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  • Worlds of Hungarian Writing; National Literature as Intercultural Exchange by András Kiséry, Zsolt Komáromy, and Zsuzsanna Varga
  • Enikő Molnár Basa
András Kiséry, Zsolt Komáromy, and Zsuzsanna Varga (eds.), Worlds of Hungarian Writing; National Literature as Intercultural Exchange. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2016, 272 pp.

Contemporary literary criticism tends to focus on popular themes. Lesser known literatures generally receive short shrift, yet, these works often provide insights and comparative lessons which popular (or major) examinations do not. A case in point is Words of Hungarian Writing: National Literature as Intercultural Exchange a collection of essays that is a sign of the increased interest in Hungarian literature in the English-speaking world. As the acknowledgment states, the work was "originated in two conference panels organized by the Hungarian Discussion Group of the Modern Language Association for the MLA'S 2012 Convention held in Seattle." (ix).

The work opens with an essay on "World Literature in Hungarian Literary Culture," followed by twelve studies addressing issues such as translatability and the fact that the most popular writers (Kertész, Nádas, Krasznahorkai, Eszterházi) "are not representative of the entirety of Hungarian literature" (7). Thus, the purpose of this book is to "open up Hungarian literary culture to foreign, Anglophone readers by highlighting its intercultural contexts, but also to identify some of the ways in which such contexts may broaden the understanding of a national literary culture from a vantage point within that culture" (9).

"Wordsworth in Hungary" by Zsolt Komáromy and "Negotiating the Popular/National Voice" by Veronika Ruttkay eschew trite parallels with German literature, and the overused trope of German impact, and point to a broader spectrum of connections and affinities. Komáromi argues that cultural memory is an important aspect of poetry and thus Wordsworth is connected to Hungarian poetry in spite of no obvious borrowing. Ruttkay's thesis is that the poetry of Robert Burns [End Page 380] played an important role in the emergence of folk poetry in Hungary; it is an interesting argument and sheds some light on the way the Pre-Romantics influenced the evaluation of folk song and folklore throughout Europe. She addresses affinities between the great Hungarian poet, Sándor Petőfi and Thomas Moore, and Robert Burns. In his "The Bards of Wales," János Arany used metaphor to link the opposition of Welsh bards to Edward I and refusal of Hungarian poets, including himself, to singing the praises of Franz Joseph who had repressed the Revolution in 1848.

In addressing the role of women in the 19th century Zsuzsanna Varga argues that "Their careers were helped not only by individual factors, but also by the mutually stimulating agenda of cultural and national emancipation, when national emancipation did not come about at the expense of denying foreign influences, but cultural transfer was understood to be part of patriotic duties" (88). In "The Hungarian Verse Novel in a Cross-Cultural Perspective" Julia Bacskai-Atkari reviews the Hungarian verse novel of László Arany and places it alongside noted English examples from Robert Southey to ballad-like works of Coleridge, Walter Scott and Byron. The genre is best examined in cross-cultural terms for two reasons: 1) "it is a unique byproduct of self-conscious generic experiments related to the nineteenth-century epic that can be observed in various national literatures" and: 2) the Hungarian verse novel, while a response to the Hungarian situation, has "its immediate incentives [in] the verse narratives of Byron and Pushkin (Don Juan and Eugene Onegin in particular)" (93–94). Even more telling of European cultural unity is Antal Szerb's The Queen's Necklace, as Agnes Vashegyi MacDonald argues: he found an objective correlative to the Europe of his times in the ultimate collapse of the ancien régime" (110).

Hungarian émigré scholars contributed to the mediation among literatures, especially the 1956 generation who "had become part of the West, and could, by virtue of their status, serve as mediators rather than merely substitutes for a genuine Hungarian culture oppressed at home" (128). Tamás Demény's examination of the connections between Hungarian Roma and African-American...

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