The 1956 revolution in Hungarian literature. On the margins of the literary canon

The article is an attempt at an outline of the situation in Hungarian literature confronted with the revolution of 1956. The events of the Hungarian October are some of the more frequent themes in revisionist literature. Selected examples of literary works show the most important features of that literature, writing strategies, patterns of artistic message. From the wide selection of the literature, a poem, fragments of a diary, a novel, and an authobiographical essay by Sandor Marai, Gyorgy Moldova, Istvan Orkeny and Imre Kertesz were selected.The article is an attempt at an outline of the situation in Hungarian literature confronted with the revolution of 1956. The events of the Hungarian October are some of the more frequent themes in revisionist literature. Selected examples of literary works show the most important features of that literature, writing strategies, patterns of artistic message. From the wide selection of the literature, a poem, fragments of a diary, a novel, and an authobiographical essay by Sandor Marai, Gyorgy Moldova, Istvan Orkeny and Imre Kertesz were selected

Wielogłos. Polskie, czeskie i słowackie teksty o Zagładzie

Handbook of Polish, Czech, and Slovak Holocaust Fiction. Eds. Elisa-Maria Hiemer, Jiří Holý, Agata Firlej, Hana Nichtburgerová. Berlin: De Gruyter. 2021, 514 s. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671056Handbook of Polish, Czech, and Slovak Holocaust Fiction. Eds. Elisa-Maria Hiemer, Jiří Holý, Agata Firlej, Hana Nichtburgerová. Berlin: De Gruyter. 2021, 514 s. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/978311067105

Pieśni rozpaczy w czasach pogardy Wokół cyklu poetyckiego Márciustól márciusig Istvána Vasa

The article offers an interpretation of the poetic cycle Od marca do marca [From March to March] by István Vas, a Hungarian poet and writer of Jewish origin. The author treated each of his poems as a notebook, where he recorded his reflections on the situation of Hungarian Jews, the human condition, the siege of Budapest, etc. For Vas, each piece is a separate testimony to the time of the war. The entire cycle is steeped in irony and a harsh judgement of the society’s moral fall. Vas wrote his poems during the period of Nazism but published them during the communist regime, when he wanted to answer a question about the role of art in the process of recovering historical memory, and whether a literary text could offer protection from the hostile reality.The article offers an interpretation of the poetic cycle Od marca do marca [From March to March] by István Vas, a Hungarian poet and writer of Jewish origin. The author treated each of his poems as a notebook, where he recorded his reflections on the situation of Hungarian Jews, the human condition, the siege of Budapest, etc. For Vas, each piece is a separate testimony to the time of the war. The entire cycle is steeped in irony and a harsh judgement of the society’s moral fall. Vas wrote his poems during the period of Nazism but published them during the communist regime, when he wanted to answer a question about the role of art in the process of recovering historical memory, and whether a literary text could offer protection from the hostile reality

Kronikarz spóźnionej wojny. Woń człowieka Ernő Szépa

The article presents a portrait of one of the most important witnesses of the Holocaust in Hungary, the author of Emberszag and „the legend of Ernő Szép”, who would greet people by saying „I was Ernő Szép”. In his innovative work, the writer draws upon his skills as both reporter and observer. The way he can intricately interweave different episodes confirms his great artistic ability, but most of all it highlights the essential need to accord to the Jewish history all the respect it deserves. Szép achieves this through adopting an anthropocentric perspective – each scene focuses primarily on human emotions and habits, whilst the key context of all the events – the Shoah – is shifted to the background. Without overloading the text with too many dates or legal references, Szép pays careful attention to facts which gives readers a perfect opportunity to recreate the successive stages of the Jewish history in 1944 Budapest

O murze, którym była rzeka. Lament nad Dunajem Mihálya Kornisa

In the first part of the article, the author presents a few crucial political and historical events which have an association with the situation of the in 1944-45 Budapest. The politics of the Arrow Cross Party, very similar to German Nazis, led to the mass execution of Jewish citizens on the Danube river. The main purpose of the article is to analyse a short story by the Hungarian writer Mihály Kornis. In The Jewish Danube he raises the thorny issue of the memory of the murdered people, and in doing so creates a blasphemous and provocative text, in which he tries to break the taboo subject of genocide

The Attitude of Hungarian Literature toward the Shoah. The Problems Concerning the Canon

The attitude of Hungarian literature toward the Shoah. The problems concerning the canon The text presents a number of the most important figures of the landscape of Hungarian literature devoted to the theme of the Shoah, among others S. Márai, M. Radnóti, J. Pilinszky,F. Sánta, who faced the problems of memory, the torments of war and the experience of the “Jewish condition”. Each of the subsequent generations of writers engaged the subject of the Shoah in different ways, changing the conventions or the stylistic or genre‑related resources, owing to which there emerged an extremely abundant literary material, varied as far as the form, volume, language, artistic freedom and references to the works which constitute the canon of writings devoted to this subject are concerned. One of the formal solutions which are unique on a world scale is the phenomenon of de‑tabooisation, of choosing genres which are incongruous with the rules of aesthetic bienséance (irony, the grotesque, surrealism), whose presence is testimony to the lack of the presence of the Shoah in the social discourse and to a desire to restore it to its rightful place in the context of literary experiments which provoke but which also demand to be perceived and solved. Key words: Hungary, genocide, canon, Jewish literature in Hungar

Animal Idylls. On Miklós Radnóti’s <i>Razglednicák</i>

Animal Idylls. On Miklós Radnóti’s RazglednicákThe article presents an interpretation of Miklós Radnóti’s famous poetic cycle, Razglednicák [Postcards] (1944), from the animal perspective. The situation of the poet – a Hungarian Jew and a Catholic, sent to forced labour and then to a death march – is presented in four short pieces, expressly referring to the idyllic aesthetics. The dominant elements of the poem’s landscape are profiles of animals. By means of the poem, a flock of sheep and an ox become live emblems of the human condition in two states: the idyllic, timeless continuance and the inevitable death, which brings biological exhaustion to an end. The sheep and the ox also represent different types of presence – the sheep seem to function in an intact scenery, almost perfectly resembling the poet’s previous pieces devoted to animals, in which the animal embodies the untouched world, coexists with the landscape, and is continuance without a name. In Radnóti, the animal is a subjectified creature that exists on an equal basis with the human. Key words: Miklós Radnóti, Hungarian literature, forced labour, idyll, animals, Razglednicák [Postcards], Bori Notesz [Camp Notebook

„Bycie Żydem” jako sytuacja uniwersalna. Żydowska „faculté maîtresse” Victora Klemperera

Filozoficzna refleksja przenikająca dziennikową twórczość Victora Klemperera koncentruje się wokół zagadnienia żydowskiej faculté maîtresse, która także dla Á. Heller, M. Blanchota, G. Scholema i E. Jabès’a – myślicieli rozważających wydarzenie Shoah i żydowską kondycję duchową wobec Zagłady – staje się jednym z najważniejszych tematów ich pisarstwa. Imre Kertész uzupełnia prace V. Klemperera, formułując koncepcję „bycia Żydem” rozumianej jako sytuacja uniwersalna, właściwa istnieniu poddanemu negatywnemu żywiołowi totalitarnych dyktatur. Myślenie o „kondycji żydowskiej”, jako „metaforze egzystencji” ma związek z różnymi sposobami myślenia o samym sobie. Według K. i K. kondycja żydowska oznacza „bycie zanegowanym” w najwyższym stopniu, a także bezdomność, tożsamość pisarską i postrzeganie Pisma jako symbolicznego, ustrukturyzowanego systemu formującego wszystkie sfery życia twórcy.The philosophical reflection, existing in diary’s of Victor Klemperer, focuses on the issue of Jewish faculté maîtresse. This issue became one of the most important themes of writing in the works of Á. Heller, M. Blanchot, G. Scholem and E. Jabès. These thinkers also considered Shoah and the human spiritual condition in relation to extermination of Jews in time of the Second World War. Imre Kertész makes the ideas of V. Klemperer complete. Kertész formulated a conception of „being a Jew”, which he understand as a universal situation of existence under destructive influence and pressure of the totalitarian dictatorships. Thinking about a „Jewish condition” as a „metaphor of existence” is relevant to various methods of thinking about the self. According to Klemperer and Kertész a Jewish condition means a „negative being” in a superlative degree and also means homeless, writer’s identity and the perception of Scripture as a symbolic, structural system which form all spheres of the writer’s life.

"Ormiańskie nagrobki." Poezja Sándora Kányádiego wobec transformacji

Artykuł został poświęcony potransformacyjnej poezji jednego znajważniejszych twórców węgierskich w Siedmiogrodzie, Sándorowi Kányádiemu. Autorka analizuje sytuację polityczną dyktatury komunistycznej w Rumunii wobec pisarzy węgierskich i odwilż kulturalną w latach 1989/90. Tekst został oparty na analizie wiersza Ormiańskie nagrobki z tomu Grzywai czaszka, w którym dotychczasowa poetyka idylliczna została zastąpiona poetyką gorzkiej świadomości zmieniającego się świata. W interpretacji wiersza skupiono się na wykazaniu znaczenia takich pojęć jak „krajobraz siedmiogrodzki”, zanikanie pamięci o mniejszościach narodowych, „ojcowizna” w poezji S. Kányádiego.The article concerns poetry of Sándor Kányádi, one of the most famous and influential Hungarian writers from Transylvania. The main purpose of the article is to analyse the political persecution of the communist dictatorship in Romania against Hungarian writers and to estimate the meaning of the period of political changes 1989/90. The author interprets the poem Armenian gravestones from the collection Mane and skull, in which Kányádi gave up his earlier idyllic poetics and chose a poetry of bitter consciousness of the world’s constant change. In the interpretation of the poems, the author focuses on explaining a few crucial terms as for example: „Transylvanian landscape”, decline of memory about national minorities and homeland in the poetry of Kányádi