Veszprémi Nóra - Jávor Anna - Advisory - Szücs György szerk.: A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria Évkönyve 2005-2007. 25/10 (MNG Budapest 2008)

NEW ACQUISITIONS, NEW RESULTS - Monika BINCSIK: On the Two New Mednyánszky Drawings in the National Gallery

ther reference: an in-coming ray of the sun immediately dissolves dream-like mythicism. An intimate mythic mood, which enchants one into reveries on warm grey days, corresponds to those states of mind in which he is only partly awakening from superior consciousness. The luministic effect is the painful awakening when limited earthly consciousness obscures the general consciousness that we have an inkling of as we awake or fall asleep, but we never fully awaken to in the course of our earthly life. There is much beautiful melancholy in luministic effects, and they correspond to the state in which we fell from the heavens to earth, and the concept of evil and suffering commenced.

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4 In Barbizon in 1889, Mednyánszky met a "devotee of theosophy", Monsieur Chevrillon,

5 who had just returned from in India, and came under the influence of the theosophy hallmarked by Madame Blavatsky and the literature published on Buddhism at the time, and he presumably read quite a lot of Schopenhauer and Tolstoy. He had formed a close friendship with Minka Czóbel, the sister-in-law of his younger sister. Drawn together by their mutual interest in oriental religion and philosophy, they spent a lot of time together at Nagyőr, Beckó, making excursions, enjoying landscapes and sights. The dream-likeness of earthly life, the freedom and purity of spirit, death as a new awakening, a liberation from the body, or the image of life-dream-death drawing on a pantheistic worldview is finely phrased in a poem published in 1896 by the talented poetess.

6 NOTES 1 The pieces were displayed at the Mednyánszky retrospective at the Polgár Gallery in 2001, and were also published in: Egri, Mária, and Árpád Polgár. Öreg kutya, Mednyánszky László 1852-1919. Budapest: Polgár Galéria és Aukciósház, 2001, pp. 37-38. 2 Dated: Beczkó, June, 1900. See Brestyánszky, Ilona ed. Mednyánszky László naplója. Szemelvények. Budapest: Képzőművészeti Alap, 1960. p. 64. 3 Ibid. 4 Mednyánszky's note, August 27, 1908. HNG Archive, inv. no.: 21849/1983,172. 5 Czóbel, Istvánné (née Margit Mednyánszky). László - Brouillon (a memoir). Manuscript. HNG Archive, inv. no.: 9035/1956. 6 Czóbel, Minka. Boszorkánydalok. Budapest: Szépirodalmi Kiadó. 1974, p. 75. AZ ELSŐ HÓ FIRST SNOW Álomhozóan hullnak fehér pelyhek Nagy szürke égből, az elalvó földre. Fehér lepellel lágyan leborítva Elmúlt tavasz világos szincs zöldje. Elmúlt tavasz virág-illatja kábít Oly fárasztó az élet - alig várom Hogy elfödjön tiszta fehér nyugalmad Hosszantartó titokzatos nagy álom. From a grey sky onto an earth slumbering, / White fluffs fall bringing sleep. / Softly covered with a white veil, / the colourful green of spring is passing. / Intoxicated with flower scents of a passing spring - / Life is so weary - I can't wait / for the pure white of your calmness to cover me, / Everlasting mysterious sleep.