Árpád Kadarkay

Árpád Kadarkay

ÁRPÁD KADARKAY (Kesztölc, 1934). Though an outstanding student in the gymnasium in Esztergom, his university application in Cold War Hungary was returned as that of a “classalien,unqualified”. He became a miner in the coal pits of Dorog and Csolnok, “the pits of hell”. Conscripted into the Hungarian Army, 1954–56, he deserted in November 1956 and joined the Revolution. After the Soviet invasion, he emigrated to Vancouver, British Columbia, in March 1957. While working the graveyard shifts at Eburne Saw Mills, Vancouver, he earned Double Honours at the University of British Columbia,1958-1963, and on a fellowship, an MA in Political Science at UC Los Angeles, 1963–65, and a PhD in Political Philosophy, UC Santa Barbara, 1965–1971. He is Emeritus Professor of Politics and Government at the University of Puget Sound, and lives in Tacoma, Washington. He did his research on György Lukács on IREX Fellowships. His publications include Georg Lukacs: Life, Thought, and Politics (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), The Lukacs Reader (Blackwell, 1995), Human Rights in American and Russian Political Thought (University PressofAmerica, 1982),and an English translation of Journey in North America, 1831, by Sándor Bölöni Farkas (Santa Barbara, 1978).

WAR AND ART – PART IV (3)

Memoirs of a Hungarian Childhood Part IV (3) It is instructive to compare Hitler and Churchill as boys in school. Churchill at St George’s School, Ascot (1884). Headmaster’s remarks. General conduct: “very – bad – is a constant trouble to everybody and is always in some scrape. He cannot be

WAR AND ART – MEMOIRS OF A HUNGARIAN CHILDHOOD – PART IV (2)

Only humans are intimately associated with art and thought. What makes us unique in the great chain of being is our creative ability to interweave the literary and philosophical, the metaphysical and poetic impulses at their highest pitch. We humans don’t just exist and pass along genes. We think, we

WAR AND ART – MEMOIRS OF A HUNGARIAN CHILDHOOD – PART IV

The widows of Kesztölc, guardians of faith and hope, may their true plain hearts in prayers and piety rest. Widows so alike, that none do slacken in piety, none can die without prayers and whispers of immortality. My mother was no widow, but she prayed and hoped. For her, divine,

WAR AND ART – MEMOIRS OF A HUNGARIAN CHILDHOOD – PART III

Death and Art. The Russians had a curious fascination with music. I listened to their songs, their beloved balalaika and watched their gravity defying acrobatic dances. Dancing and singing, the Russians claimed to hear “language beyond the mind”(zaumni iazik). Language beyond the mind. Before beginning to write Tolstoy habitually seated

WAR AND ART – MEMOIRS OF A HUNGARIAN CHILDHOOD – PART II

The Germans that survived the carnage at Dobogókő and Pilisszentkereszt scattered in the frost-stiffened Pilis forest. Most of them were captured by the Russians and the wounded locked up in a school room in Kesztölc. The Russians covered the floor with straw and the wounded lay there. The air was

WAR AND ART – MEMOIRS OF A HUNGARIAN CHILDHOOD – PART I

IN MEMORIAM of my mother Paula Hertlik1910–2007 She taught us to live and love and be all that not harms freedom and dignity. *** “There is one experience that happens to nearly all human beings alike, and that is war.”George Orwell “War will be the music of the future.”Gyula Krúdy

HANNAH ARENDT – THE HUMAN CONDITION – PART II

You are one of those people I count among the great gifts of this world. Karl Jaspers As an immigrant in a nation of immigrants, it is in America that Arendt affirms the new-found love of the world. Exuberant, she tells Jaspers that she will name her new book on

HANNAH ARENDT: THE HUMAN CONDITION – PART I

You are one of those people I count among the great gifts of this world. Karl Jaspers There are a few moments in life when the height and depth of the significance of the occasion become too great for utterance, when the thrill of electric sympathy touches the whole generation at once, and brings us to our feet with a spiritual-intellectual shock. Two of

THE CAPTIVE MIND OF GYÖRGY LUKÁCS

In his magisterial three volume history, Main Currents of Marxism, Leszek Kołakowski wrote: „Lukács’s personality and his role in the history of Marxism are, and no doubt will be for a long time, a matter of lively controversy. It is agreed however that he was the most outstanding Marxist philosopher

ROAD TO LINCOLN – FROM MY GRANDFATHER’S HAYLOFT

The short and simple annals of the poor. Thomas Gray The bittersweet days of my youth – its trials, its joys, its adventures –, though never forgotten, came to an end one September morning when Grandma Anna Minczer announced: “You are going to school”. Oh as I was young, I