Amerikai Magyar Hírlap, 1989 (1. évfolyam, 1-24. szám)
1989-03-24 / 3. szám
AMERICAN Hungarian Journal Free commemoration for the first time Tens of thousands of opponents of the Communist Government demonstrated freely in the streets of Budapest on March 15 to commemorate the 1848 uprising against Austrian rule, which was put down with much bloodshed and the help of the Russian Army. The marchers, estimated by Western diplomats to number 75,000, listened to speeches by opposition leaders beneath monumets to heroes of the 1848 revolution and from the steps of the national television headquarters. This year the leadership of Karoly Grosz legitimized the march by restoring to March 15 its former status of a national holiday, and businesses and Letter to Gorbachev On February 8, 1989, István Csurka and Gyula Fekete handed a letter to Boris Stukalin, ambassador of the Soviet Union to Budapest, on behalf of the Acting Leadership of the Hungarian Democratic Forum. The letter is addressed to Mikhail Gorbachev and its contents are the following: In these days the last Soviet soldiers are leaving Afghan territory. This fact prompted us to write to you. When our era, charged with contradictions, will have become history, this particular period will probably be remembered as a turning point. We are aware of the difficulty of such a decision on your part, and of the effort and restraint required for its implementation. We are also aware of the differences of opinion in the worldwide reaction to this move. We, Hungarian Democrats, view this pull-out as a victory. Victory because - please forgive the expression - the KREML has achieved it in spite of itself, in spite of the evil inherent in its own traditions, doctrines and practices. The most difficult battle is to overcome our own bad inclinations, and that’s the victory to which we offer You our sincere congratulations. (Magyar Hírlap) Policies of the New Smallholders Party The Independent Smallholders Party was founded in 1930 by the people desirous of liberty and a better life. The party platform adopted at the Convention of Bekes was also defined by the people. The majority of the items is still timely and could be used as the basis of today’s policies. The old party members and the representatives of new, spontaneously formed local units certainly thought so, when they announ red the rebirth of the Smallhola^-s Party on November 18, 1988, in the historic Pilvax Cafe, reminircent of the most glorious days of Hungarian past. The Smallholders Party wishes to offer opportunity to wellschools were closed. It urged the members of various informal, but no longer clandestine, oppositon groups to join in one natonal celebration, but raised no objections when 31 such organizations staged their own joint commemoration. In a speech at the television headquarters, Denes Csengey, a leader of the Democratic Forum, the largest non-Communist grouping, explained the refusal to take part in the official commemoration. "Our goal is true, lasting national unity, but this cannot be built on a system of masters and servants", he said. "The political partners must be equals." HENRY Klamm (The New York Times) meaning, loyal citizens who love their country and freedom, to participate, with the still valid principles of the old program as a starting point, in the political activity destined to uplift the Hungarian nation from its present state of deep economic, social and moral crisis. The Party’s aim is that Hungary should be a land of law, humanism, tranquillity, order, peace, respect for work and knowledge, a land of security, freedom and independence. Its aspiration is to restore selfrespect, mobility, and a sense of national identity to the Hungarian people, and to put an end to fear, coercion and opportunism. To create a social system based on the principles of human rights, equal opportunity and social security. To have the Hungarian nation find its place among European peoples as a community complete with creative dignity, a spirit of enterprise, a capacity for self-government, and an ability to enjoy the benefits of its culture and freedom. Destruction of Cities There is an article of ominous suggestion in the January 15, 1989, issue of the daily TRUTH of Kolozsvár. Men armed with blueprints and other technical documentation are enternig inner city buildings, reports our reader D.E., resident of Tordai Street. They show a marked interest in vaulted cellars and rooms, they go up to the attic, but they are reluctant to talk to the tenants, he says, and he wonders whether they do this out of pure scientific interest, or some other welldefined purpose. This letter voices, in a refined version, the old anxiety of the residents of Kolozsvár: by remodeling certain buildings and demolishing others, the government wants to do away with the specific character of the city, indicative of its history and its mentality, forcing a uniform appearance on its "unified nation". The real purpose and method of the destruction of villages was also, at first, disguised behind the lofty reasoning of "regional planning", and then came the hard facts. A casual analysis of the Kolozsvár authorities’ statement shows admittedly secret, yet unmistakeable goals, with their artful justifications and tricky applications. In words only, for the time being. But it’s obvious from the article quoted that "this scientific appraisal, the detailed knowledge of the status of our buildings, has both immediate and long-term benefits." Benefits for whom? Take a wild guess. Csíki László (Magyar Nemzet) Musical traditions in Hungary Archeological finds in Hungary provided the oldest proof of early musical activity in the region, at a time when neither Hungarians nor our country existed. In the course of cave-diggings conducted in Northern Hungary a small flute carved out of bear-bones and having three holes has been unearthed. Subsequent radio-carbon analysis proved it was made 30,900 years ago. The Pannonian extremities of the Roman Empire saved a number of musical treasures for us, mostly originating from the lst-5th centuries. One of these, a water-organ was found and is being kept in the area once called Aquincum, which is now a district of the northern part of our capital, Budapest. Also in Aquincum one Can find the headstone of Aelia Sabina, a lady-musician who only lived for a mere 25 years, and by all accounts, the monument was ordered by "T. AELIUS JUSTUS, the water organist of the second auxiliary legion". During the Middle Ages a flourishing musical culture was born in Hungary, due primarily to foreign influence, closely related to european music of the time. Music became an essential part of the pomp of the Royal Court. There are still a number of villages bearing the names of musicians who lived there, or the names of the instruments they played while performing for the King. Itinerant musicians - entertainers - began to appear both "up" in the castles, and "down" among the people. The musical achievements reached their peak - as far as artistic performances are concerned - during the reign of Matthias Corvinus, in the second half of the 15th century. Both the king and the queen - the Italian-born Beatrix of Aragónia - encouraged the development of musical culture, being genuine and generous benefactors of the arts. Surveying the first few centuries of the Hungarian musical past, we simply have to weigh how much we have received from the traditions of European music. It was in the early 16th century that the world was presented with a Hungarian artist of undeniable worth in the person of Bálint Bakfark (1505- 1579), a well-known lute-artist and composer. He began his European career in 1547 at the Royal Court of France, in Paris, and two years later he was at the Cracow Court of the King of Poland. He transformed the contemporary composed music and vocalpoliphony onto his own musical instrument, the lute. He was celebrated by a long line of artists, poets and composers, especially in France and in Poland. A saying - or almost a proverb - is still being used in Poland: "to touch the lute after Bakfark", meaning to do something one has no ability to do. The playful world of Margit Kovács The art of ceramist and sculptor Margit Kovács, which is highly individual and specifically Hungarian at the same time, represents a special stage in the history of Hungarian ceramics. During the years of early development she acquired the basic knowledge of ceramics at the leading . art centres of Europe. She took part in exhibitions from 1928 on. Her career was soon in the ascendant and by the thirties she already belonged to the leading echelon of art. From the experiences she gained during her travels abroad and from the motifs of Hungarian folk art she amalgamated a form of expression all her own which - although it underwent changes several times in the course of the passing years - always retained a "Margit Kovácsesque" character. Early on the versatility of her creativeness was proved by a series of different vessels, reliefs, murals, small sculpture, and by her first figures turned on the wheel the unrivalled master of which she remained until her death. Her Madonnas of a youthful grace and her slender saints of a delicate build recalling medieval sculpture and Byzantine mosaics, her genre figures of a Hungarian character- all radiate the joy of creation, the love for life of a frame of mind full of delicate nuances (Plump-Cheeked Girl, 1933-34; Young Apprentice, 1934; "Pound-Cake" Madonna, 1938; The Virgin Swaddling the Child, 1942; Salome, 1943-44). Guided by her witticism and a strong sense of humour she produced in profusion figures - 20 to 30 cm in height, turned on the wheel - by which she caricatured the country folk and the petty bourgeois of the end of the century. She did so mild mockery but with a keen sense of psychology. (Family Photograph Album, 1953; Proposal, 1948; Betrothed Couple at the Photographer’s, 1953; Susannah, 1955). Her technique of glazing was quite unique. In gewneral she applied the earth colours and the glaze together so as they complement each other. Her most colourful works were produced in the fifties. Her murals made with mixed technique - among them large sized compositions with many figures- constitute the group of her works of the most lasting effect. Apple Picking (1952) is outstanding among her glazed works. Its artiste effect shows affinity to early Flemish carpets. Her modelled murals are masterpieces both of her own oeuvre and that of modern Hungarian art as a whole. Wedding, 1953, Singing Girls (1953), Wine Harvest (1955), Cotton Pickers (1955), Sleeping Mother Earth and the Four Seasons (1959) are embodiments of youth and enjoyment of life. In their modelling she returned to the expressive shaping of her Paris period. Beginning 1967 her figures became elongated and they expressed certain characteristic mental attitudes. By a few facial features and some peculiar postures they suggested a whole life, the lot of a man (Funeral Sermon, 1970; Sunday, 1973). Her world of experiences became more serious: sorrow, illness and death had an increasing role to play in it. With moving empathy she moulded into form the eternal themes of human life such as birth, death, mourning, marriage, the everlasting unity of mother and child, the grief of growing old (A BIG Family, 1962; Birth, marriage, Death, 1968; Old People Feasting in Silence, 1970; Now Which Is The Mother and Which the Daughter, 1974; Living and Dead Grave-Posts, 1975, Woe, 1974.) The playful world of fairy-tales created by Margit Kovács, which is unique and yet timeless, rooted in the past yet speaking to the present, renders spell-bound the visitor who enters her memorial house. Ilona P. Brestyánszky The National Tradition When the Hungarians conquered the Carpathian Basin in 896, they had their own system of writing and presumably also had written records. Due to their conversion to Christianity towards the end of the tenth century, however, and the destruction of ’pagan writings’ these records have been lost. There is also evidence from earliest times of a strong epic literature, transmitted orally by a class of bards known as regös who went around reciting the deeds of the ancestors and national heroes of the Hungarians. This literature, too, was treated with suspicion and contempt under the early Christian era in Hungary and was not written down. Altough many traces of it have survived in Hungarian folklore and, as we shall see presently, in medieval literature as well, we are not in possession of any actual texts. In looking for the earliest Hungarian records relating to the origin and ancestral home of the Hungarians, therefore, we are confined to the Latin chronicles written after the conversion of the Magyars to Christianity. As may be expected, these display much biblical learning and a tendency to tailor facts and events - even legendary ones - so as to agree with a literal reading of the Bible and in particular, the Old Testament. Fortunately for our line of inquiry, there was a highly popular literary form in the Middle Ages known as the gesta which concerned itself with the origins and early history of nations and ecclesiastical instructions. In national history, writers of gestas usually followed a strictly defined pattern. (Contiuned) (Anthony Endrey) WM9UUM&M ««ATMERIK#I ii' i HI mummil Magyar Hírlap (Q
