Central European Cultures

On the Genre Context of Letters from Turkey by Kelemen Mikes

Gábor Tüskés — 2024-12-11

Translated into several languages, Kelemen Mikes’ Letters from Turkey is one of the masterpieces of 18th-century Hungarian literature. This paper explores genre-historical contexts of the Letters, with particular regard to French epistolary works published between about 1620 and 1720. The paper distinguishes five main types of the literary use of the epistolary form: 1) editions of letters missives; 2) epistolary theories and manuals of letter writing; 3) fictional or partially fictional letter collections and letter series; 4) letters in the novel; 5) epistolary novels. The paper argues that the French epistolary tradition emerging at the same time as the Letters from Turkey or earlier was much more complex than Hungarian research has so far assumed. This epistolary culture is one of the primary genre contexts for Letters from Turkey. It appears that Mikes must have had knowledge of epistolary manuals and florilegies that were used for learning the French language, and often included letters and phrases applicable in letter writing as well. In the French source material, we find several examples of the defining features of Mikes’ work: fictional or semi-fictional collections of letters based on one voice, a direct, chatty tone, epistolary turns of gallantry, fictionalization of the addressee, and the depiction of the situation of exile. There is a wide range of literary devices that give the appearance of real correspondence, many which were used by Mikes.

Empirical Psychology and Dietetics of the Soul: Between Medicine and Philosophy

Daniela Tinková — 2024-12-11

The aim of this study is to present the two most notable forms of ‘psychology’ in the late eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth century in the Czech Lands and Austria (since they still formed largely one political, cultural, and intellectual space at the time, and their universities followed similar rules). This is a period that usually receives very little attention in overviews and textbooks of the history of psychology. Scholars in the Age of the Enlightenment and Romantism, i.e., those who were active before 1848, especially in ‘our’ part of the world, tend to be as good as forgotten.

In the first part of the paper, psychology is presented as a theoretical academic discipline taught as part of introductory courses to philosophy: its aim was to analyse the conditions of human thought as the necessary precondition for any ‘philosophy’. At this time, the Czech Lands and Austria were gradually adopting Christian Wolff’s thoughts and, somewhat later, Herbartian philosophy, psychology, and pedagogy. Some scholars, however, could not resist Kant’s and Hegel’s attraction, although the spreading of their thought system was proscribed. In general, this part of the study focuses on the development of empirical psychology. At its core is an analysis of the work of a remarkable Enlightenment scholar, Gottfried Immanuel Wenzel, a native of Choceň and professor of philosophy at a lyceum in Linz, whose work on psychology was clearly based on familiarity with contemporary medical theories. His achievements are compared to the thoughts of Philipp Carl Hartmann Hartmann, a native of Vienna, and his work on the physiology of thought from 1820.

The second part of this contribution focuses on the dietetics of the soul as a practical form of prophylaxis, the protection of mental health, based on much older concepts of classical dietetics and theories of ‘passions of the soul’. This is a distinct ‘psychological’ genre that has essentially become independent, has literally established itself in separate publications, and has enjoyed a relatively large readership. We investigate the concepts of four thinkers of the first half of the nineteenth century: Wenzel’s dietetics of the soul, conceived of as a guide to a healthy and long mental life, Hartmann’s guide to a happy life, Bronn’s guide to a beautiful life (kalobiotics), and Ernst Feuchtersleben’s dietetics of the soul from 1838, which became the classic work of this genre.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, these two Late Enlightenment and Romantic forms of psychology were surpassed and half-forgotten, due both to the development of experimental psychology and to the refocusing of (not only Austrian) psychiatry on the anatomy of the brain and biological factors in general. Several of the subjects addressed by this early psychology – such as the unconscious, our dreams, but also what we would call ‘mental hygiene’ or mental wellbeing today – resurfaced as late as the twentieth century, but by then without any reference to the long-forgotten nineteenth-century scholars.

In Defense of ‘True Humanness’

Vladimir Biti — 2024-12-11

In the European tradition, islands usually connote two meanings. On the one hand, they serve as a place where thinking individuals can isolate themselves from the nonsense of everyday life in order to practice true ‘care of themselves and others’ (Foucault) in peace and quiet. On the other hand, they serve as a place to which concerned societies deport their ‘human scum’ in order to prevent the contamination of their organism. The so-called Praxis philosophers organized summer schools on the island of Korčula from 1963 to 1974 to gain the support of Western philosophers for their humanist opposition to their state’s bureaucratized Marxism. This would enable their philosophy to get rid of the academic insularity that was allocated to it at home. Western philosophers, in turn, saw the Korčula summer schools as a welcome liberal island in Eastern doctrinaire Marxism, which supported their interpretation of Marx’s philosophy. Connecting with Eastern philosophers, they expected to rescue the humanist orientation of this philosophy from the capitalist mercantilism at home. But despite these attempts to affirm the ‘true humanness’ of Marxism, its insularity persevered and this article attempts to show why.

The Reception of Péter Esterházy’s Helping Verbs of the Heart from the Perspective of Translatability and Readability

Richárd Vincze — 2024-12-11

This paper examines the challenges of translating and interpreting Péter Esterházy’s Helping Verbs of the Heart, a work deeply rooted in Hungarian literary tradition. Esterházy’s prose, marked by complex stylistic elements and cultural references, poses significant interpretive difficulties for English-speaking readers, who may lack the cultural context essential for full comprehension. By exploring how translation choices, influenced by both literary merit and marketability, shape foreign reception, this study highlights the nuanced shifts in meaning that occur when such culturally embedded texts are translated. It also considers how these translations impact interpretive methods in English-speaking contexts, revealing how Esterházy’s work challenges prevailing literary frameworks and necessitates new reading strategies.

The Fragility of the Mother Tongue

Tamás Lénárt — 2024-12-11

The paper examines the relationship between the mother tongue and the foreign language in the works of the Hungarian-born Swiss writer Agota Kristof, and its poetic, literary and theoretical consequences. The analysis is based on the approach adopted by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in their book entitled Kafka. Toward a Minor Literature, addressing the Czech writer’s specific use of language. In examining and interpreting Kafka’s life and works, the two French philosophers challenge the concept of a homogeneous, authentic, ‘natural’ mother tongue. Using this starting point, the present paper analyses examples of language learning, foreign language and mother tongue related passages in Agota Kristof’s oeuvre and explores their poetic implications, with reference to the short novel The Notebook and its ‘postmodern’ narrative. In this respect, Agota Kristof’s piece can be seen as a poetic experiment that adds to Deleuze and Guattari’s concept in the sense that it attempts to disconnect language from the individual and individuality. In her novel, language learning is therefore nothing other than the conditioning of the individual to a harsh foreign world deprived of the immediacy and homeliness of the mother tongue.

Stefan Wyszyński – életrajz [Stefan Wyszyński: Biography]. By Rafał Łatka, Beata Mackiewicz, and Dominik Zamiatała.

György Sági — 2024-12-11

Urban Culture and the Modern City. Edited by Ágnes Györke and Tamás Juhász.

David Szoke — 2024-12-11