Bakos Katalin - Manicka Anna szerk.: Párbeszéd fekete-fehérben, Lengyel és magyar grafika 1918–1939 (MNG, Warszawa–Budapest, 2009)

I. PÁRBESZÉD FEKETE-FEHÉRBEN - Bakos Katalin, Anna Manicka: Valami történik közöttünk. Szubjektív előszó a Párbeszéd fekete-fehérben. Lengyel és magyar grafika

KB: Let me extend the list of common personages. I myself also took part in the Sobieski tour -an international rowing tour down the Danube starting from Esztergom. Not all participants knew that it was named after Jan Sobieski, king John III of Poland, who liberated Esztergom from the Ottomans. Another Polish hero of Hungarian history who is familiar to everyone is "Uncle Bern", colonel Józef Bem, the commander of the Transylvanian Hungarian army during the revolution and war of independence of 1848/49. AM: During the partition period Polish artists and Polish writers painted and wrote "for the encouragement of the hearts". For one hundred and twenty-three years Poland, divided among three neighbouring powers, Russia, Austria and Prussia, was absent from the maps. To boost up the nation's morale and cheer it up in the hard times, Henryk Sienkiewicz wrote his Trilogy extolling the vicissitudes of the Polish gentry in the 17th century when Poland had still been a power. In Matejko's Prussian Homage the Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights pays formal homage to the King Sigismund the Old. KB: I was already grown up when I learnt about the main events in Polish history. Who mediated them to me were not the classic authors but contemporary film and literature: Andrzej Wajda and the Hungarian writer György Spiro, a master in Polish culture. Similarly to art in Poland, Hungarian history painting also took its themes from periods of Hungary's past that were held up as heroic examples to the present. Such were the wars against the Ottoman conquerors, the fighting against Habsburg absolutism throughout the 1 7-18th centuries. An inspiring ideal was King Matthias, the great renaissance ruler of the 1 5th century when Hungary was still an empire of Europe-wide significance. I suspect that the figure of Matthias appears quite differently in Polish and Czech history. AM: All I know about Hungary from that point on comes from literature. I remember that Petőfi, our Mickiewicz's counterpart, perished as the Polish general Bern's aide-de-camp, didn't he? What else? I have read novels by Jókai who was something of our Prus, wasn't he? There was also a book on the school syllabus, Boys of Pál Street, with the boy called Nemeczek in Polish. My son is reading it now, you know... KB: Sándor Petőfi's and Mór Jókai's figures are associated with the 1848 revolution and war of independence. It was the time of the 1830s and '40s that put forth the important political and economic reform proposals that paved the way toward embourgeoisement and greater independence within the Habsburg Empire, butatthattime the opposition of the Vienna courtfoiled them. The petition submitted to the emperor and the demonstrations inspired by the revolutionary wave sweeping across Europe in 1848 forced Vienna to consent to an independent Hungarian government, the liberation of the serfs and the abolition of censorship, but to this rebellion Austria responded with an armed offensive. The Hungarian revolutionaries rightly felt that entire Europe was taking note of their struggle: Mickiewicz and Heinrich Heine, among others, also wrote about or to them. The liberty fighters were defeated with the help of the Russian tsar and ruthless retaliations ensued. After a decade of unveiled terror, passive resistance and repeated political wrangling, the Compromise was signed in 1867, which resulted in the dualist Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy. Relative independence and the partial realization of reforms launched great economic and cultural development. Hungarians celebrate the 1848 revolution and war of liberation on March 15th. Ferenc Molnár's novel Boys of Pál Street is about an utterly changed world, Budapest at the onset of the 20th century. However, its great appeal lies in its perceptivity to childhood's universally valid essence. In Hungary, Bolesław Prus' Pharao and Henryk Sienkiewicz' Quo vac//s? are very popular readings, though they are not taught at school. The playwright most frequently met with on the stage is Sławomir Mrożek. One or another of his plays is constantly on, since his works combining the playful, the grotesque and the absurd show the Hungarian audiences an intimately familiar world. AM: As for the period between the World Wars, there are novels by Magda Szabó. I read Abigél when I should have, in my teens; then I saw the film and liked it very much. It is thanks to it that I did