Hungarian Studies Newsletter, 1980 (8. évfolyam, 23-26. szám)

1980 / 23-24. szám

HUNGARIAN STUDIES NEWSLETTER

No. 23-24 ISSN: 0194-164X Spring, 1980

Published quarterly by the Hungarian Research Center of the American Hungarian Foundation: Winter, Spring (two numbers included), and Autumn. Founder and editor: Bela Charles Maday. Journal editor: Enikő Molnár Basa. Corresponding editor: Lorant Czigany (London). Communications concerning content should be addressed to the Editor, 4528-49th Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20016. Communications concerning subscriptions, advertising, and circulation should be addressed to American Hungarian Foundation, 177 Somerset Street, P.O. Box 1084, New Brunswick, NJ 08903. Annual subscription in the U.S.A. $4.00. Abroad: $5.00. Current single copy $2.00; back issues $2.50 each.

BOOKS (Continued)

Fenyvesi, Charles. SPLENDOR IN EXILE; The Ex-Majesties of Europe. New Republic Books, 1220-19th Street, Washington, DC 20036,1979. 281 pages, biblio., illus. $12.95 cloth.

“Royalty provide one of the great illusions of life: that above the everyday, the ordinary, there is some higher realm of understanding and authority and that the key tothat platonic sphere is handed down from father to eldest son, generation after generation.” This book is on the losers, who may have received the key but lost their throne, nevertheless. The author offers an inside look, based on personal interviews, at the lives of a dozen claimants of thrones: Otto von Habsburg, Louis Ferdinand Hohenzollern, Umberto of Savoy, Dorn Duarte Joao, Henri Bourbon-Orleans, Louis-Napoleon, Simeon of Bulgaria, Constantine of Greece, Michael of Romania, Alexander of Yugoslavia, Leka of Albania, and the Romanoffs. Although they may perpetuate illusions in exile, they pursue rather common careers as businessmen, sportsmen, or retirees. Otto von Habsburg is an exception. He developed into a scholar of political science and became an elected public servant. He has written some 16 books, he lectures, and he was elected to the European Parliament by the people of the district in which he resides in southern Germany. “In competing for [a seat in] the European Parliament, I am returning to the battlefield, to reality,” he said to Fenyvesi. "I am not running away from my responsibilities and from the past, as some well-meaning people think; no, to the contrary, I am returning to history, and I am fulfilling the Habsburg tradition." The author concludes: “Now that we are older and I, too, have been tested in what Central Europeanscallfbe School of Life, we can agree fully on one subject: the brutal unfairness of history. But Otto has too strong a sense of the ought to be to shrug his shoulders, accept defeat or come to terms with the way things are. What holds him back is an exalted view of man, ratherthan pride in who he is. He is too dedicated a pedagogue to give up correcting reality.”

The author is a free-lance writer and a frequent contributor to the pages of The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The New Republic (see HSN no. 19/20, p. 9). He resides in Washington, D.C.

Gunda, Bela. ETHNOGRAPHICA CARPATHOBALCANICA. Budapest: Akade'miai Kiadó, 1979. 427 pages, diagrams, maps, lists of place-names, illus. $37.50 cloth.

This important volume is a sequel to the author’s earlier Ethnographica Carpathica (Budapest:Akademiai Kiadó, 1966). Both volumes are concerned with ethnographical and

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ethnological problems of researching Hungarian peasantry as projected against similar problems in the Carpathian Basin and the Balkan Peninsula. The author does not limit himself to the frame of reference adapted by European Volkskunde and Völkerkunde, but uses the wholistic approach of American anthropology in several of his chapters such as one describing the role of the beggar in a village society. Though the author alleges that most of the culture traits described have faded into oblivion some 40 or 50 years ago, the reader is assured that traces of those traits and processes still exist in more remote areas of the region. Of 26 chapters 19 are in German, 6 in English, and 1 in French.The English chapters deal with fish poisoning in the region; sex and semiotics; America in Hungarian folklore; magical means for herding sheep at the Hungarian Great Plain; and with intergenerational comparison of cultural factors. The author attempts a synthetic approach when comparing the cultures and subcultures of the region, trying to find common elements and generalities which would be valid when analyzing individual cultures. This effort is especially obvious in chapters dealing with hunting, fishing, and pastoral life. The essays concern themself also with social aspects of culture, with the structure and function of the extended family, its household, allocation of space within the house, etc. The author expanded his interest since the publication of his earlier volume also into psychological aspects of culture, eg. the role of extrovert vs. introvert types in socialization. Most of the data presented came from first-hand empirical field-work by the author, others came from archival research and secondary sources.

The author is a senior member of the community of Hungarian ethnographers, a prof, of ethnography at the U. of Debrecen, and editor of Muveltse'g és Hagyomány [Culture and Tradition], an annual.

Illyés, Gyula. PEOPLE OF THE PUSZTA. Budapest: Corvina Kiadó, 1979. Second edition. Transl. and afterword by G.F. Cushing, 308 pages. $9.80 cloth. Title of theoriginal: Puszták ne'pe, Budapest: Nyugat, 1936.

Populist writers of the 1930s concentrated on the rural scene and developed the notion that an alliance between intellectuals and peasants could resolve most of the grave social problems of which the people of the puszta and others suffered. Writers and poets of this genre rendered signal service in directing public attention to the crying social illsof Hungary. They did this through journalistic reports, through social studies heavily documented by statistics, and through fictions. Itwasthe agewhenthewritingsof such men asPe'ter Veres, József Darvas, Géza Fe'ja, Imre Kovács attracted the fancy of youth, and when change to conditions of social justice seemed to be looming in the not too distant future. Illyés took active part in this movement and in subsequent stages of social evolution. This book has been one of his most influential writings. “The leading motif,’’says Cushing,“is the description of the dehumanized life of farm servants in the shadow of the manor-house. Memories of childhood, tales told by people, the actual paragraphs of hypocritical statutes, and the chill figures of statistics expose this world, which — up to 1945 — tolerated physical punishment, took it for granted that farm managers could order the pretty peasant girls into their beds, reluctantly made a law that no more than one family was to live in one room but never enforced it, and used the rod to drive the farm servants to work from two in the morning to late at night.”

NO. 23-24, SPRING, 1980, HUNGARIAN STUDIES NEWSLETTER