Category: VOLUME VI, No. 5

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

SZELMENC: THE DIVIDED VILLAGE

The little town of Szelmenc, better known as the divided village, derives its uniqueness from its resemblance to a miniature version of Cold War Berlin, thanks to a troublesome border. With its population of Hungarians, Slovaks and Ukrainians, sleepy little Szelmenc sits right on the Slovakian–Ukrainian border, halfway between Uzhgorod/Ungvár

SOLDIER, SALTED

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

ONE TOWN, MANY BOOKS

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 CASTLE CHAPEL IN ESZTERGOM – THE ROYAL SEAT OF BÉLA III

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

OUR AUTHORS

ATTILA BALÁZS (Novi Sad/Újvidék, 1955) is a writer, translator and journalist, author of twelve books of prose and founder of the cultural magazine Ex Symposion. He worked as editor for the YU Radio–Television, then moved to Budapest in 1991. For a time he worked as war correspondent, then as political