Magyar Hírek, 1988 (41. évfolyam, 1-22. szám)

1988-07-22 / 14. szám

ABOUT THIS ISSUE AND THE PREVIOUS ONE An item in the Hungarian section of the previous issue remembered the fiftieth anniversary of the Buda­pest Eucharistic Congress which took place in the spring of 1938. Pil­grimages in veneration of the euchar­­ist began in the 19th century in France on the initiative of Marie Emilie Tamisier. The first Eucharis­tic Congress was held in 1881 in the city of Lille. That first congress dif­fered only in magnitude from the lat­er ones but not in its essence: it was preceded by spiritual exercises last­ing for several days. The main ele­ments were confession and commun­ion by the masses including the ven­eration of the eucharist culminating in an eucharistic procession. The Eu­charistic Congresses combined folk­­piety, baroque traditions and the ar­mory of modern mass-movements, including the systematic use of mod­em mass-communications. All this was true of the Budapest Eucharistic Congress. The event that led up to the con­gress was the Saint Emeric Year in 1930. Pope Pius XI sent a personal message to the faithful and had him­self represented at the celebrations by a legate thus making the event a feast of the universal Church. Since the year 1938 was the thousandth an­niversary of the death of Saint Ste­phen the first king of Hungary, it was declared the Year of Saint Ste­phen and devoted to the cult of that great saint of the House of Árpád. Wife of regent Horthy patron of the celebrations Pope Pius XI sent his personal mes­sage to the Catholics of Hungary and had himself represented by his legate this time as well. The celebrations moved great masses. Missions were held in 603 places, three-day spiritu­al exercises were held in 1,200 towns and villages. A total of some 2,500 Masses were read in Budapest dur­ing the days of the Congress. Hollókő, the nord-Hungarian village Hungarian World Heritage The World Heritage contains two Hungarian objects: the Budapest panorama with Buda Castle and the Danube embankments and a tiny and ancient village in Northern Hun­gary, Hollókő. Of the two the latter is the greater surprise, for few ex­pected that this hamlet in the Palóc district with its timber church and hi­proof houses would be counted amongst the cultural values of the world as a unique set of historic folk-monuments. (István Pokorny’s Hollókő article—which was pub­lished in Hungarian in the previous issue—appears in English in this is­sue.) As someone enamoured of Buda­pest for a great many years now al­low me to say a few words about our city, of which Balázs Varga wrote an item in the Hungarian pages of the previous issue. The Budapest panor ama is made unique by some ex traordinarily favourable features tue river Danube, which flows in its wide bed through the middle of the city, makes the contrast between Bu­da embraced by 400-500 meters high hills and Pest, the city of the plains, that seems to be subsumed by the endless backdrop of the Great Plain dramatically interesting. In fact this is not really as simple as it seems: the plain on which Pest is built, rises amphitheatrically towards the urban fringe creating a kind of balustrade, which offers a view of the city as a continuous whole. This is a key fea­ture of the visual beauty of Buda­pest. The promenades along the Danube embankments are also deci­sive motives. The Corso on the Pest­­side between the Elisabeth Bridge and the Chain Bridge with its wrought-iron Buchwald seats, street lamps, colourful sunshades on the terraces, recall the sets of the belle époque and the Buda promenade op­posite with its mansions and the nar­row lanes of Víziváros behind them crowned by the massive block of Castle Hill recall older days still. And then there are the bridges arch­ing the river, the bridges that are not only decisive elements of the city­­scene but also, as it were, a part of Hungarian history. The Chain Bridge was one of the important creations of the Age of Reform which brought new life to the coun­try. It was the first permanent bridge spanning the Danube in Hungary. The reconstruction of the Budapest bridges after the havoc wrought by the Second World War symbolized the vitality of the whole nation. Some of them, like the Chain Bridge, or the Francis Joseph bridge re­named Liberty Bridge were rebuilt in their original form, others were re­constructed in wider, more modern form—or given a completely new ap­pearance, like the Elisabeth Bridge— the daring, arching form of which proves that the new and tradition can exist in harmony side-by-side in Budapest as well. Twenty years of a theatre Katalin Róna writes about the Ka­posvár theatre in the Hungarian sec­tion of this issue. As she puts it: the theatre began something new twenty years ago “in one of the toughest and most neglected towns in Hungary from the theatrical point of view.” The theatre itself—named after Gergely Csiki, a noted 19th century dramatist—began operating a good while earlier: the building was open­ed in 1911, when it was the largest and most modern country theatre in Hungary. I did not add this just to contradict Katalin Róna. Indeed, theatre life at Kaposvár remained rather bleak for a long time. In the first forty-four years of the theatre touring companies only gave per­formances there from time to time. It took that long for the town to get a permanent theatrical company. And even then hectic and difficult years followed. The great change occurred only in the early seventies, when the young Gábor Zsámbéki became the principal director and showed what he could do with his direction of Chekhov’s Seagull. “Zsámbéki’s Sea­gull demonstrated, writes Katalin Róna, that art is condemned to death in a bleak world of vanity and indif­ference devoid of human relations. His direction expressed that only a theatrical workshop, a common will can create the medium, which can keep the theatre alive. Zsámbéki re­mained faithful to his position to this day.” Since then the Kaposvár theatre has established its reputation in the whole country. Fans travel to Kapos­vár, the company occasionally ap­pears in Budapest, theatre-goers que up at the box-office. The fact that nowadays more exciting theatre is made in Hungarian country towns than in the pampered theatres of the capital, is most likely attributable to the pioneering spirit of Kaposvár. “A marked intellectual outline has materialised in these theatres” writes Katalin Róna “a real theatre was born at Kaposvár, where are splen­did new productions every season; also, naturally, some mediocre ones, even failures. What has begun at Ka­posvár twenty years ago was a new opportunity of the new Hungarian theatrical model. And that became expressed first of all in the establish­ment of an ideal creative communi­ty.” ZOLTÁN HALÁSZ ne of the greatest successes of Kaposvár: Saint Johanna by G. B. Shaw 29

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