On Thursday 27 March, we once again had the pleasure of Len Rix’s company, this time discussing his translations of Antal Szerb, Utas és holdvilág, 1937 (Journey by Moonlight, Pushkin, 2000), Magda Szabó, Az ajtó, 1987 (The Door, Vintage, 2005), and his article ‘In Praise of Translation’, recently published in the Hungarian Quarterly.

Len described the two novels as personal, quasi-autobiographical works, both dealing with an exploration of the religious mentality, where core personal tragedy is sublimated. Szerb’s brutal self-dissection relies on form and parallelism but, in contrast to Szabó, is somewhat tempered by his heterodox Catholicism. The novel moves between different perspectives using narrative voice to scrutinise bourgeois conformity and façades. Szabó, however, puts her Protestant guilt ‘out there’ for all to examine, and is far more puritanical and judgemental, to the extent that the text is over-charged, and occasionally vulgar. There are very few shades of grace here.

Both texts condense the whole novel in the first chapter, which we read and discussed in the original, draft and final translation. Particular challenges for the translator included the ubiquitous még and már, the numerous roles played by is, rhythm and syntax, and rhetoric. 

Regarding faithfulness, and the translation of Hungarian literature, while an older generation of Hungarians in the West see it as their duty to ‘protect’ Hungarian literature from translation, and publishers continue to observe a form of cautious parochialism, successful translations have ‘lifted’ the literal text and made it accessible to an international audience. Here, sales figures speak for themselves.

It was a great pleasure to welcome Len as a guest speaker again, and we are delighted that students (in particular BA finalists) had the opportunity to discuss theory and practice of translating Hungarian literature with one of the most celebrated translators in the UK today. 

On 27 November, Eszter Tarsoly and BA finalist Victoria Ford gave a joint presentation on grammatical possession. Hungarian has no genitive and instead uses ‘head marking,’ where the possessed thing (e.g. János háza) is marked, rather than the possessor (John’s house). 

Eszter and Victoria presented was a comparative analysis of possessive constructions in English and Hungarian, with reference to the first chapter of György Dragomán’s 2005 novel A fehér király, and its English translation by Paul Olchvary, The White King. The texts are available online on Dragomán’s website, in the original and in English translation. The method was (1) to identify in the English text occurrences and uses of have and of, (2) to translate them back to Hungarian (back translation), and then (3) to cross check with the original the words and phrases translated with have and of.

It goes without saying that categories of have and of usage are numerous. To name and illustrate a few, contrasting the English translation with (2) back translation and (3) the original:

Sequence of tenses:

(1) I took the clothes I had put on the back of my chair

(2) Elvettem a ruhákat, amit a szék hátára tettem

(3) Levettem a szék hátáról az este odakészített rukátat

Linking a quantifier to a quantified item (noun) or as part of prepositions:

(1) her usual sort of hug

(2) az ő szokásos ölelése

(3) megölelt, de nem úgy, ahogy máskor

Possession (habeo):

(1) Mother asked if they had a search warrant

(2) Anya megkérdezte, hogy volt-e házkutatási engedélyük

(3) Anya akkor azt kérdezte, hogy van erre parancsuk

This method of comparing back translation with the original highlighted the number and complexity of issues faced by students of Hungarian and translation when dealing with grammatical possession (habeo construction: van (+ possessor-dative) + possessed thing-possessive suffixes; or the possessive structure where there is no true ownership: van + possessor-adessive + possessed thing). 

Andrea Talabér recently presented the work of Hungarian historian and Open Society Archives director István Rév, together with articles from Népszabadság covering the official 15 March celebrations of 1967 and 1974. Andrea outlined Rév’s focus on the function of show trials, and the manipulation of personal histories (not to mention historical dates), within the context of a broader discussion of competing historical narratives, and national holidays and official ritual under socialism.

With reference to Rév’s work (in particular, the essays in Retroactive Justice: Prehistory of Postcommunism, Stanford CA, 2005), Andrea noted the sheer number of ‘revolutionary’ public holidays in the early 1970s, (re-)burial practices, and archival ‘findings’ produced to rewrite history. Reading the Népszabadság articles (‘Gazdag program a forradalmi ifjúsági napokon’, 1967, and ‘Forradalmár elődeinkez méltóan dolgozunk, harcolunk’, 1974), we discussed the elevation of 1848 and erasure of 1919 from Hungarian Communist chronology, convergent interpretations of 1956 as an anti-Communist revolt, as well as the more general coincidence of rhetorical styles adopted by the Kádár regime and, the subject of a number of our earlier talks, the contemporary Right. 

2006

In her recent talk on the subject of her research in progress (nationalism in Hungarian popular culture), Jenny Rasell addressed a number of matters. Remarking on the sudden proliferation of nationalist symbols, and with reference to recent opinion polls and academic research on xenophobia, antisemitism, racism and homophobia in Hungary, Jenny presented a number of texts taken from various radical-right websites, weblogs and chat forums, as well as the Magyar Gárda oath.

Discussion focussed on symbols in popular culture (crosses, religious and medieval articles, maps, flags and so on), concepts of kinship, the promise to create order out of chaos, and the relationship between the parliamentary and (extra-parliamentary) radical right. We also considered the profile of the radical right, in terms of age, class, educational qualifications, and so on, and examined instances of ‘tough guy’ talk in colloquial Hungarian.

A pdf file of Pál Tamás’s recent research findings on radical right attitudes is available in Hungarian here, or in English.

The programme for the remaining five sessions is as follows:

13 November: Jenny Rasell will discuss a few texts taken from websites and blog entries edited by radical right-wing groups as part of her work in progress for her MRes dissertation.

20 November: Andrea Talabér will introduce work by Hungarian historian István Rév and provide an overview of his work.

27 November: Possessed by POSSESSION – Victoria Ford and Eszter Tarsoly will discuss approaches to possession by looking at translation strategies for the preposition of and the verb have.

4 December: Dr Gwen Jones will contrast a selection of Hungarian-language reports on the current financial crisis.

11 December: Mikulás puttony or zsákba macska: the details of the usual Christmas extravaganza, as well as the programme for this last occasion, remain fluid. The Christmas party is likely to take place this evening in the Russell Square/King’s Cross area of central London.

Friday Circle – now on Thursdays!

We meet on Thursdays at 6pm in the ‘Roman Bar’ of the Imperial Hotel on Russell Square.

Veress left his home town of Cluj for Budapest in 1916, where he studied piano under Bartók and composition under Kodály at the Liszt Academy. It appears that in the 1930s, his work gaining increasing popularity, Veress was on course to become the Next Big Thing in Hungarian music. He took over the composition chair from Kodály in 1942 and, following brief stints in England and Rome, where he immersed himself in the musical avant-garde, he returned to Hungary, and joined the Party in 1945. However, he didn’t return to Hungary after travelling with permission to Italy in 1949, and settled in Switzerland.

When applying for a job in Pittsburgh at the height of the McCarthy era, he was required to write a letter explaining his brief membership of the Communist Party, and it was this letter that provided the context for discussion of writing one’s past. On the advice of historian István (Stephen) Borsody, Veress claimed that he had joined for artistic and personal gain, and that he had always been pro-Western. Successive edits gradually removed his autonomy, until his statement resembled a seamless narrative to fit the new political context in which he sought a home. Veress was not finally able to move to the States, but remained in Bern teaching and composing music, and he never attained the recognition of either his predecessors, Bartók and Kodály, or his one-time students, Ligeti and Kurtág.

Nyugat 1910

Celebratory and commemorative events are regular events in Hungary. A number of websites have been set up to document Nyugat and its centenary, among them the National Széchenyi Library’s 100 Years of Nyugat site, and the Petőfi Literary Museum’s Nyugat100 site.

Paraszt és úr

Rob began with an overview of the ideology of reform. Part reaction to economic stagnation and the dreaded nemzethalál (‘national death’), part critique of feudal society, reformers sought to revitalise the nobility and, by extension, the country. Here, land reform was key to modernisation plans, which also entailed forms of land redistribution and agricultural capitalisation, together with labour liberalisation. Lord-peasant relations affected almost everything in Hungarian society; changes to the nature of property rights, implied by a more inclusive concept of the nation and a solution to the ‘peasant question’, however, had to be carefully managed from above. For the reform-minded nobility, no less urgent was the fear of revolution from below.

The political changes and economic crisis of the 1830s were read in conjunction with Széchenyi’s Hitel (Credit, 1930), turbulent relations with Vienna, and increased contact with the West through travel, and the circulation of Enlightenment ideas, in particular Bentham’s utilitarianism and the works of Voltaire, translated (probably) by anonymous Jacobins. The word feudális had, necessarily, pejorative connotations, when it was first used in 1791. We concluded that the debates between lawyers over feudalism versus polgári társadalom (bourgeois, civil society) bore certain similarities to the népi-urbánus vita, which occupied the reform generation of the twentieth-century interwar period.

Rob went on to discuss the roles of érdekegyesítés, the widening of the concept of rights, and the concept of kifejlődés, in efforts to convince the nobs of the need for reform; outlined changes to the ways in which property was acquired or inherited; and noted that in 1849, the franchise of eligible men stood at 20% in Hungary, and only 4-5% in England.

Nadalileht

Sandra asked what role language had played in the construction of Estonian national identity. Until the late nineteenth century, inhabitants of the villages had referred to themselves as maa rahvas, ‘country people’, rather than ‘Estonians’. It was the ruling élite, the Baltic German Estophiles, who had done the ground work for the national movement by bringing Herderian ideas on folk culture to Estonia, researching, documenting and promoting a written language. It was this primacy of language, rather than shared historical experiences, that came to dominate Estonian national identity.

Language was used to connect communities otherwise isolated from each other under different empires. The ‘uniqueness’ of the Estonian language has undoubtedly played a role in contemporary debates over whether Estonians are a Nordic, Finno-Ugric or simply an ‘exceptional’ people. In the discussion that followed, we considered similarities with Hungarian identity, and the search for linguistic anchorage in ‘the little country that could’.

Discussion included socialist ideals of beauty and civilisation (see, for instance, Bee Flowers’s photographs of the Moscow metro system), under-urbanisation, elite continuity, nouveaux riches lifestyles, gentrification, post-socialist nostalgia, notions of ‘Americanisation’, and various appropriations of urban space.