Un trozo de historia

Cuando solo hace unas semanas que una nueva palabra ha aumentado en un 25% el vocabulario húngaro de Francesca, ya nos ofrece su primera traducción de esta lengua al italiano. La damos aquí también en español (Studiolum)

Történelemóra a történelmet próbáltam magyarázni a köveknek hallgattak próbáltam a fáknak bólogattak próbáltam a kertnek szelíden rámmosolygott a történelem négy évszakból áll mondta tavaszból nyárból őszből és télből most éppen tél jön Kányádi Sándor

Lezione di storia ho provato a spiegare la storia alle pietre hanno taciuto ho provato con gli alberi hanno annuito ho provato col giardino mi ha sorriso dolcemente la storia è composta da quattro stagioni ha detto, la primavera l’estate l’autunno e l’inverno ora è l’inverno che viene Sándor Kányádi

Lección de historia he intentado explicar la historia a las piedras han callado he probado con los árboles han aasentido he probado con el jardín me ha sonreído dulcemente la historia se compone de cuatro estaciones, ha dicho, primavera, verano otoño e invierno ahora le toca al invierno Sándor Kányádi

Tomo nota de un verbo bello y peligroso: magyaráz (en infinitivo magyarázni, explicar). Españolizar, italianizzare, franciser, to anglicize, etc. indican generalmente solo la adaptación ortográfica o fonética a la respectiva lengua. Verdeutschen se le acerca más, pero no del todo: habitualmente se refiere o a la alemanización o al acto de traducir al alemán, y es tan solo de manera figurada que verdeutschen pude asumir el sentido de explicar con palabras simples, hacer comprensible. Magyaráz, por su parte, quiere decir justamente explicar, sobreentendiendo –y es aquí donde está su belleza y su peligro– que solo mediante el húngaro se puede realmente entender.

Bello y peligroso como Transilvania, donde Kányádi nació. Así la describe un escritor italiano:

«Ser transilvanos – dice Pál Bodor – quiere decir ser greco-orientales, catolicos romanos y armenios, calvinistas, evangélicos, hebreos, protestantes, unitaristas; quiere decir ser codo a codo rumanos, húngaros, eslavos, sajones, armenios. Este espacio de convivencia ha creado la grande “utopía transilvana”, la esperanza de vivir y prosperar juntos. Una esperanza que de vez en cuando se hizo realidad, como en las grandes revueltas de los campesinos». Pero la utopía, quizá, resiste aún hoy. Hay intelectuales que denuncian abiertamente la trampa nacionalista. Como los escritores Jebeleanu, Dinescu e Crasnaru que se han atrevido a protestar contra la emergencia de ciertas tesis chauvinistas. O el escritor Dorin Tudoran, que ha dirigido con el amigo húngaro Géza Szőcs un aviso a la ONU sobre este tema. Cuenta Bodor: “Hay allí dos poetas, uno húngaro, el otro rumano: Sándor Kányádi y Ioan Alexandru. Son amigos de toda la vida, traduce uno la poesía del otro. Dos destinos paralelos, un solo gran sentimiento de hermandad. La utopía transilvana está hecha de hombres como estos.»

Paolo Rumiz, Danubio: storie di una nuova Europa, Edizioni Studio Tesi, 1990

A piece of history

It was not so long ago that even one new word enriched by 25% the Hungarian vocabulary of Francesca. And now she offers to us her first translation from Hungarian. (Studiolum)

Történelemóra a történelmet próbáltam magyarázni a köveknek hallgattak próbáltam a fáknak bólogattak próbáltam a kertnek szelíden rámmosolygott a történelem négy évszakból áll mondta tavaszból nyárból őszből és télből most éppen tél jön Kányádi Sándor

History lesson I tried to explain history to the stones they remained silent I tried to the trees they kept on nodding I tried to the garden it gently smiled history is made of four seasons it said, spring summer autumn and winter now it is winter that’s coming Sándor Kányádi

I take note of a beautiful and dangerous verb: magyaráz (in the infinitive form: magyarázni, to explain). Italianizzare or franciser or to anglicize, etc. generally imply only an orthographic adaptation in the respective language. Verdeutschen is closer to it, but not that much: it usually refers either to Germanization or to the act of translating into German, and it is only in the figurative sense that verdeutschen may take the sense of explaining in plain words, of making something comprehensible. Magyaráz rather means to explain, allowing to infer – and here lie both its beauty and its danger – that you can really understand something only via Hungarian.

Beautiful and dangerous like Transylvania, where Kányádi was born. This is the way an Italian writer describes this region:

“To be Transylvanians – says Pál Bodor – means to be Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholics and Armenians, Calvinists, Lutherans, Jews and Unitarians; it means to be cheek by jowl Romanians, Hungarians, Slavs, Saxons, Armenians. This space where people live together created the great “Transylvanian utopia”, the hope of living and flourishing together. A hope which sometimes became real, such as in the great peasants’ wars”. But maybe the utopia still resists now. There are intellectuals openly denouncing the nationalistic trap, as the writers Jebeleanu, Dinescu and Crasnaru, who dared to protest against the rise of some chauvinistic theses. Or the writer Dorin Tudoran who, together with his Hungarian friend Géza Szőcs, addressed an appeal to UN on this subject. Bodor tells: “There are two poets over there, one is Hungarian, the other one is Romanian: Sándor Kányádi and Ioan Alexandru. They are friends for life, translating each other’s poems. Two parallel fates, one single great feeling of brotherhood. The Transylvanian utopia is made of people like these”.

Paolo Rumiz, Danubio: storie di una nuova Europa, Edizioni Studio Tesi, 1990

Un pezzo di storia

È stato solo di recente che persino una nuova parola ha arricchito di 25% il vocabolario ungherese di Francesca. E ora ci offre la sua prima traduzione dall’ungherese. (Studiolum)

Történelemóra a történelmet próbáltam magyarázni a köveknek hallgattak próbáltam a fáknak bólogattak próbáltam a kertnek szelíden rámmosolygott a történelem négy évszakból áll mondta tavaszból nyárból őszből és télből most éppen tél jön Kányádi Sándor

Lezione di storia ho provato a spiegare la storia alle pietre hanno taciuto ho provato con gli alberi hanno annuito ho provato col giardino mi ha sorriso dolcemente la storia è composta da quattro stagioni ha detto, la primavera l’estate l’autunno e l’inverno ora è l’inverno che viene Sándor Kányádi

Prendo nota di un verbo bello e pericoloso: magyaráz (all’infinito magyarázni, spiegare). Italianizzare, franciser, to anglicize, ecc. comportano in genere solo un adattamento ortografico nella rispettiva lingua. Verdeutschen gli si avvicina di più, ma non completamente: in genere si riferisce o alla germanizzazione o all’atto del tradurre in tedesco, ed è solo in senso figurato che verdeutschen può assumere il senso di spiegare con parole semplici, rendere comprensibile. Magyaráz, invece, vuol dire proprio spiegare, sottintendendo - e qui stanno sia la sua bellezza sia la sua pericolosità - che solo attraverso l’ungherese si possa veramente capire.

Bello e pericoloso come la Transilvania, in cui Kányádi è nato. Così la descrive uno scrittore italiano:

“Essere transilvani – dice Pál Bodor – vuol dire essere greco-orientali, cattolici romani e armeni, calvinisti, evangelici, ebrei, protestanti, unitaristi; vuol dire essere gomito a gomito romeni, ungheresi, slavi, sassoni, armeni. Questo spazio di convivenza ha creato la grande “utopia transilvana”, la speranza di vivere e prosperare assieme. Una speranza che talvolta è divenuta realtà, come nelle grandi rivolte dei contadini”. Ma l’utopia, forse, resiste ancora oggi. Ci sono intellettuali che denunciano apertamente la trappola nazionalistica. Come gli scrittori Jebeleanu, Dinescu e Crasnaru che hanno osato protestare contro l’emergere di certe tesi sciovinistiche. O lo scrittore Dorin Tudoran, che ha rivolto con l’amico ungherese Géza Szőcs un appello all’Onu su questo tema. Racconta Bodor: “Ci sono due poeti laggiù, uno ungherese, l’altro romeno: Sándor Kányádi e Ioan Alexandru. Sono amici per la vita, traducono l’uno le poesie per l’altro. Due destini paralleli, un solo grande sentimento di fratellanza. L’utopia transilvana è fatta di uomini come questi.”

Paolo Rumiz, Danubio: storie di una nuova Europa, Edizioni Studio Tesi, 1990

Old Christmases

…from one-way’s collection. Click on the pictures to enlarge.

The sea

This was the title of the book from which, more than thirty-five years ago, I first learned what the sea is. In the propaganda novel of Klára Fehér a little girl, thanks to the takeover of the Communist Party after 1945, becomes a successful medical researcher. The transcendental climax of her internal transformation following the external one is when Ágnes first catches sight of the sea about which her grandmother told her in her childhood:

“…And then her grandmother always stood up from the bench, she shuffled with heavy steps into the kitchen, and she lifted down the picture hanging on the wall above the iron bed.
It was an unframed card, a printed color picture. The sea.
A light blue, unclouded sky, a smooth, azure water surface. At the meeting of sky and sea, a snow-white ship, and a fresh green palm leaf emerging mysteriously from somewhere in the infinite blue.
– The sea – the old woman said solemnly. – Look… it nowhere has a coast, the sea is infinite, it reaches the stars…”

“…The sea is green as the molten glass, cheerfully slamming the shore. The children ride its foaming waves with rubber animals. Ágnes runs into the hot, salty water, she is swimming on the splashing waves, she is exulting, she is drunk with joy. Well, this is the sea, then!
Wherever she sees, sky and sea are embracing each other. The infinity is color turquoise, and at the edge of the horizon a little white dot: a ship. She is swimming, swimming on the emerald water, and she sees herself, the image of her childhood, her grandmother, the picture above the iron bed covered with a coarse blanket. The colored postcard: sea, ship and palm tree. If there is happiness, then she imagined it always like this.
…She cannot part with the water. She goes to the shore, sits on the rock, lies down on the sand, and lovingly looks the infinite water. By midday the sea becomes dark blue, a smooth, dark blue mirror, no ripple disturbs its surface. In the afternoon it suddenly starts to wave, it becomes gray-brown, rough, inscrutable. At dusk it is dark green as the rocks, only at the horizon it is red, where it bathes the sun.
What if she remained motionless on the shore, if she kept sitting here on the rock, watching the swaying giant until she would feel dizzy and would fall into it… what if she now set on running toward the depths?”


I thought much about the sea. In the early eighties, during a student exchange program, our university team went to the Netherlands. On a cold, rainy autumn afternoon they took us to the sea. I could not move away from the coast. It really was infinite. Not that kind of stupid infinity like one plus one to the infinity. But infinitely vast, complex, vivid and beautiful. And one could play with it. I went to the edge and at every swell I tried to stand to the farthest point where it would come out. The Dutch did not understand it and they indignantly pushed me, soaking wet as I was, into the bus.


Not long after, my friends from the Yugoslavian Vojvodina took me to the Adriatic Sea. We went to places where there was hardly any tourist. I was lying on the shore of a small island. All was filled with the smell of resin. No person was around me, only the sea. I felt someone watching me. As I turned back, deers were staring at me from the pine groove. One of course knows that the sea is not infinite, but its beauty is so many-sided and so intensive that this knowledge does not matter. This beauty even raises you above the inevitable terror of experiencing your own limitations. And no matter how few you are able to receive of it, by way of that you will connect yourself with the sea.

From then on, I dreamed of the sea and longed for the sea.


Twenty years ago I was converted. The infinity has opened for me. Some years ago I noticed that the sea is not so painfully lacking any more. Nevertheless, the things that refer to the person beloved will always remain dear to us.


These pictures were taken just a year ago on the shore of Port d’es Canonge in Mallorca. Not far from here, in the seashore cathedral of Palma within some minutes – just like every Christmas night since seven hundred years – the medieval Song of the Sibyl will resound.


El Cant de la Sibiŀla, Mallorca. Jordi Savall, Montserrat Figueras, La Capella Reial de Catalunya, 1998 (36'50)

Cartes de visite

“With a hair-pin and a visiting card,
a woman is ready to meet most emergencies.”

Emily Post: “Cards and Visits”, Chapter 10 of Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics and at Home, 1922

The complex ritual of the visiting cards became an integral part of the etiquette of the European aristocracy in the 18th century. The gentleman or lady, before visiting anyone in his or her home, first sent a visiting card with a servant, and waited until the other party indicated, by sending in return his or her visiting card, that a personal visit would not be unwelcome. The intricate nuances of the system covered by the manuals of good taste aimed at the preservation of dignity and to avoid what the Chinese calls “losing one’s face”. For example, if the return card was sent in an envelope, it indicated that the gesture was appreciated, but a visit was still discouraged.

Visiting card, photo by Matthew Brady, 1864

The visiting card with a photography – carte-de-visite – was patented in 1854 by the Parisian photographer André Adolphe Eugène Disdéri. The invention had a number of important components. Above all, instead of the former daguerrotipe that did not allow more than one copy, the recently discovered wet process was used, through which any number of prints could be made on albumin paper from one negative. The prints were then mounted on a card of the size of a visiting card. In addition, he used a camera with four lenses and could record even eight card size pictures on one glass plate. In this way he pulled down his prices to one fifth of the usual tariff, and moreover, he undertook the work with an extremely fast two-days deadline. The new phenomenon spelled disaster to all the other photographers of Paris.

An uncut carte de visite of Prince Lobkowitz, 1858

Michaux on his bicycle, uncut carte de visite, 1867

Disdéri’s cartes de visite can be found in a large number on the internet. A particularly good collection of nearly one thousand of them can be seen in the virtual museum of Paul Frecker, London, whose detailed captions offer a unique waxworks tour of the members of the contemporary Parisian haute société.

“Le Panthéon de Paris”, advertisement card by Disdéri. A montage of 380 cartes de visite, in the very format of a visiting card

The legs of the dancers of the Opera of Paris. A collective visiting card, Disdéri, 1864

Disdéri’s cartes de visite launched a huge fashion, especially after he also made a series of cartes for Emperor Napoleon III and his family which every Parisian bourgeois desired to see in their own albums. His atelier under the Boulevard des Italiens 8 was described by a German visitor as “really the Temple of Photography – a place unique in its luxury and elegance. Daily he sells three to four thousand francs worth of portraits”. He had filials in London and Madrid and worked with more than a hundred employees. He left behind 91 albums, 12 thousand negatives and more than fifty thousand pictures.

Napoleon III, his wife and son as the ideal model of the bourgeois family

The passion for cartes de visites began to subside in Paris only from the late 1860s onwards, but by that time the fashion already conquered America and the East. Ateliers specialized in cartes the visite were opened in a row in Berlin, Vienna, Budapest, Constantinople as well as in the United States, and they flourished until WWI and in some cases even after the war.

Carte de visite of Ueno Hikoma, daughter of the daimyō of Ōmura, c. 1869-1873.

Cartes de visites of maharajas, atelier of Ader, c. 1870-80

The number of the surviving cartes de visites is estimated to number more than a million. This is a particular microcosm whose intimacy permits to see more from the habits, way of thinking and everyday life of the period than the more representative and formal schemes of the later cabinet pictures do. We will repeatedly return on them.

Envelope of a visiting card, Egypt, c. 1890

Origins

Mountains of Lebanon. Photos by Pavel Kosenko

Two things are better to write about than one. It’s better to wait a couple of days before writing about a recent discovery, because often another one appears unexpectedly, as if the former called for help to interpret each other in a way I originally had not thought of.


I am reading Amin Maalouf’s recently published family saga, the Origins which explains the choice of the title like this:

Others talk about “roots”. I do not use this word. I do not like the term “roots”, even less the image. Roots penetrate deep into the earth, wiggle in the mud, they fulfill themselves in the dark. They keep the tree in captivity since its birth, and they feed it by blackmailing in the meantime like this: “If you set free, you will die.”

The political rhetoric of roots recalls a number of unpleasant memories here in Central and Eastern Europe. I, however, always remember first the touching comment of that Turkish captain from Temesvár (today Timişoara in Romania) who fell in captivity during the Hapsburg campaign which in 1686 liberated Hungary from the Ottoman dominion, and when several years later he managed to escape, he finished his memoirs like this: “Finally I returned to Temesvár, because there are my roots.” It is odd to think that for a hundred and sixty years, from 1552 to 1716 there existed a Turkish Temesvár, where four generations of the captain’s ancestors were born. And so it is understandable that after that city was also recaptured, he could not find his place in Istanbul until his death. His roots were definitively torn out from a land where there was no return.


Maalouf, the descendant of Lebanese Arabic ancestors, does not identify his forefathers with a place. He continues like this:

With humans, the situation is different. To us the roads are important alone. Unlike the trees, the roads do not grow out of the ground. They stem from somewhere, just like we do. This is a deceptive origin, for a road never has a real origin: before the first curve already there was a previous curve somewhere in the distance, and another one before that. This is an unfathomable origin, as the road at every intersection encountered other roads which stemmed from elsewhere. If all roads crossing each other were to be taken into account, they would run a hundred times around the Earth.

However, in the case of my people exactly this must be done. I come from a tribe which has been wandering from time immemorial in a global desert. Our homelands are oases that we leave when the source is exhausted, our houses are tents clothed with stone, our nationality depends on dates and ships. Beyond the generations, the seas and the Babelian confusion of languages, only the buzz of a name binds us together.

Is a surname our homeland? Yes, it is.

Some days ago, while writing about the most ancient Slovakian language record in Csömör, I left to a later entry the discovery that in this village, on the corner of our own street I met an ancestor of mine from two centuries ago. He was just measuring the land for the Lutheran school and teacher’s house on behalf of Prince Antal Grassalkovich.

Record of the manuscript history of 1798 of the Lutheran community in Csömör on the marking off of a plot for school and teacher’s house in the spring of 1787 (from here)

Clementissimus Princeps Antonius Grasalkovitz de Gyarak, perlectis his, Dominos Inspectores Inclyti Dominii, Josephum Noli, Ioannem Foltin, adiuncto eis Magistro Murariorum Gödöllöiensi, pro exscindendo hoc fundo intravillano ad Csömör mittit; qui hoc opus etiam feliciter terminarunt […] Hac occasione etiam pro horto infra Scholam ad rivulum praetercurrentem; ut etiam pro area (humno) fundus sufficiens assignatus, excissus erat.

On reading the request, the gracious Prince Antal Grassalkovich sent out his estate inspectors József Noli and János Foltin, and together with them his master builder of Gödöllő to mark off a plot. They successfully completed this task […] On that occasion, enough land was marked off also for the garden under the school running down to the creek as well as for the humno [Slovak: farmyard]

My family tradition has it that my ancestor was invited by Count Antal Grassalkovich (1694-1771) from Bohemia to Hungary in the 1740s to build the castle of Gödöllő, the first representative Baroque castle in Hungary which in 1867, due to the generosity of the nation, became the summer castle of Queen Sissy. At that time, just a few decades after the expulsion of the Turks there were not enough well trained workmen for the execution of such a large-scale work in the devastated region of Pest. Grassalkovich, who originally came from around the northern city of Nyitra/Nitra, invited the Czech master builder Schlosarik and his people who acquired enough practice on the castle buildings of the nearby Bohemia, and since then almost every male in the family has been an architect, including my father and brothers. Until the death of the last Grassalkovich they served them as master builders, and then they wandered over the country, following the jobs. At the end of the 19th century they  built a large number of historicist houses just in Temesvár as well as in Arad and Kolozsvár (Cluj), some of the most dynamically developing Hungarian cities.


When I think of what makes a community between me and my forefather, the master builder surveying the land just a corner to here, it is not the land cultivated or the house inhabited since generations, as in the case of the Turkish captain of Temesvár. Not even the common name as for Maalouf, which has changed since then, and by way of marriages has mingled with the names of other, more illustrious architect’s dynasties. But the craft. As I’m meticulously transcribing and translating the Baroque manuscript written in Latin, Old Czech and archaic Slovak and as I’m editing it into a homepage and a publication, I see him as he is just as carefully surveying the land, pulling out the cord, letting to dig the foundations about which the manuscript speaks. And if he saw how I am continuing, two centuries later, the honorable craft, I hope he would understand me, too.