In 1889, Bertha von Suttner published her novel Die Waffen nieder! (Down with Weapons!), hailed as one of the most important works of anti-war literature. Suttner shows the brutality and senselessness of war and presents profound arguments against violence and militarism. Marlene Streeruwitz’s essay on Bertha von Suttner, published in 2014, is a highly topical reflection on the Nobel Peace Prize-winner’s text, which is largely forgotten today. The article aims to analyze Suttner’s novel and Streeruwitz’s essay comparatively and to work out a universal contribution of women writers to pacifist thinking and peace policy.
History of Austria. Liechtenstein. Hungary. Czechoslovakia
This paper reconstructs the story of a so far unknown manuscript, a handwritten, personal account detailing a 1927 journey to the United States and Canada with the primary purpose of selling Hungarian wine as part of a more extensive international venture. The article introduces the research that led to the identification of the writer of the manuscript –written on sheets of paper from a Canadian hotel – and outlines the background of a fascinating business project, thereby positioning the text not only as a unique example to be studied with the tools of microhistory but also placing it in the broader, transatlantic historical and political environment of the time. The text is also studied and presented as a piece of travel writing that provides unique insights into Hungarian perceptions of North America in the 1920s and the Hungarian images of Canada and the United States.
Twentieth-century art music composed by Bartók, Ligeti and Penderecki constitutes a large portion of the soundtrack for Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film adaptation of Stephen King’s novel, The Shining. This music was not written for the film, and the use of these pieces might leave listeners doubtful as to the legitimacy of a connection between them and the scenes in the movie they were used to enhance. However, in the case of the Bartók work excerpted in the film – Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta (1936) – an analysis of the subject-position of the music allows for another interpretation. Eric Clarke identifies subject-position in music as “the way in which characteristics of the musical material shape the general character of a listener’s response or engagement,” a definition based on earlier explorations of subject-position in film studies. My analysis of the subject-position of Bartók’s piece and the scenes in which excerpts of the work appear in The Shining reveals similarities in their potential effect on an audience member.
As the above title indicates, because of the publication schedule of Hungarian Cultural Studies this bibliography straddles 2019-2020, covering the period since the publication in Fall of 2019 of last year’s bibliography in this journal. Each year’s bibliography may also be supplemented by earlier items, which were retrieved onlyrecently. Although this bibliography series can only concentrate on English-language items, occasional items of particular interest in other languages may be included. For a more extensive bibliography of Hungarian Studies from about 2000 to 2010, for which this is a continuing update, see Louise O. Vasvári, Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek, and Carlo Salzani. “Bibliography for Work in Hungarian Studies as Comparative Central European Studies.” CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture (Library) (2011): http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweblibrary/hungarianstudiesbibliography
Hungarian director István Szabó’s films usually feature the story of a young man on his way to becoming an adult during turbulent times in Hungarian history. Strangely enough, however, these stories are framed both visually and narratively in the presence of some female character—the plots, in fact, derive from the actions and decisions of these females. Zoltán Dragon’s paper charts the underlying narrative and visual design in one of the best-known films made by Szabó, Sunshine, identifying the pattern of visual storytellingwhose anchor point is one specific female figure, Vali, in the background. Vali’s role as a focalizing agency is to frame the predominantly male story and reveal the hidden or silenced content that creates an alternative family story.
Hock, Beáta. 2013. Gendered Artistic Positions and Social Voices - Politics, Cinema and the Visual Arts in State-Socialist and Post-Socialist Hungary. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. 284 pp. illus.
Reviewed by Lilla Tőke, Assistant Professor, City University of New York, LaGuardia Community College
The aim of this paper is to analyze the complex relation between autobiography and fiction in the work of the Hungarian psychiatrist, writer and music critic Géza Csáth (the pen name of József Brenner [1887–1919]), in particular his 1912–1913 diary, usually called the morfinista napló [diary of a morphine addict], by comparing its Polish and French translations as a means of highlighting alternative interpretations of the diary itself. Because the choices that were made when translating such fragmented texts already imply more or less developed interpretations of them, variations between them can be examined side by side in order to reveal sometimes widely diverging understandings of the diaries’ meaning, purpose and general structure. The decision-making that led to the translators’ choices is not only examined here case by case, but also in the context of an assumed overarching reading of these diaries, accounting for a sense of consistency in their differentiation patterns. Scrutinizing these choices allows for the discussion of relevant internal contradictions within the text itself, which in turn accounts for its richness and poetic value; they invite us to immerse ourselves into a world of tangled streams of thoughts where life and work crisscross, into a narrative that is neither a proper diary nor a novel. Beyond attempting to assess the degrees of validity of the given translations, this paper focuses mainly on showcasing them as alternative yet equally relevant interpretative stepping stones into Csáth’s monstrously complex and tormented literary world.
Juckes, Tim. 2012. The Parish and Pilgrimage Church of St Elizabeth in Košice - Town, Court, and Architecture in Late Medieval Hungary (Architectura Medii Aevi 6). Turnhout: Brepols. XII+292 pp. 224 figs.
Reviewed by Marianne Sághy, Central European University (CEU), Budapest
Stauffer-Bern’s biography by Otto Brahm can be regarded as an important source for Titorelli, the painter in Kafka’s novel Der Prozeß. The way in which Kafka used this source recalls the idea of “lethetic Reading”, which Clayton Koelb introduces in order to explain the relationship between Kafka’s text Das Schweigen der Sirenen and Homer’s episode in The Odyssey. Although Kafka may have used Stauffer-Bern as a basis for his own creation, he used only a few of the details he found in Brahm’s biography. The importance of this source can then be appreciated only if we consider the story of Stauffer as the missing link between Titorelli and Kafka’s later creation of Gracchus.
History of Austria. Liechtenstein. Hungary. Czechoslovakia