Accepted Abstracts

Hungarian Identity and European Connections

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
Hungarian writers of the 19th and early 20th century were concerned with Hungarian identity formation. At the same time, they were aware of the need to place Hungary in a European context. Sándor Petőfi proudly proclaimed himself to be a Hungarian but this was balanced by his interest in European literature and political movements. Other poets of the era also saw Hungarian identity as part and parcel of European identity. In the early years of the 20th century Endre Ady addressed the same issues. He was the champion of Hungarian values and traditions but advocated openness to western ideas and models. By the latter part of the century, in the work of Peter Huncik, Hungarian identity assumed cross-border dimensions as Hungarian writers now function outside of Hungary's political borders. A multi-ethnic approach is emerging in the literatures of the neighboring countries with Hungarian minorities and also within the diaspora. How this wider globalization will play out is yet to be decided.


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. In 2017 she was awarded the Arany Janos Medal by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences for her work for Hungarian studies, including the founding and leading of the AHEA, work with the Modern Language Association of America and official positions in the MLA and the SCLA among professional organizations. Works include Sándor Petőfi (Twayne World Authors) and editor of volumes in the series; Guest editor of Hungarian Literature in the Review of National Literatures; author of numerous articles on Hungarian and comparative literature. 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.

---

A Return to Humanism: The Poetry of Zoltán Böszörményi

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
Focusing on his latest volume of poems, The Conscience of Trees, the paper unearths the humanist elements in Zoltán Böszörményi’s poetic terrain. The poet’s erudite ruminations evoke the classics of antiquity and transcend the limitations of an exclusively ethnic identity. His voice, at once serene and keenly metaphysical, soars beyond the nets nationalism, revolutionary fervor, and religious obeisance. The poems echo the words of the greatest Hungarian humanist Janus Pannonius: “Költő és hivő nem férnek össze” (‘Poet and believer abide not together’).


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Peter Hargitai is Poet Laureate of Gulfport, Florida. The retired FIU professor and human rights activist
is an Academy of American Poets Landon Prize translator of Hungarian literature. He and his book Daughter of the Revolution are the subjects of an award-winning documentary directed by Tünde Tálas. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Hargitai

---

The Problem of the Notion of Modernity in the Contemporary History of Literature in Hungary and beyond

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
The Hungarian history of literature and within it the term for the period of so-called modernity has generated several debates in the last three decades. The Hungarian literary periodization, on the one hand, has tried to find starting points in international literature; on the other hand, it has attempted to describe 20th-21st-century Hungarian literary fiction by such scientific neologisms as, for example, György Tverdota’s term of ‘tradition-preserving modernity’ (hagyományőrző modernség. The aim of my paper is, after briefly outlining the stakes of the debate developed so far and getting to the historical root of the terminological question, to find a way out of the difficulties of periodization of literature and other arts. In order to achieve this, broadening the starting point taken from Hungarian literary studies in concentric circles, I will first review comparative literature, then other branches of the art of the age, and finally, with the help of considerations across disciplinaries, I will look outside humanities. According to my thesis, the changes started in the middle of the 19th century in both Hungarian and international literature have been strongly interrelated with other aspects of culture and civilization. A common term for these changes is necessary because of the aspect of periodization and possible due to the existing common traits; however, it cannot be ‘modernity’. This is why, considering a long 20th century, due to the emphasis on relations and relativity, I suggest introducing the notion of ‘relationism’.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Literary theorist and theologian. He received his first Ph.D. degree (2017) from the Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) in literature. He received his Licentiate of Sacred Theology (2017) from the Pázmány Péter Catholic University (PPKE). Now he is a Ph.D. candidate at PPKE and a senior lecturer at ELTE. He carried out research work in Belgium (K.U. Leuven) and in the U.K. (University of Oxford). He published his first book entitled Prophetic Counterparts in The Brothers Karamazov in 2015. Currently, he is a Visiting Research Fellow at Yale University.

---

Priests, Pastors, and Power: The Corruption of Clergy in Novels by Zsigmond Móricz and Ludwig Thoma

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
The novel A fáklya written by Zsigmond Móricz in 1917, and Ludwig Thoma’s novel Andreas Vöst penned in 1906, both portray the influence of modernity on the role played by clergy in rural society – Móricz in Hungary, Thoma in Bavaria. In these regions of Central Europe, religious authorities played critical roles as moral arbiters of social values, celebrants of key milestones in individual and family life, and powerful liaisons between the individual and the state. Clergy played an often determining role in constituting community and individual identity given the demand that the members of rural society collectively ascribe to and participate in a common faith. Yet as both Móricz and Thoma emphasize, while pastors and priests may represent presumably absolute moral and religious values, they also succumbed to the modern forces of status, commodification, and materialism, and were consequently subjected to the corrupting influences of these forces. In both narratives, the religious leader of the community bears direct responsibility for social, moral, and physical harm. My paper will explore the connections between religious authority on the one hand, and secular corruption and individual moral failing on the other, in order to analyze the role of religious authorities in exacerbating the social ennui that accompanied the forces of modernity in rural Hungary and Bavaria as seen in these narratives. My comparison will show that the corrupting influence of these fictional religious authorities exemplified a phenomenon that affected Europe generally as it transitioned from a feudal to a modern economy and society.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Professor of German at Northern State University. My books and articles deal with modern narrative in Germany, Hungary, and global realism. I have translated several novels by Zsigmond Móricz into English, as well as a collection of stories by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. My research currently centers on the novels of Zsigmond Móricz and Germans-from-Russia studies.

---

A Hungarian Tragedy: 100 Years since the Demise of Géza Csáth

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
Géza Csáth (1887-1919) and his cousin Dezső Kosztolányi were unusually close in the turn-of-the last century, in the then-Hungarian city of Szabadka, today Суботица/Subotica in Serbia. He lived the tragedy of WW I and Trianon, when Szabadka became Serbian territory. While attempting to cross the border on his way to Budapest, Csáth, detained by Serbian soldiers, committed suicide in their presence. A Hungarian writer as well as an amazingly accomplished polymath, creative artist, playwright, musician, music critic, and neurologist-physician, his chosen occupation, however, was medical doctor of psychiatry. Nonetheless, he showed evidence of being a psychopath still early in his creative writings and later in his medical practice. The film Opium: Diary of a Madwoman (Hungary, 2007, Director: János Szász) is loosely based on his life. A Renaissance man but crushed to death when addiction took hold, was he unable to use his mind to protect himself? Was Csáth bipolar? Is this the root of his madness and drug addiction? Or were external circumstances to blame? Does the character of Csáth metamorphose from the villain of melodrama to the victim of tragedy? Csáth eloquently describes in his short story “Opium” that the exchange of old values for new is the heart of any tragedy. In this paper, the presenter, while exploring Csáth’s relationship with Kosztolányi, proposes that the era of the demise of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, while tragic for many, was a Promethean time of creativity, during which the lives of Csáth, Kosztolányi, and their contemporaries are symbolic of loss and despair.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
James V. Pavlish is an adjunct professor of Spanish language and literature at John Carroll University in Cleveland, OH. He holds a BS in Linguistics from Georgetown University, an MA in Spanish from Cleveland State University, and of Master’s in Theology from St. Mary Graduate School of Theology (OH). He has presented several papers on the works of Dezső Kosztolányi. He has also read papers on comparative literature at numerous national as well as international venues, the two most recent being at the Crossing Borders Conference in Vasto, Italy (2017), and at the AHEA conference at Cleveland State University (2018).

---

Refugee Identity in Zoltán Böszörményi’s Latest Book of Poems: Conscience of Trees.

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
The identity most in the news lately has been that of the refugee. Hungarian literature has several writers who have cultivated their art while in self-imposed exile, and we can get a varied picture of the refugee identity through their works. The most prominent among them was György Faludy, but now we have a new generation or two of refugee writers as a result political pressure. A unique case among them is Zoltán Böszörményi, from Transylvania who was forced to flee Romania in 1982 because of his association with a circle of young Hungarian poets. As a refugee in Canada he had to put aside his literary pursuits for existential concerns which included learning English, getting a degree in philosophy from York College and working his way up from low-paying janitorial jobs to a position with an advertising agency. In 1990, after the collapse communism, he went back to Romania and, using his business experience, he started a Hungarian publishing firm, complete with a weekly newspaper, a quarterly literary journal and books of prose and poetry. He was also able to restart his writing career, adding prose to his poetry; his adventurous escape and varied experiences in the Western World combined with his knowledge of the contemporary intellectual currents of Central Europe gave him plenty of material and inspiration as well. Thus his poetry, while Hungarian in language and cultural influences, can be best described as globalist in the positive sense of it: being open to the ideas and the intellectual ferment of the world.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Paul Sohar, a 1956 refugee from Hungary, finished his education in the US with a degree in philosophy and has been writing and publishing in every genre, including seventeen volumes of translations, the latest being Conscience of Trees, Zoltán Böszörményi’s poetry (Ragged Sky Press, Princeton, 2018). His own poetry: Homing Poems (Iniquity Press, 2006) and The Wayward Orchard, a Wordrunner Press Prize winner (2011). Other awards: first prize in the 2012 Lincoln Poets Society contest, and a second prize from RI Writers Circle contest (2014) in addition to several Pushcart Prize nominations and three translation prizes received in Hungary. Magazine credits include Agni, Gargoyle, Kenyon Review, Rattle, Poetry Salzburg Review, and Seneca Review.

---

The Novels of István Eszterhás: Hungarian, American, and Global?

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
His son Joe became a famous Hollywood screenwriter, but less is known about István Eszterhás, a prolific writer who lived in Cleveland and edited a famous Hungarian-American newspaper. Leaving his homeland because of the Second World War, he arrived in Cleveland in 1950 and wrote realistic fiction, at least 13 novels as well as a memoir and some poetry, up until 1998. He had an uncanny sense of the ideological language of Cold War Hungary, coupled with insightful observations about diaspora communities. His works deal with themes of language, identity and emigration, as well as politics and religion, and they do so with empathy, mostly historical accuracy, and a deep respect for the human condition, hallmarks of great literature. Novels addressed will include A bíboros és a rendőr [the Cardinal and the Cop], his novel about Mindszenty, and A hézag [the Rift], his novel about Hungarian-American language, a really funny yet thought-provoking story with loads of ideological baggage and multiple levels of irony. Although not in the Hungarian literary canon, István Eszterhás should be, and this paper will explain why.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Endre Szentkiralyi studied English and German at Cleveland State University, earned an MA in English at the University of Akron, and earned a PhD at the University of Debrecen. He has edited several books of oral histories, and worked on the 56Films documentaries Inkubátor and Megmaradni. His books include Cold War to Warm Cooperation: the Military Service of Cleveland Hungarians 1950-2014 (Zrínyi Publishing); his latest (Being Hungarian in Cleveland: Maintaining Language, Culture, and Traditions) is now being published by Helena History Press. He currently teaches English and German at Nordonia High School near Cleveland, Ohio.

---

Printing for the Empire, Printing for the Minorities: The Buda University Press (1770- 1848) in Pest -Buda

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
My proposed paper offers an introduction to the history and activity of the Buda University Press, the institution, which, by printing the most important scholarly texts for the nationalities of Hungary, played an important role in the articulation ideas of national awakening in the region. Founded in Upper Hungary in 1577, the Press moved to Pest-Buda in the late 18th century as part of the general relocation of the country’s most important administrative offices from Pozsony to the twin cities. Due to the printing privileges conferred on the Press by the Austrian imperial court, the Press was in the unique position to print with non-Latin alphabet, which make it the most important producer of schoolbooks for a wide range of nationalities of the empire. This role of spreading cultural modernity and cultural enlightenment will be measured against the conditions of literacy in the language areas whose scholars were employed by the university press, as well as against the national composition of the twin cities. The paper will argue that Pest-Buda acted as an important regional center in the period, where national self-conceptualisations were articulated.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Zsuzsanna Varga has taught Hungarian Studies at the University of Glasgow for ten years. Her research interests include 19th women's writing, travel writing and book history.

---