Category: The Arts

DANCING ‘HUNGARIAN’ IN THE US – ON THE KÁRPÁTOK FOLK ENSEMBLE

Like thousands of others, my family left the homeland in 1956 after the Hungárián Revolution when I was only three years old. Although Hungarian was the spoken language in our new home, years of immersion into the American lifestyle must have concerned my parents enough to decide that I needed

LIFTING THE CURSE ON THE SEVSO TREASURE – PART II

One could ask how such extraordinarily large family treasures could emerge here during the Late Antiquity. The western part of Hungary belonged to Pannonia province during Roman times, with the Danube forming its borders in the north and the east. Rivers are excellent borderlines, since they are visible for all,

BRANCUSI AT HOME

A wooden house in a garden of mulberry trees, with a deep well for a summer’s day, a stone path over the lawn, and outhouses packed to the brim with corn-cobs. There is also an assortment of outhouses, barns and sheds with old farm implements and cartwheels attached to the

SILENCED VOICES

Hungarian Plays from Transylvania Silenced Voices – Hungarian Plays from Transylvania is an impeccable volume that collects five of the “forgotten playwrights” of Central Europe: András Sütõ (1927–2006), János Székely (1929–1992), Géza Páskándi (1933–1995), Csaba Lászlóffy (1939-), and Géza Szõcs (1953-). They are Hungarian dramatists from Transylvania, each represented by

LISZT IN ESZTERGOM

A Festival in his Memory “It is a quarter to 3. The last Amen of the Mass has just been pronounced… and I am coming to kiss your hands… while telling you that everything went according to your wishes, and that God blessed me. My Mass began at 1.30. As

TRANSLATING PASTERNAK’S HAMLET

Was it for this…(Wordsworth, The Prelude) Hamlet: Give us the foils…King: Give them the foils…(Shakespeare, Hamlet) O joy! that in our embersIs something that doth live…… those obstinate questioningsOf sense and outward things,Fallings from us, vanishings;Blank misgivings of a CreatureMoving about in worlds not realized,High instincts, before which our mortal NatureDid

RECONSTRUCTING ANCIENT EGYPTIANS

A New Exhibition at the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts Hundreds of mummies were bought in markets in Egypt in the late 19th century, and transported to North America and various European countries, including Hungary. That was easy in those days. Egypt seemed to be overflowing with mummies, and there

TRADITION AND CONTINUITY

Music is a realm of the human spirit – a realm perhaps a bit undervalued at the moment – that can reveal a great deal to us and offer insights into matters of fundamental essence. This aspect of music was perhaps most spectacularly evident in the revolutionary periods of the

TONAL INNOVATIONS IN FERENC LISZT’S EARLIER PIANO COMPOSITIONS

Over the course of the 20th century, and in particular in the latter half, Ferenc Liszt, who during his lifetime and even decades after his death had been known primarily as an unrivaled virtuoso, began to enjoy new fame as an innovative composer. Musicians and music historians began to discover

ODE TO HUNGARIAN

Now, not St. Gellért but St. Gellért’s maid,1 sing in my room – my mind – as twilight fades, your lips the first to sound Hungarian song under those twilit trees you sang among. The Tartar in your features, faint to trace, is still our secret, binds us to that