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	The Works

03.01.2010 09:44

Angst: the handbook of the urban guerilla

Gergely Nagy

The arrival of capital was quiet, swift, and effective, like an assassin’s work. Suddenly its presence became visible everywhere: its smell, the scent of money, could be detected even through the exhaust fumes. Budapest became irrevocably sexy.

01.24.2010 18:07

Just a little bit of hog

János Háy

The boy awkwardly tried to catch hold of the leg, all the time thinking he can’t let the tears out, he can’t, because then he’ll never be a man. Anyone who feels sorry for the hog will never grow into a man. He remembered what his father always said: if you like sausage, then you’d better like this, too. And he did like sausage.

01.15.2010 08:53

King M. (excerpt from a novel)

Endre Kukorelly

Serious face, he rarely smiles. Supposedly too little, but rarity of smiling as compared with what? He picks up from the table a bilious-green goblet and crushes it. The blood flows onto the tablecloth. He squeezes it with an even force until the glass smashes. As in a stagey film, though in those they would use paint, whereas this is real blood, though one would have to admit this too is a fairly stagey scene.

01.02.2010 20:17

Guard Me and Protect Me

Miklós Radnóti (1909–1944)

Flames leap into our sky, and those who read
the heavens’ blazing portents fall to earth.
There is a white pain that encircles me
like salt at ebb-tide tracing the sea’s girth.

12.23.2009 18:47

A Tao of One’s Own II. (excerpt)

István Vörös

In our heads there is
the memory of an ancient world
from the time before our birth,
a sight emerging
from the time of closed eyes.

12.08.2009 12:04

Landscape with Raft (short story)

István Szilágyi

Nowhere else will you find as many angel-faced children as there are up there. And nowhere else will you see as many adult faces ravaged by decay and crumbling with rot.

11.24.2009 10:52

Belong to each other (short story)

János Háy

If there were a God, and if he had time to cast a glance into the married lives of couples in Budapest, his cheeks would flush red with shame, assuming he had cheeks, assuming he were not merely a waft of air like most spirits. Course he’d immediately deny all responsibility, since marriage was not part of his original design. Man had invented it, cause man had thought it would be a good idea.

10.25.2009 11:27

Lazarus (excerpts)

Gábor Schein

Will I visit your grave? Is there anything there? If there is, it must be, I believe, something utterly different from what is engraved upon the headstone: may the deceased be tied to the bonds of eternal life. Rather this: totus homo fit excrementum. As all else in self-loathing, you hurried this up, making it happen while you were still alive.

09.09.2009 11:52

Bread Tags (poems)

Ferenc Szijj

At times there is something surprising even in harmless scents.
For example, the scent of urine in roasted coffee.
In everything that perishes, there hovers something
of us, and suddenly, when nobody
is even looking, what happens
or slips away?

09.04.2009 15:56

At the Western Gate (short story)

Zsolt Láng

I should at first point out that in the two or three years previous, the blows of fate (drought, earthquake, floods) had followed each other in rapid succession. At that time, my father was still an active dancer at the Opera, although it was growing ever harder for him to lift his partners.

08.18.2009 09:25

the return of the letters (poems)

Gábor Schein

"The letter / D was the last to arrive. It played in the doorway with / a spotted kitten, took it onto its belly, played hide-and-seek around / its leg, then settled down on a broken-edged / stone bench, and for a long time could not fall asleep."

07.26.2009 19:46

Flower Eaters (excerpt from a novel)

László Darvasi

"Slips of paper fell to the ground when the little girl impatiently shook the boxes open. The first one said, NO!, the second said, YES!, and the third said, MAYBE! Klára whispered hoarsely to herself, like someone holding untold wealth. 'Yes, no, maybe, and it’s all mine, mine, mine!'"

07.14.2009 11:19

Hungarian Bride (poems)

János Térey

"Miss Omnipotence,
Miss Ambivalence, dear!
We write to each other, keeping
Twin diaries: the sharp echo
Of each other’s voices ring in our ears;

Should there be no echo, only noise
We’d miss each other terribly"

06.24.2009 16:12

like the illuminators (poems)

Gábor Schein

"so who would dare to name anyone as
father, or kin? like a brook
continually changing its course,
but everywhere reaching the same depth,
so does time step from body to body,
it has no death, no resurrection."

06.16.2009 20:35

Table Music (excerpt from a play)

János Térey

"GYŐZŐ: Pest, the big smoke, is full of labouring proles, / Juicy with gossip about us on the hill. / Down there the streets are cordoned off. Cops know / They need not cordon streets off up in Buda.

KÁLMÁN: I’m faintly aware of a sickening distant buzz: / Here we go again: they’re burning cars. / Here we go again: uproot that call-box. / Here we go again: the piercing sirens. / Here we go again: streets full of teargas."

06.03.2009 12:17

In the Vise of Two Skies (poems)

Roland Acsai

"The lake’s rippled surface / Mirrored the sky with such clarity / One couldn’t tell / Which way was up or down. / Between the two, on horizon’s ebb, / In the light’s narrow beam, / A factory building loomed with metallic hue. / Only in Finland one sees / Such metaphysical form – I thought"

05.30.2009 10:49

Two voices (poems)

Ákos Győrffy

"Not that I have any knowledge of what evil is, not at all, / I haven’t a clue about the way the oak leaves are stuck in its flesh, / the way rough strings are looped around its hind legs and it is hung / on the rotten roof-beam of the shed dug deep in the ground, / it could be the corpse of a dog, a rabbit, or a fox, I can’t tell"

04.15.2009 09:02

Wittgenstein and my grandmother (poems)

Imre Kőrizs

And just when god lost a small life
man would accidentally find it,
an old coin of an unknown exotic country.
He would study it, not recognising the writing,
He couldn’t decide on its value, although
the jeweller would take it only for scrap gold.

03.24.2009 09:29

Almanac

Miklós Radnóti (1909–1944)

"Silver full moon at midday / is the sun, a mere faint presence in the heavens." – Miniature portraits of the months of the year, written mostly after the outbreak of World War II in which the poet was eventually killed. Idyllic sketches, with threatening overtones creeping in.

03.17.2009 10:52

A Tao of One’s Own I. (excerpt)

István Vörös

"The good is now closed,
flooded by the Danube.
A dragon sails across it,
an ant makes its way on a barge.
Yet whether by water
or by road, neither of them knows.
The water wants only the good. And now
wants it very much."

03.06.2009 09:14

Beneath Pannonia's Sky (poems)

Ágnes Gergely

"I am so very, very good
as ancient kings and hares that nested
in fairy-tales; in twilight, thugs
and coachmen leave me unmolested."

02.24.2009 09:08

East Europe Triptych (poem), Pixel (short story)

Krisztina Tóth

"My name is Alina Moldova.
I come from Eastern Europe (...)

I have amalgam fillings in my teeth,
in my heart I carry an inherited dread.
When I speak English, no one understands me,
when I speak French, no one understands me,
It is only the language of fear
that I speak without an accent."

01.20.2009 11:33

Boredom (two short stories)

Frigyes Karinthy

"In the beginning, there was Boredom. And thus sayeth the Lord: Let there be Amusement, for I’m beginning to doze off. And He came up with the idea of a bunch of little globes; He knocked them together for a while, back and forth. He entertained Himself that way for six days. On the sixth day He gave a great big yawn, and almost fell asleep again. And then, quickly, He came up with the idea of the human being."

01.13.2009 11:31

Psychiatry (two sketches)

Frigyes Karinthy

"...if I have a delusion, I am insane. But you just said that I am insane. In that case, my belief is not a delusion, but a correct idea. Therefore I have no delusion. Therefore I am not, after all, insane. It is only a delusion that I am insane; hence I have a delusion; hence I am insane; hence I am right; hence I am not insane." – Two sketches from the 1930s on the traps and paradoxes of psychiatry, translated by Thomas Szasz, the renowned antipsychiatrist.

01.09.2009 10:33

Tiresias's Confession (poems)

András Gerevich

A collection of poems by András Gerevich entitled Tiresias's Confession has been published in English by Corvina, Budapest. "It is one of the most difficult things in the world to write poems so clear, so pellucid, so free of metaphor and simile as to be almost pure speech", writes poet George Szirtes, one of the translators.

12.23.2008 10:34

Apagyi (short story)

Géza Ottlik

"Out of all the hundreds of cadets either plowing ahead of us, trailing behind us or plodding along with us during those long years of military school, only one single boy was ever called a 'bad apple'. I can even remember his name. It was Apagyi."

12.15.2008 08:36

Berlin-Hamlet (excerpts)

Szilárd Borbély

"From between the creases of fabric / gapes / a face, like the countenance of Europe scorned. / It spits / into the distance, but does not speak. It reflects, / like thought itself. Above, the floodlit city / looks to a new epoch. The escalator / rises into the heights, and creates correspondences, / like a metaphor degraded in the course of time / into a simile. The mind listens."

12.09.2008 08:52

The Garden of Exile (poems)

George Gömöri

"Small Nations

as a rule peep out of the pockets of big ones

and there they rave and wave their arms about:

'vile usurper!'

'dearest friend!'"

11.25.2008 09:54

Something Is Burning Outside (short story)

László Krasznahorkai

"...the most peculiar thing of all, they established, was what they hadn’t even noticed until now, yet it was the very strangest of all: that this illustrious creative figure of the present day, always active, was here, where everyone was at work, perfectly and totally idle."

11.13.2008 10:09

Passage to a Detour (short story)

Noémi Kiss

"We are in hell. And now comes the intrigue. I try to rummage through the souls, I try my best, straining; I want to understand them but it doesn’t work. They are strangers. Already, everyone has disappeared, the stains are gone, the main actors are nowhere to be seen, and if I were to take a photograph of the crime scene, it would reveal nothing of what had happened there. Did anything actually happen?"

10.29.2008 10:19

Pigeon (short story)

Krisztina Tóth

"As the pigeon-in-underwear – which is what I had called him – came closer, I stooped down to get a better look. And indeed, between its legs there really was some kind of filmy material, which, when the bird was in flight, hung down from the chafed leg. I waited motionless for the pigeon to come closer: the material was a hairnet."

10.17.2008 08:52

My Crimes

Ernő Szép (1884–1953)

"I am deadly insulted. I only look like people. This chap here who breathes in and out past my lips, he is no work of mine. I have no idea what I have to do with the whole composition. Where is my own special programme, my individual taste, my fantasy and my interest? This me? Any bellboy has the right to look like me. I have been settled. I am deeply ashamed. Me, me, me."

09.23.2008 10:22

Sequences of Holy Week (poems)

Szilárd Borbély

If you are yearning for the kind of catharsis that raises gooseflesh, then read The Splendours of Death by Szilárd Borbély. Be forewarned, however, as you are about to encounter one of the most staggering volumes to appear in recent decades. In suggestive verses of hypnotic strength, the poet erects a monument to a mother: a mother who became the victim of a savage murder.

08.12.2008 08:52

Towards the One and Only Metaphor II.

Miklós Szentkuthy

"Frederick the Great and Bach in church at night... They drink, they become delirious, they chatter: Bach is a perverted lecher, a Don Juan, an atheistic libertine; Frederick is a regicidal nihilist, a revolutionary, a traitor. By the morning both have grown quiet; Bach prays with his family, Frederick rides on horseback in front of his soldiers."

07.27.2008 17:41

Towards the One and Only Metaphor I.

Miklós Szentkuthy

"A Catalogus rerum, an "Index of Phenomena" – I am unlikely to free myself of this, the most primitive of my desires. ... is that a sentimental fear of death guiding me, I wonder, a grandpawish fondness for knick-knacks, or some desire for universal knowledge, a Faustian gesture?"

07.13.2008 15:59

The river (poems)

Zsuzsa Beney (1930–2006)

"Because there are no gates of death, just slow
gatherings of dust. Mud and dirt cover our lives.
They gather in the corners of our souls.
We can’t step into the light for fear of drowning."

05.30.2008 09:56

Two poems for children

by Dániel Varró and Endre Kukorelly

"There’s tales that are clever,
full of tricks and treasure,
and tales unpossible, terrorible
unbearable, horrorible..."

05.23.2008 11:41

Haul (short story)

György Dragomán

"The best thing would be if you say you got AIDS, because then you’ll automatically be granted refuge status on medical grounds. But for that you need the virus, too. Lucky for you, you went with an old pro like me. For another twenty percent I can take care of that for you, too."

05.18.2008 13:32

Funeral Oration (poem)

Sándor Márai

Written in Italy in the 1950s, "Funeral Oration" is a lament about the fate of the exile who, having lost his home and his property, is now in danger of losing his native tongue and his cultural heritage.

05.03.2008 11:46

True Love (short story)

Béla Zsolt (1895–1949)

"The draftsman had been out of work for six months, and had become extremely unkempt and bedraggled in appearance. It was now three months since he’d moved out of the neighborhood where he’d spent years leading a respectable bachelor’s life in one of the new apartment blocks."

04.14.2008 14:09

Tram – Final Station (prose poem)

Ágnes Nemes Nagy (1922–1991)

"This has always been a peculiar place. The tram pulled into the valley’s jaws, running, running on a thinning path, then a hill-side leapt up against it, and then the tram stopped. Chasm. An unincreasable final stop."

04.01.2008 12:44

Forced March (poems)

Miklós Radnóti (1909–1944)

Two of Miklós Radnóti's last poems, written in the last months of his life. From Forced March: Selected Poems, translated by Clive Wilmer and George Gömöri.

03.25.2008 16:30

The French Prisoner (two poems)

János Pilinszky (1921–1981)

"János Pilinszky is, for me, one of the great European poets of an extraordinary generation: that of Paul Celan, Zbigniew Herbert, and Yves Bonnefoy." (Clive Wilmer) – Two new translations by Clive Wilmer and George Gömöri.

02.11.2008 08:58

The Under-Secretary Makes a Statement (poems)

György Petri (1943–2000)

"Petri is a lyrical poet who has deliberately gone sour... To understand him is to understand the declining years of European Communism and to sharpen our eyes for intimate half-truths of our own." (George Szirtes)

01.28.2008 07:21

More One Minute Stories

István Örkény

"A one minute story by Örkény is... a combination of many things: anecdote...; aphorism, short note, found object, tale, joke, parable, a little of everything." (Péter Esterházy) – A new selection of István Örkény's one minute stories was recently published in English.

01.21.2008 09:58

The Voice from the Past (short story)

Gyula Krúdy

"The key turned twice in the lock, and ten years flew by. What did Sindbad do in those ten years? Perhaps no one cares. The days of his youth were gone, and with them his stern father, the two cheerful and wise tutors, his spirit of enterprise which in times past had led him to willingly court adventure; he no longer considered women perfect angels."

12.12.2007 09:57

Baedekker

Virág Erdős

"Budapest is a nation that’s great and free.
Budapest has an area of roughly its own size, even larger if we include all the holes.
Budapest is the City of Cities, World of Insects, Planet of the Apes, etcetera."

10.31.2007 08:21

Losing My Sight? (poems)

György Faludy

György Faludy, a prominent figure of 20th Hungarian literature died a year ago at the age of 96. The poems below - including a love poem to his young wife - were written towards the end of his life.

09.21.2007 09:03

Goat Rouge (excerpt)

Agáta Gordon

"we sniffed our new friends out hungrily and tried to figure out exactly what everyone else was trying to figure out why they lived together was it like our neighbor innocently imagined that they were no more than colleagues or cousins for whom it was easier and cheaper together or was it because like us they were secret lovers"

08.30.2007 08:21

Treble (three Holocaust poems)

András Mezei

András Mezei (1930) is a major poet and writer whose novel The Miracle Worker, a story about Budapest in 1943-44 seen from the point of view of Hungarian Jews, has been translated into English. He has just published his collected poems (Hármas könyv, Belvárosi Könyvkiadó, 2007).

08.21.2007 09:03

The Kid (excerpt)

János Háy

"All these forgotten destinies had an effect on the kid. In point of fact, the whole world is a conspiracy like this one, as hatched upon us by others. These people exist in order to take the grievances they have accumulated in their lives out on us in the most devious way possible, and by the time you notice, you are already standing there with a knife in your hand ready to kill someone."

06.04.2007 09:04

Ill Augury (poems)

Zsófia Balla

"What was it that happened? One should know. When? And how?
So often recounted! Job wrote it long ago.
in the ether spins every lethal shot.
Would it not be better not to hear, not to know?"

05.23.2007 09:04

The Rose

Zsófia Balla

"We will never know / what it would show farther in, / in the darkness of the arched chamber: / petals guard and besiege it." – Two translations of the same poem.

05.16.2007 09:03

Martyr

Magda Székely

"You may strike me down. I will not strike back.
My hand is feeble for ill.
In place of the slumping body, unswayable
my true body stands strong." (Motto)

04.19.2007 10:02

I'll stroll perhaps a little less (poems)

Endre Kukorelly

"I’ll remain, not coincidentally, but neither
out of some resolution
fixed and clear,
won’t amuse myself with thoughts of where I’d rather be,
somewhere, elsewhere,
rather than here"

03.31.2007 10:02

9 Kilos. A Story After Psalm 119 (excerpt)

Zsuzsa Selyem

9 kilos is Zsuzsa Selyem's first fictional work. It is an experimental novel based on the structure of Psalm 119, in various styles – from minimalistic dialogues to theoretical passages – and told by several narrators in search for connections between the episodes of a story happening in the 90s in the squares of post-communist East European cities.

03.20.2007 10:02

The Snake's Shadow (excerpt)

Zsuzsa Rakovszky

"– They say that your Susanna is a witch! (...) – That’s not true! – I snapped back in fury (...). – Anyways I saw her myself asleep in her bed on Saint Martin’s eve, when the thirteenth happened to fall on a Friday! – I said triumphantly, hoping this once to come out on top in the debate. – If she were a witch she would have had to have flown to the Brocken peaks at midnight!"

03.13.2007 12:04

Dialogue on Time (two poems)

Zsuzsa Rakovszky

"The flashlight strives with its pale fading glow
to salvage something from the dark of night,
kindle into borrowed life what is no
more."

03.12.2007 09:40

Violetta's Surprise (short story) II.

Paul Olchváry

"...on sleek black roller skates and carrying a thick, leather-bound book, was King Matthias. He, too, wore a Burger King crown, over a thick red wig that reached his shoulders. (...) Why, I wondered, was the king, who was supposed to be incognito amongst the peasants, wearing a crown?"

03.05.2007 12:40

The Family Cat (short story)

Erzsébet Galgóczi

"We were not bad people, nor was there a child in the family young enough to find any pleasure in torturing animals, it’s just that we didn’t need more than two cats."

03.02.2007 09:40

Violetta’s Surprise (short story) I.

Paul Olchváry

"The tram came to a stop and I flung what was left of my Multi on the tracks opposite. To hell with Germanic tidiness; I was glad to live in Hungary, where, even if the day-to-day struggle for cash was all-consuming, at least I was free to compensate with such a cynical gesture knowing that others couldn’t care less, and that if they did care, most likely they were on my side; for we were all in the same creaky, splintered wooden boat." – Adventures of a New Jersey-born Hungarian American in post-socialist Hungary.

02.26.2007 11:13

Worthwhile to Steal (poems)

Tamás Jónás

"So more and more often I stole, I’d tear
open the pocket to my winter coat
and pack it full with whatever would fit,
whatever had happened to catch my eye."

02.05.2007 17:13

Bagatelle macabre (poems)

Lajos Parti Nagy

"Like slippers, woven of corn husk,
so as not to step on cold stone.
naked feet already point up,
so immovable, so alone,
in the callous hospital dusk."

01.29.2007 12:03

No Strings Attached (short story)

Lajos Parti Nagy

"None of the hysterics and blue funk whether my water’s gonna hold out, and with the groom whispering, even at the church door, you better say no, you bra buster bitch, if you value your life. None of that, love, no! They’re standing there like a pair of lovebirds, all blatant marzipan head to foot, and the three of them weighing in at a hundred pounds if one, cross my heart and hope to die."

01.25.2007 11:13

Tales of Budapest

Aliz Mosonyi

"Of course there are nightmares in Budapest. There are six of them: Mari, Lajos, Béla, Lujza, Borbála and Cékla. But the names do not mean a thing if you do not know what sort of nightmares they are."

01.22.2007 08:13

Brief Encounter with Cartagena (poems)

Sándor Kányádi

"one gulp of your light and color
will be plentiful enough
in the icy Carpathians
to gild my remaining years with love"

12.19.2006 10:08

Death is always new

Victor Határ

...there is one form of art that cannot become worn, that goes beyond everyday novelty, innovation. And this – in its content, the experience, its formulation, its captivating betrayal – is death. (...) It says something new to everyone, something which he has not yet come across. And this is the multiple gigabyte novelty. Unrivalled avant-garde itself.

12.11.2006 11:08

Ruin: A History of Commonism (an excerpt)

Endre Kukorelly

"At times ruining is all it does. Ruin and ruin, Commonism is a ruin. The most interesting thing in Commonism, and this is truly interesting, is that everything is destroyed, and what is built up in place of the destruction, that work is in itself destruction."

12.04.2006 08:18

Circumstances (poems)

Zsuzsa Rakovszky

"But that no, that never – that merciless
Wolf’s grin, the eyes misty with glee,
I know I won’t see that face
That stared back at me from the blood-freckled mirror
Of a ransacked bedroom…"

11.27.2006 08:37

Blade in Fashion (poems)

Gabor G. Gyukics

"With an easy walk
She passed the executioner
Stepped off the podium
Leaving bloody footsteps"

11.22.2006 14:37

With Pure Heart

Attila József

Six poems from a new Attila József volume in English, published by Green Integer Press (Los Angeles). The book, titled A Transparent Lion, was edited and translated by Gabor G. Gyukics and Michael Castro.

11.16.2006 08:08

Uncle Vida (short story)

Sándor Tar

“There’s all these beautiful new houses, some with six rooms and split levels, burdened with mortgages, and the head of the household out of work, not to mention the children, they signed a contract to have them, and got promised the moon, and now there’s nothing, just the shit hitting the fan. Then after a while the wife gets fed up and wants a divorce. That’s how things go today. And the houses, Uncle Vida says, the houses are up for sale. But who's gonna want to buy them, he says.”

11.07.2006 11:08

Marmaris (poems)

András Gerevich

“'I brought you to Florence to see this':
my father pointed to Botticelli’s Venus.
'Your dad looked like that when we got married',
said my mother, at the statue of David."

10.30.2006 16:13

Jadviga's Pillow (excerpt from the novel)

Pál Závada

One of the Hungarian literary sensations of the last decade, Jadviga's Pillow (1997) was an oddity in Hungary, being both a critical and a public success. The novel, portraying life in a Slovak village in Hungary between the two world wars, was recently published in German under the title Das Kissen der Jadviga.

10.09.2006 08:13

Miserere (Draw a Line)

Krisztina Tóth

"I want to see the bodies. As I come to the fence, I jiggle the latch. From where I’m standing, I can see that a few of the legless bodies scattered in the grass are still moving, even though an entire endless night had passed."

09.27.2006 09:18

A Week With Old Cain (poems)

István Kemény

"There is a crisis of values, Cain, sir!
A need for a credible word,
the people are seeking a father
and the Bible says, you –"

08.10.2006 16:18

On one knee (Two poems)

Ádám Nádasdy

"I know, Lord, that to think of you is cheek,
and still worse, to address you when I speak,
as if my voice were what you're yearning for.
There was a time, if you'd struck me with lightning,
I'd have accepted it, thought it the right thing.
Now I've made you my co-conspirator."

06.25.2006 08:18

In a Pyramid

Miklós Erdély (1928-1986)

"Looking for a better job, I decided to join a pyramid. The admission committee (the pyramid itself) judged my neck muscles suitable for the show; no particular objection was raised against my build. I was not supplied with any instructions or information; but then again, I didn't inquire either."

06.07.2006 16:18

The Straight Labyrinth (Poems)

János Pilinszky (1921-1981)

"Pilinszky is different. Everybody is different, but some are even more so. (...) When he walked down the street, he walked like a persecuted legend. That is just what he was. A persecuted legend, pushed out of literature and completely unknown." (Ágnes Nemes Nagy)

05.31.2006 16:18

See Me Thus, He Who Wants (Poems)

Sándor Csoóri

"and when I’ll be without a country
because I can no longer profess it my own,
I’ll wrap myself in snowfall
as he who dons a white shirt,
on the last day."

05.22.2006 08:38

Body and Soul (Poems)

Zsuzsa Takács

"My glance took flight and landed
on a thorny fingertip of the pine beyond the window
pasturing on the green and blue, willing, yet reluctant
to reach further."

05.17.2006 10:18

A Fable About Love

György Somlyó

"There are some who love like the hare lost on the motorway, entrapped in spotlights. / There are some who love like the lion that tears apart what it desires. / There are some who love like the pilot loves the town on which he drops his bombs. / There are some who love like the radar that directs planes in the air."

05.15.2006 09:23

The Sneak Thief

Ervin Lázár

Ervin Lázár has recently celebrated his 70th birthday. Although he is best known as the author of wonderful children’s books, his Csillagmajor (The Little Town of Miracles), fifteen short tales based on the author’s experiences as a child growing up in a Hungarian village, is written for adults.

05.09.2006 12:23

The Ballad of Mrs. Kádár (an excerpt)

Mihály Kornis

"Towards the end he kept saying / how he’s not to blame / that Imre Nagy died / or was killed / or whatever. / Murdered. / He asked: / isn’t he invited to the funeral? / And I said: no. / Because he never got notified. / And he says: / But the funeral is today! / And I say: / Yes, I know. / And then they came and took him away."

05.01.2006 12:23

Campaign Silence

László Garaczi

Between the two rounds of the parliamentary elections in Hungary, HLO's brother site, Litera asked eleven writers to write a short note in which they describe their feelings about the political atmosphere in the country. A jury composed of five students from various Hungarian universities chose the best from the "national eleven".

04.12.2006 12:22

The Dead Instruct the Living (Poems)

Imre Oravecz

"Suddenly the horses vanished too,
as if from one day to the next they had been taken to slaughter,
though really it took years
until they wasted away, one by one, unnoticed"

04.10.2006 08:23

Sad Sack (Poems)

Roland Acsai

"Like a vital organ / You have transplanted these lines / From a previous poem of yours / To give this one life. / You carefully analyze / Whether words like leukocytes / Will accept them? Or reject?"

04.03.2006 09:22

Living Thus (Poems)

Roland Acsai

"To your greetings the cleaning woman answers
By listing the TV program, as if you asked her.
The electric brain magnetizes madness
Like television screen attracts the grime –
To wipe it clean, a dust cloth won’t suffice."

03.30.2006 08:12

The Victor

Béla Hamvas

"It wanted to be regular and proportionate, like all trees, ideal trees; like all beings, ideal beings. But it was no dreamer. A dreamer would have been crushed by the crags. Nor was it eccentric. An eccentric would have lost patience and fled long ago."

03.21.2006 11:15

Chernovitz [group trip east] - Part Two

Noémi Kiss

"It’s not that great to be German, just as it’s by no means so great to be Székely! And in Bukovina it’s certainly not great to be Jewish! So then what is it best to be? It’s best to be dead."

03.20.2006 11:34

Chernovitz [group trip east] - Part One

Noémi Kiss

"Bukovina is everything and nothing. A place of many colors, many nationalities. Barren and fleeing, emptied of content. When you look at it, you see something, but there’s nothing there. Zero, point of origin. The center of the periphery. Central Europe’s unknown center. On the most remote point of the world stands a city."

03.16.2006 09:15

She Leaves Me (Two Poems)

Anna Szabó T.

"What does a fetus think light is?
Waiting, it stirs, it makes gestures.
Gurgle of bowels. My heart throbbing.
It’s in a dream, soaked and weightless."

02.13.2006 11:26

The Letter B in The Last Window–Giraffe

Péter Zilahy

"The riot police come by bus with packed lunches, like a bunch of tourists from the countryside. After a quick city tour, they form a cordon, march down the Road of Revolution, and barricade Republic Square. Bobby-soxers pin flowers on their shields and offer them cakes. It gets smeared all over their visors."

02.08.2006 10:15

Golden Embroidery (Excerpt)

Éva Bánki

"My brethren, he said... You can see that Our Goddess the Happy Lady, who is none other than the Virgin Mary, appears to you in her heavenly image, as a weasel. Listen to what she has got to say! The pagans were so drunk that they couldn’t tell a squirrel from a weasel."

02.03.2006 11:01

War

György Dragomán

"...the question was not whether it was going to be ice cream or chocolate, nor whether it was going to be raspberry syrup or peach nectar, not even whether it was going to be a Hungarian dance or a Romanian dance but the real question was always whether it would be peace or war."

01.16.2006 10:15

The True History of Jacob Wunschwitz (Excerpt)

László Márton

"Running an eye over the regions of our own era, controlled and enmeshed as they are in so many different ways, the sight of disintegrated or as yet unconsolidated terror states prompts us, time and time again, to ask: at what moment do age-old agencies encounter the personal names that suddenly spring to the surface?"

12.22.2005 08:31

On Elijah's Chariot

Endre Ady (1877-1919)

"The Lord bears all that He afflicts and loves
Up and away Elijah-wise.
Fervent and swift the hearts He gives to them:
These are their chariots of fire."

12.19.2005 12:39

The Photographer’s Legacy (Excerpt)

Pál Závada

"My little Lojzi, teach me how to tie a knot." "What the fuck, then that’s why…?!" "Why? Well…who could I ask? So far I did alright in my shirt collar, even for the wedding, but now, well, it so happens that they’re appointing me envoy to Prague next week…"

12.05.2005 08:10

The Year of the Falling Star (Excerpt)

Zsuzsa Rakovszky

"And that the best company’s there nowadays among the street sweepers: all barons and generals..."

11.28.2005 08:08

Fairy Vale, or Riddles of the Heart of Man (Excerpt)

Endre Kukorelly

"I don’t see what strings are being twitched for her to operate so appropriately. New instrument, doesn’t yet have a place, doesn’t fit in here, maybe won’t do so for a thousand years—that’s me."

11.17.2005 02:42

The White King (Excerpt)

György Dragomán

"And that is when I knew for sure what she was thinking: Father had died, he’d wasted away once and for all at one of the labour camps along that faraway canal that hooked up with the Danube, the Danube Canal, it was called."

10.08.2005 22:19

The Inheritance Question

Krisztián Grecsó

"...poultry know how to talk, and once they’ve set up roost in the run, they set about muttering quietly, disguised as clucking, you know, everyday things, sweetcorn, get along there, you see what I mean, son, everyday things like that, but if they have everyday things, matters to discuss, then surely they also have special, ceremonial, issues to agree on, too, it’s obvious, isn’t it?"

10.05.2004 09:45

The Snake's Shadow (Excerpt)

Zsuzsa Rakovszky

"And did it really come to pass that one time, not far from where I was lying, the grass quivered, and a great snake hauled its thick, ringed body alongside me, so close that my upper arm shuddered from the touch of its cold, flaky skin? Was I only dreaming that the hand, which only a moment before had been stroking the nape of my neck, stretched out into the thick of the dark grass, grasped the snake and flung it far into the undergrowth?"

09.08.2004 09:47

Who Plays the Other Role? (Poems)

Orsolya Karafiáth

"Lo, here I stand. No drama, no poetics.
My dear one tells me I'm a frigid bitch:
my solid scale of values seems to topple."

08.24.2004 09:55

The Crunch of Empty Boots

Gábor T. Szántó

Gábor T. Szántó (1966) belongs to the third generation of postwar Jewish Hungarian writers, who came of age after the period of silence about Jewishness that characterized the experience of their parents' generation.

08.13.2004 09:59

Juliet: A Dialogue About Love

András Visky

An Eastern European Juliet set during the times of darkest dictatorship and without a Romeo: this, in a single sentence, is the essence of András Visky's drama, a "dialogue" in which the Transylvanian writer has documented the true story of his parents. In 1939, his father fled from Rumania to Hungary, where he was to meet his future wife.

07.28.2004 10:32

On the Nature of Love (Poems)

Krisztina Tóth

"... How should I have reacted? Glacially still,
reached down into my bag and drawn
a gun on you, like in the films?"

07.19.2004 10:55

My Hero's Square (Excerpts)

Lajos Parti Nagy

"'Homeless,' she reported, 'three homeless individuals of unknown provenance.' 'So what, sweetheart,' a vexed yet liquid voice replied. 'So what?' 'But, I wish to report... the point is, they're more or less the size of the Embassy, or the whatchamacallit next door.'"

06.30.2004 11:01

Celestial Harmonies (Excerpts)

Péter Esterházy

"But the worst of all was the silver cutlery, the fact that we ate with the silver cutlery every day, not only on Sunday or holidays. 'Why?' 'Because we haven't got anything else,' our father grinned. Our mother shook her head. The weight of the silver got imbedded in our hands. When we were invited somewhere, or at school, our hands could hardly switch to aluminum."

06.11.2004 11:59

Hungarian Wine

Sándor Márai

"Wine is a man thing; one must talk about it softly. The best way to do that is with a glass of wine. When I'm old I want a wine cellar. I have strongly decided that. I do not want anything else from life."

06.03.2004 12:11

Lake Huron (Excerpt)

Gábor Németh

"She was astonished, continuously, astonished into the telephone, and up there in the castle when we met, what made you think of me, she asked, she was beautiful, her body an hourglass, measuring disappeared time..."

05.21.2004 12:13

The Building (Excerpt)

László Darvasi

"That night, when the aged dream-sentinel rouses the emperor, a predatory dragon fills the sky and thieves the light from the stars. The monarch blinks sleepily into the dream-sentinel's eyesockets for a few moments, then he shouts for the guard."

04.30.2004 12:18

A Book of Memories (Excerpt)

Péter Nádas

"There was no doubt of it, the dark coat on the rack could mean only one thing: a guest had arrived, an unusual guest at that, because the coat was stern-looking, grim, quite unlike the coat that usually hung on that rack, so shabby, and threadbare I didn't even feel like doing what I usually did when left alone with strange coats in the hallway and go through the pockets and, if I found some loose change, cling to the wall, listen for noises, wait for the right moment, and then steal a few fillers or forints."

04.02.2004 12:28

Hanging Question (Poems)

György Petri

"A rude planet this is
you live here
for fifty or for how many thousands of years
There is no room here for stupid sadness
Might makes Right is winning;
an old lurking pig, God is hiding."

04.02.2004 12:22

N. A. (Poems)

Dezső Tandori

"I would have liked it if it was that way.
It wasn't that way.
I asked: be that way.
So it became that way."