Category: Arts and Letters

In 1975, I co-edited a book entitled Pesnici Vojvodine (The Poets of Vojvodina). The purpose of the book was to present poems written in the languages spoken in Vojvodina: Serbo-Croatian, Hungarian, Slovak, Romanian and Ruthenian. I may add that – along with Hungarians, Slovaks, Romanians and Ruthenians – Croats represent

Rudderless (Kormányeltörésben, 1971) is one of the truly great Hungarian poems written by my generation. Yet, it is hardly known by the wider public either in Hungary or internationally. István Domonkos already lived up North with his Swedish wife at the time of writing, making his living as a tennis

It behoves the reviewer – and any author of non-fiction for that matter – to disclose her or his preconceived notions, reveal whatever conscious biases she or he may harbour. Indeed, I am predisposed to like the work of György Ferdinandy, for his journeys in exile have paralleled some of

MR CSATÁRI I waited eleven years for my first visa back to Hungary. To be more precise, for a permit to stay for two weeks, supplied on a purpose-designed form. This was all I had to present at the border, so my trip would leave no sign of the date

It is difficult to say anything new about the work of Ádám Farkas. His evolving oeuvre has been followed for over four decades by sharp-eyed artists and sharp- witted critics. It is an oeuvre that has evolved from a handful of seemingly digestible principles, which the artist himself has repeatedly

If we imagine an almost straight line connecting Novi Sad, formerly in Yugoslavia, with Odessa, one of the points of embarkation for emigrants to the New World, then at what is roughly its midpoint can be found the modern-day Romanian city of Sibiu. Close to that city is a small

I’m a modern Everyman. I use books to find for myself a dwelling place, if only a temporary one, within the pastiche of narratives and experiences, facts and fantasies. I leaf through the books, do not drink and do not drive – I smoke and fly, through the tunnel under

The art object, as a newly victorious fetish (and not the sad, alienated fetish) must work to deconstruct its traditional aura, its authority, its power of illusion to stand out in the pure obscenity of commodity.(1) Jean Baudrillard “How useless is painting”, wrote Pascal, “which attracts admiration by the resemblance

The city of Esztergom (known as Strigonium in Latin and as Gran in German), perched on a rocky plateau rising above the Danube in the middle of the Carpathian Basin, directly along the limes of the Roman empire, was the location chosen by the Grand Princes of Hungary to hold

Historically, the international acknowledgment of Hungarian artists has been regrettably poor. There have been attempts, from time to time, to remedy this situation – I myself have spent decades pursuing this painstaking enterprise – but the effect of the often thrilling results will not hold for long unless we manage