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)

Is it conceivable that a Futuristically multiplied Cubist nude is descending a winding staircase? It is, if one can explain where the nude is coming from and going to. Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 1 1911, No. 2 1912, No. 3 1916) is coming from the experimental studio of a witty and restless artist who liked to surprise, baffle and shock the spectator. (227) The critical style matches the subject most wittily here, as part of the challenging introduction of the reader to the work of a writer of intricate verbal talent and enormous intellectual sophistication, and revealing, at the same time, that the critic, pace Wilde, can aspire to become a kind of artist too. At the ESSE 4 Conference in 1997, hosted by Lajos Kossuth University Debrecen, a round table session was dedicated to the life and work of professor László Országh (1907-1984), the outstanding and highly influential lexicologist, Anglicist, as well as founding father of American studies in Hungary. An assistant professor of Országh's English Department at Kossuth University in the 1960s, Péter Egri participated in the event along with a selected group of other scholars. True to his interest in drama, and in tune with his own performing talents, it was with an admirable mixture of deeply felt respect and warm humour that he presented a vividly dramatized picture of Országh as scholar and senior colleague in four acts, which began and concluded with the train journeys between Budapest and Debrecen and back the same route that both Országh and Egri had to take every week. In his introductory words to the published version of the round table discussion Zsolt Virágos, convenor of the session claims that Országh "has left many tracks in the profession and [...] has bequeathed a legacy that is both impressive and unique" (369). It is well justifiable to apply similar terms in an assessment of Péter Egri's work all the more so as he was selected to be one of the first two recipients of the Országh László Award in 1997, which recognized the quality of his academic and scholarly achievements in the fields of study that Országh himself had cultivated and excelled in. The present essay does not intend to ignore the fact that Egri's scholarly progress is inseparable from, though not at all directly dependent on the context provided by the contemporary political, social and cultural changes and processes. Written by a scholar of a highly individual talent, his works, taken as a whole, offer a particular 34