How do Croatian writers relate to the traumas of the recent past – the Yugoslav war, the decades of communism and World War II? We talked to Bosnian Croatian writer Miljenko Jergović, author of Sarajevo Marlboro, a novel which presents the city under the siege.
Ladislaus Löb, Hungarian-born professor of German Studies in England and translator of Béla Zsolt's Nine Suitcases, described in a book his way from Hungary through Bergen-Belsen to Switzerland in 1944. György Vári talks to the author about Nine Suitcases, the disappearance of family history and the debate around his rescuer, Rezső Kasztner.
"Lot has long been a hero of mine. A morally charged hero, which is why he has such a difficult fate—a true person." – Imre Kertész talks to János Kőbányai about Hungarian literature and his forthcoming book.
In sketching a portrait of George Konrád, it is my intention to delineate the features of a creative personality whose likeness is deeply embedded in history; an Eastern European intellectual whose life history, as well as the motifs of his work, are deeply interwoven with the public history of the region.
There will always be that one author who defies description, who does not follow any definite movement: that one writer whose works cannot be pared down to fit into any one genre or style. Such is the case with István Szilágyi.
"...if you’re Hispanic you’re not expected to be clever, but interesting and exotic." – The Catalan philosopher Xavier Rubert de Ventós was the guest of his Hungarian publisher Typotex and the Cervantes Institute in Budapest on the occasion of the Hungarian release of his book Por que filosofia?
" In Russia, women are considered the better, more noble half of society, and I attempt to illustrate and emphasize this in my work." – Russian author Ludmila Ulitskaya spoke with us at the Budapest Book Festival, where she was this year's Guest of Honour.
"...our definition of literary genres is in serious need of revision." – Basque author Julia Otxoa and Spanish writer Eugenio Fuentes were invited as guest authors to Budapest’s 16th Book Festival. We asked them about their own as well as each other's work.
Swedish writer and illustratror of children's books Sven Nordqvist, best known for his Pettson and Findus (Festus and Mercury) series, was a guest at the 2009 Budapest Book Festival.
Jean Mattern, representing Gallimard, answered our questions concerning the current state of publishing in France, as well as the recent release of works by Hungarian authors.
Similar to the character of Gyuri Köves in Imre Kertész’s Fatelessness, Gyuri Azarel is a young boy capable of intellectual observations far above what would normally be expected. Released from the rules and conventions that define an adult’s existence, a child can ask and say anything; in the case of Azarel, this results in a narrator who hides behind the mask of childhood in order to gain free expression.
An interview with Á. Nádasdy, C. Whyte and A. Gerevich
"Three Men on Love" was an evening devoted to a discussion between poets Ádám Nádasdy, Christopher Whyte and András Gerevich as part of the Europoetica Festival, held in Budapest in April 2008. The three poets talked about love and issues of literary creation in relation to homosexuality.
In this latest addition to the series of interviews on our sister website Litera, Tim Wilkinson looks back on his career as a literary translator while also discussing his personal dreams and revealing which works have offered the greatest challenges, yet still proved to be the most rewarding.
There are poets who are moved to write by the radio waves of language. Others simply look – they look until they see that what they see is not what they see. It is not a pipe, it is not a rose, it is not a bouquet of tulips. Until that certain "watermark" appears, "from which we may state that behind the startled and mundane actualities something must be standing in complete motionlessness."
”It irritates me more than anything when the translator takes upon herself or himself to redress a political imbalance by mangling a perfectly open text just to show that they are not simply co-opting it.” – Poet-translator George Szirtes answers questions by HLO’s brother site, Litera, as part of a series of interviews with translators.
In many crucial respects, Géza Ottlik differs from the majority of the great figures of Hungarian literature. In his youth, he was a track-and-field runner; at university, he studied mathematics, and he could play bridge on a professional level. His Adventures in Card Play (written together with Hugh Kelsey) is considered as one of the greatest and most original books on bridge theory ever.
Who was Zsuzsa Beney? There are many answers to the question. She was certainly one of the most original voices in recent Hungarian poetry whose originality was vouchsafed by a voice and a theme which was both consciously and unconsciously monolithic.
For the English-speaking public, the oeuvre of Miklós Szentkuthy (1908–1988) is completely unknown. Yet there is a large camp of ardent Szentkuthy readers in his native Hungary, and in France his ten translated works have created something very close to a cult.
"I’ve been a Jewish Hungarian or a Hungarian Jew at various stages of my life. Today, I am a Jew when I hear that the Jews are mean and pushy. And I am a Hungarian when people say that the Hungarians are fascists."
Bodor’s districts are comparable to the Zone in Tarkovsky’s Stalker, although here they are reservations rather than sacred spots for purification and salvation. In these districts, the primordial aspirations of power are enacted, human solidarity takes the shape of mutual dependence and the only adequate response is flight.
Móricz's novel Relations, recently published in English, is a career story in the Balzac vein, a kaleidoscopic image of the hierarchic society of a Hungarian small town, as well as a description of the "natural history" of corruption, the all-encompassing network of swindles.
"As a writer this is what I’ve been interested in exploring: people buying into the things that society demands of them and then getting damaged by that."
Karinthy is a contemporary author. To put it in a laconic and slightly simplified way, Karinthy created Budapest’s sense of humour, created the absurd and the grotesque. He recognised the eccentric in metropolitan man, and, following the lead of one of his role models, Swift’s Gulliver, highlighted the Chaplinesque minor characters of this ever more technical world.
On 9 November 1944, Miklós Radnóti was executed by firing-squad. He was 35. When his body was exhumed the following year, a notebook full of poems – some written within days of his death – was found in his greatcoat.
Béla Zsolt was one of the great eroticists of politics who channel their libido and even all their madness into social struggle. A characteristic anecdote is that he was newly married when he woke up in the morning and declared in a firm and defiant tone to his somewhat startled wife: “Bethlen’s regime must be overthrown.”
You only have to speak the name Petri and you find yourself in the middle of a subculture – the period of Kádárist consolidation, which followed in the wake of the 1956 revolution. His poetry was a type of civil political poetry in an age in which readers looked for covert messages of resistance and freedom in every line of poetry.
Örkény brought something radically new to literature by creating fantastic realism, which appeared to be the only valid and viable formal solution to fit a reality that had turned completely fantastic and absurd. Behind each of the almost Dadaistic situations he depicts we sense the workings of history.
The Hungarian Proust – this commonplace holds most stubbornly when it comes to Krúdy. Yet, there are no two more diametrically opposed artistic sensibilities.
Ten minutes with Rushdie is not much – only enough to learn which Hungarian film director influenced him; what he thinks the problem with Islam is; and in what language a British-Indian writer dreams.
Péter Nádas was interviewed about his life and work over the last five years, his short-lived career as a dramatist, as well as his collection of essays and short stories recently published in English.
The life and work of Géza Csáth, a talented and versatile child of the fin-de-siècle – writer, music theoretician, psychiatrist, drug addict, lucid portrayer of altered states of consciousness and a man who murdered his own wife – has been rediscovered in recent years.
For Magda Székely, the memory of the scandal of genocide never came to an end. She lived through the horrors over and over again so as to offer some sort of an answer to those who died.
While moments of irony are few and far between, Hungarian poetry is oppressively aware of the unmitigated predicament of humanity as a whole, or at least that of a national community. This is the kind of poetic diction (among many other things) that Endre Kukorelly deconstructs when he conceives poetry as an ironic view of the self, a medium in which radical exposure of the I becomes a subject of reflection.
These urban intellectual women had lost their livelihoods and their positions in the wake of the 1956 Revolution or in the Rákosi era: jobless, they sit around drinking coffee, sipping cheap cognac, smoking working men’s cigarettes and finding comfort in each other’s beds. Escaping from their unheated bed-sitters, they while away the time in cheap bistros pondering whether to kill themselves or escape to the West.
Tamás Jónás' poems lead us into a merciless world. There is no resting place: even in the midst of a family idyll, the individual is not allowed a moment of respite. He continually has to answer for some sin that he either has or has not committed, or call on others to answer for the sins they have committed against him.
In his study on 17th century Flemish painting, Zbigniew Herbert was surprised to find that while contemporary masters of a good reputation tried their luck abroad, the truly great, such as Vermeer, Hals or Rembrandt, never crossed the Alps. In fact, they never ventured as far as the nearest country.
László Krasznahorkai is not a fashionable writer. He is marching directly against what the age is about: that literature should become part of the entertainment industry. He is failing to adapt smoothly to what is going on. This art is powerfully pitched against the intention to skim through life laughing or just sticking it out as best you can without taking any particular risk.
"This was a pledge we had made together. We knew very well that we could not have children. If we did, we would expose ourselves to the regime. And this was a generation which did not want to get involved in a phoney game." – Magda Szabó (89) talks to writer János Háy.
Gábor Gyukics (1958) translates Hungarian poetry into English, American poetry into Hungarian, and is also a poet in his own right, writing in both languages.
On the publication of Sándor Tar in English translation
Tar’s prose is about nothing else but poverty. Yet, for him this is far more than a plain quality of social existence; it is an ontological predicament. His texts are socially embedded, but they are not restricted in relevance.
"...we were superficial at the time of the turn of the century... We really believed we were invulnerable." – Born in Hungary, Terézia Mora (1971) has been living in Berlin from 1990. She is the author of a collection of short stories and a novel, written in German.
All my love poems have been written to men. Only in Hungarian, the pronouns do not have genders like in most languages. The third person singular is neutral; there is no difference between he and she.
Over the recent period, a number of authors have left contemporary Hungarian literature and entered the national pantheon who had one crucial trait in common, namely, that they may fairly be called the last "big game" of modern day Central and Eastern European literature.
Agota Kristof (70) paid a brief visit to Budapest for the first time after four years. This time, she was participating in the “Exile” programme focussing on emigrant authors from Eastern Europe. Agota Kristof arrived in Neuchâtel as a refugee in 1956 with her husband and young baby, and she has lived there ever since.
At the mega-size fancy dress ball of “Budapest rock’n’roll” he created a costume combining the decadent components of the fin-de-siècle. He was in search of a world which makes its being conspicuous by its decline and disappearance.
Faludy was the hero of the age but not in an ascetical sense - he was a man whose ecstatic love of life still spared him from resorting to opportunism and one whose passions were as powerful as his moral consistency.
László Márton's historical novels, his talent as a performer and, most of all, his legendary erudition might have scared anyone away… and still, we tried.
One of our most versatile poets. An arrestingly colourful personality. If you ask me, he is the person I would hire to popularise poetry in secondary school classes. His career as a poet started late, but has remained unbroken ever since; his life's course has been structured and criss-crossed by profound human drama.
All poets are lonely. This commonplace holds true despite the fact that poets are constantly being labeled and categorized. Thus, while Pilinszky's loneliness is not unparalleled; his, however, lies in its absolute uniqueness.
Csoóri’s poetry is an ever-alert sounding board of a sinking world. He carries on his shoulders the weight of a heritage from Atlantis. In Csoóri’s later poetry, the lines owe their unremitting dramatic power to the pain in the eyes of the man who watches the dark flow of disintegration.
Trams, streets, promenades, familiar props of the cityscape serve as unsympathetic background for the speaker’s lonely, elegiac voice; changes of all kinds, transformations of shape, movement and personality take place, almost always intimately bound up with the identity of the speaker.
His stature and his elegance, his dignity and his fallibility all came from another world. In that world, there was his father, Zoltán Somlyó, and there was Paris.
"1989 did not bring the kind of catharsis that had been expected of it. The commemorations are, of course, lovely, but they only take us further away from the possibility of catharsis. But why should I want young people of today to go through the scandal of Auschwitz? How could they go through it?"- An interview with Imre Kertész by writer and Litera editor Gábor Németh.
"I had to go as far as America, to get to know the Hopis and the Pueblo Indians, to find my way back home. All in all, I wanted to get away; and long after I finally did, I realised it had been a mistake – in a way, a failure. However, it took me half of my life to understand this."
"Three writers invited another thirty, and created a common work of art, in which 33 original voices speak, separately and together. 33 authors speak about desire, passion, intimacy, corporeality, love and violence in 56 pieces of writing." - An interview with the editors.
"At the time of my second childbirth I had prepared myself: I took in a notebook and a pen, I lay down on the high birth bed, and put the pen and pad next to me, saying I shall write down, I must write down what I feel. But in the event the experience itself was so stormy that, of course, I did not manage to write down anything: but the pen and paper were there. I had done my bit."
"I started to get annoyed by the fact that the melody hijacked me, I could not get free of my own hearing. It is almost as if you had to scratch the original text from underneath this covering layer. You get an attractive thing like a palimpsest, and it hides the thing which could really work for you. "
"If for several centuries we all have to be jointly and uniformly silent about the body, this means that we need to be silent about a number of other ramifications, too. This means we expose ourselves to some truly dangerous things."
Magda Szabó's novel, The Door, is on the long list for this year's Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. HLO interviewed the translator of the novel, Len Rix, who has also translated Antal Szerb's cult novel, Journey by Moonlight.
"The stuff of this novel is closer to an anthropological or ethical description – it is more attuned to answering the question 'what sort of a being is man?' And in answering this it will treat other people’s opinions and beliefs as simple raw material, just as a doctor who gives a person an anaesthetic and does not take into account their sensitivities in other walks of life or worry about their nakedness."
The last interview with recently deceased writer István Eörsi on writing children’s poems about cancer; on how being in prison after the 1956 revolution makes one a better writer; on Georg Lukács; and on how someone who loves pig brawn and brandy cannot hear the music of the spheres.
"It is actually quite fortunate that the first three volumes took him eighteen years to write. Ten years ago Nádas’ implacable humanism would have caught us much more unprepared." – An interview with the publisher of Parallel Stories, a new three-volume novel by Péter Nádas.
Captivity was a conscious emigration into the great events of a great era. Our world here, the world we were socialised into, is a small and shabby world. Being part of a small nation is usually not favourable for great prose and drama.
György Spiró’s new novel Captivity (Fogság), the Hungarian literary sensation of the year, is a reconstruction of the period from around the death of Christ until the Jewish War. Uri, the protagonist of the novel, is selected to be a member of the delegation that takes the Pesach tax of Roman Jews to Jerusalem. Through his adventures we get an extremely lively picture of contemporary Rome, Jerusalem and Alexandria. – An interview with the author by Erika Csontos.
The poet whose first two volumes initiated a radical process of renewal within modern Hungarian poetry was born on December 8 1938. What we know about him is minimal: he was born and educated in Budapest, and was taught during his grammar school years by the poet Ágnes Nemes Nagy, who so to speak introduced him to literary society.
As Ernő Szív I write two types of feuilleton, one is about 40 to 45 lines of rambling stuff that appears six times a month. The other is more like a short story in a national literary weekly. I wrote the children's novel against depression. It worked - I can recommend the method to anybody.
"I have needed many coincidences and the passing of years to understand what tragic consequences it can have if we are not able to accept the rules of Nature, and in particular the mysteriousness of human beings."
Imre Kertész is the first - and to this day only - Hungarian Nobel-prize laureate in literature, and, for this reason, probably one of the most talked about Hungarian writers in recent years.
"I think you have to be good at forgetting - it is part of normal life. Writers, on the other hand, have a different job description, if any. A writer cannot really afford to forget in the way which is necessary for other people for a healthy life. This makes life slightly more difficult, but it is our own fault - nobody asked us to be writers. "
László Krasznahorkai's books contain a deeper knowledge about the fine structure of the ever darkening world and its laws that have been invalidated in our modern world.
"I have a more intense relationship with people than with the objects of nature or sentences or works of art. Life is always primary; everything else is feedback."
