The Hungarian Student, 1958 (2. évfolyam, 1-7. szám)
1958 / 5. szám
12 The Hungarian Student Hungarian Section “Behind the Mask, a Deep Love of Nature” In the March issue we printed an interview with Mrs. Láng Kecskeméti, a former student of Béla Bartók. As a service to our readers, we arc reprinting in its entirety a review of THE NAKED FACE OF GENIUS: Béla Bartók’s American Years by Agatha Fasselt (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, illustrated, $5.) Like Mrs. Kecskeméti, Mrs. Fassett was also a friend of Bartók during his years of exile in the United States. This book review by Arthur Berger appeared originally in The New York Times Book Review Section, Sunday, April 26, 1958, p. 6. IBeFORE the development of the rigorous approach to musical history that is known as “musicology,” the memoir was a major source of information about musicians and musical life. Disciplined treatment of facts is obviously progress, since memory easily deceives. At the same time, a good memoir of a creative personality yields a human warmth, of little use perhaps to the scholar, but fascinating to those who try to comprehend the eternally perplexing phenomenon of the artist. In resorting to memoir as an approach to Béla Bartók, Agatha Fassett has succeeded in bringing us into the presence of one of the most retiring figures ever to appear on the American musical scene. Bartók (1881-1945) was a Hungarian composer of modern tonalities, contrapuntal and rather harsh sounding; but through his six string quarterts and works for orchestra, he is becoming better known to the American music lover. During his tragic last years from 1940 to 1945, spent here in voluntary exile from his native Hungary, he presented an impenetrable façade to almost everyone but a few compatriots. As Mrs. Fassett puts it, he had a “classical mask that was ready for any public occasion, and which was generally mistaken for the sign of an essentially cold personality.” She herself admits, “I never had any illusion that I had been taken into his confidence.” Yet he revealed some of his deepest concerns to her, because a passionate love of nature served as a meeting ground. In a memoir from the Romantic era, nature would have been a source of no end of extravagances. But any sign of them has been whitled away in what turns out to be a thoroughly ingenuous and remarkably well written account where nature figures not as a mystical value with a capital “N,” but in specific terms that bespeak the most precise knowledge of Bartók’s part. The author injects surprising suspense into the most innocent episodes, such as a quest in the forest for a lost cat or a walk outside her Vermont house during which Bartók finds traces of an old coach road. Significanlty, Bartók is mentioned only in the subtitle of “The Naked Face of Genius,” for this keenly perceptive treatment of him is like a composite portrait of any true creative individual. His pride, refractoriness and temper are typical products of the artist’s integrity. Specific details of Bartók’s music and career such as may be found in Halsey Stevens “Life and Music of Béla Bartók” are thus not to be sought here at all and are gratuitous when they appear. The author’s aim was not to document Bartók’s life but rather to describe his behavior as she saw it and to record memories of conversations that bear little on music. When not directly in Bartók’s company, she sees him through the eyes of his wife, Ditta, who became her close friend. Gradually, we watch Ditta crack under the strain of her husband’s suffering from his depatriation, the leukemia of which he died and the American public’s appalling apathy to his music. When Mrs. Fassett, toward the end, sees the Bartóks less and less, she quite properly resorts to sketching in pertinent details and reprints a description of the composer’s death which she received in a long letter from his son, Peter. Arriving inexorably as the consequence of the recurrent theme of illness that pervades the book, this conclusion skillfully rounds out a highly moving exposition, molded with exceptional sympathy and care. Autumn Came to Paris By ANDREW ADY (1877-1919) Yes, Autumn came to Paris yesterday, Gliding in silence down Rue Saint-Michel; Here in the dog-days, soft beneath the leaves She met and hailed me well. I had been strolling toward the slumbering Seine, Deep in my heart burn’d little twigs of song. Smoky and strange and sad and purplehued. Nigh dead, I walked along. The Autumn understood and whisper’d low; Rue Saint-Michel grew tremulous and grey; The jesting leaves cried out along the street And flutter’d in dismay. {Trans, by W. Kirkconnell) Poem by Sándor Weöres. Weöres is a noted Hungarian contemporary poet. Sándor Weőres’s poetry has grown from the surrealist into the pure lyricism of all humanity. This poem appeared in his anthology published in 1957, entitled Tower of Silence. Dezső Szabó: To the Twenty Year Old. This story is an admonition to Hungarian youth by the well-known Hungarian novelist, who died of starvation during the siege of Budapest in the winter of 1944-45. “Believe in the unity of creative mankind,” he wrote. “There is a universal homeland above individual countries, and there, all created beauty and all moral values are compatriots. To plant again in the individual the belief in this unity is the task of the future.” Sándor Erdei: Dezső Szabó. Sándor Erdei, the last Secretary of the Hungarian Writers Association wrote the introduction to a volume of short stories by Dezső Szabó. Authorities, however, forbade the publication of the book. Sándor Körösi Csorna. Csorna was a Hungarian explorer. He traveled to Asia in search of traces of the ancestors of Hungarians and tried to solve the mystery of the origin of the Hungarian race. He is the author of the only existing Sanskrit dictionary, published by the British Geographical Society. Csorna was born in 1787 and died at the age of 55 on April 11, 1842. The British Geographical Society erected a memorial for him in Darjeeling, Tibet. It is of interest to note that he also traveled in Japan and in 1933 a statue was erected in his honor in the Chapel of Tayso University and he was consecrated a “bosatu,” a Buddhist saint. Across Europe. This is a letter from a fellow student about his experiences in France, Belgium, Holland, West Germany, Denmark, and Sweden. The Editor Answers. The editor of The Hungarian Student answers questions and problems of students. FOLK DANCES (Continued from page 5.) Now we can look back upon over five hundred performances. We travelled 45,000 miles and appeared before 1,800,000 spectators. In June we will perform in London, and we expect to perform in several other cities of the world. We hope that through our tours we shall help other countries to get acquainted with Hungarian folk music and folk dances. This is one of our main goals. We shall continue to strive for this in the future.
