Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2002. Vol. 8. Eger Journal of American Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 28)

Studies - Mária Kurdi: "Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain." On the Scholarly Heritage of Péter Egri (1932-2002)

which underpinned and shaped the theory and practice of translating poetry in nineteenth- and twentieth century Hungary. Completing the survey, "Whose Immortality Is It Anyway?" evaluates Dezső Mészöly's outstanding translation from 1990 in relation to the progress of Shakespeare's lyrical art itself, as a "revitalization, reinterpretation, and modernization of traditional translations [...] in tune with the prosodic context of Shakespeare's own achievement in integrating, rejecting, rejuvenating, and recasting traditional ways of composing sonnets" (33-34). A költészet valósága extends its inquiry also to the ways how fiction and drama may become imbued with the lyrical. In this respect, Egri's examples range from the intricate poetic structures he discovers in the "Proteus" episode of Ulysses to the use of symbols and visions in especially the early plays of Eugene O'Neill. In his 1984 book about the ontology of drama discussed in comparison with that of other genres, drama theorist Tamás Bécsy pays credit to these observations (222, 312). The discussion of O'Neill's plays in a comprehensive book about poetry like A költészet valósága is, offers certainly not a strange interlude before the third period of Egri's scholarly work with drama in its centre, which was announced by the 1983 book titled Törésvonalak: drámai irányok az európai századfordulón (Faultlines: Dramatic Trends at the Turn of the Century in Europe). Researching O'Neill, Egri realized, the route first had to lead back to the theatres of Europe, to consider the roots of the American playwright whose intimate knowledge of his exemplary international predecessors is indispensable for a deeper understanding of his own work. Systematically, in Törésvonalak as well as in some corresponding essays, Egri constructed a both manysided and broad picture of the changes in theatre and the renewed playwriting practice that flourished across different countries and nations and inspired O'Neill later. Oscar Wilde comes first and Maxim Gorky closes the line in the survey of authors whose dramaturgical innovations within realism, symbolism, aestheticism, naturalism and symbolism Egri examines as milestones of the revolution taking place in the modern European theatre between the politically charged dates of 1871 and 1917. A synthesizing book like Törésvonalak hardly ever comes to light without omissions as far as the list of analyzed writers is concerned, 20