Magyar Baráti Közösség

Louis Elteto: About the Hungarian Media Law

Posted by  elajos  on  Sunday, January 09, 2011 : 946 Reads

The rather hysterical reaction to Hungary’s new media law in western Europe would be comical if it weren’t damaging to the country’s reputation.  It is particularly sad to read malevolent pronouncements claiming that Hungary had destroyed democracy by passing such a law, thus having become unworthy of the EU presidency, or even of EU membership.  And this about a country and a people that did more to put an end to the division of Germany and Europe, as well as to the cold war, than others far greater and stronger than they.  

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Portlandban bemutatják a Inkubátor című filmet

Posted by  Kovacs_Istvan  on  Monday, October 25, 2010 : 1394 Reads

Dokumentumfilm (Magyarország/USA)

Directed by Réka Pigniczky

www.56films.com

...A dokumentumfilm egy emigráns közösség átalakulásának történetét dolgozza fel a hidegháború vége után majdnem 20 évvel. Az „Inkubátor” című dokumentumfilm azokról szól, akik Nyugaton nevelkedtek emigráns közösségekben, hogy miként fogalmazódott meg bennük a kettős identitás és hogyan lettek „kötőjeles-valakik”. Hogy miként lehet valakinek egyszerre két hazája – az egyik a valós életben, a másik pedig egy képzelt valóságban, amelyet olyan szülők alakítottak ki és tartottak fenn, akik arra kényszerültek, hogy meneküljenek szülőhazájukból. Az első generációról szól, kiknek a szülei tovább éltek külföldön mint amit eredetileg elképzeltek és nem mindig sikerült asszimilálódniuk.

This film is about growing up in an exile community in the West, developing a double-identity, and becoming a hyphenated-somebody. It’s about learning to have two homelands at the same time - one in real life, and the other imagined and maintained by parents who were forced to flee. It is about a first generation of children whose parents lived abroad longer than they originally expected to, and who never really assimilated.

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László Fülöp: Amor profana

Posted by  elajos  on  Monday, September 06, 2010 : 965 Reads

In love,
curious phenomenon,
we build esoteric images, on and on,
clothed into overstatement of colored view
or stingy judgement on negative hue.
We disrobe faults,
clothe into success,
derivation
of our mate's imagination.
Our concealed ego grows graceful,
latent love ripens
by confidence,
placed in us
by wrong or common sense.
Reality can't limit
what we reflect, what we convert to
in a relationship.
 
In our love
your beauty
elevated into coordinated harmony.
Around you the everydays,
rare events,
grouped into adorned gala affairs.
You radiated Spring, brightened flat hours,
and Spring's reflection of you bursts
into million colorful flowers.
You converted my insane passion into inebriated words.
Inspired, provoked,
you radiated gentle excitement,
your proportions glowed through overcoat.
 
And I?
In our love
I became as bare
as a short-lived flare.
A scapegoat in wolf's clothing
for which overdue the rent,
a quickly disrobed,
a paltry, "Standard and Poor" quotient,
one would sell short just to unload.
I became a disappointment,
a discardable,
forgettable,
episode.
 
(1987)

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Kosztolányi Dezső: Szegény anyám csak egy dalt zongorázik

Posted by  elajos  on  Friday, August 13, 2010 : 1214 Reads

Egy árva dalt. Azt veregeti folyton,
és megbicsaklik elefántcsont ujja
a fekete-fehér elefántcsonton.
És elfelejti, próbálgatja egyre,
és szállni vágy, mint vérző sas a hegyre,
mert szállni tudna, szállni és röpülni,
de visszahúzza újra ezer emlék.

Ezt zongorázta kisleány-korában,
s mikor apuskával egymást szerették.
Ezt próbálgatta, amikor születtem,
és megtanulta, elfeledte csendben.
Jaj, mennyi vágy van benne, hosszu évek.
Egy szürke dalban egy szent, szürke élet.
Hogy össze nem rogy a szobánk alatta,
hogy össze nem rogy menten, aki hallja.
E dalban az ő ifjusága halt el,
s a semmiségbe hervadt vissza, mint ő.
Kopog-kopog a rossz, vidéki valcer,
és fáj és mély, mint egy Chopin-keringő.

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George Gömöri: In Memoriam Clara Györgyey

Posted by  elajos  on  Friday, February 26, 2010 : 1277 Reads

In memoriam:  Clara Györgyey: Writer and translator who specialised in the theatre

 Klara Takács, writer and translator: born Budapest 23 May 1933; married Ferenc Györgyey (two daughters); died Wallingford, Connecticut 11 January 2010.

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Papp László: Megmentett értékek

Posted by  elajos  on  Tuesday, December 08, 2009 : 2466 Reads

Az amerikai magyar templomok sorsa és az azokban felhalmozott értékek elvesztéséről írott cikkem  sokak lelkiismeretét megmozgatta, cselekvésre ösztönözte. Ami azután következett, iskolapéldája lehetne annak, hogy a magyarok nem csak acsarkodni tudnak, de össze is tudnak fogni egy nemes cél érdekében.

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Miklós Cseszneky de Milvány: My Mediterranean

Posted by  observer  on  Thursday, July 02, 2009 : 2054 Reads

The Mediterranean - when I hear this name the first image that comes into my mind is the sea. My first encounter with the sea happened to be in the Mediterranean, on the Montenegrine coast. It was really an encounter in the broader sense of the word, not only a meeting, but also a duel. It was late night when after long hours of hitchhiking in the shadow of rattling guns and walking along untrodden paths in the Black Mountains at last I arrived at the coast. I was staggering in the darkness, hardly could see any stars in the overcast sky and public lighting also was switched off in fear of a possible missile raid. My flask was empty and I felt tortured by thirst. The camping, the address of which I had found in a ten-year-old travel book, still existed though, but the door was locked and the porter had gone. The tap was within arm’s reach yet it seemed unreachable.

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Gregory Nehler: A Hungarian Community in Limbo

Posted by  elajos  on  Friday, May 15, 2009 : 2135 Reads

Preface to Gregory L. Nehler’s A Hungarian Community in Limbo


When I was Associate Instructor of Hungarian at Indiana University, Bloomington between 1978 and 1981, I began a research project on the bilingualism of Hungarians in South Bend, IN. I tape-recorded scores of interviews in Hungarian and my friend, Greg Nehler, an IU student at the time, conducted scores in English. This project resulted in several published articles and one book that I wrote (Fejezetek a South Bend-i magyar nyelvhasználatból, Budapest, 1990). What follows below is an unpublished paper by Greg Nehler, the typescript of a talk prepared for the Hungarian Cultural Association of Chicago in May 1981. This typescript deserves more visibility than it has in my project files, therefore I have asked Professor Louis Éltető of Portland, OR, the man responsible for infusing Nehler with great eagerness to learn Hungarian language and culture, to publish it on this homepage. I am publishing this with Nehler’s permission.

Over the last three decades Nehler’s talk has gathered ­some historical importance in as much as it is a record of a Hungarian community that has since all but vanished. One of the many signs of vanishing is that St. Stephen’s Catholic Church, built in 1909 and also mentioned by Nehler, was demolished in 2004.


Budapest, 8 May 2009                    Miklós Kontra
                               
­

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Peter Gosztonyi: Hungarian Army in WW II.- Excerpt

Posted by  FülöpL  on  Tuesday, March 31, 2009 : 3499 Reads

In a subchapter “The army in the Ukraine” Erich Kern, German officer writes  about the Hungarian army’s participation in 1941 as follows:

“In recollecting the bravery of the Magyar soldiers, the Germans could form opinion based on the military event that took place in early August of 1941 south of Uman, in the district of Pervomaysk. A German eyewitness wrote about it in his recollections of the war:

Note: Excerpt from pp. 55 - 56 of the book

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Csaba Lukács: Murder in Veszprém Part 1

Posted by  elajos  on  Tuesday, March 10, 2009 : 4678 Reads

The murder at Veszprém last Sunday [Febr. 8] at dawn threw back by decades the cause of fighting prejudice and of Roma-Hungarian coexistence. Yet, paradoxically, the death of hand-ball player Marian Cozma of Bucharest has done more to advance Romanian-Hungarian reconciliation than years of joint government meetings and diplomatic attempts. [Translator’s note: European handball, also known as Olympic handball, is a team sport played on a soccer field. Marian Cozma was a Romanian national, a professional player for the Veszprém team in Hungary.] The repercussions of the tragic event may fundamentally reshape people’s thinking in both countries.

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Hungarian Revolt Contributed to Oregon Culture

Posted by  Kovacs_Istvan  on  Wednesday, January 28, 2009 : 3299 Reads

The Oregonian, Sunday November 2, 1986

The cream of Hungary’s population fled their homeland 30 years ago this month as the Soviet army crushed a 14-day rebellion against Moscow’s domination of a once independent nation.

An estimated 200,000 Hungarians turned their backs on their homes, jobs, treasured heirlooms and ― in some cases ― families, to seek freedom and opportunity in the non-communist world. Approximately 38,000 of the self-exiled Hungarians were welcomed to the United States in the months after the 1956 revolt.

Inspired by the heroism of the Hungarians who, against overwhelming odds, had risen up to fight Soviet tanks with gasoline-filled bottles, American church groups and individuals volunteered as sponsors to help the refugees settle in a new homeland.

Among those groups was the Oregon Committee for Hungarian Refugees. During its three months of existence, the Oregon committee worked with charitable agencies to bring 220 refugees to Oregon and provide them with transportation, temporary housing, orientation, job placement and permanent sponsors. More than 2,000 contributors donated money for the committee’s work.­

Note: In 1986 on the the 30th anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution The Oregonian interviewed Ede Hamar. The article is reprinted here as it is currently not online and is only available via microfilm.

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