Vol. II, 1910

On 11 December 2008, the Friday Circle convened a roundtable discussion and exhibition celebrating the centenary of literary journal Nyugat (West, 1908-41). Anniversary events in Hungary included a year-long exhibition at the Petőfi Literary Museum, numerous talks, lectures and public events, a Nyugat 100 bus that toured the country for six months with a mobile exhibition, and a number of important archive resources being made available online, from audio recordings of Nyugat authors reading their works, texts and graphics, to personal correspondence.

Our contribution was intended as a reflection on Hungarian literature, culture and translation at Nyugat’s centenary. To this end, we invited speakers and guests to a roundtable discussion at the University College London Wilkins Refectory, to discuss the anniversary and broader questions of Hungary’s contentious relationship to ‘the West’, over coffee and Hungarian patisserie.

Following a welcome from Dr Daniel Abondolo in the chair, Tim Wilkinson, translator (Imre Kertész, Péter Zilahy, a number of academic monographs on history and culture) and essayist, opened the roundtable. Noting that Nyugat was by no means a representative cross-section of Hungarian literature at the time, Tim introduced the notion of the literary canon in order to address its scope and validity. If a major writer such as Dezső Szomory had dropped out of Hungarian literary life, then the construction of the canon should be the subject of critical attention. Tim then presented figures from the Nyugat era and from the past fifteen years, on the number of translations of Hungarian literature published, their authors (living or dead) and translators, observing that no great progress had been made in terms of quantity. Although the ‘free adaptations’ of Mór Jókai’s novels had a contemporary equivalent in popular translations of questionable quality, the translator can today choose from a wide range of excellent authors and works. 

Len Rix, translator of Antal Szerb, Magda Szabó, and others, continued with the theme of difficulty in finding and navigating Hungarian literature in translation. He stated his aim as a translator, to acquaint English-speaking readers with Hungarian literature, and then introduced a discussion of the foibles of the publishing industry. Publishers are timid, translators do not receive royalties, and editors might insist on ‘no adverbs’. For Hungarian literature to move from the margins into the mainstream, it needs translations that will catch on, and intelligent marketing expertise. In conclusion, Len rephrased Tim’s observation that the books would then have no difficulty selling themselves.

Dr Zsuzsanna Varga of the Centre for Russian, Central and East European Studies at the University of Glasgow, presented her work in progress: a searchable database of Hungarian Literature in English translation, 1969-2007. The database lists works of fiction, drama, and lyrical poetry, the best known and most widely translated genre of Hungarian literature, and focuses mainly on texts published in the UK and in Hungary. It includes monograph-length translations of Hungarian fiction, individual poets’ volumes, the contents of historical and thematic anthologies of poetry and short fiction, as well as many periodical items. The database included, at the time of Zsuzsa’s presentation, almost 3,500 titles.

Informal discussion broadened out to include Hungary’s view of ‘the West’ as superego, Nyugat as a ‘rainbow coalition’ of writers who didn’t agree on much, translation anthologies, the establishment of an East European film network at Sheffield Hallam University, and a selection of photographs and images from Nyugat.

Márai, Napnyugati őrjárat, 1943

The accompanying exhibition held in the School of Slavonic and East European Studies Library presented a selection of original journals, first editions and newspapers from the Library’s rich collection. Original and facsimile issues of Nyugat from 1908 to 1939 were on display, together with accompanying notes highlighting the early Secession aesthetic, the breadth of subjects addressed by contributors, and the diverse authors and works discussed in ‘Figyelő’, the reviews section, the austerity and pacifist controversies of First World War issues, as well as personality clashes, and changing editorial styles and staff, such as that imposed by the Second anti-Jewish Law in 1939, towards the end of the journal’s existence. Debates on aesthetics and ethics could be followed in the context of social and political upheavals over the first half of the twentieth century. Visitors could peruse newspapers from the first years of the twentieth century, Nyugat’s peer and rival journals, and a small number of first editions. We highlighted graphics and illustrations throughout, from portrait photographs, caricatures and illustrations, for instance of a ‘modern’ bookshop in England in 1934, to maps, advertisements for shoe cream and personals. The exhibition notes can be viewed or downloaded in pdf format here.

A reception followed at the SSEES Masaryk Senior Common Room. 

The co-convenors, Dr Gwen Jones and Eszter Tarsoly, would like to extend warm thanks to all those who took part, in particular SSEES library staff who suggested and organized the exhibition, and Jenny Rasell, for her assistance and enthusiasm on the day.

Nyugat, IV, 1911, 3

A small exhibition will accompany the roundtable discussion, ‘Hungary’s ‘West’?: Literature and Culture at the Centenary of Nyugat‘, and will be on display on Thursday 11 December until 5 pm, on the second floor of the SSEES library, 16 Taviton Street, London, WC1H 0BW.

Nyugat poster, Mihály Bíró, 1911

We are delighted to announce the roundtable discussion, ‘Hungary’s ‘West’?: Literature and Culture at the Centenary of Nyugat‘, to be held on Thursday 11 December, 3.00-6.00 pm, in the Old Refectory, Wilkins Building, University College London.

On the occasion of the centenary of the literary periodical Nyugat (‘West’, 1908-41), scholars, translators and journalists will discuss Hungarian literature, translation and culture, as well as broader notions of ‘the West’, to which students and friends of Hungarian and Central East European Studies are invited to take part.

Texts and visuals from Nyugat will be presented, and discussion will take place in an informal atmosphere. Keynote speakers and discussants include Dr Zsuzsa Varga, University of Glasgow, who will give a paper on the reception of western literature in Nyugat; Len Rix, noted for his popular translations of Antal Szerb and Magda Szabó; Tim Wilkinson, essayist and translator of, among others, Imre Kertész and Péter Zilahy; as well as scholars from UCL-SSEES. The event will be chaired by Dr Daniel Abondolo, Senior Lecturer in Hungarian Literature at SSEES, and is convened by Dr Gwen Jones and Eszter Tarsoly.

The poster comes from the National Széchenyi Library’s Nyugat centenary website.

Such criticism ‘presses buttons’ in the original, classifies into generations and ‘isms’, overlooks genre, and tends to confuse the elevated status of the poet with substance. Primarily, it is an exercise in the metalanguage of criticism, in which terms of debate, and the broader semantics, are presumed to be self-evident. In practice, this reinforces the privileged position of art and writing in Hungarian, and produces and reproduces a reliance upon a code that native speakers ‘get’, whether they like it or not. Attempts to translate this code yield opaque, impenetrable nonsense (and this also applies to similar literary histories written in English). The following excerpt from Antal Szerb’s Magyar irodalom történet (1935) on ‘Polgári irodalom’ illustrates this tendency:

A nyugatos orientáció igazi jelentősége az volt, hogy nem volt zsarnokian magyaros orientáció, nem volt teljesen a magyar múlthoz hozzáláncolva, európai szempontú szemléletével megoldotta a hagyományokat, levegőt, teret csinált, hogy egy újfajta magyarság, Ady és Móricz magyarsága mozogni tudjon. Az eredmény, melyet a Nyugat szellemi szabadsága legnagyobb képviselőiben létrehozott, nem abból állt, hogy a magyar irodalom nyugatibb lett, hanem hogy mélyebben és szabadabban magyar lett.

It is assumed here that ‘Hungarian’ and ‘Western’ (largely coterminous with ‘European’) are two discrete entities, between which ‘Hungarian literature’ is able to move. Literature is produced by ‘representatives’ of ‘orientations’. Such representatives can choose to detach themselves from a linear past of production and its attendant conventions (or ‘traditions’), having first created a ’space’ for themselves in which to do so. The quality of being ‘Hungarian’ can be quantified (to paraphrase: Nyugat created a space within which Hungarian literature could be more deeply and freely Hungarian). It remains unclear, however, whether Western or European literature can also be measured in terms of its essential western-ness or European-ness.

It is worth noting here that spatial metaphors of occupation and subjugation have not only survived the twentieth century, but have prospered because of it, to the extent that a great deal of contemporary cultural and public discourse deals in a hegemony of displacement, where things are simply in not in the place they should be. This displacement is, of course, politicised.

Rather than translating ‘polgári irodalom’ as ‘bourgeois literature’, it would be more constructive to explore the multiple referents of all things ‘polgár’. To take an admittedly random and necessarily superficial selection: the fourth volume of Spenót deals with ‘a nemzeti-polgárosult irodalom kibontakozása’ and its inevitable ‘phases’ between 1849 and 1905; the purported antonymy between ‘polgárság’ and ‘parasztság’ was cemented in the murky world of the inter-war népi-urbánus vita; the ‘polgári író’ survived for a while as a suspect creature under state Socialism; and now the term has undergone a serious attempt at appropriation by Fidesz. I won’t even go near ‘magyarság’, but would note that in this text, it appears to mean very little, if the ‘magyarság’ of Ady and Móricz consists of not much more than the fact that they were male native speakers of Hungarian who wrote in Hungarian in the early twentieth century. It was our opinion that, beyond this, they have nothing in common.

None of this means one cannot write about Hungarian literature well in Hungarian or, indeed, in any other language. Far from it. Rather, one should be wary of regurgitating the unhelpful, and boring clichés of the ‘classics’. An exegesis of this code remains unwritten!

With reference to translations of contemporary Hungarian literature, we noted that the big guns (Esterházy, Kertész and Nádas) are, naturally (!), Hungarian writers schooled in German culture. Translations of their works appear in German first, and all three pay close attention to translations of their works into German; translations into English do not appear to be a priority. Translations of Hungarian literature into English via the German are ten a penny. While the number of quality translations directly into English is gradually increasing, it is imperative that the broader circulation of sensible literary criticism, independent of both the Hungarian canon and hastily-applied cultural-studies-speak, accompanies this growth.

A Nyugat közleményei alapján összeállítottunk egy műfajonként rendezett tartalomjegyzéket a folyóiratban megjelent művekből, melyek közül mindenki szavazhat a saját maga által legjobbnak tartott 15 versre, 3 elbeszélésre, 1 regényrészletre és 3 cikkre, hogy összeállítsa a maga ízlése szerint legjobbnak tartott folyóirat számot.

If you are unable to read the above, voting for your favourite 15 poems, 3 short stories, 1 excerpt from a novel, and 3 articles from the Nyugat repertory is probably not worthwhile. Voting closes on 30 October, and registration is required here.

Tomorrow, Friday 13 June, we will be discussing translation of texts on Nyugat.

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.