Category: Arts and Culture

Poems of Hungary, Second Selection A Note on the Poems The Editor’s first set of selections, in the previous issue, emphasized social-political themes. This second set emphasizes art-making intention: hearing and seeing, perceptions shaped into poems, paintings. The earlier set made reference to Wallace Stevens, but this set looks more

Chapters 5 and 6 Born in Budapest in 1935, George Jonas first spoke gibberish, then German, and finally settled on Hungarian in preparation for a lifetime of writing in English. Since 1956 Jonas has lived in Toronto. The excerpt here is from a work-in-progress entitled Me, A Novel. When completed,

Poems of Hungary AUTHOR’S NOTE  We arrived in Budapest for a year’s stay on the day Princess Diana died, 1997, so these poems speak for an earlier era, then recently post-communist. The eleven poems the Editor has selected, six in this issue and five in the next, were written as

Letter to the Editor from Frank Koszorús, Jr., Washington DC In march 1944, greater Hungary’s Jewish population exceeded 800,000. Nazi Germany invaded Hungary and installed a pro-German government that month, drastically changing the situation of the country and resulting in the destruction of its Jewry, which had survived under the

Marina Tsvetaeva and The Poem of the Mountain Too much rubbish? Little sweeping? –Grieving mountains! Poets coupled by a single dash –suspended…over nothingness – the no one of our bodies.(Marina Tsvetaeva, An Attempt at a Room) “What is writing poetry but translating?” Tsvetaeva asked in a 1926 letter to Rilke. Is not it always a question

János Xántus, the 19th Century Naturalist Two passages may stand side by side to illustrate the appraisal and achievement in the United States of John (János) Xántus, 19th century Hungarian naturalist and traveller of the American West. The fi rst is what Xántus himself wrote to his Hungarian editor, István

In Memoriam Tamás Körösényi Sculptor – (18 February 1953 – 25 June 2010) “Hello, this is Tamás Körösényi”, he would say on the phone, quietly but firmly, always a bit in a hurry. He had something to tell me quickly: about his plans, exhibitions, publications, assignments for his students. He

The 43rd Hungarian Film Week from a documentary filmmaker’s point of veiw The 43rd Hungarian Film Week almost did not happen. After it was made clear that no state funding had been set aside for the event, fi lmmakers resigned themselves to the fact that it would be the first

Can we talk about Hungarian wine, Austrian wine, French wine? If we can, is the specificity linked to nation states, or is it purely geographical? Surely, no one would deny that South Africa is not the same as Italy… My foremost aim here is to propose a series of arguments