THE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-SEVENTH PSALM
(A story)
By
ISTVÁN ÖRKÉNY
We had no stretcher. Maurer and Ligeti carried the patient in their arms and wanted to
put him down on the operating-table with all his clothes on; they had to be told not to soil the
sterilized sheet. After that they undressed the man, reluctantly.
I saw Laci Haas without his clothes on for the first time. He had been working all
through the five months without a pause, and until the appendicitis attack the day before he
had never reported sick. When I looked at him I felt as though needles were being jabbed in
the back of my head. There was something unfinished, something you might say, moving, in
the way his body was built. It was slim and white like a girl’s, the chest a little hollow, the
belly sunk, and the flesh desiccated like dried fruit. Lumber work demands 5,500 calories a
day; it was the heaviest work we had ever done. Where did a child’s body like his keep its
reserves of energy? I had no idea. I had forgotten to wonder about it.
The big brawny ones melted away like ice in the sun. A lorry driver as strong as an ox
for instance, was done and finished before the unloading was over, and of the manual workers
(we hadn’t too many in our company anyway) only this Maurer had managed to survive,
possibly because he was just too stupid to give up the ghost. Only a thin chalk line between
his brows and woolly hair seemed to indicate the place where his forehead should have been.
Sluggish, indolent, callous. A railway engine could have rolled over him. I had only asked
him to come and help with the operation because of his strength.
He lifted the patient like a feather on to the operating-table.
I had had so much experience by then that I could tell at a glance how long a man had to go.
These Laci Haases, unpromising, made of soft wax, could stand anything. It was all a matter
of strength of mind. Death is not outside, it is inside us. It is there we have to keep it in check.
Let go of yourself for a second and it starts to grow, to divide like a cell, to swell and even
without wanting to, kills you like an embryo bursting its mother to pieces.
When he was laid on the table, he said:
“Take good care how you kill me, Silberman, won’t you?”
And he smiled.
„I don’t care a damn about you, if that was a little dig at me,” I said. “Why the hell
didn’t you tell some whopping lie when the company was lined up at Jablonovka?”
„I told them straight: a poet.”
„Big joke. A poet’s good at any damn trade. Couldn’t you have told them something
else?”
“It makes no difference what I’m good at,” he said, “I can’t lie.”
“Everybody told lies at Jablonovka,” I said. “By the way, I did spend a term and a half
at the Medical University in Prague.”
“We heard that,” he said wearily.
“I did a bit of dissecting too,” I went on.
“Cut it out,” he waved his hand.
“Did I ask to operate on you?” I asked.
“Cut it out,” he said. “Give me plenty of ether. I don’t care about the rest.”
And he closed his eyes. At Jablonovka the company had been lined up and Harangozó ordered every one in the
corn trade to come forward. Four corn dealers stepped out. Harangozó had them taken behind
the ramp and beaten to death. That scared us out of our wits. We thought we had got a regular
butcher of a commander, but later it turned out he reserved his hatred exclusively for corn
dealers and wasn’t out to get anybody else. When they asked us our trade or profession, fortyseven of us in sheer fear swore we were doctors, or rather forty-four of us did, because three
were real doctors. But they are no longer with us. Harangozó looked us over and said:
“That one with the scar on the throat will be the company’s doctor.”
At nineteen I had had a thyroidectomy and the scar that had remained proved to be a
stroke of luck at Jablonovka. But I had never dreamed that I would ever have to operate on
anybody. Corporal Bisztrai of the Medical Corps called me to the tool-shed that morning. The
operation was to take place there, and he told me to get a couple of others to help get the place
cleaned up.
It was woodland all around. The house was built of wood and a pleasant smell of pine came
from the walls, which made your hands sticky with resin if you touched them. The only snag
was that the room was originally intended for storing things, so it had no windows. The
resourceful Ligeti had taken the headlamps and the batteries from the company’s defunct
Mercedes. He rigged the light up just like a real operating theatre. We had the sheet sterilized
in sodium and boiled the catgut, the syringes and all the other instruments we could lay our
hands on in a hurry. I also had a wash-basin with disinfectant put in the room.
“Wash your hands,” I said to Ligeti.
“I have,” he replied.
“But you touched his clothes. And you too, Maurer!”
“Does it make any difference to him?” Ligeti shrugged his shoulders, looking at Laci
Haas, who was lying white, eyes shut in the floodlight, shyly covering up his private parts
with his left hand.
“Go and wash your hands, I told you.”
They obeyed, their faces betraying insolence. I had got used to that. At first everybody
hated me. Not because of my not being a real doctor and still being the company’s doctor, but
because I lived and ate with the army guards. In the evenings I listened to the radio in their
company. I was exempted from wearing a yellow armband. That was what made them sore.
But as time went on they began to realize that I was on their side all the same. There was the
time, for instance, when the order came through that from then on those with chilblains had to
turn out for work just the same, because the sick roll must never exceed three per cent. But by
then I knew about Harangozó’s changes of mood and temper. Most of the time I exceeded the
three per cent limit; in late December in fact, when the great frosts set in, I managed to
exempt twenty-seven men. They saw that I was playing a risky game for them. From then on
they hated me a little less.
“What are you doing?” I snapped at Maurer and Ligeti. “There’s a clean towel to dry
your hands on.”
With the same impassive face they dried their hands. Because that impassive, sulky
face was there to stay.
They sat on a crate. We were waiting for Bisztrai. Maurer was holding his ham hands
away from his body so as not to touch anything, and in the meanwhile he watched my
movements. That stare made me jumpy. There was silence. The good smell of pine oozed
from the walls, like at home when my father brought the pine tree home for Christmas and hid
it in the pantry and the smell seeped through, betraying its presence. Father had always bought
the tallest tree that would fit into the room. He had started life all over again four times
because his business had always gone bankrupt; perhaps that was one reason why he had
wanted me to become a doctor… I took out a Russian cigarette and lit it. “Are we forbidden to do that too?” Ligeti asked.
“Your hands are already disinfected,” I said. “But you can smoke, Laci.”
He opened his eyes. He sat up. He lit a cigarette. I was a little relieved because it was
painful to see him stretched out pale in the white light, motionless.
“Do you want anything?” I asked.
“What could I want?” he asked without interest.
I thought a moment.
“Food is out of the question. Do you want some tea?”
“I don’t want tea.”
“I may be able to get some rum for you.”
“Don’t get me anything, Silberman.”
There was silence again. Nobody spoke. No noise came from outside because the huts
of the army staff were covered half way up with dung and on top of that a thick layer of snow
had fallen. It made the silence lie on your heart like a weight of lead.
“We could at least talk,” I suggested.
“What shall I talk to you about?” he asked.
“Recite me a poem.”
“I can’t think of a single poem.”
“Do the one you recited at the social evening.”
“It wasn’t by me.”
“Who was it by?”
“Who knows?”
But whenever it came to discussing poetry he always livened up. This time too he soon
recovered and started to talk and gesticulate, even forgetting to keep his left hand on his
genitals. He had been the great surprise of the social. A voice as strong as the roar of the wind
came out of this soft-spoken boy. It swung over the long sheep pen so that even those with
gangrene, whom we didn’t dare bring forward for fear Harangozó might see them, could hear
it.
We had got up the social on the Regent’s birthday on Harangozó’s order. He had these
fits of humanity. He was in constant conflict with himself, but the boys were unable to see it.
He had been ordered to produce so many cubic metres of timber for saw-logs, sleepers and
telegraph poles, and in the course of it to exterminate the company. But he had quite a bit of
idealism, too. He wanted to maintain the illusion that here everything was as if we had been
free people – free as far as anyone could be free in war time. As long as everyone did his
work he wouldn’t let anyone so much as eye us. He insisted on our singing and enjoying
ourselves in the evenings; occasionally he himself came and mixed with us in the sheep pen.
When Laci Haas began to recite at the social he broke into tears. He turned aside and went out
to keep his emotions from betraying him. The next day I learned from his batman that he had
been pacing his room the whole night, clearing his throat. I daresay that was why he had
insisted on the appendicitis operation; he hadn’t forgetten Laci Haas reciting those lines.
It wasn’t an ordinary poem. It was the Hundred and Thirty-Seventh Psalm in some old
seventeenth century version.
“Recite it, please,” I asked him.
“I can hardly remember it.”
“As much as you can.”
“I don’t feel like it.”
All my prompting was in vain. Then Ligeti, speaking over his shoulder, turned on him:
“Why are you putting on dog?”
At that he obediently rose on one elbow, looked round, and threw the loose corner of
the sheet over his loins. He didn’t seem to want to recite a poem naked. He spoke very softly, almost inaudibly.
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea,
we wept, when we remembered Zion.
We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.
For there they that carried us away captive required
of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us
mirth, saying. Sing us one of the songs of Zion.
How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?
If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its cunning.
If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to
the roof of my mouth, if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.
He fell silent. He got a cramp, and lay back again, drawing up his leg. I started to
sweat. If anything makes me nervous the palm of my hand becomes damp and cold sweat
comes out on the small of my back. Ligeti was staring in front of him, biting his nail; Maurer
was breathing heavily with his mouth open and his sticky fish-gaze fixed on me. Laci panted
slightly for a while yet, then once again the silence was complete and again the smell of pine
wood came flooding into the stillness. Through my mouth and nose, through my very pores it
penetrated; I felt like crying behind my closed eyelids. I was shaken. I thought of things I had
never thought of. What life was like, what it was about and who had conceived it and if it had
come about of itself, why did it have to be so full of conflict and self-contradiction, why was
it self-suffocating, inscrutable, insoluble… I brushed the thoughts away, but at that moment
my father’s sallow face as he lay on his sick bed flashed before me. To shut out the image I
tried to imagine myself dead. I did not succeed. I was living even in my death. Not very much
alive but just enough to know that I was not dead. Then in came Bisztrai.
He had got bandages but no ether. Instead of that he thrust into my hands a bottle of
novocaine. He inspected the headlamps, switched them on and off, smiling complacently.
Before he left he snarled at me;
“If the shed is not empty by noon, I’ll kick you in the belly, Mr. Silberman.”
He mistered me. He didn’t like anybody to come into the tool-shed. He lived next door
in the room to which the shed was attached. He would lie on his campbed day and night, but
eight or nine times a day he came out to see if the padlock on the door of the shed was still
there.
We boiled the instruments on the big utility stove. I had only once given an injection
in my life, six weeks before, to a chap suffering from dysentery. But it hadn’t made difference
anyway.
“We haven’t got any ether,” I told Laci. “I’ll do it locally.”
“What’s that?”
“A local anaesthetic.”
“Will I be awake?”
I said yes. He asked if he might smoke. I shrugged my shoulders and handed him the
whole packet.
“All you’ll feel will be one sting,” I said.
In civilian life Ligeti was a drugstore shop-assistant. I knew him to be a clever man,
but at this moment he was not particularly exerting himself. He moved about with a slowness
that was an ironic comment on the futility of his activity. I had to round on him three times
before he shoved the scalpel across to me.
“Now throw away the cigarette,” I told Laci Haas. “Lovely smoke rings,” he said grinning, and blew the smoke up into my face.
“If that was intended as sarcasm don’t exert yourself,” I said. “I sat in the library every
day till closing time. I wanted to be a good doctor.”
“You’ve said that before.”
“If Hitler hadn’t marched into Prague I’d have become one too.”
“Oh, well,” he said.
“What’s that’Oh, well’?” I demanded.
“That’s how we indicate something unsaid in literature.”
“What’s it all about?” I asked.
“Do you know where the appendix is?”
“I bloody well know,” I said.
I think I made the cut beautifully at the right place. To be frank, I felt damp on the
forehead and down the neck, but I had stopped trembling now, and the tension I had been
living under since the previous day was relaxed. I didn’t know what I was doing but
something inside me told me that I was doing it correctly.
“Your peritoneum is like mother-of-pearl,” I said.
“Don’t flatter me, Silberman,” he replied.
Up till then there had been sharp knives in everything he said. That was the first
sentence with a milder tone. I knew that this softening was not intended for me; it was merely
the onset of nerve paralysis, or what we call operational shock.
There weren’t enough artery forceps, so the wound had to be swabbed frequently.
Slowly, very cautiously I began pulling out the small intestines.
“Does it hurt?” I asked.
“It doesn’t.”
“You’re lying,” I said. “Not even Professor Schleiermacher could do this without
pain.”
“What we tell you cannot be a lie.”
“Do you hate me?” I asked.
“Should I love you?”
I did not answer. One does not expect gratitude. Yet I’d walked my feet off before I
could cajole them into letting me have the headlamps and allowing me to borrow the
instruments from the veterinary clinic. A drop of sweat sprang out from under my hair and
rolled down my temple and face. Haas gave a cry of pain.
I ought to have found the appendix by then. On Laci’s belly, above the cut, lay the
sterilized sheet. I put the bowels on it in apple-pie order. But now my hand stopped.
“Who do you think I’m siding with?” I spoke with irritation, because I was again
seized by that internal trembling. “Who’s holding the baby for you? Who’s hiding the chaps
with gangrene? How many times have I put you on the sick list, Ligeti? And you, Maurer? Go
on, answer me!”
Ligeti was grinning. Maurer was breathing heavily down my neck. I could feel the hot
steam of his breath. I could have killed him.
“Is what I’m doing betrayal? And what you’re doing not?”
“It is not,” Laci said.
“Not even your reciting at the social?”
“We can do anything,” he said.
“Why can you do anything?”
“Because we’re going to die anyway,” Laci said.
The room was overheated. Everything on me was drenched through, my neck, shirt,
hand. I mopped my forehead with my arm.
“Don’t be glad too soon,” I said. “You’re not going to die. I’ll find your appendix in a moment.”
“Congratulations!”
“I’d already read all the fourth year text-books in my first year.”
“It’s a pity, all that cramming wasted,” he said.
“I didn’t think about how much I’d earn,” I said. “I wanted to be a country doctor.”
“Cut out the talk,” he said. “Operate.”
Now and again he gave cries of pain, although I took care, because I knew that if I
didn’t, they would be right. The minutes dragged on, very slowly. Maurer still gaped at me
with those paralytic eyes of his.
The bowels were already lying in a big heap placed on top of each other.
“You haven’t found it?” Laci asked.
“Don’t be afraid,” I said, “I’ll find it.”
“Don’t make it a question of prestige.”
“Do you want to get better or not?”
“Idiot,” he said and closed his eyes.
The trembling had completely taken possession of me.
Schleiermacher had lectured to the fourth year; I had never got as far as that. But his
famous sayings were known to everybody at the university. This one, for instance:
“Gentlemen, the appendix does not float about like the kidney. The appendix is always in its
right place, you only have to find it.” I didn’t. I had to call Ligeti to help hold the bowels
together, when Laci’s head slid to one side.
“Finished,” Ligeti said.
He turned on his heels and was about to leave everything; he only returned to his place
when I shouted after him. The pulse was regular but weak, weaker than it should have been. I
had no camphor. I had no caffeine. I told Maurer to prop up the patient’s head and throw
water on his face.
He let the forceps slip. It was torture to see how he picked up the jug from the ground;
it seemed as if this was the first time he’d taken anything in his hands. Then he poured a little
water into a tin cup, looking at me every now and then in the meantime, which only made his
snail’s pace still slower.
“Quick!” I shouted at him.
He started to move with the cup in his hand but no faster than before. He crossed the
room as though his feet were entangled in sea-weed. He bent over Laci. He looked into his
face. He looked at him, then at me, at him, at me again. If he’d looked at me once more I’d
have gone mad.
“Don’t stare like that, you miserable fool!” I shouted. “You’ll kill him if you waste
time like that!”
He stood there stock still. A dim-witted wretch like him needs time before the voice
reaches his brain. He stared at me, turned, went over to the jug dragging his feet, and poured
the water back into it. He placed the cup back in its place on the shelf, in exactly the same
place he had taken it from, going through these actions like a trained gorilla. Then he came
over to me.
“Put the bowels back,” he said.
“What are you saying?”
“Put the bowels back and sew the cut together.”
“You beast,” I said. “What do you know about it? You dim-witted, stupid bastard, you
crack-brained monkey! You idiot!”
His face didn’t as much as move a muscle. The insults had not penetrated his eardrums.
“Sew him up, ” he repeated with the same impassive voice, and lifted his hairy-backed hand.
I backed away. He came after me. A prehistoric mammal, a beast rearing on its hind
legs, a Neanderthal male. He had been standing there behind my back while I had been
working and felt his hot breath down my neck.
The stove began to pour out heat. The sweat trickled down my neck. The pine-wood
smell from the warm walls was so strong it seemed as if the wood had come into the room. I
sewed the cut together. My father had wanted me to be a doctor. He had said: “Not only
because a doctor can make a livelihood wherever his fate takes him, but also because the work
of a doctor is noble and honourable. He serves the good of mankind.”
ARS POETICA
(Short story)
by
ISTVÁN ÖRKÉNY
Author’s Note, May 1974:
Although I have forgotten exactly when this short story was written, I do remember for
certain that it was some time in the early 1950s. In any case this is quite clearly borne out by
its atmosphere, its subject, and its thinly veiled message. I submitted it to some literary
periodical at the time; it was accepted, sent off to the printers, and I even remember receiving
the proofs. However it never appeared in print, for the entire journal was dispatched to the
pulping mill. The manuscript lingered in a drawer of my writing desk and gradually faded
from memory. Hence it did not emerge from obscurity even when there was no longer any
barrier to publication. I saw it and salvaged the manuscript from oblivion while making
preparations for the publication of my collected works. I would surely write my Ars Poetica
somewhat differently today, but nevertheless I have let the original stand word for word.
Rather than make any alterations, I consider it more useful to preserve the full literary
ambiance of a period of history that is now past, with all its heart-wringing sincerity.
I was already taken by surprise to hear the concierge saying a good two years ago as
he stood in front of me on the stairs;
“Oh, the senior consultant sends you his regards.”
“What senior consultant?” I asked.
“Dr. Miakits, from the Bodrog Street hospital.”
“You’re wrong there, Mr. Kiraly. Dr. Miakits is not a senior consultant yet, and I hardly think
he is likely to become one in the near future.”
He was adamant, however, that Miakits was indeed a senior consultant and head of the
medical ward. He himself had been sent home from hospital just the day before after
treatment for an ulcer in the large intestine. Miakits, according to the concierge, enjoyed a
high reputation in the department and as a matter of fact dealt only with the most complicated
and apparently hopeless cases. He had deigned to examine the concierge only after hearing
that I was one of the tenants of his house.
I gaped in astonishment at all this. We didn’t think that Miakits quite made the grade
as a doctor. He lived nearby and so we did call him across from time to time, but we always
nicknamed him “little Miakits”. It was characteristic that once, when my sister was running a
temperature, my mother declared, “I’ll send for little Miakits, but if you’re not improving by
tomorrow, I’ll call a doctor.” This gave rise to a catchphrase, and whenever anyone
complained about feeling bad he was invariably asked, “should we call a doctor, or will little
Miakits do?”
Yet it wasn’t so much that we wanted to cast aspersions on his professional
knowledge. To be perfectly honest his medical qualities never came into it. His awkward
behaviour and ubiquitious modest stoop prevented us from ever taking him seriously in his
vocation. He would arrive and bow, and the hand he extended was as soft as an inflated
leather glove. He abandoned every sentence somewhere in the middle, as if he were ashamed
of its continuation. What he had to say came out in bits and pieces, or rather it split forth like
the water from a lame man’s bucket. He was always soaking wet when he arrived, as if the skies always opened just when he set out to visit us; and on his way out, even though he knew
the flat well, he never failed to turn the knob of the lavatory door instead of going through to
the hall. No, it was impossible to take little Miakits seriously. My surprise was all the greater
when an artist friend of mine tragically lost his twenty-four year old wife in the flower of her
youth; on the verge of madness, staring bluntly and almost blindly in his despair he
exclaimed:
„Inconceivable! Unfathomable! Ten days ago Miakits told me there was no need to
worry.”
„Who’s this Miakits?” I asked.
„Maybe it was just because Miakits flew off to Prague during the crisis that poor Nelli
had to die.”
„Why did he fly to Prague?” I asked.
„Oh, he was called to sonic Minister’s sickbed.”
Miakits is a fairly unusual name, I thought, but there just might be two of them. Yet
everything corresponded. My artist friend’s Miakits was also called Endre, he too lived in
Buda in Harangvirág utca, and he too owned an ivy green Fiat of the type that had become
popular not long before.
There was no doubt that it was our little Miakits he was talking about, and the praises
sung by my friend commanded all the more respect in view of the fact that poor Nelli had
after all died in his department. It turned out that little Miakits exercised some magical charm
over his patients. It wasn’t merely that they had a blind faith in his capabilities, nor was it
because he was such an imposing and handsome personage – our little Miakits, imposing! –
although these were not merits to be sneezed at in the women’s medical wards. Miakits’
magic was mainly due to his ability, as poor Nelli had expressed it, to “strike the right chord
with everyone.” By the time he set out on his rounds at ten o’clock, the wards had been
imbued with some peculiar sense of expectation since dawn. By the time he finished after
marching past all the beds his patients were truly buzzing with excitement, their aches and
pains had eased, and their general disposition had perked up. He never uttered any special
words of wisdom or gems of wit, but he always managed to come out with just the right
words for each individual. For example, every morning he used to greet a seventy-two year
old woman suffering from cancer with a slap on the back and the question, “What’s new?
How did you sleep, you old bag?” And on hearing this the woman would beam back at
Miakits as if from the edge of the grave and spend all day making fresh plans, confident in the
future, as if she wanted to live seventy years all over again.
“There’s a sort of internal equilibrium there,” my friend explained, “some kind of
healthy self-confidence which the patients are able to sense. When it comes to doctors,
Miakits ranks with the very best.”
I have to admit that this recognition flattered me as well. It is one thing to be respected
by a clumsy oaf whom everyone ridicules a little, and quite another to attract the same respect
from one who is an outstanding professional in his own field, a famous physician who is
summoned to treat foreign Ministers… for the fact was that Miakits held me in the highest
esteem. He used to buy my books as soon as they appeared, have them bound in the same red
ribbed-back cloth, and then pay me a visit for me to inscribe each new possession. Then he
would launch into a few rapturous sentences, which he always left unfinished, attempt to
leave via the lavatory, and in the end, after a couple of awkward bows, back out onto the
staircase.
It followed from this that Miakits was leading a double life.
However as soon as I realised that the Miakits known to me was quite different from
the one known to his patients, I understood at once the reason for this double life. It was only
in my presence that Miakits was clumsy, and the source of this clumsiness was the respect he felt for me. My presence made him shrivel and contract, like a styptic stick affects the skin. In
all probability he walked imperiously down every street and drew the glances of the ladies
after him; his head was still held high as he strode up the stairs; but the moment that he
approached me his neck would give way and he would move anxiously back and forth like
someone with his head destined for the pot. As a matter of fact Miakits considered me to be
the greatest writer of the age.
I could never manage to find out how he arrived at this conviction. Perhaps there is
some mysterious preordained affinity between us. Perhaps I am the writer who happened to
express the horror of waking up at dawn, the smile of unfaithful women, or the highway after
a heavy shower, in just the way that corresponded best to his own way of thinking and
nervous system. It is also possible that Miakits was some sort of culture fiend who liked to
dazzle his company with the originality of his views. These queer fishes typically quote
Arvers, the French poet rendered immortal by a single sonnet; they like to mention that
renaissance staircase in the rear wing of the Palazzo Pitti in Florence, to which entrance can
be obtained only by bribing the porter; and they are forever conjuring up a Beethoven
fragment whose sixty-seven bars are worth more than all the symphonies. Finally it is also
conceivable that Miakits had a real passion for discovery and, seeking in his own way to open
the lock of life’s secrets, hadn’t managed to find a better key than myself.
That’s what I thought. That’s what I thought until some time last year when Miakits
began to drop hints about certain writers (no names mentioned) who brazenly stopped at
nothing in striving to increase their popularity, whilst others (still no names mentioned, but an
unmistakeable gaze in my direction) had retreated too far from the public eye, were really
shutting themselves away from their fans… I was accustomed by now to the fact that, rather
than use plain words, Miakits seemed to follow some sort of Chinese etiquette manual when
he was talking to me, forever digressing and never reaching the point; consequently I
managed to grasp the meaning of the following sentence at once:
„For example, to do an aesthetically pleasing public reading… (pause) Far be it from
me to put forward such a daring suggestion… (pause) The writer with his own personal
accentuation could bring to light the hidden meanings of his sentences, and in doing so the
audience would be…”
He fell silent and reached into his pocket, searching for something; presumably he
wanted to complete the predicate of the unfinished sentence.
„If I’m right, Dr. Miakits, you’re interested in organizing some kind of literary
evening,” I prompted him.
He smiled gratefully with downcast eyes.
„If there was a writer, a writer who really deserved it, who…”
He broke off and stared at me stonily. I had to burst out laughing.
“I’m sure such a writer could be found, Dr. Miakits,” I remarked, naturally in such a
way as to suggest that I had no idea as to who this writer might be, but I’m afraid it might
prove harder to find him an audience.”
„Oh,” he sighed, “the really worthy writer (and he stared at me once more) needn’t be
afraid of that. The fans… the fans and the sheer rapture…”
He suddenly thrust something soft towards me, which I ascertained to be his hand;
then he opened the lavatory door and left in the usual way, though more hurriedly than usual.
In the following eighteen months or so he kept coming back to the idea of the public
reading. In the meantime it turned out that he had talked with a good few readers of mine and
lots of enthusiastic fans who, if he was to be believed, were all strongly in favour of the idea.
„There are a lot of bad lecturers around,” I told him once, modestly concealing my
own identity behind this third person plural, “and many of them just send their audiences to
sleep.” „No, no!” he exclaimed in despair.
„Apart from that,” I continued, “there are genres which don’t go down well. The short
story, for example, is not for mass consumption here. So where do we stand with the short
story which amuses an initiated few rather than the masses? It’s better if that sort of author
stays away from the public podium.”
I could see that these words depressed him. He thought that I was looking for a way
out, and so I hastened to reasure him that, if he could find a number of persons who were
interested. I would do all in my power to get hold of the appropriate “worthy” writer as a
lecturer… His face beaming, he rushed out in the visual roundabout way.
Emboldened by this green light, he began to drop more and more unambiguous hints
to the forthcoming reading. After a while he informed me that he had succeeded in finding a
site of the right capacity and suitable for the occasion. Then he started to mention some sort of
executive committee, but in my opinion this was going too far.
„All a writer needs,” I told him, again speaking in general terms, “is a chair, a table,
and a lamp. He doesn’t need any executive committee to do a reading.”
Miakits turned pale.
„The committee has already been chosen,” he said in a pleading tone, adding after a
brief pause, “it’s too bad the list isn’t quite as imposing as it should be, but you know how
things are here…”
I ceased raising objections. Let him do as he pleases, I thought. I dumbly received
notification that, after vicious internal squabbling, the committee had elected a President and a
Vice-President, the latter to function in the event of the death or indisposition of the former.
When Miakits enquired which of the flowers generally on sale in Hungary was particularly
beloved by writers I replied without hesitating that writers like the cyclamen best of all,
feeling sure that a pot of them would be waiting for me on the lecturer’s table. Thus the day of
the public reading drew nearer.
Miakits rang the doorbell two hours before the reading was due to begin, with a single
cyclamen in his buttonhole. He insisted that I put on tailcoat or a dinner-jacket, and only when
I showed him that I didn’t possess either did he agree that I should appear on the platform in
normal everyday clothes. He selected my shirt and tie and just before we left he unexpectedly
opened a minute phial and sprinkled my hair with perfume. Outside the house we climbed
into the green Fiat and I glanced at my watch.
„Dr. Miakits, what’s all the rush?” I asked. “The reading doesn’t begin for an hour and
a half”.
„The Presidium,” said Miakits, “would consider itself honoured if the lecturer were to
devote a little time to discuss a few formalities. They all suffer from stage fright, and they’re
nervous wrecks by the time they come to shake hands with a famous…”
He didn’t finish. He started the car and we drove across to Pest, then all the way down
Rakóczi lit, past the Keleti, and a good way beyond into a district which I don’t know. Then
we pulled up by the gate of an enormous and visibly brand new building. Two hefty
uniformed porters assisted us out of the car; it struck me that each wore a cyclamen in his
service cap. The one opened the double glass doors and the other tagged along with us and
opened numerous further doors in the long and stately marble corridor along which we
walked. I was pleased at this polite reception. This pleasure soon gave way to a deeper
emotion when we stepped into the meeting hall and I ran my eyes over the members of the
Presidium.
This hall served normally as a gymnasium, rather above average and spacious, suitable
for competitions. Now, however, the ribbed wall bars were covered by cyclamen coloured
curtains, the poles, ropes, horizontal beams and horses were all decorated with fresh
cyclamens. The same flowers were also strewn liberally over the conspicuously long table around which the members of the presidential committee were waiting expectantly for me.
They were all standing, and I came to an abrupt halt, unable to believe my eyes.
Miakits had been right to rebuke me two years earlier for leading too much the life of a
recluse. It was true, I could recognise the outstanding figures of the nation’s arts and science
for the most part only from the pictures I had seen of them. I was used to seeing them on
newsreels when they were receiving their decorations, or celebrating their fiftieth birthday. I
knew most of those present in such a way only. To my astonishment I made out several
world-famous scientists amongst them, great musicians and sculptors, as well as writers
whom I had hitherto considered to be my own masters. I was filled with confusion and
apprehension, joy and pride. A great heat rose up from somewhere, my ears began to buzz,
and I only understood Miakits’ whisper when he repeated it:
„Wave to them…”
„Why wave?” I asked, alarmed.
„Because they won’t dare to sit down until you wave.”
I gave an embarrassed wave and everyone sat down. There was a thronelike structure
at the head of the table in the centre of a cyclamen-covered carpet. Miakits led me to it and I
sat down. This all happened as if it were a sequence from a dream.
It was only now that I understood that it had been a foolish error to live so much like a
recluse. Why had I never tried to secure admission to this community of all the talents? I
made a quick reckoning. Amongst all those present a grand total of seven writers, two painters
and one architect were personal friends. I could see that the seats around the presidential table
were numbered and I realised that my best friend, a grey-haired, stubborn-looking novelist
with a predisposition to liking my works, was eighty-seventh in the order of those invited.
“How typical!”, I thought. My friend looked across and smiled encouragingly, giving me a
little strength as he did so. This tiny drop of self-confidence evaporated at once as Miakits
whispered in my ear:
„The President!”
A decrepit old man leaning on a stick shuffled towards me from the presidential chair,
where the number ‘1’ was clearly visible. I instinctively rushed to greet him, but Miakits
thrust me firmly back onto the throne.
As a young man, before a few vague poems started me off on my literary career, I had
graduated as an engineer from the Technical University in Budapest. Even then Professor
Rimanóczi enjoyed a world-wide reputation. His name was there to be read in every text
book, and now it was he, the man who had so many times and with such paternal tenderness
hauled me over the coals for the slow progress of my studies, who in his dotage limped
painfully towards me beside the ceremonial table.
„The finest day of my life,” he mumbled as he gripped my hand, and under his
shrunken eyelids tears filled those lurking cobwebbed eyes.
„It was worth so much suffering over the years, young man, to be able to shake hands
with you once again…”
He dismissed Miakits’ offer of assistance, hobbled back on his stick across the marble
flooring, and minutes ticked by whilst he dried his eyes in a red-bordered handkerchief the
size of a tea-towel. After him, János Hagyó, seated on his right, stood up to speak. My heart
leapt as the voice of the uncrowned Prince of our poetry resounded:
„For two days and nights we debated, in hunger and in thirst, whether it was right to
put you forward to face the nation, in place of ourselves. We have decided that none amongst
us is more worthy of the task than you. You were chosen by general acclamation. Only one
person’s support was not forthcoming, that is if that crawling worm, that filthy scum in our
midst can be called a ‘person’.”
As he said this he pointed to a critic skulking at the end of the table, known for his bad breath and base intrigues, who not only changed his ideology every four or five years but his
own name as well. (He currently went by the name of Fedor Kukurikuvics Káposzta.) Lo and
behold, this literary turncoat had even found a way in here, and even here he was obviously
up to his usual tricks. He was continually fidgeting and whispering into the ears of those
seated next to him, disparaging my artistic ability in ambiguous phrases. Not for long,
however! As soon as the speaker pointed, two brawny security men grabbed him by the collar
and bounced him out of the hall with heavy kicks to the backside.
„Do away with him,” said Rimanóczi, as the three of them left. Then he accepted my
helping hand and pointed towards a gilded door. “Let’s adjourn to the scene of the lecture.”
We walked along a maze of echoing corridors and up broad stairways, then through a
wrought-iron gate and out into the open air. The Presidium sat down in the VIP boxes and
Miakits led me off up yet another stairway.
„The fans!”, he murmured as he left me, “the fans are simply longing for…”
He didn’t finish. I started up the steps, completely on my own now and feeling some
ghastly power gaining strength over me. At the top of the steps a narrow rostrum awaited me,
complete with table and chair, and on the table the predictable pot of cyclamens. When I
reached the podium a hundred and twenty cannon fired the ceremonial salute and then a brass
band which I couldn’t see began the National Anthem.
The night was already drawing in. In the hollow of an elliptical basin, all around as far as the
yee could see, an incalculable mass of human beings was swarming under the floodlights. On
the smooth turf below, usually the setting for soccer matches and athletics meetings, tens of
thousands of girls in white dresses spelt out the first latters of my name in the arena, like
initials embroidered on the corner of a giant handkerchief. They finished the Anthem and then
the applause burst out.
This was not a dream, it was really happening to me. I could touch the leg of the table
with my knee, my dark suit was pinching at the armpit, a little stone had crept into my shoe –
I could sense everything exactly as it was. I touched the mystery of the manuscript paper with
my fingertips and the rhythmic applause squirted through to my eardrums like the jet from a
garden sprayer. If it had been a dream, perhaps fright would have caused me to lose control;
but this was reality, concrete and alive, a reality which demanded action, blew my mind clear,
and sharpened both my hearing and my vision. I could feel the breath of hundreds of
thousands on my skin and the burning assault of the lights on the pupils of my eyes. I spotted
Káposzta, the critic who was forever changing his tune, as two muscular hangmen strung him
up onto a lamp-post. The hanging took place in the far distance, at the tramstop behind the
tribune on the opposite side of the arena, but I could see Kukurikuvics clearly. His legs gave a
last convulsive writhe, then his whole body distended and he spat forth his tongue.
By then, however, all eyes were fixed on me, and a deathly silence descended, such
that even in the far corner of the arena you could hear me turning over the pages of the
manuscript. I emitted a little cough and glanced down at the opening sentence.
The words were already formed on my lips when my vocal chords seemed all of a
sudden to freeze up inside me. I was appalled by what I was about to read. I felt that this
sentence, in this spacious night, split in a hundred thousand directions, did not read well. I
moved on to the next sentence, but here a new and still greater disappointment awaited me.
What to do? There was no other way out and so I skipped the first paragraph, from
beginning to end.
I thought to myself that I could begin with the second paragraph instead, where I
recalled having captured in words an important and even universally valid idea. But – Christ,
what’s going on here? – this too stuck in my throat. It was certainly a fine idea, but it only
sounded good, because it wasn’t quite true. It is quite possible that it wasn’t even true when I
wrote it down, but I only realised this now, when it would have been delivered in the crossfire of the spotlights and amplified through loudspeakers.
I was terrified. The pages started to crackle between my trembling fingers. I quickly reached
for the second page and glanced through it, then passed rapidly on to the third and the fourth…
Somewhere here (or perhaps on the following page) there had to be one sentence on which at
the time of writing I had worked and worked until I was satisfied: at last there would be
something exact, true and reliable… I found it! I wanted to shout it boldly into the
microphone, but I could only gaze down at the letters, and words failed me. Even this passage
of which I was so proud turned out to be all superficial embellishment, narcosis, falsehood.
Who am I then? The truth-teller who lies with every word? In the meantime the silence
around me became ever deeper and more oppressive; my teeth chattered as if it were very
cold, but even this sound was heard by me and noone else.
Then I arrived at the final page, with only four lines typed on it. I glanced at them, my
last straw. What I saw there was not merely a lie (for it is possible to have good intentions
when telling lies) but an open and deliberate slap in the face for truth. Even if I had wanted to
I couldn’t have uttered a word because of the choking in my throat. I folded the papers
together and put the manuscript away, mopped the icy sweat off my brow and bowed, as if my
reading had come to its end without anything the least untoward having occurred.
I felt as cold as tinplate inside, dreading what was to come. The crowd waited a few
moments in motionless silence, weighing up my mute performance, but then – as if
responding to a command – an overwhelming round of applause rang out. The ten thousand
girls in white dresses joined hands and danced on the green turf, then a few deafening bangs
signified the commencement of the fireworks display. They wouldn’t even boo? They weren’t
going to throw eggs at me? It seemed rather that the whole entertainment was going according
to plan, without any hitches. I took a deep breath when I saw that the members of the
Presidium had leapt to their feet and were waving handkerchiefs in my direction. Before I left
old Professor Rimanóczi asked me if he could kiss the hem of my suit, but I wouldn’t let him.
I drew him towards me, kissed him on the forehead, and escorted him out with my arm across
his shoulder.
As for little Miakits, lie took me home and in the car, in between fresh outbursts of
sobbing, wiped away his tears.
„I knew it,” he murmured, ”this is what we expected. This is what we hoped for. We
guessed, we felt that at least the writers…”
He never finished that sentence either.
Translated by Chris Hann
Thank You very much:)
You’re really kind!
I like it very much:)
…and of course, you’re right:“I think the most foreigners haven’t the faintest idea what a beautiful poems we have.”
Regards: Marianna.
Dear Marianna,
I don’t think you’re right. Some aliens with hearts and minds can appreciate your poems too. LOL.
kind regards.
Kyaw/
Dear Mr. Kyaw,
Can I say to you one of my experience what I will never forget. It happened in the 80s. A reporter went to the biggest bookstore of Paris. And she asked do you have something from Hungarian poets or writers. Bien sûr -told the bookseller and he showed the lowest shelf and took out a book: Voilà, here is one and he handed to her a Hrabal’s book. Do you know Hrabal? “Bohumil Hrabal was a Czech writer, regarded as one of the best writers of the 20th century.” from the Wikipedia.
Now when I wrote Hrabal’s name altogether four times, every times it had been underlined with red than a mistaken word. So Hrabal’s name there isn’t among the accepted names.
Do you know how many times we heard that the people couldn’t make a distinction between Budapest and Bucharest.
Mr. Kyaw , unfortunately I don’t know nor am I, many countries’ literature.We learned French, English,German, Russian, American literature and one-one eminent writers or poets than Franz Kafka, a Czeck writer; Bohumil Hrabal, a Czech writer ;Jaroslav Hašek, a Czech humorist; Martin Andersen Nexø, a Danish writer; Rabindranath Tagore, Indian poet; Eugène Ionesco, was a Romanian and French playwright and dramatist; Panait Istrati, a Romanian writer and I don’t remember other names now.
Regards:
Kati Svaby
Endre Ady :On Elijah’s chariot
The Lord, like Elijah, gathers up
His darlings, those with harshest lots:
Those gifted with quick hearts of flame
Become his fiery chariots.
Elijah’s nation rush to heaven
And stop there in perpetual snow,
To ice-bound Himalayan peaks
Their ragged rattling chariots go.
Bleak statelessness, nor earth nor heaven,
By winds of fate they’re tossed and hurled.
Elijah’s car makes for the cool
And wicked beauties of the world.
Their hearts burn bright, their brows are hung
With icicles. And how Earth laughs.
The Sun meanwhile strews diamond dust
Like ice along their frozen paths.
Szirtes, George
On 1st December 2011. Our dear friend, Károly Vilhelm, artist died. Peace to your ashes.
knowledge is only acquired by those who desire it.
good luck!
Attila József:Welcome to Thomas Mann
Just as the child, by sleep already possessed,
Drops in his quiet bed, eager to rest,
But begs you: “Don’t go yet: tell me a story,”
For night this way will come less suddenly,
And his heart throbs with little anxious beats
Nor wholly understands what he entreats,
The story’s sake or that yourself be near,
So we ask you: Sit down with us: make clear
What you are used to saying: the known relate,
That you are here among us, and our state
Is yours, and that we all 'are here with you,
All whose concerns are worthy of man’s due.
You know this well: the poet never lies.
The real is not enough; through its disguise
Tell us the truth which fills the mind with light
Because, without each other, all is night.
Through Madame Chauchat’s body Hans Castorp sees:
So train us to be our own witnesses.
Gentle your voice, no discord in that tongue;
Then tell us what is noble, what is wrong,
Lifting our hearts from mourning to desire.
We have buried Kosztolányi: cureless, dire,
The cancer on his mouth grew bitterly,
But growths more monstrous gnaw humanity.
Appalled we ask: More than that went before,
What horror has the future yet in store?
What ravening thoughts will seize us for their prey?
What poison, brewing now, eat us away?
And, if your lecture can put off that doom,
How long may you still count upon a room?
Ah, do but speak, and we can take heart then.
Being men by birthright, we must remain men,
And women, women, cherished for that reason,
All of us human, though such numbers lessen.
Sit down, please. Let your stirring tale be said.
We are listening to you, glad, like one in bed,
To see to-day, before that sudden night,
A European mid people barbarous, white.
Watkins, Vernon
Gyorgy Petri:You’ve Stuck Me on Your Hook, oh Lord
You’ve stuck me on your hook, oh Lord.
For twenty-six years
I’ve been curling, wriggling
enticingly, but the line
has never tightened.
It’s obvious
that there’s no fish in your river.
If you still hope,
choose another worm.
It’s been fine
to be a chosen one.
But now I’d like
to dry off and crawl in the sun.
Tótfalusi, Istvan
Ottó Orbán:The Father of the People
Which monarch-cum-deity had fewer restraints or more power?
His was the way, the truth and the life, but chiefly the death;
his world was as simple as Russian Roulette,
the red ball, obedience: the black, execution…
A brief generation, to see his fallen statues’ living original –
the short-assed, vengeful, industrious genius of organisation,
who dickered with his penknife in a functioning watch,
because he failed to grasp the ideal in whose name he murdered.
Divinity requires a godlike imagination,
a pinch of poetry to go with the hard-line of strategy –
conscience and soul are not merely words in a spectrum,
sooner or later the lie starts to rot in the firm-looking binding,
and chronically sneezing, time, the monumental mason, carves on the
tombstone
of common memory: Xerxes; Capone; the once fearful name of the
emperor.
Szirtes, George
Gábor Garai: Give merriment
Give merriment, and nothing, Sir!
Myself tackle the others.
Then the others does not interest, you are fortune, ill fate, a failure success.
Let me smile at a trouble and trouble, somebody else is not needed, this single shelter, even the privilege of my solitude are needed only, I exchange a fate, anywhere, with anybody,
if my merriment, I may make it voluntarily;
and frees again the discipline, if I know his sense and I undertake it,
and not armour, but wing my shoulder.
And that let the tomorrow not be an all trouble,
but beginning and continuing crazy adventure,
we ends though once – add merriment to it only, Sir.
LONGING FOR DEATH.
Alexander Petőfi.
Give me a coffin and a grave,
And let the grave be deep and low;
And bury with me all I feel,
All passions strong, all thoughts of woe.
O, mind and heart, twice cursed, e’er have
You been the bane of my whole life!
Why torture me with burning scourge?
Why should not end now all this strife?
Why should this feverish brain inspire
To rise above the stars on high?
When angry Fate hath it ordained
That crawl upon the earth should I.
Why have I not fair heavenly wings,
If my aims soar to heaven’s dome?
To carry me into heights where
Immortality is at home!
And if to me this world is void
Of joy, why have I, then, a breast?
Created that of human joys
It be the home, the shelt’ring nest!
Or if there be a heart which flames
And burns in passion’s deep abyss,
Why, then, this icy look on me,
Thou God of happiness and bliss?
Give me a coffin and a grave,
And let the grave be deep and low;
And bury with me all I feel,
All passions strong, all thoughts of woe.
Sándor Weöres: Sheep school
Once there occurred a miracle:
a ‘sheep school’– what a spectacle!
only bleaters got the praise
talkers weren’t allowed to graze.
Those who never showed up there
got medals sewn into their hair–
therefore, not one sheep attended
and the ‘sheep school’ was suspended.
Donald E. Morse and
Makkai, Adam
Dear Ms. Kati Svaby,
Sheep School, Bleaters, Talkers, Medal winners. Good one. I like it.
Kind regards.
This translation is so beautiful. Did you translated these poems? Avagy szoljak magyarul hozzad. Ezeket the forditottad angolra? En meg ilyen hiteles forditassal nem talalkoztam. Koszonom, hogy megosztottad velunk. Thanks for sharing these translations with us.
Harmat
Dear Harmat,
I found this translation on the Net.I wondered than you - because I thought that it was impossible to translate these perfect,humorous rhymes. It is translated by two names, one is a Hungarian and the other is an English name.The English could be a poet who made from the translated poem into English without rhymes could make a very similar poem. You know who can translate a poem can be a poet. This is the reason that our greatest poets could translate the most beautiful poems of the world. There are an other poem the translation of which is incredible. József Attila: Születésnapomra.
Hello.
Kati Svaby
Hello,
On 2nd January 2012 was a big demonstration there were about 100 000 people. The people recited this Second Hungarian National Anthem written by poet, Mihály Vörösmarty. It was very moving. After that long poem the people sang it also.
Written by Mihály Vörösmarty Lyrical Translation
Oh, Magyar, keep immovably
your native country’s trust,
for it has borne you, and at death
will consecrate your dust!
No other spot in all the world
can touch your heart as home—
let fortune bless or fortune curse,
from hence you shall not roam!
This is the country that your sires
have shed their blood to claim;
throughout a thousand years not one
but adds a sacred name.
'Twas here brave Árpád’s mighty sword
ordained your land to be,
and here the arms of Hunyad broke
the chains of slavery.
Here Freedom’s blood-stained flag has waved
above the Magyar head;
and here in age-long struggles fell
our best and noblest, dead.
In spite of long calamity
and centuries of strife,
our strength, though weakened, is not spent;
our country still has life.
To you, O nations of the world,
we call with passioned breath:
“Should not a thousand years of pain
bring liberty—or death?”
It cannot be that all in vain
so many hearts have bled,
that haggard from heroic breasts
so many souls have fled!
It cannot be that mind and strength
and consecrated will
are wasted in a hopeless cause
beneath a curse of ill!
There yet shall come, if come there must,
that better, fairer day
for which a myriad thousand lips
in fervent yearning pray.
Or there shall come, if come there must,
a death of fortitude;
and round about our graves shall stand
a nation washed in blood.
Around the graves where we shall die
a weeping world will come,
and millions will in pity gaze
upon the martyrs’ tomb.
Then, Magyar, keep unshakeably
your native country’s trust,
for it has borne you and at death
will consecrate your dust!
No other spot in all the world
can touch your heart as home;
let fortune bless or fortune curse,
from hence you shall not roam!
Hello ,
Listen to our Second Hungarian National Anthem to music by Béni Egressy Hungarian composer.
youtube.com/watch?v=vYYRXahBrk4
Frigyes Karinthy: Prologue
I can’t tell anyone,
Hence I tell everyone
I tried to whisper one by one, to all of you,
Your ears and mouths passing through.
The secret, which is common,
And only for a few can be known.
The secret for which I was born
Hidden deeply in blood and torn.
I tried to find somebody whom I could tell
The word, the secret, the tiny miracle,
And whisper in its ears: pass it on!
I can’t tell anyone,
Hence I tell everyone
Nearly turned out the secret, I almost told
But I’ve never finished my word.
One of them turned hot and red from it,
She wanted to whisper too: a kiss had commit.
The other numbly froze from my words,
Passed away, left me alone.
I can’t tell anyone,
Hence I tell everyone
The third suspiciously glared at me,
Started to laugh and this delighted me.
When I was a child I decided,
To tell it to the god, he exists I hoped .
But I’ve never found him in burning thorn,
Even in wine and bread I vainly sought.
In vain I waited, I yearned
He didn’t find me worthy to be concerned.
I can’t tell anyone,
Hence I tell everyone
How hurt me when they fooled and tortured me,
Sometimes would have been better to be naughty.
Cause dream is the sin and dream is the kindness,
But more from all dreams is the evidence
That I’m here and still I am,
And I witness, the sun shines again.
I’m not a god, I’m not the world
Nor aurora, nor aloe crop.
I wasn’t worse or better from anyone,
Though I was the best: a living human.
I was everyones’ relative, friend,
Everyones’ ancestor, descendant.
I can’t tell anyone,
Hence I tell everyone
I tell, I want to tell,
But my hand is gammy, my mouth is stutterer.
I want to tell where the ways end
Help me, provide me a helping hand.
Raise me up, I want to speak, live and look,
I can’t do it here in the dusty ground.
I threw away the clanky and I haven’t a bell,
Here in the dust my voice is so feeble.
A foot stepped on my chest and treaded me,
Raise me up to the height, mercy me.
I hire one of the pulpits,
Let me stay on its step, please.
I don’t know yet what will I say,
But I guess it will be a good news, don’t delay.
A good, an excellent news, secret and rainbow,
From me, for you, whom I loved without sorrow
I stay with rounded eyes here, waiting for the miracle.
What I can’t tell anyone
I’ll tell everyone.
Translated by Csilla D.F.
With voice-record:
Dear Kati,
Thank you for your answer. Do you speak Hungarian? Maybe it is a silly question. I am from Transylvania, Erdely. I moved to the states 5 years ago. But HUngarain poetry can’t realy be translated I thought. I was so happy to find these translations.
Thanks again for posting them.
Adel