Hungarian Studies Newsletter, 1984 (12. évfolyam, 39-42. szám)

1984 / 41. szám

HUNGARIAN STUDIES NEWSLETTER

No. 41 ISSN: 0194-164X AUTUMN, 1984

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. 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, N.J. 08903. Annual Subscription in the U.S.A. $5.00. Abroad $7.00. Current single copy $3.00; back issues $3.50 each.

BOOKS (Continued)

author of several volumes on theoretical and applied neuroscience.

Homolya, István. VALENTINE BAKFARK, Lutenist from Transylvania. Budapest: Corvina kiadó', 1984. (Translated from the original Hungarian “Bakfark,” Zeneműkiadó, 1982.) 246pages, musical notes, facsimile, biblio., illus. $8.00cloth.

Very modest information is available on the first forty years of Bakfark’s life. Historians and musicologists argue about his ancestry, birth, education and about the first phases of his career as acomposer/lute-player of the 16th century. It is assumed that he was born at Brassó, Transylvania (now Brasov, Romania) in 1507. Biologically, he may have been of Saxon origin but culturally he was a Hungarian. Based on available biographical facts, Bakfark's work can be divided into four periods: the Hungarian, the French, the Polish, and the Italian. Since in those days performance and composition were inseparable, it is possible that he produced compositions in his younger years which are not known to us. So far 43 compositions are accepted as authentic. The French period ended with the publication of his Lyons Lute-Book in 1553. His work during the Polish period is summed up in the Cracow Lute-Book. His greatest achievement, the polyphonic motet-fantasia, developed no further after his death. His seven great fantasias are considered the highest form of achievement in this type of music, in which the Renaissance artistic ideal of the highest level of music took on form and substance. Undoubtedly, Bakfark was the most prominent Hungarian composer of instrumental music during the Renaissance. The illustrations portray persons and places of significance in Bakfark’s life, while a number of facsimiles show the first editions of the tabulatures László", Gyula and István Rácz. THE TREASURE OF NAGYSZENTMIKLÓS. Budapest: Corvina, 1984. (Translated from the original Hungarian “A nagyszentmiklosi kincs,” Corvina, 1977.) 184 pages, illus., biblio. $18.90 cloth.

It was a hot and boring summer day in 1799, when Neru Vuin, a farmer of Nagyszentmiklos (now Smnicolau Mare, Romania), was digging a ditch in his yard. Suddenly, at about 6 inches from the su rface his spade hit a large object: a jug of pure gold. Digging further he found 22 more golden vessels with a total weight of some 20 pounds, the largest single find of early medieval gold treasure, now housed at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, Austria. A great deal had been written about this find, but the present writer had the advantage of relying on the aid of modern photography which revealed details hence unknown. These are brilliantly shown on numerous colored and black & white plates. It is

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now believed that the treasure comprises two sets of golden dishes: one with runic inscriptions possibly the possession of a powerful prince, the other with human and animal figures, possibly that of his wife. Certain elements of the prince’s service set show a resemblance to the first coins of the Hungarian kingdom and are dated as of the 10th and 11th centuries. The elegant album-size volume is illustrated by photographs taken by lstva"n Racz of Helsinki, and has a good bibliography on previous research. Included are also three related essays: “Anthropological Conclusions Drawn from the Nagyszentmiklds Treasure” by Pa'l Lipta'k; “The Animal Designs of the Nagyszentmiklo's Treasure” by Zolta'n Kádár; and “The Vegetal Ornament of the Nagyszentmiklo's Treasure” by Mikto's FUzes-Frech.

The author is a senior archaeologist of the HAS.

Konra'd, George, ANTIPOLITICS. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 757 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 (A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book), 1984. 243 pages. $12.95 cloth.

Much but not all trouble that beset the Hungarian nation during its past one thousand years, originated with the great powers of European history. Some of it stemmed from within the country. As a remedy, the author proposes to “abolish international power politics.” He wishes that the Soviet Union remove its troops from Hungarian soil and make room for “bourgeois civil liberties.” Internally, “we do not want the authorities to have discretionary rights over us. We want constitutional guarantees, we want itclearthatsemifreedom is not freedom; half-truth is not truth. . .” How could these desiderata be achieved? Not by revolution, not through gradual reforms, not by another world war, but by the withdrawal of U S. and Soviet troops from Europe. Is this too much to expect? Such a withdrawal, writes Irving Kristol (prof, of social thought at New York U.) in the New York Times Book Review “would hardly be an intolerable loss to Soviet military security were Hungary to become a neutral, bourgeois-liberal state more or less like Austria. It would, however, be an intolerable loss of a kind that indeed threatens the Soviet Union’s political security.. .The future of Eastern Europe will be decided by events within the Soviet Union itself. . .Just what we in the West can do to hasten this process even the best and brightest Hungarians seem not to know.”

The author is a sociologist, writer, and recipient of the Herder Award.

Lukacs, József and Ferenc Tókei eds., PHILOSOPHY AND CULTURE: Studies from Hungary Published on the Occasion of the 17th World Congress of Philosophy. Budapest: Akade'miai kiadó', 1983. xii + 368 pages. $19.00 cloth.

This volume comprises 21 essays of which 8 are in English, 8 in French, and 5 in German. The authors overtly profess to be adherents of modern Marxist thinking, though quite uneven in orientation. The volume includes studies “on the philosophy of history and society, on theoretical linguistics, writingsexpounding the issuesof the modern view of nature, inquiries into the problems of esthetics and ethics, meditations from today’s vantage upon the motions of culture of the onetime Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, analyses of the oeuvre of Georg Lukacs, and essays probing the methodological and theoretical questions of the research of culture.” It fails, however, in supplying the reader with a definition of “culture.” The fairly clear division between humanistic and anthropological concepts of culture as used in the United States has seemingly not troubled Hungarian philosophers, yet.

NO. 41. AUTUMN 19Ö4, HUNGARIAN STUDIES NEWSLETTER