Category: Arts and Literature

THE RENAISSANCE STUDIOLO IN EUROPE

International Conference in the Esztergom Castle Museum of the Hungarian National Museum Esztergom, perched over the Danube, was the first capital of the Kingdom of Hungary between 1000 and 1256, as well as the oldest and most important cultural centre of the country. In 1256 the king moved to Buda

CSARODA AND THE HUNGARIAN REFORMATION – A TRAVEL ESSAY – PART II

Towards the end of the 16th century, Ottoman power temporarily waned and, with the Habsburgs in the ascendant, persecution of Protestants in Hungary again gathered strength. The ruthless regime of Giorgio Basta, attempting to Germanise and Catholicise Hungary on behalf of the Habsburgs between 1601 and 1604, is remembered as

THE DEVIL THAT FAILED: MURDER MOST UTOPIAN – DR MÁRIA SCHMIDT MEDIATES A CONVERSATION ON THE DOCUMENTARY AGE OF DELIRIUM

Dr. Mária Schmidt, Director of the House of Terror, mediated a conversation with thejournalist and filmmaker David Satter about his award winning documentary Age of Delirium, which tells the story of the fall of the Soviet Union as lived and experienced by the Soviet people. The discussion followed the first public screening in Hungary of Age of Delirium at the Pushkin cinema in Budapest under the

‘HE SET OFF TO TRY HIS LUCK’ – EXCERPT FROM FAIRY TALE THERAPY

When people start working with fairy tales in individual therapy or groups, they know very little about the tale itself – or indeed, about therelationshipexistingbetweenthemandthefairytale.They only see a story which may attract or repel them with elemental force, but they are unable to say why. Perhaps it is because they recognise themselves in the fairy tale’s protagonist. Or perhaps the conflict between the

THE PRINCE THAT DESIRED IMMORTALITY – A HUNGARIAN FOLK TALE

Once upon a time, beyond seventy-seven lands, even farther, beyond the Óperencia too, at the crumbling side of a ruined oven, in the seventy- seventh pleat of the skirt of an old woman there was a white flea, and right in the middle of it was a gleaming royal city,

BORIS PASTERNAK: STAR OF NATIVITY

“Star of the Nativity” is one of six gospel poems in the longer lyric sequence that Pasternak published as the last chapter of  Doctor Zhivago. Five of the six poems revolve around the Passion. “Star of the Nativity”is the one exception. Its aesthetic reminds me of a Roublev icon–painting as annunciation, as Pavel Florensky says – a likeness for an invisible, spiritual energy for which it is the leading wave. (Florensky is thinking by analogy of Jesus through whom God, although imageless, approaches in

RADIO TIMES: NOTES AND POEMS – PART III

A LIFE SPENT ON SHORT WAVE You have to be totally devoid of common sense not to believe in mystery. Mystery is there every step we take, literally under our noses. This is something every lathe operator who works with metal, every joiner who works with wood, every sculptor who

FORCED MARCH AND POEMS FROM A MUDDY NOTEBOOK

AB: In the Yad Vashem Museum in Jerusalem, the official memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, there is no mention of the name of Miklós Radnóti. The great Hungarian poet, who was born in Budapest into a Jewish family, later converted to Catholicism, but that didn’t save him from

POEMS FROM CAMP NOTEBOOK

Look – night is falling and dusk is absorbing the wild oak fence, edged with barbed wire, the hut’s so floating. A slow stare lets the frame of our bondage go and the wire’s tightness is just in the mind, just in the mind. Look, my love – see how