Hungarian Studies Newsletter, 1998 (15. évfolyam, 51-54. szám)

1998 / 51-52. szám

ier for the uninitiated to recognize the fact that the current Slovak capital of Bratislava is identical with the former Hungarian capital city of Pozsony, also known as Pressburg (German), Istropolis (Roman), Possonius (Latin); and that the former Hungarian province of Transylvania is identical with the erstwhile semi-independent Hungarian state of Erdély (Hungarian) or Siebenbürgen (German), as well as with the current Romanian province of Ardeal. The Historical Dictionary of Hungary deserves to be in all library collections, but particularly in university/college libraries.

BOOKS (Continued)

Vardy, Steven Béla and Agnes Huszár Várdy. THE AUSTROHUNGARIAN MIND: AT HOME AND ABROAD. New York: East European Monographs, Columbia University Press, 1989. 374 pp. ISBN 0-88033-151-8. $64.00.

The Austro-Hungarian Mind is a scholarly volume that covers a number of important aspects of the nineteenth and twentiethcentury history of the Middle Danube region, with particular emphasis upon the two dominant nationalities of the former Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. The book is the result of the joint effort of a husband and wife team, both of whom are prolific scholars and write some of their works jointly. The current volume is the result of their desire to combine the best of their essays in a coherent single work. They wished to place these essays at the disposal of scholars and other readers who are interested in the achievements and failures of the former Dual Monarchy, and in the fate of the peoples who used to be part of that state.

The Austro-Hungarian Mind is divided into twenty chapters, which are organized into four separate parts. These include: 1. Five essays on the nature of Austro-German and Hungarian Romanticism, (2) four essays on Baron loseph Eötvös’s views on liberalism and nationalism within the Habsburg Empire, (3) four essays on the Treaty of Trianon and its impact upon the newly created minorities in the Carpathian Basin, (4) and seven essays on the nature of the immigrant experience in the New World, especially as related to the various Hungarian emigrés from Austria- Hungary and from its so-called successor states. There are more essays on the Hungarians than on the Austrians, and some of these essays range far and wide, but they still constitute an important portrait of the intellectual, cultural and social life of the peoples who constituted the leading nationalities within the Dual Monarchy.

By bringing these revised essays together into a single volume - essays that originally appeared in four countries and in three separate languages - the authors have rendered considerable service to the scholarly community.

IN QUEST OF THE MIRACLE STAG’: THE POETRY OF HUNGARY. AN ANTHOLOGY OF HUNGARIAN POETRY IN ENGLISH . Ed. Adam Makkai, Urbana, Chicago & London: (Copublished by) Atlantis-Centaur & M. Szivárvány and Corvina for international distribution by University of Illinois Press, 1996, pp. lxvi+964. ISBN 0-9642094-1-1. US$69.95.

This gala of more than seven centuries of Hungarian poetry is presented in nine chapters and preceded by A Note on the Hungarian Language, spelling, and the pronunciation of the 44 letters of the Hungarian alphabet (pp. xxvi-xxix) by the editor and E.M. Herrick with a Table of Contents (pp. xxxi-lxiv) and the Index

of Translators (91 names; Adam Makkai with 81, Watson Kirkconnell with 72, and Peter Zollman with 58 translations; pp. lxiv-lxvi). It includes folk poetry (I, pp. 1-24), medieval poetry (11, pp. 25-46, also including the English translation of poems written in Latin by Hungarian authors like the 15th-century lanus Pannonius), the age of reformation and counter-reformation (III, pp. 47-98, twelve poets with Bálint Balassa’s lyric songs of love and soldiers' life, and Count Miklós Zrinyi's narrative of his greatgrandfather's heroic battle with the Ottoman Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent), patriotic verses from the 18th century (IV, pp. 99- 110), 16 poets of the Hungarian enlightenment (V, pp. 111-208, with Kazinczy, Csokonai, Berzsenyi, Kölcsey, and József Katona). The 19th-century florescence (VI, pp. 209-370) is represented here with eight romantic and less romantic poets like Vörösmarty, Arany, Petőfi, and Madách (the author of the philosophical vision, The Tragedy of Man). Modern Hungarian poetry (VII, pp. 371-596) begins in the 2nd half of the last century, it includes Ady, Babits, Kosztolányi, Gyula luhász, Árpád Tóth and others born in the 19th century but whose life ended before World War II. This chapter also illustrates the poetry of those who lived longer and also worked after 1945 like Áprily, Kassák, and Füst. The next chapter introduces 19 poets born in or after 1900 (VIII, pp. 597-864) like Attila József, Lörincz Szabó;, Miklós Radnóti, Gyula Illyés (author of the 1956 poem One Sentence on Tyranny ), Sándor Weöres, brilliant artist of word (whose several verses were set to music by Zoltán Kodály), and poetesses Ágnes Nemes Nagy and Margit Szécsi.

Each chapter begins with a historical sketch, and short biographies of the poets quoted. László Cs. Szabó's essay: A Nation and Its Poetry (IX, pp. 865-947) is a kind of summing up. The threefold Appendix (X, pp. 949-964) also contains A Short History of Hungarian Verse by László Gáldi and Adam Makkai, as well as notes on the illustrations, fine black-and-white woodcut portraits of twenty-five out of the eighty poets by the internationally wellknown artist George Buday.

Most of the translations of this anthology are resplendent, true mirrors of the form and message of the original poems.

With this first volume of a forthcoming series, a well-selected anthology of excellent translations, Adam Makkai and his team have opened wide the hitherto sealed doors of the treasury of Hungarian poetry for the English-reading world. Good luck to the future volumes! G. Kara

REFUGEES AND MIGRANTS: HUNGARY AT THE CROSSROADS. Eds. Maryellen Fulleron, Endre Sik and Judit Tóth. The Institute of Political Science of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Budapest, 1995. Pp. 256.

This Yearbook is an outgrowth of the work of the Research Group on International Migration, a group sponsored by the Institute for Political Science of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Established in 1989, the group's first research activity took place that year and it surveyed ethnic Hungarians, who had just arrived to Hungary from Transylvania. The result of their survey is available in "Sociological Characteristics of Refugees and Their Flight from Translyvania”.

The current Yearbook is a new venture. It is the first attempt to publish in English and to reach an international audience of scholars and policy makers concerned with migration issues. It provides an overview of the ongoing and recently completed migra(Continued on page 9)

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NO. 51-52, SPRING-SUMMER, 1998, HUNGARIAN STUDIES NEWSLETTER