The Canadian-American Review of Hungarian Studies - Vol. 4 ... - EPA

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Carpathian Federation, and printed by the Dai Nippon Printing Companyin Hong Kong. A more truly international venturecould hardly beimagined. A careful reading of some of the articles leads to the suspicionthat Australian Carpathians are really Australo-Hungarians(pardon the pun) in disguise. The term "Carpathian Basin", rather thanHungary, is used regularly in the text, often with the basic assumptionthat the basin would serve as the focal point of the integration movement.From an over-all perspective, the articles are uneven in quality andinterest. The translation of the Ermacora article is undoubtedly correct,but a bit stilted. Typographical errors are an occasional minor annoyance.While the book is intended to promote a political goal of sorts, mostof the articles selected are neither political nor polemical in content.They have been drawn from a wide variety of academic disciplines.Graphs and charts provide statistical information on population factors,natural resources and trade. One need not be an academicspecialist in order to profit from reading the work, although its primaryappeal will be to the Central and East European devotee.Indiana University of PennsylvaniaEdward E. PiattA Short History of Hungary. By Zoltan Haiasz. Translated by CsabaSzabo. Budapest: Corvina Press, 1975. Distributed by Imported PublicationsInc. of Chicago. 275 pp. Illustrations. $10.00 cloth.Tastefully turned out by Corvina, this historical primer presents andupdates for English-language readers the interpretation of Hungary'spast familiar to us from the work of the late, outstanding Marxisthistorian Erik Molnar. The translation is nearly flawless and idiomatic,though we hope that the rendering of the 1918 Karolyi dszirdzsdsforradalom as the "Michaelmas Daisy Revolution" will prove to be lessrisibility-inducing in Britain than in America.Structurally the book is disproportionate. The first fourteen centuriesof Hungarian prehistory and history ending in 1900 receive 174pages; the ensuing seventy years, 87. More space is devoted to the 10thHungarian Party Congress than to the Reformation, about the same asthe author gives to the Rakoczi and Kossuth Wars of Independenceeach. The illustrations are excellent but there are no maps. The translator'spractice of using Hungarian place names in discussing eventstaking place in territories detached from Hungary in 1918-1920 (Pozsony,Ersekujvar, Gyulafehervar, Balazsfalva, Vilagos, Liptoszent-
miklos, etc.) makes it impossible for the non-Hungarian reader to tracethe narrative on modern maps published outside Hungary. Similarly,the use of a correct but unfamiliar German geographical nomenclatureinstead of place names familiar from English historical writing (forexample, Hochstadt for Blenheim) fails to prompt instantaneous reactionin the lay reader's mind.Methodologically the text, which otherwise reads well, lapses intoweaknesses characteristic of dogmatic historiography. Hypothesis ispresented as historical fact, as on p. 15: "The ordinary Magyar [of theearly 10th century] had the choice of two alternatives: to join the armedbands or . . . to till the soil," etc. Historical fact incongruous with thejustification of a synthesis is omitted, as on p. 243: "Ferenc Nagy, whowas in Switzerland at the time . . . was summoned by the government toreturn home. . . Nagy refused and sent a letter of resignation instead."The non-captive reading public has the omitted facts available in FerencNagy's Struggle Behind the Iron Curtain, Macmillan: New York, 1948,pp. 405 426 and in the open diplomatic archives of the West. The bookends with a presentation of the establishment of the dictatorship of theproletariat in Hungary (p. 247) as a curtainraiser to the end of thedialectical process in that country and so perf orce of Hungarian history.The 1975 publication of this little book in Budapest roughly coincidedwith the signing in Helsinki of the Final Act of the Conference onSecurity and Cooperation in Europe. The fact that it is being freelydistributed in America by Imported Publications, Inc. of Chicagoshould be partial proof of U.S. compliance with those "third-basket"desiderata of the Final Act which call for reciprocity in the free movementof ideas and in access to printed information. We hope that theHungarian counterpart of the American Imported Publications, Inc.will soon be, if it isn't already, as free of government control in importingand distributing information originatinganywhere in the world as isthe Chicago firm which has placed Zoltan Halasz's book in our hands.Fort Thomas, KentuckyLeslie C. TihanyThe Crises of France's East Central European Diplomacy, 1933-1938.By Anthony T. Komjathy. Boulder: East European Quarterly, 1977.Distributed by Columbia University Press. 277 pp.As a general rule scholars would agree that highly critical reviewsshould be kept as brief as possible, if indeed they should be written at all.
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Canadian-American Review of Hungari
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the best possible settlers who woul
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than a decade later they were follo
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Sociologists have yet to explain sa
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fifteen minutes, and spent the rest
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from the "Canadian poetry" of Icela
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garian community of Western Canada,
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lowed translations from other, more
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which took place in the pages of th
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from teaching in 1968, Kirkconnell
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Magyar poets and writers to the rea
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tive of his helpful attitude and un
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33. Kirkconnell, A Slice of Canada,
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The groaning of the slaves on Egypt
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ecause most such lines are imbedded
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;Two spheres contend with one anoth
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matched it to this feeble hurdy-gur
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NOTES1. The only full-length study
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terest in Hungarian literature, has
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limitations of Bowring and others:
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Jones' Five Hungarian WritersJ 4 Su
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REVIEW ARTICLEHungarian Poetry in E
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Page 59 and 60: REVIEW ARTICLEHungarian Religious P
Page 61 and 62: magas és a mély magánhangzójú
Page 63 and 64: SPECIAL SECTIONToldiAn Epic Poem (1
Page 65 and 66: CANTO ONE"He lifted, with one hand,
Page 67 and 68: "Who should be squire of this whole
Page 69 and 70: What meant this hubbub in a widow's
Page 71 and 72: "Lad, here's your share! Don't say
Page 73 and 74: The heavy stone flies on: where wil
Page 75 and 76: The homes of moorhen, plover, gull
Page 77 and 78: Perhaps I'll shed my blood, some no
Page 79 and 80: CANTO FIVENicholas went wandering a
Page 81 and 82: Her tongue was like a coulter in th
Page 83 and 84: Rosemary pots mourned on its window
Page 85 and 86: Such were her words. No more would
Page 87 and 88: As if a nest of hornets rose to sti
Page 89 and 90: Upon an isle, by a Czech's hand the
Page 95 and 96: REVIEW ARTICLEQuo Vadis Transylvani
Page 97 and 98: Hungarians in Rumania in terms of t
Page 99 and 100: down by serious shortcomings in bot
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Page 108 and 109: Now and then, however, this rule de
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Page 112 and 113: OUR CONTRIBUTORS (continued from pa
Page 115: TO THOSE WISHING TO SUBMIT MANUSCRI
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