History/Political Science paper by Deak, George
Ervin Sinkó and Hungary: A Story of Unrequited Love
Type of Abstract (select):Abstract (max. 250 words):
The writer and poet Ervin Sinkó was born in Szabadka in 1898 but spent only the first 21 years of his life within Hungary. As a participant in the Soviet Republic of 1919, he was a in danger of arrest had he returned to the country during the Horthy regime. Nor was he willing to return to live in Hungary under the Rákosi or the Kádár regimes. Instead, he lived his life as a Hungarian writer beyond Hungary's borders as an outsider in Austria, Yugoslavia, France, and the Soviet Union. He finally settled in Yugoslavia after World War II where he became the director of the Department of Hungarian Language and Literature at the University of Novi Sad. His marginality was exacerbated by his Jewish origins, from which he was also alienated. As a writer, the Hungarian language and the humanistic strain of its culture that it embodied, formed the basis of his identity. This presentation will examine Sinkó's attitudes towards his exile and marginal status, and evaluate what kind of loss it meant to him as well as to his motherland. The presentation will focus on the following episodes in his story. Why did Sinkó need to evade extradition from Yugoslavia after World War I? Why did he fear meeting members of the Jewish congregation in Szabadka in the early 1920s? How did he react to the Rajk trial? What did he say about Hungary in 1962, when he returned there for a short visit?
Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
George Deák was born in Hungary and emigrated to the U.S. in 1957. He earned his PhD in History from Columbia University in 1980. His dissertation dealt with the early history of the National Association of Manafucturers (GyOSz). He abandoned the field of history for thirty years, working as a computer programmer and manager. He returned to the field in 2011 to teach as an adjunct instructor at University of Massachusetts, Lowell. Most recently, he has translated and edited Ervin Sinkó's The Novel of a Novel, Abridged Diary Entries from Moscow, 1935-1937, which is due to be published by Lexington Books in the summer of 2018. deakgy62@gmail.com