Abstracts of Submitted Papers 2013

Initiation into a World with no Future: Ferenc Barnás's The Ninth (A Kilencedik) and Görgy Dragomán's The White Knight (Fehér Király)

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
Two contemporary novels, published within a year of each other, transport us back to life under Soviet control in Kádár's Hungary and Ceauşescu's Romania. Ferenc Barnás's The Ninth (A Kilencedik) and György Dragomán's The White King (A Fehér Király), published in 2006 and 2005 respectively and rendered into English by the gifted translator Paul Olchváry, are initiation or coming-of-age novels that can also be classified as trauma literature. Since the novels are semi-autobiographical with narrators about the same age as their authors were at the time the stories take place, they are historically important as literary forms of “bearing witness”. The narrator protagonists of these novels are young boys, aged 9 and 11. They are “outsiders”, not because of anything they have done, but simply because of who they are: sons of fathers deemed “unreliable” by the all-powerful Communist Party. Thus, their crises have existential dimensions. If they are literally going to survive, they must find some way to adapt. However, their environment offers little in the way of acceptable options. How are they to cope in a world which seems to offer them no viable future?
Basic to their predicament is an unjust legal and social system, based not on “the communal establishment of universal values”, but on the will of a small group of Party members whose chief function is to promote themselves and perpetuate the system. To keep the Party in power, it doles out perks and privileges to the Party faithful and terrorizes anyone who might object. Long gone is the world of the classic education novel (Bildungsroman) Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship (Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre), where the process of maturation leads to a more or less harmonious integration into society. Instead, these protagonists live in a post-Nietzschean world of lost values that has more in common with the experience of the Absurd in Camus's The Outsider (L'Étranger)or Beckett's Waiting for Godot than the more harmonious world of Goethe's masterpiece.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Marguerite Allen has a Ph.D. in Comparative Studies in Literature from the University of Chicago, where she was a Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation Dissertation Fellow. In 2008 she conducted research as a Fulbright Scholar in Hungary and was a Visiting Scholar at the Roberta Buffett Center for International and Comparative Studies at Northwestern University. She has written about her Hungarian family: a memoir about her uncle and an article about her father's work as a Counter Intelligence Corps officer in the U.S. Army and his arrests of Arrow Crossers in Austria, as recorded in his private diary. She had a scholarship in 2007 to attend the Holocaust Educational Foundation Summer Institute. She has published a book on the 1587 Faust chapbook and Thomas Mann's Doktor Faustus, The Faust Leg end: Popular Formula and Modern Novel, as well as articles in major academic journals. Most recently, Marguerite wrote a chapter in The Faustian Century: German Literature and Culture in the Age of Luther and Faustus (Camden House, February 2013). After receiving her Ph.D., Marguerite taught German courses at Princeton University and World Literature at Loyola University of Chicago. She also won a National Endowment for the Humanities travel grant to conduct research at the Thomas Mann archives in Zurich, Switzerland.

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Hungarian Poets: Using Historical Narrative to Prepare for a Better Future

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
Hungarian literature has often looked to the past not with nostalgia but with an agenda. Zrinyi praised his ancestor for heroic deeds to encourage his country to throw off the Ottoman yoke through a united effort. The Romantic poets, notably Vörösmarty and Arany also reached into the past to revive pride in athe nation and to urge it to step forward into a country in livelly dialogue with its future. The vatic vision of Petőfi was less motivated by history than by folklore, yet even thisd reaches back to an earlier, presumably simpler and better times. The goal of all was to create a nation proud of its past and unified by a shared tradition. Their example can show us how the past can be a gateway to the future.



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Enikő Molnár Basa received her PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. After teaching for several years at universities in the Washington, DC area, she took a position at the Library of Congress. In 2002-2004 she held the Kluge Staff Fellowship at the Library working on what will eventually be a book examining Hungarian literature from the point of view of its political and social commitment. Dr. Basa is the author of Sándor Petőfi in the Twayne World Author Series (G.K. Hall) and editor of volumes in the series on Mihály Vitéz Csokonai, Imre Madách, Kálmán Mikszáth, and Ferenc Molnár, as well as Dezső Kosztolányi and Miklós Radnóti prepared for the series but published by the Finnisch-Ugrarisches Jahrbuch at the University of Munich. She was guest editor of Hungarian Literature in the Review of National Literatures series, and contributed some articles to it. Author of several articles on Hungarian and comparative literature, she has also been active in Hungarian and literary professional organizations, presenting papers at a wide variety of venues. She is the Executive Director of the American Hungarian Educators Association, and received the Presidential Gold Medal of Hungary from Árpád Göncz in 1997. In 2010 she received the Péter Basa Award of the American Hungarian Educators Association. Dr. Basa taught at the U. of Debrecen in the Fall semester of 2004 and at the U. of Szeged in the fall of 2009.

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Márai Sándor Nápolyban és Nápolyról

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
Márai Sándor poétikai fejlődésében fontos szerepet töltött be a nápolyi tartózkodás. Köztudomású, hogy akkor született Halotti beszéd című verse, amely a nyugati emigráció egyik legnagyobb irodalmi alkotása. Az idegenség-tapasztalat elbeszélői, költői szinten megjelenő összetevői szoros kapcsolataban állnak – néha paradox módon – a nápolyi élet elevenségével. Nincsenek kétségeim afelől, hogy a halál motívuma, jobban mondva az élet és a halál titkának motívuma és értelme mindig érdekelte Márait, két szempontból is. Először is a halál úgy, mint egzisztenciális, filozófiai, metafizikai rejtély; másodszor a halál, mely az embert saját hazáján kívül éri. Itt találjuk csiráit a San Gennaro vére koncepciojának is, amely Nápoly regénye, de ugyanakkor a hontalanságé és otthontalanságé is. Márai melankoliájának, nyugtalanságának, belső vándorlásának középponti motívuma a gyász, a halál, az élet értelmének a keresése, a mitikus múlt és a megrendítő jelen viszonya. Emellett nagy feladatának tartotta a magyar kulturális identitás megőrzését, ápolását.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Dr. Amedeo Di Francesco a „L’Orientale” Nápolyi Tudományegyetem professzora, magyar nyelvet és irodalmat tanít. A Miskolci Egyetem és a Debreceni Egyetem díszdoktora. 1971-ben a Római Tudományegyetemen szerzett diplomát magyar szakon. 1975-ben a Magyar Tudományos Akadémián szerzett kandidátusi fokozatot. 1994-ben kulturális tevékenységéért a Premio Internazionale Sebetia-Ter per la Cultura díjjal tüntették ki Nápolyban. 1995-től az Annali dell’Università degli Studi di Napoli “L’Orientale” – Studi Finno-Ugrici főszerkesztője. 1996-ban a Magyar Köztársaság művelődési és közoktatási minisztere a Pro Cultura Hungarica emlékplakettet adományozta számára. 1996-tól 2006-ig a Nemzetközi Magyar Filológiai Társaság (majd Nemzetközi Magyarságtudományi Társaság) elnöke, jelenleg választmányi tagja. 2002-ben a Hungarica et Slavica könyvsorozat alapítója (Boris Uspenskijjel és Aleksander Wilkoń-nyal) a nápolyi M. D’Auria kiadónál, 2008-ban az Ister – Collana di Studi Ungheresi sorozaté (Edizioni dell’Orso, Alessandria). 2002-ben Magyar Köztársaság elnökétől a magyar–olasz kapcsolatok ápolásáért és fejlesztéséért A Magyar Köztársági Érdemrend Középkeresztje kitüntetésben részesült. 2006-ban Nemzetközi Magyarságtudományi Társaság Lotz János-emlékérmet adományozott neki a hungarológia terén kifejtett nagy jelentőségű kutatói, oktatói és szervezői munkájáért. Több mint kétszáz publikációja van, olasz, magyar, angol, francia, német, horvát nyelven. Világszerte tartott tudományos előadásokat hungarológia témakörben.

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Hungary's Immigrant Women Poets: Reading the Works of Zsófia Balla

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
The diversity of languages and cultures in motion is central to contemporary European experience. Such diversity is represented in a variety of textual forms that challenge existing concepts of genre, audience and cultural production which shape our current European experience. These emerging varieties of cultural expressions connect diverse communities and have the potential to better contextualise our understanding of cultural patterns within Europe.
A significant body of migrant women’s textual expression has been produced in contemporary Hungary by native speakers of Hungarian who have immigrated to Hungary from neighbouring countries such as Romania, Slovakia, Croatia or Slovenia. The present paper’s objective is to examine this phenomenon through the lens of the poetry of Zsófia Balla and also to problematise the manner in which this work has been conceptualised within, and integrated into, the Hungarian literary establishment. In addition, the findings will be placed in a European context.
The paper proposes to contribute to a better understanding of current cultural developments in postcommunist spaces, and the ways contemporary migrants tend to articulate their positions within the European cultural framework; it will also add to the mapping of contemporary women’s writing in Europe. The central objective of this project is therefore the investigation of Hungary’s immigrant women’s textual production in the context of reinterpreting their past positioning within the Hungarian literary canon and offering alternative future readings.





Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Dr Borbála Faragó is currently a Marie Curie Intra-European Fellow in the Central European University, Budapest. The title of her research project is Migrant Women Writers on the Margins of Europe: The Case of Hungary. She holds a PhD from University College Dublin, Ireland. Her research interests include literature and cultural studies, poetry, literary theory, gender, ecocriticism and discourses of migration and transnationalism. She is the author of a number of articles on contemporary Irish poetry and is in the process of publishing a monograph on the work of Medbh McGuckian. Her other publications include Facing the Other: Interdisciplinary Studies on Race, Gender and Social Justice in Ireland (2008) and Landing Places: Immigrant Poets in Ireland (2010).

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The effects of the EU's language policy on revitalizing endangered languages: the case of Hungarian in minority contexts

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
In my presentation I aim to outline the general linguistic context of the EU because preserving the Hungarian language and finding its future depends highly on the linguistic rights and language policies of the different countries.
One of the starting points of my paper is a quote from the Council Resolution on a European Strategy of Multilingualism (2008): “Linguistic and cultural diversity is part and parcel of the European identity; it is at once a shared heritage, a wealth, a challenge and an asset for Europe.” On the one hand preserving cultural and linguistic diversity is a response to globalization, which is becoming more and more accentuated, motivating individuals to find their origins, their roots and some necessary benchmarks, language being one of these. On the other hand language is a symbol of cultural identity and resistance to any foreign domination.
One of the goals of my paper is to discuss the concepts of linguistic diversity and multilingualism as understood within the European Union, as well as their manifestation on the level of national language rights in the different countries of the European Union where Hungarian is present as a minority language.



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Gál Noémi, PhD is currently a lecturer at the Sapientia University of Marosvásárhely, at the Department of Humanities. She completed her university studies in 2003 at the Babeş–Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca majoring in English language and literature and Hungarian language and literature. She received her Master’s degree in Irish Studies at the same university in 2004. She completed her doctoral studies in 2009, the title of her thesis being Language Revitalization. Theory, Methodology and Perspectives. Her main field of research is sociolinguistics and the revitalization of endangered languages. She has presented her results at numerous national and international conferences and workshops.

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The Forgotten Author, Julianna Zsigray

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
Julianna Zsigray [1903-1987] was a prolific and a very popular author in Hungary before WWII. She published over two dozen novels and was an established person in the Hungarian literary scene. Her early works were publishes in the prestigious NYUGAT periodical, suggesting that she was accepted by her contemporaries. During the period, from 1931 to 1948, she published a novel almost every year, and the books enjoyed great popularity. In 1944 she was persecuted for her anti-German behavior, however during the Communist dictatorship, her censorship continued and she was not allowed to be published. After the 1956 revolution, she was able to publish some works but only with great difficulty. The generation, which grew up the decades after WWII did not have a chance to become acquainted with Zsigray's books and she became a "Forgotten Author". Today she is not recognized among the Hungarian literary personages. What we face with, in this case, is not singular in our example. There are many "Forgotten Authors" in Hungarian history and maybe it is time to review the works of those writers?


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Judit Kerekes is an Associate Professor of Mathematics Education at the City University of New York College of Staten Island. She has published extensively on the educational aspects of mathematics and she was a co-author of two books on the same topic. She also lectured and presented numerous papers on education and has been involved in teaching in Hungarian Schools within the community. Kerekes is the niece of Julianna Zsigray, who is the subject of her talk.

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The Correspondence of Alexander Lenard

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
This paper presents the correspondence of Hungarian writer and translator Alexander Lenard (1910-1972). As an émigré during World War II in Italy and later in Brazil, Lenard maintained his ties to Hungary through an extended correspondence. He exchanged letters and books with Weöres Sándor, Károlyi Amy, Passuth László, Karinthy Ferenc, Kardos Tibor, Nemes Nagy Agnes, Devecseri Gábor, Klára Szerb, etc. He also corresponded with Neo-latinists from around the world, including Robert Graves. Later in his life, when Lenard was living as a hermit at the edge of the Brazilian rain forest, these letters became his only lifeline to the outside world.


Lénárt-Cheng Helga: Lénárd Sándor levelezése

A dolgozat Lénárd Sándor magyar író és fordító (1910-1972) levelezését mutatja be. A második világháború előtt Olaszországba, majd késobb Brazíliába kivándorló író elsősorban levelek útján tartotta fenn szülőhazájával a kapcsolatot. Évtizedeken át levelezett Weöres Sándorral, Károlyi Amyvel, Passuth Lászlóval, Karinthy Ferenccel, Kardos Tiborral, Nemes Nagy Agnessel, Devecseri Gáborral, Szerb Klárával, és a magyar irodalmi élet más nagyjaival. A világ számos neolatinistájával, köztük Robert Gravesszel is gyakran váltott levelet. Élete vége felé, amikor Lénárd már remeteként élt a brazil őserdő szélén, ezek a levelek jelentették számára a külvilág felé az egyetlen kapcsolatot.



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Helga Lénárt-Cheng studied at ELTE, Budapest and completed her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at Harvard University in 2007. She has been on the faculty of the Modern Languages Department of Saint Mary's College of California, Moraga, CA, since 2008.

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Ferenc Molnar's Play "Liliom" Blooms Anew in "Carousel"

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
Ferenc Molnar's masterpiece "Liliom" premiered in Budapest in 1909. It revived numerous times in various repertories and was filmed many times. Its musical version, "Carousel," by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein opened in 1945 on Broadway. It's movie version by 20th Century Fox was released in 1956. The play does not fade away; it bloom anew in the film as well as in the musical because of the protagonists imperishable human and artistic values. The musical relocates the amusement park scene from Europe to New England but not the character of the shiftless sharper but also a barker of pure heart.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Rajec, Elizabeth Molnar
Independent Scholar. Retired professor emerita, academic librarian from City College of the City University of New York. Among her many published writings the Bibliography (vol. 1-2) on Ferenc Molnar should be mentioned here, published by Bohlau in Vienna in 1986.

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Family Documentary Lore - Reading a 1970s-1980s Correspondence between Jerusalem and Nagyvárad

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
Documentary literature is a mega-genre including diary, memoir, jubilee/regional book, minutes, and correspondence. This literature does not aim at artistry and its writers are far from acclaimed authors. Rather, they come from all social strata and wish to pass on their experiences and knowledge as people who lived through meaningful events and as part of their community/nation. In the Jewish-Israeli context, this motivation is amplified by the magnanimous events that befell the Jewish people in the last century and a half. My presentation offers a reading in the letters of my parents, Israeli immigrants from Erdély/Transylvania, to their sisters (each had one) in Nagyvárad/Oradea in Romania of the late 1970s and early 1980s (my paternal aunt later returned me the letters). The letters depict my parents' lives as eternal immigrants raising Israeli-born (sabra) children, and their longing for their past families and for the Várad/Erdély that once was. The very last of them bluntly tell their anguish about their deteriorating health. In my reading of the letters I wish to illustrate their nature and traits as documentary materials and their contribution to understanding Hungarian-Jewish immigrants, mostly Holocaust survivors, living in Israel of the 1950s-1970s. I shall also deal with the ways in which my reading re-writes the letters through a combination of literary-cultural research and personal memorial journey.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Ilana Rosen is Associate Professor of Hebrew Literature at the Ben Gurion University of the Negev at Beer Sheva, Israel. She studies documentary literature of Jews of Central-Eastern Europe, with stress on their Holocaust memory and narrative, as well as the multi-ethnic narrative of emigrants to south of Israel. Her publications include: Sister in Sorrow – Life Histories of Female Holocaust Survivors from Hungary (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2008), winner of the 2009 American Folklore Society (AFS) Elli Köngäs-Maranda prize for women's studies; Soul of Saul – the Life, Narrative, and Proverbs of a Transylvanian-Israeli Grandfather (Burlington: Vermont University, 2011).

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A Linguistic Institute in the service of Hungarians living in Transylvania

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
Being the researcher of the Szabó T. Attila Linguistic Institute for 10 years now, I considered it would be interesting to present the social and institutional background, aims and objectives of this Institute that was established due to the complexity of those problems that occurred after the regime change in 1989, when minorities regained their right to use more widely their mother tongue again. Insecurity, inconsistency and strong influence of the Romanian language, the lack of information and of public awareness about linguistic rights are just some of the many problems. These problems are characteristic for all the regions outside the borders of Hungary where there live Hungarians (the territories taken away after the Trianon Treaty) and called for the establishment of linguistic research institutes in these regions. Thus in 2001 in Transylvania the Szabó T. Attila Linguistic Institute was constituted.
The main objectives of the Linguistic Institute:
1. to establish, maintain and develop demographic, juristic, sociolinguistic and educational databases,
2. to take part in language and statute planning
3. to make research in sociolinguistics,
3. to offer language services to Hungarian institutions and private entities
The institute also proposes to collect, analyze and facilitate access to every Romanian law and statutory rule that governs language use. Linguistic human rights, bilingualism, contactology, Hungarian minority language variants are also research topics of the Institute. The Institute also creates digitized linguistic databases (glossaries for the public administration, loanwords glossary and monolingual interpretive dictionaries).



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Sárosi-Márdirosz Krisztina is an Assistant Professor PhD. at Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania (Târgu-Mureş, Romania). She gratuated the Faculty of Letters at Babeș-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca and the Faculty of Political, Administrative and Communication Sciences at Babeș-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca. She received her PhD. in philology at Babeş-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca in 2009. She has published studies on linguistics, translation studies and terminology. She is a member of External Public Body of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and at present she is working on the Hungarian-Romanian cultural dictionary and on an electronic data-base of legal terminology in collaboration with Szabó T. Attila Linguistic Institute (Cluj-Napoca). She has also taken part to numerous national and international conferences and scientific sessions (New York, Budapest, Eger, Szeged, Wien, Novi Sad, Cluj-Napoca, Miercurea-Ciuc etc).

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Major Themes in György Faludy's Poetry

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
The year after Faludy’s death I expected an avalanche of papers presented on the poet at the subsequent AHEA conference so I restricted my presentation to one aspect of his oeuvre, his concern about the environment and the way its deterioration threatened the future of mankind. Perhaps the poet’s death had caught some scholars off guard, because as it turned out, there were no other papers presented on his work. Now that a selection of my 123 Faludy translations is about to come out in an e-book form from The WriteDeal publishers under the title of “Silver Pirouettes” I would like to give a more general talk on every aspect of Faludy’s work from every period of his life, illustrating them with my translations that have appeared in 23 literary magazines in the US, UK, Canada and Austria. In order to conform to the theme of this upcoming 2013 conference I will again demonstrate the poets disillusionment with industry and the havoc it was wreaking on the environment, but in addition I will show another development that gave him cause to worry about the future: the general dumbing down of the people of the West, especially the younger generation. Preserving the past was also on his agenda; he had a deep commitment to Western Civilization and its roots in the Greco-Roman world, because he saw the past as a guide to the future. A people without a past had no future, he always maintained.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Paul Sohar ended his higher education with a BA in philosophy and took a day job in a research lab while writing in every genre, publishing seven volumes of translations, including "Dancing Embers", his Kanyadi translations (Twisted Spoon Press, 2002). Now a volume of his own poetry (“Homing Poems”) is available from Iniquity Press. His latest “The Wayward Orchard”, was a Wordrunner Prize winner: www.echapbook.com/poems/sohar (2011). His Faludy translations are scheduled to be published by The WriteDeal. His prose work "True Tales of a Fictitious Spy" was published by SynergeBooks in 2006. He has given talks at MLA and AHEA conferences and lectures at Centennial College, NJ. His magazine credits include Agni, Kenyon Review, Rattle, Salzburg Poetry Review, Seneca Review, etc.

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The complete thesaurus of the old Hungarian language used in Transylvania

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
The motto of this year’s conference refers to exactly what the editors of the Historical Dictionary of the Hungarian Language in Transylvania have tried to achieve throughout the long decades ever since the first volume appeared in 1975, that is: preserve the language of the past and make it accessible for future generations.
The aim of the paper is to present the past, present and future of the monumental work, which is the Historical Dictionary of the Hungarian Language in Transylvania.
The past refers on the one hand to what the dictionary represents: it is the complete thesaurus of the (spoken and written) Hungarian language used in Transylvania in the period of the 16th–19th centuries (and from this perspective it is a unique lexicological work). On the other hand the history of the dictionary itself is quite long, as Szabó T. Attila started thinking about the idea of such a work as early as the 1920’s, 50 years passed until the first volume was published in 1975, and now, in 2013 the last volume is about to appear.
The present is in fact another historical moment, as the final editorial touches are made on the last volume.
The future refers to the future plans we have with the Historical Dictionary of the Hungarian Language in Transylvania and that is its complete digitalization. This is very important because in this way scholars all over the world will be able to use this extremely rich database.



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Dr. Zsemlyei Borbála is currently an assistant professor at the Department of Hungarian and General Linguistics, Babeș‒Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania. She completed her university degree in Hungarian language and literature and English language and literature at Babeș‒Bolyai University in 2000. She continued her studies at the same university and recieved her master’s degree in Hungarian linguistics in 2002. In 2009 she defended her PhD thesis with the title Diminutive suffixes in the old Hungarian in Transylvania. Her main field of research is the old Hungarian language used in Transylvania. She presented the results of her research in numerous national and international conferences. She is one of the editors of the Historical Dictionary of the Hungarian Language in Transylvania (Erdélyi magyar szótörténeti tár).

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