although not with the intention to save traces of the past from disappearance, but rather towards reconceptualizing plaster as a material in its own right that constantly transforms at the whims of human and climatic forces. By using two buildings located in the heart of Budapest’s seventh district as case studies, the author will then demonstrate how the plaster archeologist views and examines façades. Finally, through an exploration of plaster’s characteristics and history, the author will argue for plaster archeology as a non-interventive mode of engaging with architectural surfaces.

Read the full article here: https://ahea.pitt.edu/ojs/ahea/article/view/319

22/04/2024

Countdown begins
10 days until the conference
The program has been finalized:
https://sites.google.com/stmarys-ca.edu/2024-ahea-rutgers/2024/program

19/04/2024

Although three notable American editors opposed Lajos Kossuth before and during his visit to the United States in 1851-52, the most influential was arguably James Watson Webb, editor of the New York Courier and Enquirer (NYCE). Webb had been appointed by President Zachary Taylor to be Charge d’Affaires to Vienna in 1849 but had neglected to wait for confirmation by the Senate before traveling to Vienna. When the Senate rejected his appointment by an overwhelming vote, an embittered Webb was obliged to return to the United States. Although Webb had made many political enemies, the public reason given for his Senate rejection was that body intended to keep the post vacant as a “punishment” for Austria’s brutal suppression of the Hungarian rebels after their defeat in August 1849. Webb allegedly held Kossuth responsible for his rejected nomination, and upon returning to the United States and resuming the day-to-day operations of the NYCE, the paper's coverage of Hungary and Kossuth turned negative. During his visit to New York, Kossuth hinted that the Austrians might have bribed a certain New York editor to publish falsehoods about the Hungarian War of Independence. Webb took this hint as a personal attack and demanded an explanation from Kossuth, who never clearly explained which editor he was referring to.

Read the full article here: https://ahea.pitt.edu/ojs/ahea/article/view/317

17/04/2024

The main aim of the authors' research is to provide an overview of what role language education plays in how Hungarians living in diaspora communities preserve their cultural identity. To this end the authors compared three Hungarian schools from three continents (North America, South America and Australia), selected by a sampling based on geographical location. The authors compared the similarities and differences between their educational methods according to factors predetermined by the research group. By reviewing the extant, but limited literature on this topic, the authors studied the present situation of Hungarians living abroad and the actual questions of identity preservation with special regard to language learning and preservation. These results present a detailed image of language education within the Hungarian diaspora. The authors also compared the educational methodology employed by the three schools based on different statistical data, such as the number of students, their cohort, student motivation as well as the role of partner institutions in the preservation of Hungarian identity. This study introduces the similarities and differences among institutions located far from one another.

Read the full article here: https://ahea.pitt.edu/ojs/ahea/article/view/353

15/04/2024

As a couple, Miklós Mészöly (1921-2001) and Alaine Polcz (1922-2007) have a special status in Hungarian literature. Mészöly is one of the most important figures of postwar Hungarian fiction. His wife, Polcz, became an author at the age of sixty-nine when her first book, a wartime memoir entitled Asszony a fronton [1991, ‘One Woman in the War’] (Polcz 2005, 2002b), gained attention. Although she has been generally regarded only as an írófeleség [‘a writer’s wife’] (see Borgos 2007), by the turn of the century she eventually became more popular than her husband. This paper focuses on a novel by Mészöly, Pontos történetek, útközben [1970, ‘Accurate Stories on the Road’], that was based on Polcz’s tape recorded narration of her journeys mostly to Transylvania. The author's analysis poses two questions; the first regards the issues of style and narration, while the second examines the topic of gender. In other words, this approach to Mészöly’s novel aims to grasp the characteristics of the narrative style of Mészöly by comparing his transcription to the text recorded on the tape made by Polcz. How was it possible for the husband to publish a novel exclusively under his own name from his wife’s “raw material”?

Read the full article here: https://ahea.pitt.edu/ojs/ahea/article/view/361