Itt-Ott, 1996 (29. évfolyam, 1/126-2/127. szám)

1996 / 1. (126.) szám

Dienes, was an inspiration to me and to all of us students. We carry on in his footsteps, fulfilling what together with him we envisioned and later developed.

In 1952, when I was asked by the president of Elmhurst College after my graduate studies at Michigan and Lancaster to teach history, be assistant admissions director and to head Hungarian studies, soon the need and a framework of the American Hungarian Foundation took shape in 1955, with a team of dedicated people — a board of directors and others.

The Foundation was conceived as the basis of a good idea. It had to grow to succeed, I believed! I said to a colleague, we’ll reach our goals in five years. Youth believes and dreams. He was older and wiser. He said, maybe 15 years. It has taken longer, much longer. We still have not reached, fulfilled our goals.

Our team soon discovered in those early years, after we introduced Hungarian studies at Rutgers University in 1959, that this circle of ours faced some mighty big issues in the public arena, where others were confronted with this good idea that our circle, our team, presented.

Others saw it and then looked at and took measure of it and the team and circle that presented it. This good idea/concept was presented by

•a circle born primarily in America, not in Hungary

•a cirle that had its schooling in America, not in Hungary

•a circle funded mostly by “Americans,” not “Hungarians”

•a circle where they speak American/English mostly, not Hungarian.

How could this good idea of the circle also include the other circles? Surely, by holding fast in the spirit of Endre Ady, who wrote: “Góg és Magóg fia vagyok én” — I am the offspring of Góg and Magóg, the ancestor of the Magyars/Hungarians, and no matter if Pusztaszer damns and curses the song a hundred times, still it flies on new wings, still it prevails, and yet it is new and Magyar.

Góg és Magóg fia vagyok én,

Hiába döngetek kaput, falat S mégis megkérdem tőletek:

Szabad-e sírni a Kárpátok alatt?

Verecke híres útján jöttem én,

Fülembe még ősmagyar dal rivall,

Szabad-e Dévénynél betörnöm Új időknek új dalaival?

Fülembe forró ólmot öntsetek,

Legyek az új, az énekes Vazul,

Ne halljam az élet új dalait,

Tiporjatok reám durván, gazul.

De addig sírva, kínban, mit se várva Mégis csak száll új szárnyakon a dal S ha elátkozza százszor Pusztaszer,

Mégis győztes, mégis új és magyar.

ITT-OTT 29. évf. (1996), 1. (126.) szám 43