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Endre Ady |
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Endre
Ady (1877-1919), a legendary figure in Hungarian
literature, was born in the remote village of Érmindszent
in the Austrian-Hungarian Empire (now Romania). His father
was impoverished landed gentry, and his mother came from
a long line of Calvanist ministers, but Ady took to women
and drink before leaving college. After a brief flirtation
with law
school, he settled as a journalist in Debrecen. His
first book of verse appeared in 1899, and from 1900 to his
death in 1919, Ady wrote poetry constantly while drifting
from one newspaper to another, often as foreign correspondent.
In 1903 he met Adél Brül, the cultured wife
of a lawyer, who became his inspiration his Leda,
and with whom he lived in Paris
for much of the 1904-12 period. When Adél finally
left him, and after more affairs and sanatorium treatment,
Ady married a young girl, Bertuka
Boncza, and retired to Transylvania. Even here his nervous
temperament was not at peace, and, weakened by drink, he
died of pneumonia in Budapest in January 1919, a few months
after being elected Chairman of the Vörösmarty
Academy.
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Ady's poetry |
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Ady produced a large
body of work: over 1000
poems
in ten books,
plus numerous short
stories and articles. He travelled widely, and between
1908 and 1919 was closely associated with the journal Nyugat,
which featured some of the best writing of the period. The
contemporary
nature of Ady's contributions kept him in the public
eye as someone who advocated modernity and bewailed the
backwardness
of his country and its disastrous politics. The slaughter
of WWI, and the belligerence of its combatants, particularly
horrified Ady, and he made many enemies
in the conservative classes. His language was equally
uncompromising: he used melancholy
images in the Symbolist manner, but gave them a sharper
and more topical edge. He founded no school, but greatly
enlarged what Hungarian poetry could say. The best known
of his poems include At the Gare de L'Est, Upward Thrown
Stone, Blood and Gold, In an Old Wagon and Beautiful
Farewell Message, the last two dealing with his tormented
relationship with Leda.
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Hungarian
poetry |
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Hungarian
literature
is not
well known outside the country and émigré
circles. The Hungarian Poetry section of The New
Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (1993)
is fuller than anything available in English on the Internet.
But among more important Hungarian poets
should be mentioned Ferenc
Kölcsey (1790-1838) and Mihály
Vörösmarty (1800-55) of the Romantic period,
and Sándor
Petöfi (1823-48), whose patriotic and narrative
poetry is still a favourite. Árpád
Tóth (1886-1928) and Gyula
Juhász (1883-1937) were both Symbolist or Art
Nouveau poets. Very different were Mihály
Babits (1883-1941) and Dezsö
Kosztolányi (1885-1936): one a conservative member
of the intelligentsia and the other the successful author
of tender and musical pieces. Free verse, anarchism and
expressionism emerged during WWI ( Kassák,
Szabó,
Fodor,
Fenyö
and Áprily)
and the outstanding poet between the wars was Attila
József (1905-37) who assimilated surrealism and
expressionism to take proletarian poetry to new heights.
Hungarian poetry has been even more diverse since
WWII, particularly in the flight from Soviet
hegemony.
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Reading the Hungarian |
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Though not an easy language, Hungarian can
be learnt from book, cassette and CD sources at languagequest,
dealtime,
worldlanguage,
language
resources, and free internet courses can be found at
hungarian
language course, language
exchange and hungarotips.
You will need
some literary
background, and some knowledge of Hungary's
Magyar
and later
history.
Hungarian speakers will find these useful: Magnar
Versek, MEK, Magyar
Költészet, Hungarian
Literature and Hungarian
Cultural Collection. For anthologies of Hungarian poetry
try the American
Hungarian Foundation, Hungarian
Bookstore, Treasury of Hungarian Love Poetry, Quotations
and Proverbs by K Gatto (1996), Magyar Poetry
(1908) and Modern Magyar Lyrics (1926) both edited
by W. Loew, J. Horváth's A Little Treasury of
Hungarian Verse (1947) and M. Vajda's Modern Hungarian
Poetry (1977). Twentieth century and contemporary Hungarian
poetry can also be found in Arion,
The Hungarian Quarterly,
Anthology of Contemporary
Hungarian Literature, Hungarian
Literature Online and Geometry
listings. Much of literary criticism is in Hungarian or
Russian, but P. Rákov's Rhythm and Meter in Hungarian
Verse (1966) and A. Karátson's Le Symbolisme
en Hongrie (1969) may be useful.
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