Amerikai Magyar Szó, 1978. július-december (32. évfolyam, 27-50. szám)
1978-10-05 / 38. szám
Thursday, Oct. 5. 1978 8 AMERIKAI MAGYAR SZO — GYULA KRÚDY Commemorating the one hundreth anniversary of the birth of the great Hungarian novelist. Gyula Krúdy (1878-1933), a unique personality in Hungarian letters, was bom into the gentry, the impoverished provincial nobility. He suggested the country squire by his exterior, but his wav of life was that of the struggling Budapest journalist and author, and his voice brought him close to the radical bourgeoisie. Next to the creations of Mor (Maurice) Tokai and Sándor Brody, his is the most impressive oevre though the almost impenetrable luxuriance of atmosphere in his works is so Hungarian that it is impossible to translate. His early novels and short stories show the influence of Mikszáth, Turgenev and Dickens; soon afterwards, in the 1910’s, he evolved his individual style. This is a lyric style all his own, in which atmosphere” overshadows plot and character-development and construction is dissolved in a web of reflexions and rambling digressions. We enter into a peculiar dream-world where Present and Past are blurred and blend toghether and the characters lose their contours to dissolve into local colour. His novels written at the time are centered round an idle day-dreamer, a man wallowing in memories of the past, hankering for the unattainable, and setting out on precarious adventures. (The Sindbad novels and short stories, 1912; The Scarlet StageCoach, 1913.) His figures move in the dreary world of the contemporary gentry for whom life is one long bout of drinking and cardplaying, with occasional amorous adventures to break the aimless monotony. Though apparently feeling at home only in the tangled world of dreams, even Krúdy was susceptible to the influence of revolutions; he expressed his sympathy in a number of newspaper articles, reportages and pamphlets. He remained loyal to his stand even amidst the ravings of the White Terror; the world depicted in his works written after that time is more richly painted and more realistic; there appear as scenes of action the outlying - working- and lower-middle-class - districts of Budapest; and nobles, and bourgeois are portrayed with colder irony /Seven Owls, 1922). It is almost as though - in his own peculiar, stylised, transposed way - he were making a re-assesment of all that he had brought with him, all that was decadent and enervated, immoral and brutal in the Hungarian nobility. The finest piece of writing of his last period- When I Was a Young Gentleman, 1930 - is the story of a single day spent in one and the same place, and it is, in a way, the danse macabre of a passing world. A peculiar átmosphere of half-dream, half-reality and an almost total absence of any plot make the novelettes and short stories of his last years unique pieces in Hungarian literature /Life’s Dream, 1930). On account of both his style and technique, Krúdy has been compared with Proust, and some have attempted to discover ties between him and the surrealists. Actually he owes nothing to either of these influences. He, too, dissolves prose into dream and lyricism, but his peculiar technique and method of construction appreciably serve to mirror a class and world living a curious sham existence; his technique of merging past and present was a hankering, in an age that had become strange, after an idealised, imaginary Hungarian middle-class-that-never-was. LETS LEARN HUNGARIAN It is a widespread belief that the learning of the Hungarian language is very difficult. It is not so. In general, the learning of anv foreign language is difficult, because of its own particular grammar, pronunciation and idiomatic forms. Ad yet, millions have successfully learnt foreign languages, manv to perfection. For an English-speaking person to learn Hungarian, admittedly, is difficult, but for a Hungarian to learn the English language is even more difficult, what with its total lack of rules for pronunciation. To temper the fears of many English- speaking persons about the Hungarian language, I will mention a few circumstances in favor of it. a. ) The pronunciation of the letters of the Hungarian alphabet is constant, regardless its position in the word or the letter before or after. Every letter is pronounced fully, there are no mutes. b. ) The word-accent is always on the first syllable, with no exception. c. ) There are no genders, no he or she or it. d. ) There are only three tenses of verbs: present, past and future. Other tenses do occur, but only in old-time writings. The Hungarian language I shall speak of is the language, written or spoken, of educated and cultured people. There are, of course, regional variations. One of the difficulties of students of Hungarian is in the pronunciation of the vowels, which is different from most other languages, though their sounds are there, spelled differently. With this in mind, I shall deal separately with the vowels and the consonants. The full Hungarian alphabet is as follows: aabccsdeéfggyhiíjkllvmnnyoöóóp • 14 r s sz t ty u u u u v z zs. The letters q, w and x occur only in words of foreign origin, the letter y occurs in the above listed consonant-combinations, in some Hungarian family names, otherwise only in words of foreign origin. Oscar Vago Hungary’s National Tradition EXCERPT FROM PROF. TIBOR KLANICZAY’S STUDY IN THE SUMMER, 1978 ISSUE OF THE HUNGARIAN QUARTERLY National tradition comprises the full historic experience of a national community and is its spiritual and cultural product. Humanity now lives within a system of national societies. Each must therefore use, as well as it can, its own national traditions as well as the general, common traditions of humanity. This applies to capitalist and socialist nations. However, neither the interpretation nor the concept of tradition are identical in those cases; national traditions differ in bourgeois and in socialist societies. Both bourgeois and socialist nations, unless they are out to mutilate their own traditions, will sooner or later have to accept and cherish it as a whole. The only difference will appear in conception.interpretation, ranking, or other hierarchical order. Saint Stephen, the first Hungarian king, the seventeenth-century poet, Zrinyi, and the nineteenth-century poets Vörösmarty and Petőfi were held in high esteem by the bourgeois nation as they are by the socialist. Over the past twenty-first years the Hungarian socialist state has not neglected to embrace, cherish and make known the precious traditions of the country’s past. On the contrary, one may assert with every justification that more such efforts have been made in the past twenty years than even before. A new hierarchy of traditional values has been uncovered and publicized to an unprecedented degree. A long üst of past achievements could be drawn up in the field, starting with the central position accorded to revolutionary values, the popular and critical editions of the classics of Hungarian literature, research into and publication of long-forgotten relics, the restoration of art monuments, the nurturing and collection of folk culture, and the successful activity of scholarly institution in the study of the Hungarian language, literature, history, leading to synthesis based on scientific standards. Add the widespread popularizing work, the worthy and crowd-pulling celebrations of national anniversaries (Dózsa, the leader of a peasant revolt in 1514, Rákóczi, the poets Petőfi and Ady) and initiatives in particular towns or regions caring for local traditions. The vividness, increased respect and nurturing of the Hungarian national tradition cannot entail any kind of nationalism, and does not oppose internationalist objectives. Against the latter - with regard to traditions - one only offends if one displays indifference towards the culture of other nations. The salutary part of a national tradition strengthening national consciousness should go hand in hand with the effect of universal culture exemplifying interdependence and respect for each other on the part of the nations. Page from the first book in Hungarian printed in Hungary, the New Testament in Janos Sylvester’s translation. Sárvár-Ujsziget, 1541.
