Language/Literature paper by Sohar, Paul
Recent Hungarian History Reflected in Katalin Mezey's Poetry (Accepted)
Type of Abstract (select):Abstract (max. 250 words):
Poetry is not a whimsical stepchild of the cultural landscape in Hungary; on the contrary, it is regarded as the highest achievement of Hungarian culture. True, Hungary has contributed a lot in the fields of music and the creative arts, and has gained recognition for them, but poetry so far has not proven itself very exportable, at least not to the extent as other aspects of Hungarian culture. It seems to remain a secret treasure of those who speak the language. Unfortunately, the literary arts cannot stand on their own, cannot be exported without being transformed into another tongue. Even prose and theater have fared better in translation (see Ferenc Molnár, Sándor Márai, etc), but poetry somehow resists being dressed up in a foreign tongue. The importance of translating Hungarian poetry lies in the fact that poetry is considered important in Hungary, and its practitioners, the poets, are expected to deliver an important message, acting in the role of spokespeople for the nation.
For demonstration, a few poems are presented from Katalin Mezey’s newly translated selection of poems “Song Offerings”. She has witnessed a large segment of turbulent Hungarian history and very creatively commented on them in her poems. Her creative life was divided into two equal parts by an important historic event, the collapse of communism with the Soviet empire. Her poems will deal with the different problems people had to live with before and after the sudden transformation of the political and economic life of the country.
Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Paul Sohar came as a student refugee in 1957 from Hungary to the US where he got a B.A. in philosophy and a day job in a chemistry lab. He has been writing and publishing ever since in every genre and in the language of his adoptive country; by now he has published seventeen volumes of poetry in his translation and three of his own, the latest being “In Sun’s Shadow” (Ragged Sky Press, Princeton, 2020). Awards and Prizes: Four translation prizes received in Hungary, the latest being the Balassi Translation Prize (2021); for his own book of poetry “The Wayward Orchard” he received the Wordrunner Poetry Prize in 2011.