Central European Cultures

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2023-12-15

Psalm Paraphrases in Latin in Sixteenth Century Hungary

Anna Posta — 2023-12-15

The most popular trend in sacra poesis (sacred poetry) in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was the paraphrase of psalms into Latin. In parallel with numerous European examples, there are a good number of paraphrases of psalms from this period in Hungarian Neolatin poetry. Psalm transcriptions in Latin are associated with Georgius Purkircher (Psalm 72, 79), Christianus Schesaeus (Psalm 79, 90), Caspar Piltz (Psalms 3, 4, 23, 31, 51, 79, 80, 91, 110, 127), Johannes Sylvester (Psalm 79), Georgius Ostermaier (Psalms 1, 42, 122–126, 133), Laurentius Szegedinus (Psalms 51, 128), Valentinus Crispus (Psalms 42, 51) and Johannes Bocatius (Psalm 103). In my study, I attempt to outline the main similarities and differences between the paraphrases of the psalms in Hungary and Germany by selecting from this corpus of texts, by means of a detailed philological analysis of the poems and by highlighting the parallels between them.

The Hungarian Bouvard et Pécuchet

Ágnes Hansági — 2023-12-15

Mór Jókai’s satiric novel Egy ember, aki mindent tud [A Man who Knows Everything] was first published in 12 parts in the illustrated satirical weekly Az Üstökös between 2 May and 18 July 1874. Its German translation was published parallel with the Hungarian text. This paper shows that, in several regards, Jókai’s short novel is parallel to Flaubert’s unfinished, subversive masterpiece Bouvard et Pécuchet. The structure of the two novels is obviously similar; both are built on a chain of metonymic contacts of failed “projects”. Although in the fields of science and knowledge the heroes “encounter” do not follow the same order, the extent of thematic coincidence is surprising. Jókai’s and Flaubert’s novels are built on a scenic or episodic structure, the cut-at-will-form (Moretti). Both texts may be read as a narrative telling the story of the birth of the dilettante as a product of popular communication and mass media.

Merchants, Sorcerers, Fire Worshippers: ‘Snapshots’ of Persian Culture and the Central European Mirror

Márton Pál Iványi — 2023-12-15

Critiques of Western Orientalism have been well-known since the Saidean perspective, and in-depth analysis of Frontier Orientalism has also gained prevalence and academic recognition. Yet, another tendency, namely, that of exoticizing Persia, has not been given wide-ranging attention. This paper delivers a theoretical and empirical framework describing another variant of Central European Orientalism, which may be remotely reminiscent of alleged colonial thought, yet with regional peculiarities and without any direct exposition of historical-political conflict.

Individual, Society, and System

Magdalena Garbacik-Balakowicz — 2023-12-15

This paper examines Sándor Márai’s (1900–1989) views on the nature of historical processes, focusing on his late fiction, i.e., novels published in exile. Three novels are selected for the analysis: San Gennaro vére (1965, The Blood of San Gennaro), Ítélet Canudosban (1970, Judgment at Canudos), and Erősítő (1975, Comforter). The analysis focuses on the relationship between the individual and society. The article examines the role Márai attributed to the individual in the historical process. The paper points out further components of Márai’s reflection: the mutual conditioning of the individual and society, the transformation of society into a system understood as a mass society, and the cyclical nature of historical processes.

Infinite Judgment

Roland Végső — 2023-12-15

The article uses the idea of “infinite judgment” (borrowed from the field of logic) to reflect on the narrative techniques employed in Ádám Bodor later works, with a special focus on the novel The Birds of Verhovina (2011) and the collection Nowhere (Sehol, 2019). In a formal sense, the idea of infinite judgment breaks down the duality of the so-called positive and negative qualities of logical judgments (assertion and negation) by introducing a negative predicate into the structure of a positive proposition. Applying the same logic to Bodor’s prose, we can also grasp it as a poetic principle: the process of fictional world-creation does not follow the logic of either negation or affirmation and, through a subtle logical negation, opens up a series of infinite possibilities. This rhetorical strategy, in turn, becomes the appropriate vehicle for the articulation of a specific type of historical experience that we could designate as “potential history” (in opposition to the “actual” history of Eastern European dictatorships in the second half of the twentieth century). Bodor’s prose forces a confrontation with this potential history through narratives of transience and historical transformation whose ultimate horizon is human extinction.

Getting out of Time

Gábor Szabó — 2023-12-15

The essay examines how historical time appears in the novel Zsömle odavan [Zsömle Feels Used Up], that is closely linked into László Krasznahorkai’s previous oeuvre in many ways. The satirical depiction of a society falling out of history, and the dispelling of absurd illusions places it within the historical-philosophical framework typical of Krasznahorkai’s novels, primarily creating its continuity with the novels Satantango and Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming.

Phantom Pain

Alexander Mionskowski — 2023-12-15

The paper introduces the oeuvre of Kurt Drawert and analyzes, by which means and with which aims the contemporary history of German Reunification is reflected critically in his essays, poems and prose. Drawert’s work circles around carefully recorded absences that the author himself has experienced and which are possibly reflected more extensively due to his relocation to federal West Germany in 1993. Such absences are shown to be ruinous for post-Soviet individuals in the unified society. But at the same time, they are constitutive for Drawert’s poetics, written from the passage through the non-places of his (former) country. Reading his oeuvre from this perspective means comprehending a meticulous measurement in his poetics of the absent: of Heimat, causing an atopian perception (including the increase of retrotopian nationalistic thinking); of speech that has been and still is ‘injured’ or even lost, causing a not only political aphasia (allegorized by the Kaspar-Hauser-figure); and absence of time, as past is lost with the belated and declined East—and the present suffers from a global acceleration, causing an asynchronia in transformation that further reduces the society’s ability to design the future. Drawert’s engagement does not cease with a melancholic exploration of a collective phantom pain, stating a persisting disintegration. Out of the analytical measurement of such ‘left-overs’ of the reunification process in Germany there evolves a harsh criticism of the contemporary situation surrounding the individual in the global digitized society. A related mission of literature reveals the (always fragmented) truth to the reader—prolonging a political kind of criticism whose methods trail back to GDR-opposition. Thus, any ‘valid’ political change would depend on the influence of a common language and maturity.

Homéros Magyarországon. Adalékok [Homer in Hungary. Contributions]. By Zsigmond Ritoók.

Attila Simon — 2023-12-15

Secretaries of the Invisible

Máté Székely — 2023-12-15

The Wonderful Life of Words

Richárd Vincze — 2023-12-15

Shibboleth: Judges, Derrida, Celan. By Marc Redfield.

Andrea Timár — 2023-12-15