Category: VOLUME X, No. 2

FUNERAL ORATION FOR THE FALLING LEAVES – HALOTTI BESZÉD A HULLÓ LEVELEKNEK

HUNGARIAN POETS OF TRANSYLVANIA A late 12th-century text known as the “Funeral Oration” (“Halotti beszéd”) is the first surviving complete work in (Old) Hungarian.1 Its opening is known to every schoolchild in Hungary: “My brethren, you see with your own eyes what we are: verily, we are dust and ashes.”

FOUR TRANSYLVANIAN POEMS

THE POOR RELATION FROM THE WOODS (A szegény erdei rokon, 1984) I 1. The poor relation from the woods stands at the door. 2. He has an archaic stare. 3. “thanks,” he mutters bashfully. 4. “… back home? Well … nowadays even the salt… what I mean is, not even

SIX POEMS

My paternal grandmother served as assistant choir leader – a precentress, no less – in our village church. My father was the youngest of her eleven sons, and thus heir to the family home. I and my five siblings lived in the same house and the same backyard with her.

SOPRON – A TRAVEL ESSAY

First we heard what sounded like gunfire, then came a shrieking sound like a festive rocket being launched. Only then did we see rising in the sky above the vines a great murmuration of starlings, circling and swirling in great arcs, coming together, coming apart, reforming. Thousands of starlings in

SZÉPHALOM – THE UTOPIA OF AN ENGLISH GARDEN – PART I

Ferenc Kazinczy, as an enthusiastic amateur and knowledgeable connoisseur, has long been synonymous with horticulture in Hungary, and in particular with the art of the English landscape garden. The profound effect that this new art form, which swept through Hungary at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, had

OUR AUTHORS

SALVATORE BABONES (New York, 1969) earned his PhD in sociology from The Johns Hopkins University (2003). An American citizen, he is now an associate professor of sociology at the University of Sydney. His research takes a longue durée approach to elucidating the macro-level structure of the world economy, with a