Home » Posts tagged 'hungarian'

Tag Archives: hungarian

A Legacy of Losers

Posted on by | Leave a comment

Hungarian Writer Miklós Vámos (b, 1950)

I am currently reading Miklós Vámos’s The Book of Fathers (2000), in Hungarian: Apák Könve. In the notes at the end of the novel, I found this anecdote, which I couldn’t help but share with you. It summarizes more than half a millennium of Hungarian history.

One well-known fact is that Hungary and the Hungarians have lost every important war and revolution since the time of the Renaissance king Matthias Corvinus. He occupied Vienna and became Prince of Austria. He died in 1490. Since then, the nation and its heroes can be found only on the losing side.

A famous, if hoary, joke is instructive.

A Hungarian enters a small shop in New York and wants to buy a hat. But he doesn’t have enough dollars on him, so he asks if he could pay in forints, the Hungarian currency.

“I’ve never seen any forints,” the owner of the shop says. “Show me some.”

“Who’s this guy here?” asks the owner.

“This is Sándor Petöfi, the brightest star of Hungarian poetry. He lived in the nineteenth century. He was one of the March Youth who launched the 1848-49 War of Independence. He was killed in the Battle of Segesvár when the war was crushed by the Austrians and the Russians.”

“Oh my God, what an awful story … And who is this guy on the twenty forint bill?”

“This is György Dózsa, who led in peasant uprising in the sixteenth century. It was crushed and he was executed—actually, he was burned on a throne of fire—”

“OK, OK. And who is that on the fifty?”

“That’s Ferenc Rákóczi II, leader of another war of independence, crushed by the Habsburgs. He was forced to spend his life in exile in Turkey.”

“I should have guessed. And on the one hundred?”

“That’s Lajos Kossuth, leader of the 1848-49 War of Independence, you know. After it was crushed, he had to flee—”

The owner stops him again. “OK, you poor man, just go—you can have the hat for free.”

(Note: these banknotes are no longer in circulation, owing to the ravages of inflation.)

Acres of Cheap Crap

Posted on by

Several days ago, Martine expressed some interest in going to a Walmart … because, well, she hadn’t seen the inside of a megastore for several years. With some reluctance, I drove her to the giant Walmart in Panorama City, at the corner of Roscoe and Van Nuys. Originally, I intended to drop her off and go to a huge bookstore nearby. But then I asked myself, “Do I really need to buy more books?”

That was my mistake. For almost two hours I wandered around the store looking at all the merchandise. In the menswear department, I didn’t see any pants under 30 inches in the inseam. I looked at the shirts: They had flimsy pockets that would dump my reading glasses on the ground every time I bent over.

I guess that for some people seeing so much merchandise and so many services in one place was exhilarating. For me, it was profoundly depressing.

It brought to mind the Atlantic Mills megastore in Bedford, Ohio to which my parents took me. I remember we bought a clunky Recordak tape recorder there. Then there was the huge Fedco Store on La Cienega whose late night pharmacy I had to visit after a visit to the emergency ward for urethral strictures.

I was delighted when I got Martine to agree to leave after purchasing a box of cheap light bulbs. From there, we drove to Otto’s Hungarian Import Store and Deli in Burbank to buy some gyulai kolbasz sausage. We ate lunch nearby at Lancer’s on Victory near Magnolia. It’s one of those 1950s style coffee shops that managed to make it to the 21st century.

Gyökér

Posted on by

Stamp Honoring Hungarian Poet Radnóti Miklós (1909-1944)

The title of this post is the Magyar (Hungarian) word for “Roots.” Radnóti was a Jewish-Hungarian poet who was conscripted into forced labor by the Nazis and marched to the point of exhaustion. The poem below was found in his pocket when his body was exhumed from a mass grave.

Roots

Strength courses in the root;
It drinks the rain, it lives together with the soil,
And its dream is white as snow.

From beneath the soil to above the soil it bursts;
The root crawls, cunning,
Its arms like ropes.

On the root’s arms, worms sleep;
On the root’s legs, worms sit;
The world grows worm-ridden.

Yet the root lives on below;
The world does not concern it —
Only the branch does, full of leaves.

Marveling at the branch, it feeds it constantly;
To it it sends its savors,
Its sweet, celestial savors.

Now I too am a root;
I too now live among worms;
It is there that poetry is made.

I was once a flower; now I have become a root,
With the heavy dark soil above me;
My fate now ended,
A saw wails above my head.

Below is the first stanza of the poem in Hungarian, just to give you an idea of the severe compression possible in the Magyar language:

Gyökér

A gyökérben erő surran,
esőt iszik, földdel él
és az álma hófehér.

Perched on Nothing’s Branch

Posted on by

Hungarian Poet Attila József (1905-1937)

The last few days I have been suffering from a summer cold. I know it’s not summer yet, but the temperature has been hot. During that time, I was reading a manically humorous detective novel written in the 1940s and finally quit as I was two-thirds of the way through. What I picked up next was a collection of 40 disturbing poems by a Hungarian poet who committed suicide by throwing himself under a train in 1937.

It’s not that I’m addicted to gloominess, but I am after all a Hungarian myself. So it must be something in the blood. Here is the title poem from the collection I read:

Perched on Nothing’s Branch

I finally arrive
at the sand’s wet edge,
look around, shrug

that I am where I am,
looking at the end. A
silver ax strokes
summer leaves. Playfully.

I am perched solidly
on nothing’s branch.
The small body shivers
to receive heaven.

Iron-colored.

Cool shiny dynamos revolve
in the quiet revolution of stars.
Words barely spark from clenched teeth.

The past tumbles
stonelike through space,
blue time floating off
without a sound. A blade
flashes, my hair—

My mustache is a full
caterpillar droopong
down my numb mouth,
my heart aches, words are cold.
There’s no one out here
to hear—

Magyar for a Day

Posted on by

Dancers from the Karpátok Hungarian Folk Ensemble

Around the beginning of May, I look forward to the Grace Hungarian Reformed Church’s Annual Hungarian Family Festival. It’s also one of Martine’s favorite events because of the food, the entertainment, and the friendliness of the people in attendance.

I don’t get too many opportunities to participate in any event as a Hungarian. I still remember much of the language, and the Hungarian parishioners seem to understand my somewhat ungrammatical Magyar. The pronunciation is okay, but my vocabulary has gaps you could drive a regiment of Hussars through.

Martine loves stuffed cabbage, and the church does a fair job cooking it up. But most noteworthy are the baked goods (Sütemények), particularly the Hungarian cheesecake (crémes) that tends to sell out in microseconds after being brought out out from the church kitchen.

Also wonderful is the folk dancing by the Karpátok Hungarian Folk Ensemble, which is celebrating its 60th anniversary in Los Angeles. When the Covid-19 lockdown hit, the last public event we attended was a Karpátok concert. We are happy that they are as active as ever and are considering a program of events featuring their music and dancing.

My Own Nationality

Posted on by

A Different Kind of Hungarian

As I get older, I am increasingly unwilling to interact with strangers. Chatting with people I do not know is just something I would rather not do any more. I don’t even like sharing an elevator. The absolute worst is having to interact with American tourists when I am traveling abroad.

And yet I remember helping a group of French tourists in Iceland get guesthouse accommodation in Höfn, Iceland, when they couldn’t find any locals who understood them.

The difference was they didn’t have any expectations of help, whereas many or most American travelers, on the contrary, would. It is at that point that I reply to their question(s) very politely in my off rural Hungarian dialect from the 1930s. I could be telling them in Hungarian to get stuffed, but I actually try to answer them politely in my native language.

There is always the danger that the person accosting me knows the Magyar language. That actually happened to me once in Vancouver’s Chinatown, when the beggar asking for spare change recognized what I was saying and answered me back in Hungarian. I immediately melted and gave him a five dollar bill. He actually invited me for coffee, but I was on my way to a movie screening and didn’t want to be late. Else I would have obliged him.

I am not that way, of course, with my friends and acquaintances. Or even with waiters or cashiers. It’s just that I have a phobia of dealing with demands placed on me by strangers. That even includes the unsmiling visage that I characteristically assume—all to avoid having to deal with the public at large.

The Paprika Connection

Posted on by

Otto’s Hungarian Deli in Burbank

Things were starting to get serious. I was running out of Hungarian paprika, and my supplier of füstölt kolbász (smoked Hungarian sausage) had gone out of business months ago. Normally, I am not a big fan of what I call Eurochow, but in the case of Hungarian cuisine I make an exception.

In Greek mythology, there is a character named Antaeus, who would “challenge all passers-by to wrestling matches and remained invincible as long as he remained in contact with his mother, the earth.” Likewise, I have to remain in contact with my Hungarian roots. Plus, unlike me, Martine is a hardened carnivore; and Hungarian cuisine is definitely a cuisine for carnivores.

On Saturday, Martine and I drove out to Burbank, where, in the middle of a residential block, sits Otto’s Hungarian Import Store and Deli. We used to go there more frequently, but lately Martine has been reluctant to go on long drives due to a pinched nerve in her back.

Fortunately, Otto’s had some good kolbász and big jars of Szegedi and Kalocsai sweet Hungarian paprika. And since Martine had been such a good sport about coming along, I got her some dobos torte and dios baigli.

Trianon

Posted on by

The Crown of St. Stephen of Hungary

Looking back at the treaties that ended the First World War, it appears that the Hungarian half of the Kingdom of Austria-Hungary was made to pay the heavier price for what was essentially the Emperor Franz Joseph’s decision to go to war against the Serbs for assassinating the heir to the throne in Sarajevo. According to Wikipedia:

The treaty regulated the status of the Kingdom of Hungary and defined its borders generally within the ceasefire lines established in November-December 1918 and left Hungary as a landlocked state that included 93,073 square kilometres (35,936 sq mi), 28% of the 325,411 square kilometres (125,642 sq mi) that had constituted the pre-war Kingdom of Hungary (the Hungarian half of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy). The truncated kingdom had a population of 7.6 million, 36% compared to the pre-war kingdom’s population of 20.9 million.Though the areas that were allocated to neighbouring countries had a majority of non-Hungarians, in them lived 3.3 million Hungarians – 31% of the Hungarians – who then became minorities.

How Trianon Chopped Hungary to Bits

Pieces of Hungary went to Yugoslavia, Romania (the largest chunk, all of Transylvania), Russia, Czechoslovakia, and even Austria. What did Austria lose for its participation in the war? Essentially, Bohemia (to Czechoslovakia) and the much of the Tirol (to Italy). The new borders of Hungary became to larger of the two green areas in the above map.

I can understand separating out the Slovenians, Croatians, Russians, and Slovaks; but a great injustice was done to the Hungarians of Transylvania, who are treated as second-class citizens of Romania.

Magyarság

Posted on by

Members of the Kárpátok Folk Dance Troupe

Yesterday, Martine and I attended the 30th Magyar Majális és Tavaszi Fesztivál at the Grace Hungarian Reformed Church in Reseda. This is perhaps the fifth or sixth year we have attended, and each time I was powerfully reminded of my Hungarian roots. I, who speak Hungarian most of the time to confound strangers with whom I do not wish to converse, was surrounded by friendly people speaking, for the most part, the Magyar tongue.

And with the continuing decline of European ethnic restaurants in Los Angeles, it is also the best place in Southern California to find good Hungarian home cooking. Martine had her beloved crémes pastry—sort of a sweet Hungarian cheesecake. I had my favorite gulyás leves (Hungarian goulash soup).

I get very sentimental about my Hungarian roots. Maybe because I am surrounded by non-Hungarians. It requires an effort to keep up my mother tongue for the actual purposes of communication. My pronunciation is right on the money, but my vocabulary and grammar are atrocious. That’s because I essentially ceased using Hungarian as my main language at the age of six.

The Program for the Festival

As I continue to age, I expect to see myself reading more Hungarian literature and seeing more Hungarian movies. The Hungarian Reformed church in Reseda is not really my religion, though it was my mother’s. My parents decided that all boys born into the Páris family were to be Catholics, like my Slovak father; and all girls, to be Hungarian Reformed Protestants. As it turned out, I have only one sibling, my brother Dan.

American Glop

Posted on by

Does It Need Dipping Sauce Because It’s Dry and Tasteless?

I’m grateful that I was not raised on American food. My mother and great grandmother were superb cooks in the Hungarian tradition. Although as a smaller child I loved hot dogs and hamburgers, I found myself increasingly drawn to food that had real flavor.

Real food is prepared with spices. And not just catsup. I cannot understand why American hamburgers are just meat. My mother mixed ground beef with ground pork, and then added egg, bread, minced onions, garlic, and parsley. We called it fasirt or schnitzli. They were good hot or cold and made great leftovers.

Compare it with the typical American fast food hamburgers. Oh, you’ll probably need a “dipping sauce” consisting of a mixture of warmed-up fat, catsup, and sugar to make it palatable.

If your dish requires a dipping sauce, it’s because the cook did not know how to season the dish. That’s also why hamburgers are often served with some sort of thousand island dressing, because they are not otherwise moist or tasty.

And I’m not just talking about hamburgers, either. Most American food tastes unappetizing and bland to me. I suppose you’d like it only if you were raised on Cheerios until you reached the age of twenty-one. Living in Los Angeles, I would rather go to a good Asian or Latin-American restaurant rather than one of the standard fast food chains. You can get real food there, and it will have flavor.