Fraternity-Testvériség, 2010 (88. évfolyam, 1-4. szám)

2010-10-01 / 4. szám

Fraternity i Testvériség

HRFA is proud of its member who translated one of the most influential novels of Hungarian Literature, "Siege of Sziget” by Zrínyi Miklós. He shares his thoughts on the enormous work he has done.

My Personal Experience with Translating ‘Siege of Sziget’ by Zrínyi Miklós

László Korossy

I he professor did all that could be

I done with the material, but at the

I end of the day, it was still Statistics. His only mistake was to hold class in a room where there was a computer at every desk, which meant that every student was in a world far away from probabilities and equations. My own personal world was finding everything I could on Hungarian culture, music, art, and literature, trying to reinvent myself as a Hungarian gentleman extraordinaire, having lived my entire life in a suburb of Washington, DC. I was twenty years old and a sophomore at the Catholic University of America. The process was going slowly.

I had travelled with my mother to Hungary two years prior. It was not my first trip to the homeland, but my Hungarian heritage had recently been awakened inside me, and I went for the first time as a naively eager tourist-patriot rather than just the youngest member of a family vacation troupe. I wanted to experience everything Magyar and bring back as much of it as I could. So when I found a copy of the Szigeti Veszedelem at a bookstore, I was quite excited to buy the book I had faintly remembered hearing about, one on our countless battles with the Turks, probably.

I think the author and the main character had the same name. Sounds like fun! My mother was decidedly less exuberant; “It’s two hundred pages, it was written four hundred years ago, and it sounds like if you try to read it, you’ll just end up hating Hungarian.” I suppose there was some merit to that. I was, after all, still reading Hungarian

Translated by László Kórössy

with an introduction by George Götnöri

lós Z

rínyi

eS

iege of Szí

ge

on maybe a second or third grade level. But how could I pass up a challenge like that?

I read Zrinyi’s epic masterpiece cover to cover during my senior year of high school, reading between, and sometimes during, classes, on lunch breaks, and on the way to and from school. It was slow going and often painful as 1 read, re-read, re-reread, and finally abandoned many passages. Hungarian had been, once, my first language, but with only a small community to speak with, my siblings and I had long since started filling in English words or phrases when the Hungarian equivalent didn’t come to mind. In Zrínyi, I

encountered a Hungarian that was almost glacially pure, that was crisp and confident like I had never had the chance to experience. But its exotic grammar, alien words, and flowing, almost bubbling cadence, all the imprints of the 17th century, captivated and moved me. It was the language that first drew me into the sweeping, fantastic narrative of a lone Hungarian stronghold, standing fast against an unstoppable Turkish onslaught, doomed but serene in the knowledge that they were dying for God and country. As the Turkish wizard opened the gates of hell in the second-to-last chapter, I sat transfixed as he drew forth demons to do battle with the exhausted defenders, only to have God send forth St. Michael and his angels to fight the infernal hordes while the great Miklós Zrínyi led his troops in a final, heroic, fatal charge into the Turkish lines to be immortalized by the poetry of his great-grandson (who, confusingly, really is also Miklós Zrínyi). The book ended, I had won the challenge, and I knew that I had read something extraordinary. This story would have ended there, if not for Statistics.

On that particular day, tired of the endless stream of numbers and equations,

I stumbled across a copy of the Szigeti Veszedelem online. It was the full text, available to read for free. After kicking myself for having filled up precious suitcase space with a now-unneeded book, I began reading the first lines again:

Én az ki azelőtt iffiu elmével

Játszottam szerelemnek édes versével,

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