Hungarian Studies Newsletter, 1983 (11. évfolyam, 35-38. szám)
1983 / 38. szám
comparative research projects carried out by scholars from Eastern and Western Europe in the social sciences. Consequently, the Sources of Law project is a cross-national study. “The comparable social phenomena which manifest themselves in countries having different political, social and economic systems are, in this study, the legal normative systems and their dynamics.” Since the project is restricted to existing normative law, it differs from many sociological studies which involve research objects outside and beyond formal institutionalized categories. Ten contributors present essays on the Austrian, East and West German, French, Hungarian, Norwegian, Polish, Swiss, Soviet Russian, and Yugoslav systems. The Hungarian essay (pages 167-187) is by Attila Rácz, senior researcher in the Institute of Legal and Political Sciences, HAS, and its framework is socialist jurisprudence. He discusses the various source agencies and the types of laws they produce. E.g., The Constitution law-decrees, decrees, cabinet decrees, national and local normative resolutions, dispositions, instructions, codification and systemization of legal rules. Lega'ny, Dezső, FERENC LISZT AND HIS COUNTRY, 1869- 1873. Budapest: Corvina kiadó', 1983. Original title: Liszt Ferenc Magyarországon. 1869-1873. Translated by Gyula Gulyas. 325 pages, chronology, appendices, biblio., illus. $19.50 cloth. The life of Liszt (1811-1886) has been described in scores of biographies, studies, and novels. Many of his biographers believe that his virtuoso career peaked between 1839 and 1847 when he travelled extensively giving concerts all over the Western world. They understandably underrepresented his later years with which this book is concerned. The author researched the contemporary Hungarian, Italian and German language sources and filled several gaps left by earlier biographersand critics. He provides insight into the interaction between Liszt and his contemporaries. After all, he lived when Berlioz, Chopin, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Verdi, and Wagner composed and played in the concert halls of Europe. Here are meaningful documents on Liszt’s influence on Berlioz and Wagner, and on music composition especially on his fresh approach to sonata construction and his pioneering in chromatic harmony. The book is also a testimony to Liszt's patriotism and emotional involvement with Hungarian culture. He certainly was a brilliant composer of the Romantic Age and the greatest pianist of his time. The reader is aided by supplementary material such as 27 black and white pictures, appendices containing notes, a chronology of Liszt’s Life in Hungary, his concert schedule in Budapest, a bibliography, and a thorough index. The author is a musicologist in Hungary. Lipták, Pál. AVARS AND ANCIENT HUNGARIANS. Budapest: Akadémiai kiadó, 1983. 208 pages, 23 black and white plates, charts, tables, diagrams, biblio. $19.00 cloth. The research report concerns the “origin and transformation of the Hungarian people from the early Hungarians (Proto-Magyars) through the stage of the Hungarians of the Conquest into those under the Arpa'd Dynasty.” Tracing ethnic origins and “roots” of human groups has become a favored activity for some time. It involves looking at archaeological finds, linguistic, physical and anthropological and ecological data. According to the author the study of Hungarian prehistory in a physical anthropological framework may be divided into three phases: the study of the physical anthropology of linguistically related peoples; to study the skeletal remains of the Conquest period; and to synthesize these two. Such efforts involved the elaboration of the taxonomic method and field studies in Kazakhstan and Bashkiria. The overall task is complex and requires interdisciplinary cooperation, i.e., the incorporation of the achievements of “sister disciplies.” The author is also confident that with the comparison of paleoanthropological material and data recovered farther to the East, inferences may be drawn concerning the physical anthroplogical characteristics of the Eurasian steppe belt at large and also concerning the migration and ethnogeny of the steppe peoples.” The author is professor of physical anthropology at the Eötvös L.U. Nyerges, Anton N. ARPAD TOTH: SONG OF THE DRYWOOD. The author’s publication. 201 Langford Court, Richmond, KY 40475, 1983. 128 pages. $12.00 paper. According to the author, “this book presents a study of the life work of Arpad Toth (1886-1928), the poet’s poet of Hungarian literature. A member of the Western movement that set Hungary on its 20th century course of expanding intellectual and social horizons, Toth’s major contribution was a genius in employing strategies for the handling of information in poetry form.” His contribution to the resolution of the dilemma between science and art, the rational and the intuitive, has been considerable. “His poetry vitiates any truth we may ascribe to the notion that poetry must raise the white flag of surrender to science. Or at least until science demonstrates that it can handle knowledge integration as effectively as his poems and with a symbol system that extends not only to the cosmos and atom but also comes intensively to bear on the crucially human.” The volume contains documentations of the philosophy as expressed in poems, letters, and quotations from other works, and makes Toth and his ideas accessible to the English speaking reader. The author, who is professor of English at the Eastern Kentucky U., has pursued this cultural bridge building activity for quite some time and with missionary zeal. He has published, out of his own savings, writers of the Western movement, such as Gyula Juhasz (see HSN no. 26, p.3); Mihály Babits (see HSN no. 29, p.3); and also a volume on Ja'nos Arany (see HSN no. 12, p.2); and Sándor Petó'fi (see HSN no. 6, p.2). Sisa, Stephen. THE SPIRIT OF HUNGARY: A Panorama of Hungarian History and Culture. Rákóczi Foundation, P.O. Box 2727, Cleveland, OH 44111, 1983. 342 pages, maps, tables, 350 black and white pictures, 16 colored prints. $25.00 cloth (and postage). In Canada: Rákóczi Foundation, P.O. Box 67, Station “1”, Toronto, ON M6E 4Y4. As our readers might have noticed, occasionally we review books which are not written for scholarly consumption but for a broader intellectual audience: specifically, for those English speaking persons who are interested in Hungarian society, in “roots” or simply in an intellectual exercise. The volume before us fits the criteria in more than one way. This generously illustrated album-sized volume will satisfy the needs of second and later generation Hungarian immigrants for a Hungarian history handbook. In addition to being potentially a basic text in cultural history for Hungarian ethnic studies, it may be used as a teaching aid in undergraduate-level courses on Hungarian culture. The trend expressed by the appearance of this book and by such other volumes as Domokos Varga’s Hungary in Greatness and (Continued on Page 4) NO. 38, WINTER 1983-1984, HUNGARIAN STUDIES NEWSLETTER 3
