#hungary

Hungarian poet and translator Gábor Gyukics talks about leaving Hungary in the 80s as a political refugee, his time living, writing and publishing in the US, and his years of translating Native American poetry.   Sándor Jászberényi: You left Hungary in 1986. Where did you go? Gábor Gyukics.: Yes, I left Hungary in 1986, I […]

We revisit a scene from Josephus Flavius’ account of what he called, in his famous history, the war of the Jews. We find ourselves with Marcus Atius, who has welcomed a party traveling with the body of Aristobulus in search of honey to preserve the corpse until it can be sent to the Jews for […]

“… wars occasion a certain natural selection among peoples, which plays a very important role in the gradual perfection of the human race, because victory is generally won by those peoples who are physically, mentally, and morally the strongest and who stand at a higher stage of culture.” – Lajos Méhelÿ: The Biology of War […]

My father was a lifeguard at the swimming pool in our small town, and every summer he tanned a darker brown than you ever would have thought possible. Not like most Hungarians, not a flaky, reddish bronze, he was really the color of chocolate. He was proud of his brown skin, he liked to show […]

Bottled by a Transylvanian Hungarian in English She stood with a half-emptied glass in one hand and an almost full glass in the other. A composed Chinese gentleman stepped in. He stepped out on the first floor. Ten minutes to eight and there she was, gin-and-tonicked and in love in the lobby, waiting for Zelda […]

Kodak, one of the most familiar names on the market in the world of photography, launched research into ways in which to produce darker tones simply in response to interest from chocolate producers and furniture factories, that were increasingly impatient to have photographs that captured a diversity of shades.   At the beginning of the […]

It has no single form. And that’s the point! Can we trust in that which constantly changes its appearance? In Blind Hope? It could be a beggar on the street corner, or a young woman, servant to a house, marched off to Auschwitz together with her masters, to the Danube Delta or Vorkuta where she […]

Seven years ago, as fate would have it, I arrived in Indonesia for the first time in my life, on Vesak. Vesak is the celebration of the birth, enlightenment, and departure from earthly existence—or Parinirvāna—of Gautama Buddha. Parinirvāna cannot really be called death, much like the crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension of Christ. From the perspective […]

‘Wanderselig,wundertrunken Übt ein Vogel seinen Mund’ (Hugo Ball: Kind und Traum) Infants trumpet into elefánt-clouds bu-bo bu-bo: winged lions sing underwater nothing to see do you dare to look into the akvárium do you see letter-snakes rumble on your tongue “the good heart flutters in a bell jar” “churchbells rise upwards” (Kassák) the image is […]