Eminenta hungara literaturologo Prof-o Mihály Szegedy-Maszák (23 junio 1943 - 24 julio 2016) ĵus mortis. En septembro 2012 mi korespondis kun li pri Imre Madách (pri kiu li multe verkis), György Lukács, kaj Sándor Szathmári. Interalie, li respondis, pri manko de traduko el la hungara de la eseo Madách tragédiája de 1955 de Lukács, ke li provus aranĝi tradukon. Evidente tio ne plenumiĝis. Lastatempe mi skribis al li enketon pri Frigyes Karinthy rilate al Lukács. Li ne respondis; nun mi scias la kialon.
Mi resumis lian vidpunkton pri Madách en mia eseo "La tragedio de l' homo en tri medioj" en Beletra Almanako n-ro 23, junio 2015, p. 95-102. Jen mia koncerna afiŝo:
La tragedio de l' homo & mi
Sube, mi iom pli detaligas lian fakan laboron en la angla.
I have learned that the eminent Hungarian literary scholar
Mihály Szegedy-Maszák (23 June 1943 - 24 July 2016) has just died. (Note his academic appointment at the
Dept. of Central Eurasian Studies, Indiana University.) I have found one obituary in English:
Top Hungarian Literary Scholar Mihály Szegedy-Maszák Dies
Hungary Today, 2016-07-26
Here are two notices in Hungarian:
Meghalt Szegedy-Maszák Mihály (2016.07.25)
Elhunyt Szegedy-Maszák Mihály irodalomtörténész (2016.07.25)
I corresponded with him in 2012 about
Imre Madách,
György Lukács, and
Sándor Szathmári. He recommended Thomas Mark's translation of
The Tragedy of Man, commented negatively on Lukács' role in the Stalinist system and his relation to Hungarian literature, and offered to find someone to translate Lukács' untranslated 1955 essay
Madách tragédiája. (No translation ever materialized.) Recently I wrote him inquiring about any known connection or comparison between
Frigyes Karinthy and György Lukács. Now I know why he did not respond.
Szegedy-Maszák supplied an essay on Madách's classic supplementing the recommended translation:
Madách, Imre.
The Tragedy of Man; translated from the Hungarian by Thomas R. Mark; illustrations by György Buday; with an afterword by Mihály Szegedy-Maszák. 2nd ed. Budapest: Black Eagle Press / Fekete Sas Kiadó, 1999. [1st ed.: 1989.] “The Tragedy of Man: A Reading” by Mihály Szegedy-Maszák, pp. 197-210.
See also his essay ...
“Life-Conception and Structure in ‘The Tragedy of Man’,”
Acta Litteraria Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, vol. 15, 1973, pp. 327-335.
... and his contribution on Madách's
Tragedy in ...
Nagy, Moses M., ed.
A Journey into History: Essays on Hungarian Literature. New York: Peter Lang, 1990. (American University Studies. Series XIX, General Literature, 0743-6645; Vol. 25)
See also his essay:
“
Romantic Drama in Hungary,” in
Romantic Drama, edited by Gerald Gillespie (Amsterdam; Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1994), pp. 297-315.
He also wrote about the effect of Stalinist repression on Hungarian writers:
Szegedy-Maszák, Mihály. “
Hungarian Writers in the 1956 Revolution,”
Hungarian Studies, Vol. 20,
no. 1, 2006, pp. 75-82. [1.83 MB - PDF]
Here is my abstract of another article:
Szegedy-Maszák, Mihály. "The Introduction of Communist Censorship in Hungary: 1945–49," in
History of the
Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe: Junctures and
Disjunctures in the 19th and 20th Centuries. V
olume III:
The making and remaking of literary institutions (Amsterdam;
Philadelphia: J. Benjamins, 2007), pp. 114-125.
There are three essays about Hungary in the third volume. There is
one about Hungarian literary historiography, one about the
historical role of Nyugat, and this:
"The Introduction of Communist Censorship in Hungary: 1945–49" by
Mihály Szegedy-Maszák (pp. 114-125).
The author is a well-known scholar of Hungarian literature. Here we
find a harsh condemnation of Lukács, covering the period from his
return to Hungary in 1949 to his condemnation by the very Stalinists
on whose behalf he acted. He is reported to have been out of touch
with the state of Hungary during and immediately after the war.
Lukács was deep into Communist machinations during the period of the
coalitions government. One such maneuver was an alliance with the
peasant-backed Populist Party, which also served to inject
anti-Semitism into the post-Nazi political arena. We also find
Lukács setting cultural policy, instituting a Communist literary
hegemony involving the defamation of various Hungarian authors past
and present as reactionary. Here we also find Lukács' hostility to
pessimism, an occasion for his condemnation of the putative
rottenness of the past. Numerous writers were silenced.One sees no
indication here of any concession to a dark view of the world as a
result of the Holocaust, something else which seems not to have
affected Lukács very much. Lukács is known for his lifelong
aversion to Hungarian backwardness. The author also claims that
Lukács exaggerated this, distorting Hungarian history. The author
singles out the uncompromising Sándor Márai as the tragic hero and
victim of persecution.
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