William Penn Life, 2000 (35. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
2000-10-01 / 10. szám
agyar Gyulas Illyés by Barbara Kerékgyártó Gyula Illyés was the leading figure of modem Hungarian literature. His career began in Paris where he wrote free verse and experimented with expressionism. When he returned to Hungary, he became one of the most highly regarded contributors to the literary magazine Nyugat. He wrote his two major works, both prose, in the mid- 1930's: Puszták Nepe (People of the Puszta) and Petőfi. Petőfi is one of the finest books ever written on the great Hungarian poet; it is at once an essay and a biography. After 1949, Illyés wrote a number of successful dramas and screenplays. The Example of Ozora (Az ozorai példa) is a dramatic treatment of an episode from the War of Independence of 1848-49. It contends that national aspirations and class interests were intermingled in that struggle. Another work, Two Men, which portrays the poet Petőfi and General Bern, is a brilliant, tense sketch of those gloomy yet glorious days of 1849. In the 1950's Illyés, like other Hungarian writers, was tormented by profound crisis. The pressure of the times is noticable in his poem, "A sentence about tyranny," written during the darkest era of Hungarian history. This exceptionally powerful poem depicts every moment of hopelessness felt by those living in tyranny. The poem was written in 1950, but was not published until after the revolution in 1956. In November of that year, it was published not just in Hungary, but all over the world, and it came to be known as one of the greatest works of national poetry ever written. For the benefit of our readers not schooled in the Hungarian language, we present this English version of this month’s “Magyar Nyelv” feature. A sentence about tyranny by Gyula Illyés Where tyranny exists that tyranny exists not only in the barrel of the gun not only in the cells of a prison not just in the interrogation block or the small hours of the clock the guard's bark and his fists the tyranny exists not just in the billowing black fetor of the closing speech of the prosecutor, in "justified us of force" the prisoner's dull morse not merely in the cool postscript of the expected verdict there's tyranny not just in the crisp military order to "Stand!" and the numb instruction "Fire", the roll of the drum, in the last twitch <f the corpse in the ditch just in the door half-open and the fearful omen, the whispered tremor of the secret rumor the hand that grips, the finger before the lips, tyranny is in place in the iron mask of the face in the clench of the jaw the wordless O of pain and its echo and the tears of silence-breeding fears, in the surprise of starting eyes tyranny supplies the standing ovation, the loud hurrahs and chanting of the crowd at the conference, the songs of tyranny, the breasts that tyranny infests, the loud unflagging noise of rhythmic clapping, at opera, in trumpet cry, in the uproarious lie of grandiose statues, of colors, in galleries, in the frame and the wash, in the very brush, not just in the neat snarl of the midnight car as it waits outside the gates tyranny permeates all manners and all states, its omnipresent eyes more steady than those of old Nobodaddy, there's tyranny in the nursery in father's advice, in his guile, in your mother's smile in the child's answer to the perfect stranger; not just in wires with barbs and hooks not just in rows of books, but, worse than a barbed wire fence the slogans devoid of sense whose tyranny supplies the long goodbyes; the words of parting, the will-you-be-home-soon, darling? 14 William Penn Lite, October 2000
