Washington, DC – The “Hungarian Review”, the English-language affiliate of the bi-monthly journal Magyar Szemle, edited by Gyula Kodolányi and John O’Sullivan, has published its second issue for 2019.
Minor notes and tragic themes are dominant in this issue, that carries three substantial articles dealing with the events of the period from March 1944 to April 1945. In his editorial note entitled “Consolations in a Somber Time”, John O’Sullivan writes: “That short period is the single most terrible year in a century that as a whole was cruel to Hungary and Hungarians. To take a single statistic, at least one in ten Hungarians died either in that period or as a result of it: more than half a million Hungarian Jews in the Holocaust and a large but unknown number of other Hungarians on the battlefield, in the Gulag, and in other political murders. That some Hungarians participated in these crimes either directly and voluntarily or through folly and cowardice only makes their cruelty more terrible and more worthy of scrupulous examination and judgement.”
The first two articles of this issue are two speeches delivered at the Saint Thomas Becket Commemoration held on January 5, 2019 in Esztergom, Hungary. Saint Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury who was martyred in 1170 for defending the rights and privileges of the Catholic Church is still commemorated regularly in Hungary. These two speeches are by Iain Lindsay, British Ambassador to Hungary and State Secretary for Security Policy Péter Sztáray (“Contemporary Lessons of the Life of Saint Thomas Becket”).
The ‘Current’ section contains further articles by Éva Eszter Szabó (“The Iron Curtain Metaphor and the Fence Walls of the US and Hungarian Border Barriers – Part I”); Salvatore Babones (“Waking from the Eurasian Dream”) and a Danube Institute Discussion between Lord Peter Lilley and György Schöpflin (“Brexit: The Prospects”).
The periodical then continues with a section entitled ‘March 1944’ with contributions by Ernő Munkácsi (“How It Happened – Documenting the Tragedy of Hungarian Jewry – Excerpt from Cahpter II”); György Schöpflin (“Vilmos Nagybaczoni Nagy and Hungary’s Post-Trianon Traumas”); and Vilmos Nagybaczoni Nagy (“Fateful Years 1938-1945 – Excerpt form Chapter VIII”).
The ‘ March 1944’ section is followed by a section entitled ‘Hungarian Poets of Transylvania’ which includes poems by Sándor Reményik (“Funeral Oration for the Falling Leaves – Halotti beszéd a hulló leveleknek”); Géza Szőcs (“Four Transylvanian Poems”); and Laura Iancu (“Six Poems”).
Finally, ‘The Arts and Letters’ section features articles by Gordon McKehchnie (“Sopron – A Travel Essay”) and Olga Granasztói (“Széphalom – The Utopia of an English Garden – Part I”).
Currently, 49 issues of the Hungarian Review from 2010 through 2019 can be ordered from amazon.com at: http://amzn.to/1KE5ILT or directly from the publisher at http://www.hungarianreview.com, or by calling the Coalition office in Washington.