Revisiting 1956 – Canada the 'Blessed Harbour' for Hungarian Writers
Kürtösi Katalin
„Óvatosan lépked, s emlékszik az ősz.”
(Autumn is walking carefully, remembering)
’Elégia’, Vitéz György
These days we are celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Hungarian revolution of 1956 and remember that Canada received almost 40 thousand refugees – in my paper which is based on the last chapter of my monography on Canadian literature, I would like to speak about the presence of Hungarian émigré writers in Canadian letters, more specifically about the output of the past twenty years. Let me borrow the starting kick from Esterházy Péter, one of the best known contemporary writers in Hungary who says that Hungarian literature can take pride in being at home at several places of the world thanks to all our misfortunes in history”.
The best known Hungarian-Canadian writer was George Faludy – he died a few weeks ago at the age of 96 – who lived in Toronto between 1967 and 1989: John Robert Colombo wrote an entry about him for the first edition of the Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature in 1983. So for Faludy, Canada was not the first station after his emigration in 1956. He wrote his poems in Hungarian, while his autobiographical Notes from the Rain-forest was written in collaboration with Eric Johnson. The other Hungarian to have an entry of his own in the Oxford Companion is George Jonas, who – on the other hand – wrote his poems, novels and scripts in English (Steven Spielberg’s München was based on Vengeance, Jonas’s novel published in 1984). The third internationally acclaimed Hungarian émigré writer was Stephen Vizinczey: although his English was very limited when he left Hungary in 1956, his In Praise of Older Women (1965) became a bestseller overnight in North America and later was very well received in Western Europe, too (the novel has a renaissance in our days, it has been translated among others to French, Italian and Spanish). In my view, these writers would well deserve individual monographies about their oeuvre – the same is true about the contribution of Hungarian writers to Canadian literature or ethnic writing in Canada, all the more so since George Bisztray’s book was published in 1985. John Miska has also done a lot for the dissemination of Hungarian-Canadian culture in general partly by compiling bibliographies partly by publishing essays and books about this topic.
After this quick survey, I would like to turn to recently published anthologies and say a few words about the poetry of George Vitéz and the play of Tibor Egervári. Anthologies are of special importance for ethnic or minority writers: not only do they offer a special selection and systematization but they also provide a possibility for authors for whom publishing an individual volume is not possible. It is not only in the ’new country’ that these writers can publish their works: during the past twenty years in Hungary special attention has been payed to ’émigré’ writers and several anthologies were devoted to their work.
The political changes were about to come any minute when Üzen az ág. Kanadai magyar irók antológiája (The message of the branch. An anthology of Hungarian-Canadian writers) was published (1989) in Hungary. This is a collection of poems and short stories by 39 different authors, written in Hungarian. In this volume we can find what is usually called a story of voyage/escape (e.g. by ’Emlékek’ – Memories – by Kati Rékai), as well as stereotyped description of immigrants (e.g. those telling tall tales about their old country high social status in John Miska’s story) together with political-patriotic poems (e.g. by József Hamvas or Béla Dorog). As the foreword says, the editors selected from works sent by the authors and were not sure that they made the best choices.
Crystal Garden/Kristálykert was also published in Hungary (in 2001) containing poems by English-Canadian poets and by three Hungarian-Canadian poets – all the poems can be read both in English and in Hungarian so each of them is subject to translation. The title of the anthology is the title of a poem by Eva Tihanyi: she has five poems in the volume, each written in English (i.e. the poet did self-translation) and then translated into Hungarian (by Szepesi Dóra). Jon Tarnóc (one of the editors of this collection) also wrote his poems in English, while Robert Zend wrote some of his poems in English, some in Hungarian (Thury Katalin, the other editor, translated into Hungarian while Botár Olivér into English).
In the third anthology, entitled Blessed Harbours (2002, we can read the poems and short stories in English, without regard to whether they were originally written in Hungarian or in English. This volume was published by Guernica, probably the best known Canadian publisher specializing in ethnic writing – it was edited by John Miska while George Bisztray wrote a short introduction. Of the three anthologies this is without any doubt the most careful and representative selection introducing works by 35 authors, including George Jonas, George Faludy, John Marlyn and Ferenc Fáy as well as Nancy Toth, Tom Konyves, Rose Dancs, László Kemenes Géfin, George Vitez or Endre Farkas. The 261 page volume offers a short bio about each contributor and a very useful concise bibliography about Hungarian-Canadian writing. Many of the stories recall personal memories linked to old country life (’The Phase-Out Man’ by Paul Gottlieb) or reach back as far as the POW camp during the second World War (’The Prisoners’ Gift’ by Alex Domokos), while others give an account about the first impressions in the new country (’The New World’ by Judith Kalman) – these topics are quite current among immigrant writers. Many of the poets, however, disregard the conventional modes of ethnic writing and either carry on writing as they used to in their native country (Iván Béky-Halász, George Faludy, Ferenc Fáy) or pursue experimentation in poetry or prose (Endre Farkas, George Vitéz, Robert Zend, Szabolcs Sajgó, Ágnes Simándi, Jim Tallósi, Nancy Tóth or László Kemenes Géfin).
If we compare the three anthologies we can see that there is no Hungarin-Canadian author who would be present in each of them – six, however, contributed to two of the three volumes: Éva Tihanyi and Robert Zend have poems in both Kristálykert and Blessed Harbours, while works by Alex Domokos, John Miska, Joseph Seres and Ágnes Simándi can be found in both Üzen az ág and Blessed Harbours. The anthology published by Guernica not only puts Hungarian-Canadian literature in a wider context by placing them in a series of works by ethnic writers but this company is obviously more open to the younger generation most of whom are second generation immigrants and write in English (e.g. Endre Farkas, Tamás Hajós).
Leaving the anthologies behind, let me continue with two poets both of whom emigrated in 1956: at the time George Vitéz was 23, while Endre Farkas only 8 years old. These autobiographical data are reflected in their choice of language – Vitéz writes mainly in Hungarian (as we’ll see, often mixing languages) while Farkas writes in English or switching from English to French in his poems. With regard to ethnic writing, it is a generally accepted view that those who graduated high school in their mother tongue opt for that language while those who are taught at school in the second language write in it. Our examples follow this practice.
George Vitéz, who used only English in his daily work as psychologist for Queen Elizabeth Hospital is mentioned as one of the major experimental Hungarian-Canadian writers by John Miska, stating that Vitéz created something new by revolting against out spiritual and poetic traditions and by de-mystifying and de-heroising our history and literary traditions. (Miska, 1989. 7-8) This engagement towards experimentation contradicts F. Loriggio’s thesis, namely that one cannot expect the same type of aristorcratic aesthetisation and the same type of obvious and refined literaryness like from the self-exiled authors of ’classical’ avant-garde. (Loriggio, 1987. 78-79). In my view these two attitudes are not contradicting each other, i.e. carrying on with avant-garde approaches and re-defining them can be compatible with ethnic/immigrant writing and the two can enrich each other.
Vitéz is a poet of exceptional linguistic juggling – as Esterházy puts it, he is a ’refined, intelligent and brave poet, brave towards and opposite himself and the language […] George Vitéz from Canada knows something that he would not know from here and we would be most unintelligent not to make us of this difference which is the same thing ’. His linguistic braveries can be touched upon his poems in Hungarian as well as in his plurilingual poetry: multiplying languages for him is but an occasion for creating even more conceits, witty associations. This poetic strategy involves that his poems almost resist translation – John Robert Colombo and Robin Skelton had a hard job when creating the English versions for Blessed Harbours. On the other hand, a reader who speaks only Hungarian could hardly comprehend the complexity and the references of these poems. Vitéz is a poet who is not only a master of our language but can expand it to embrace other languages (ranging from Latin to German, English, French, even the language of ’Brobdingnag’ as one of his poems testifies it) and enrich it with wide range references to classical and modern culture: he uses the medieval ’missa’ form with the same ease as avant-garde experimental forms, meditating about the art of Hyeronimus Bosch or Brahms, Brecht and Bartók. His is an intellectually very rich poetry – and Esterházy must be right stating that Vitéz offers something that a non-immigrant poet might not know. Immigration as an experience is present in the subject matter of several poems – but the immigrant experience is not what made him a poet.
We are faced with two positions concerning the role of immigration – a biographical factor – in becoming a writer or artist: it can play a decisive role (like Marco Micone admits it in an interview /Vaďs – Wickham, 13/) while other writers claim that they would write even if they (or their parents) had not emigrated (as Pan Bouyoucas says int he same interview, 25) because they consider themselves as writers in the first place and immigration for them is an additional experience that they do not deny since they carry several motives of the old country and its culture in the suitcase of their imagination.
Endre Farkas mastered English as a child since he had his schooling in this language in French-speaking Montréal so after the age of 8 he was faced with three languages. As he states, „My ambition is to be Canadian/whatever that means” – in his poetry he uses mainly English, but occasionally inserts French phrases to reflect the situation of the language war of the late twentieth century. His definition of Canadiannes is worth looking at: „Canada, after all, it’s moi et toi/qui sont perfectly bilingue” – in these two lines the message and the use of language completely overlap, he speaks about bilingualism and uses the highest level of code-switching by mixing the languages within the predicate. Let us also note that his bilingualism involves his second and third languages – and not his mother tongue. Farkas’s Hungarianness is reflected more noticeably in the subject matter of some of his works in the 1990s: his play Surviving Wor(l)ds is based upon his family history, including the holocaust, in his poetry volume entitled Surviving Words, on the other hand, we can read a sequence of poems inspired by his visit to Hungary.
„I return in ’91.
[…]
I am comforted tourist in the country of my birth.” (52)
The visit evokes childhood memories and the atmosphere of the revolution when the family decided to emigrate, not risking another wave of hate towards them like in 1944.
„It’s an old story; old as stories,
always new to someone.
I remember.
It is ’56.
Somewhere the dream is good.
Somewhere the revolution is good.” (49)
Although the aim of the visit was to find the ’promised land’ in the old country (and not in America as it is more commonly said), the realities of Hungary in the early 1990s frighten the visitor who concludes that „I am glad that I am not from here.” (56) since „now that it’s free/they are ready/to sell this passionate country.” (58). The return to the native country left the poet with ambiguous feelings, he is worried about the dangers resulting from the changes but at the same time feels a bit distanced from this world.
It is tempting to compare the attitude Farkas presents in his poetry with that of Vitéz who defines the home country the following way:
„A haza: Ott van, ahol minden borsóföld mellé fal épül.
Amiről sok rossz és néhány jó verset irnak.
Amiből napról napra a jobbak többet kirekesztenek.
[…]
A haza nevében (majdnem) mindenki követel és proklamál,
mert a haza szelid és nem tiltakozik.
Állandó végveszélyben sodródik, mégis fönnáll ezer éve.
Ahonnan csak földrajzilag lehet eltávozni,
de csak fizikailag lehet visszatérni.
[…]
jogar
Haza ott van, ahol jog van, nemcsak
joghurt.” (Haza Tér És, 67)
Although Vitéz is more ironical, he is also concerned about the negative signs of a transitional historical period. For both poets writing offers a tool to warn the people of their native country about the side effects of the changes and of joining the Western world.
As we could see from the anthologies and the works of two Hungarian-Canadian poets of different generations, they could handle their immigrant experiences very differently both as far as the choice of language is concerned and regarding the general attitudes. Some of them belong to the group of ethnic writers (writing either in their mother tongue or in one of the country’s official languages) and they also form part of Hungarian literature of the diaspora while others (like E. Farkas) have no links with Hungarian literature but are an integral part of English language minority writing in Québec.
Works Cited
Farkas, Endre. Surviving Words. The Muses Company/La Compagnie des Muses, 1994.
- -. Surviving Wor(l)ds. Scirocco Drama, 1999.
Miska, János. Kanadából szeretettel. Kanadai Magyar Irók, Ottawa, 1989.
Miska, John (ed.). Blessed Harbours. An Anthology of Hungarian-Canadian Authors. Toronto: Guernica, 2002. 261 pp.
Üzen az ág. Kanadai magyar irók antológiája. Kapu Könyvek és a Kanadai Magyar Irók
Szövetségének kiadása.
Tarnóc János, Thury Katalin (eds.). Crystal Garden. Kristálykert. Budapest: Magyar-kanadai Baráti Társaság, 2001. 201 pp.
Vitéz, György. Az ájtatos manó imája. Életünk Könyvek, 1991.
- -. Haza Tér És. Jelenkor, 1998.
