What’s in a name?

The museum is named after Sándor Petőfi, Hungary’s iconic poet. He lived a brief but eventful life in a very important part of Hungarian history and became the symbol of the Reform Age and the Freedom War of 1848-49. A permanent Petőfi exhibition commemorates the poet with the title: “Who Am I? I Will Not Say…” – Petőfi’s Choices. The exhibition shows not only the good side of Petőfi but gives an insight into his doubts and failures as well, revealing a complex personality, a talented but not very balanced man behind the stereotypical picture of a national icon. The exhibition is an interactive place. It’s not only for the eyes. Visitors can get involved in the poet’s life events on several levels. They can use their hands and mind to discover an extraordinary person from a very different point of view compared to the traditional picture taught in textbooks in schools.

The building

Petőfi Literary Museum is located in a beautiful neo-Classical building called Károlyi Palace in the centre of Budapest. It’s a two-storey building, with a balcony with iron railing and a courtyard with huge and shady trees. With Károlyi Garden behind the building, the complex represents a real oasis for people longing for culture. From the three-aisle, carriage entrance with wooden-block flooring, you can reach the imposing, three-part stairway with red marble steps. This connects with the Ceremonial Hall and the Ancestors’ Gallery, from where you can proceed to a series of halls with mirrors and original, white marble fireplaces, the neo-Renaissance former Károlyi family chapel with wood panelling, and the library with its mahogany-lined galleries, intimate harmony, and fine old-book smell.

Though quite a number of Károlyis can be linked to the building the best known of them is probably Mihály Károlyi and his wife Katinka Andrássy.

’More than Petőfi, more than literature, more than a museum’

The Petőfi Literary Museum is a public collection that explores and collects the Hungarian literary heritage in the widest possible way.  It also presents classical and contemporary Hungarian literature to different audiences in an appealing manner making literature fun for every age group. The museum tries to attract people with various events. It’s usually a lively place and there’s a lot to attend. The motto of the museum and the enthusiastic people working there is an István Örkény quote: ‘The task of a museum is to make the act of asking questions an ingenuous and invincible habit of ours.’ They live up to the task very well. They believe that discovering, investigating, the ability to notice miracles, the joy of understanding correlations, and experiencing the variety of different opinions and ways of thinking are all really important factors of people’s lives. For the museum staff, the museum is a place of constant experimenting and learning. A complex medium which gives new and new perspectives to read texts, artist biographies, personalities, museum and literature in a rather novel way.

To reach these goals they provide museum education for both young and old. Lectures and guided tours through the exhibitions make the interactive exhibitions an even livelier experience. City walks connected to literary figures are organised regularly usually free of charge. The walks help the participants to become familiar with a period, a writer or poet and they demonstrate that literature is not only a dull school subject but can be enjoyable and is part of our everyday life.

What’s going on?

The museum is always an exciting place to visit but June is an especially good time for that. PIM houses the Margó Literary Festival which is a four-day event from 12-16 June. Margó Festival is one of the most significant literary forums in Hungary today. It brings together authors, writers, poets, and a broad variety of audiences offering public readings, panel discussions, debate sessions, lectures, book launches and activities for children. You can meet contemporary Hungarian authors and can also buy their books as festival events run parallel with a book fair. To make the festival even more enjoyable the literary events are supplemented by concerts and theatre shows. The PIM courtyard is an ideal venue for the event with its big green trees and stage. There are so many events going on during the four days that it’s really difficult to choose from them. It’s a real literature fest. Don’t miss it!

by Ágnes Salánki and István Dezsényi

1. hempen–homespun

What hempen home-spuns have we swaggering here…

—A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 3.1.67

Clothes, they say, make the man—or unmake him, as the case may be.

In this scene from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Puck has just happened upon an impromptu play. He isn’t just calling the band of actors he’s run into rustic—hempen means “made of hemp,” and hemp was traditionally used to weave coarse cloth (like burlap) and ropes. These actors aren’t just unsophisticated, but painfully so.

In Shakespeare’s day, cloth wasn’t just a commercial product. It’s true that there were guilds of weavers who turned out different kinds of cloth for those who could afford to buy it, but cloth was also commonly made at home (and particularly by those without the means to buy cloth from the weaving guilds). The cloth made at home was usually simpler than the cloth made for the marketplace—a loom that was able to weave complicated patterns, for instance, was often larger and much more expensive than a simple frame loom used to make plain weave. But it didn’t stop and start just at the weaving. The raw materials used for the cloth were also produced in a parallel fashion to how the cloth was woven: those with money could buy nicer thread made with exotic and expensive materials (like silk) in the market, and those without could spin wool or flax at home.

Homespun referred to a type of plain weave cloth that was woven using thread spun at home, and because plain weave cloth is plain, the word homespun also came to refer to anything rustic, simple, or unsophisticated.

2. “By the Book“

You kiss by the book.

—Romeo and Juliet, 1.5.109

Ah, young love, when everything’s new and fresh. Except, that is, for Romeo’s kisses.

By the book is a phrase that has come to mean “conventionally” or “in accordance with tradition or rules,” but when Shakespeare used it here, it also had a much more literal meaning: “by rote.” Education, and particularly formal education, in the 16th and early 17th centuries involved a lot of memorization and recitation of key texts—books belonged to teachers, not to students. Because of this, the phrase by the book came to refer to things that were done as if memorized.

The later meaning was around when Shakespeare was writing. This makes Juliet’s comment even shadier: is she saying that Romeo has studied the arts of l’amour, or is she saying that his kisses aren’t anything special? It’s Shakespeare: it could well be both.

3. Branbury cheese

You Banbury cheese!

—The Merry Wives of Windsor, 1.1.126

What is it about Banbury cheese that makes it so objectionable? It’s not what Banbury cheese is, so much as what it isn’t, which is plentiful.

Banbury cheese is a strong, yellow cheese that was made (appropriately) in the town of Banbury in Oxfordshire, England. Banbury cheese was very thin—so much so that when eager eaters pared away the rind, there wasn’t much cheese to eat. In The Merry Wives of Windsor, a minor character calls Abraham Slender a Banbury cheese in mockery of his name (and, one assumes, his slenderness).

4. “I Find the Ass in Compound with the Major Part of Your Syllables”

I can’t say your worships have delivered the matter well, when I find the ass in compound with the major part of your syllables.

—Coriolanus, 2.1.58-60

Education, as we mentioned before, was fairly structured in Shakespeare’s day. Students who progressed to university were taught more than the rudiments of reading and writing: they were given a classical liberal arts education, spending time reading Latin authors and studying math, rhetoric, and grammar.

Grammar in Elizabethan England wasn’t about when to use lay and when to use lie: it was a study of Latin, not English, grammar. As such, grammars focused on Latin words and constructions, including the Latin prefixes and suffixes.

And here’s where Shakespeare’s insult gets literary: a few grammars of the time focused on the suffixal -as, and there were a number of puns in Shakespeare’s plays and in other plays and satires of the time that punned on the similarity between the suffix -as and the ahem suffix-like ass. The collocation in compound was lifted straight from grammar books of the day, where an enterprising student would learn the rules that restricted when -as could be used in compound with another word, or as a suffix to a root word.

What about the syllables? At this point in time, words weren’t taught letter by letter, but syllable by syllable. This literary joke boils down to this: in nearly everything that the tribunes (“worships”) have said, this character finds proof that they are, through and through, ah… fools.

5. Lily-livered

Go, prick thy face, and over-red thy fear, Thou lily-livere’d boy.

—Macbeth, 5.3.17-18

The thing about Shakespearean insults is that sometimes the insult isn’t clear to modern audiences. We might think there’s a double-entendre in prick your face (there isn’t) and completely miss the actual insult: lily-livered.

Lily-livered means “cowardly,” and it has its origins in medieval physiology. When Shakespeare was writing, the prevailing belief was that there were four bodily fluids, or humors, whose balance not only affected your health, but your character. For instance, a person who had too much blood was sanguine, or cheerful or courageous. A person with an overabundance of black bile was melancholy (or sad); a person with too much phlegm was phlegmatic (or unexcitable); a person with too much yellow bile was choleric (or aggressive and hot-tempered). As you can see, these humorous dispositions gave us English words to describe each of these temperaments.

It was also possible to have too little of one of these humors, and we have English words for that condition as well. Lily-livered is one of those. Medieval physicians believed yellow bile was produced in the liver, and the liver of a person whose body produced too little yellow bile would be pale (because it wasn’t full of bile). Since yellow bile is associated with a warlike, aggressive disposition, a person with a deficiency of it would be weak and cowardly. The whiteness of the lily pairs well with the supposed paleness of a bile-less liver, giving us lily-livered.

As for the first part? Macbeth is telling the frightened servant to pinch his cheeks to cover up his fear. A double–entendre in Shakespeare? Never!

6. Whoreson Zed

Thou whoreson zed, thou unnecessary letter!

—King Lear, 2.2.65

Plenty of people assume that the alphabet as we know it today is the alphabet as it always has been: A to Z, 26 letters in all. But that isn’t the case. Letters have been added to and dropped from the Latin alphabet since before English was English.

Z, or zed as it is called in British English, is one such letter. The grandfather of our modern z was the Greek alphabet’s zeta, which is the sixth letter of the Greek alphabet. The Etruscans took and adapted the Greek alphabet, and in turn, the Romans adapted the Etruscan alphabet for their own use, but the alphabets weren’t a one-to-one match. The sound /k/ in Latin, for instance, was covered by three Etruscan consonants: kappa (which gave us k), koppa (which eventually gave us q), and gamma (which eventually gave us g). Phonetic changes in Latin also meant that some Etruscan letters were left out in the cold because there was no real use for them. That’s what happened to z: it was dropped from the Latin alphabet in the 4th century BC.

It goes without saying that we did eventually add it back into the Latin alphabet, but it’s one of the rarest letters in use, and in Shakespeare’s day, long before the American preference for -ize and -ization over -ise and -isation was common, z was even rarer than it is today.

This jab comes in the middle of an argument between the Earl of Kent and the servant Oswald, and is well-aimed: Kent is reminding Oswald that, as a servant, he is as unnecessary as the letter z.

7. I’ll tickle your catastrophe

You scullion! You rampallian! You fustilarian! I’ll tickle your catastrophe!

—Henry IV, Part 2, 2.1.60

Of all of Shakespeare’s plays, the two Henry IVs (parts 1 and 2) are the most insult-laden, which means we’ve saved the best for last. It’s not just that each play includes numerous lines that are intended to be insulting, but those lines are chock-full of individual insults, like the one here.

Let’s unpack this particular line. The word scullion dates back to the 1400s, and first was used to refer to the lowest-ranked servant of a household—usually the one who did the grunt work in the kitchens. It wasn’t too long before people began to use scullion to refer to any person of low rank, and by Shakespeare’s day, it was a common epithet of abuse.

Rampallian is an insult with a shrouded past. It first showed up in English in the late 1500s to refer to a scoundrel or villain. It seemingly came from nowhere: we have nothing that gives us a definitive etymology, though we’ve made a few conjectures that might be heading in the right direction. Some etymologists believe this is possibly a blend of the earlier verb ramp, which means “to move or act threateningly,” and the now rare rascallion, which refers to a scoundrel or rascal. (This makes sense, since rascallion is derived from rascal).

Fustilarian is an alteration of the earlier (and much more colorful) word fustilugs, and both words refer to a ponderous, clumsy person, and especially a fat and slovenly woman. The earlier word is fustilugs, which is a blend of the word fusty, which refers to something dusty, musty, or old-fashioned, and the plural of lug, a word that refers to a big and clumsy person and is the same lug used to refer to the heavy nut that holds a wheel onto a car. Fustilarian is Shakespeare’s comic take on fustilugs, and is so rare that it is only entered in the historical Oxford English Dictionary, where Shakespeare appears to be the only one to have used it.

And while you may know what a catastrophe is, you are likely not familiar with the sense that Shakespeare is using here. You likely know the “disaster” meaning of catastrophe; there was another meaning that referred to a disastrous end point of something. Shakespeare built on this “disastrous end” meaning here, where catastrophe is used to refer to the posterior of a person.

source: merriam-webster.com

Can you match the Shakespeare plays and their Hungarian titles?

Key

1. d. 2. a. 3. g. 4. b. 5. f. 6. e. 7. c.

The Naming of Cats

The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,

It isn’t just one of your holiday games;

You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter

When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.

First of all, there’s the name that the family use daily,

Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo, or James,

Such as Victor or Jonathan, George or Bill Bailey

All of them sensible everyday names.

There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter,

Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames:

Such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter —

But all of them sensible everyday names.

But I tell you, a cat needs a name that’s particular,

A name that’s peculiar, and more dignified,

Else how can he keep up his tail perpendicular,

Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?

Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum,

Such as Munkstrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat,

Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum —

Names that never belong to more than one cat.

But above and beyond there’s still one name left over,

And that is the name that you never will guess;

The name that no human research can discover

But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.

When you notice a cat in profound meditation,

The reason, I tell you, is always the same:

His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation

Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:

His ineffable effable

Effanineffable

Deep and inscrutable singular Name.

T. S. Eliot

A macska neve

A macska nevét kiszemelni felette nehéz,

Nem afféle vasárnapi könnyű mulatság:

És én kijelentem – de ezért ne nézz le -,

Hogy HÁROM NEVET is követel meg macskád.

Egy, amelyen hívogatja naponta a ház,

Mint: Aladár, Jonatán, Kari, Dénes,

Mint: Péter, Salamon, Gyuri és Atanáz –

Mind csupa egyszerű, köznapi név ez.

Cifrábbakat is lelsz, ha nagyon keresel

(Mást, ha uraké s ha kisasszonyoké lesz).

Plátón, Ardzsuna, Perszefoné, Demeter –

Mégis, csupa egyszerű, köznapi név ez.

Ám tudd meg, a macska külön nevet is óhajt,

Büszkébb nevet is, amely övé egyedül:

Másképp hogy is űzi a spájzban a tolvajt,

Holdlepte tetőn hogyan is hegedül?

Ily neveket ha kívánsz, nosza hosszú a listám:

Csimbalabumm, Tyafogány, Kalapetty,

Kraxima, Dzsellifalónia, Bombalurisztán –

Mit soha nem hord több egerész, csakis egy.

Mégse reméld, hogy ezekkel a macska betelne:

Még egy neve van – hanem ezt ne kutasd,

Mert nem fedi fel soha emberi elme –

Ám TUDJA A MACSKA, s a titka marad.

S olykor ha merengve csak ül s elréved macskád,

Nos, annak okát is elárulom én:

Mámoros eszmék töltik a csöppnyi agyacskát,

Úgy töpreng meditál csalafinta nevén:

Rejtett, egyszeri, titkos,

Rejtszeri-titkos,

Agyafúrt, csalafinta NEVÉN!

Ford.: Tótfalusi István

Here are a few ’cat idioms’ for you. Can you match the idioms with their meanings?

Key

1. c.

2. a.

3. d.

4. e.

5. b.

Bond, who published his first book, A Bear Called Paddington, in 1958, went on to write more than 200 books for children.

More than 35 million Paddington books have been sold around the world to date.

Bond’s latest Paddington novel, Paddington’s Finest Hour, was published in April 2017, with a second Hollywood film based on the books due out later this year.

Ann-Janine Murtagh, executive publisher at HarperCollins children’s books said: “I feel privileged to have been Michael Bond’s publisher – he was a true gentleman, a bon viveur, the most entertaining company and the most enchanting of writers.

He will be forever remembered for his creation of the iconic Paddington, with his duffle coat and wellington boots, which touched my own heart as a child and will live on in the hearts of future generations. My thoughts and love are with his wife, Sue and his children Karen and Anthony.”

Charlie Redmayne, HarperCollins CEO, said: ‘Michael Bond was one of the great children’s writers and at HarperCollins we are immensely fortunate to have published him and to have known him.

“He was a wonderful man and leaves behind one of the great literary legacies of our time.”

Obituary: Michael Bond

Michael Bond’s Paddington Bear has become one of the classic characters in children’s literature.

A chance encounter with a toy bear in a London shop spawned a long line of books, a BBC TV series, a feature film and a lot of merchandise.

A prolific writer, he also created The Herbs, featuring Parsley the Lion, which became a successful TV series and the tale-telling guinea pig, Olga da Polga.

And for adults there was Monsieur Pamplemousse, the retired detective turned restaurant critic and his bloodhound, Pommes Frites.

Thomas Michael Bond was born on 13 January 1926 in Newbury and raised in nearby Reading. One of his earliest childhood memories was standing by the railway line to watch the Cornish Riviera Express thunder past on its way from Paddington to Penzance.

Bond’s father was the mild-mannered manager of the local post office and was the basis for the character of Paddington Bear, the unassuming ursine stowaway.

“My father was a very polite man and he always wore a hat,” Bond said. “We’d go on holiday to the Isle of Wight and he used to go in the sea with his trousers rolled up and keep his hat on in case he met someone he knew and would have something to raise. He would have been mortified if he hadn’t.”

His parents instilled in him a love of books and he later remembered never going to sleep without a bedtime story.

Bond’s happy childhood was interrupted when his parents sent him to a strict Catholic school where the Brothers kept discipline with heavy rubber straps.

Bond often suffered this brutal treatment, so much so that he left school at 14 and got a job as a clerk in a local solicitor’s office.

A year later he was working for the BBC which, impressed with his hobby of building amplifiers and other electrical gadgets, gave him a junior job at a transmitter facility in Reading.

His budding career nearly came to a premature end when four German bombs fell on the building where he was working. Despite the ground floor being blown out he escaped unharmed.

In 1943 he volunteered for the RAF, later transferring to the army. It was while he was stationed in Egypt that he submitted a short story to the magazine London Opinion, which paid him seven guineas for it.

At that point he decided he quite liked the idea of becoming a writer.

Bond returned to the BBC in 1947, working at Caversham Park which monitored foreign broadcasts. Three years later he became a BBC cameraman, working on programmes including Blue Peter, while continuing to write short stories.

On his way home from work on Christmas Eve in 1956, Bond spied a lonely teddy bear on the shelf in a shop window, and took it home as a stocking filler for his wife. He called it Paddington because they were living near Paddington Station at the time.

While musing over a typewriter and a blank sheet of paper, he wondered idly what it would be like if an unaccompanied bear turned up at a railway station looking for a home.

The seeds of the idea had taken root during the war when Bond saw newsreels of children being sent out from British cities to avoid German bombing. “I had memories of children being evacuated from London with a label around their necks and all their possessions in a suitcase, and this became part of Paddington as well,” he said.

“Paddington Bear was a refugee with a label – ‘Please look after this bear. Thank you’, and he had a little suitcase.”

A Bear Called Paddington appeared in 1958 with illustrations by Peggy Fortnum. Ivor Wood would later take over the drawings and he went on to develop the successful BBC TV series that first aired in 1976.

Wood came up with the idea of a three-dimensional puppet which moved, using stop motion techniques, against a two-dimensional drawn background. Bond wrote the scripts and the actor, Michael Hordern, narrated the stories.

During the 1960s, Bond turned out an average of one Paddington book a year but didn’t feel secure enough to become a full-time writer until 1965, when he quit his job with the BBC.

Later that decade came the first of the Parsley books, featuring a lion and his friends including Sage the Owl and Sir Basil and Lady Rosemary. These books too were successfully translated onto TV by Wood and his company, FilmFair, first as The Herbs in 1968 and then The Adventures of Parsley which aired in 1970.

While aimed at children, it became cult viewing for adults who appreciated the dry humour which probably escaped the target audience.

In 1971 Bond published the first of his Olga da Polga stories for children, featuring a guinea pig with a penchant for telling tall stories in the manner of Baron Munchausen.

Bond next turned to writing for adults with his Monsieur Pamplemousse books, the first of which appeared in 1983. The idea of a French detective who quit the police and became a restaurant critic came when Bond – a Francophile – was eating in a French restaurant.

Pamplemousse and his faithful bloodhound, Pommes Frites, travel the country, sampling menus and getting into a series of comic mystery adventures. The books are full of the wry humour that was Bond’s trademark.

But the popularity of his original creation never seemed to wane and Bond continued to write adventures for the little bear. As well as the books, a huge merchandising operation was built up and Paddington toys remained high on the wish list of new generations of children.

Designer Shirley Clarkson was one of the first licensees to produce the figure with his now famous hat, wellington boots and duffel coat. She made the very first Paddington Bear as a Christmas present for her young son, Jeremy (future presenter of the BBC’s Top Gear).

In 2014 StudioCanal released a feature film of Paddington, with the bear voiced by Ben Whishaw. Bond, who had a cameo role, called the film “absolutely delightful”.

Since 1958, more than 150 different Paddington titles have been published, and more than 35 million copies have been sold worldwide in more than 40 languages.

Bond was still writing in recent months, with Paddington’s Finest Hour published in April of this year. It is a volume of letters from the bear to his Aunt Lucy in Peru – the relative who originally despatched him to London more than half a century previously.

Michael Bond was once asked why the popularity of Paddington had endured for children in the age of computers and video games.

“Paddington is eternally optimistic and always comes back for more, no matter how many times his hopes are dashed,” he said.

“It’s simply the joy of a little bear who is an outsider getting into scrapes and mishaps – always with the best of intentions – and coming out on top every time.”

source: The Telegraph, BBC

Can you believe that it’s already been 20 years since we saw Harry meet best friends Ron and Hermione, take on a troll in the girls’ toilets and face Voldemort for the very first time?

To honour the beginning of Harry’s magical journey, lots of events will be popping up all around the UK for those looking to be spellbound.

We’ve already seen one almighty stunt in celebration of HP, when nearly 700 children broke the Guinness World Record for the largest gathering of people dressed like Harry Potter in one place!

Not only that, but Rowling’s publisher Bloomsbury will be releasing four new editions of the book, one for each house at Hogwarts School Of Witchcraft & Wizardry.

The book covers feature the crest for each house and inside you can find fact files, character profiles and illustrations.

An exhibition is set to open later this year at the British Library on October 20 to celebrate everything fantastical in Harry’s world, too.

The one and only J.K Rowling herself also decided to add to the celebrations by divulging more information about Potter’s family tree, much to fans’ delight.

J.K’s official Potter fan site Pottermore also recently announced a Wizarding World Book Club, allowing fans to revisit their favourite books and discuss them online.

Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone was first published on June 26 1997 and since then it has sold more than 450 million copies worldwide in an impressive 79 languages.

This of course led to the magical movie franchise of which propelled Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint into the spotlight, as well as a highly acclaimed sold-out theatre production and several theme parks dotted around the globe.

And let’s not forget about all of that memorabilia too. Phew!

With that in mind, it’s easy to see why the Philosopher’s Stone has earned its own spot as a holiday on the calendar.

Facebook  also celebrates  the 20th anniversary of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by animating posts about the landmark book using interactive spells.

In a nod to J.K Rowling’s 1997 book about the world-famous wizard, the social media site is animating posts about the landmark book using ‘hidden spells’.

If users post or comment about any of the four houses – Gryffindor, Slytherin, Ravenclaw, and Hufflepuff – the words appear in that house’s colour and animated swirls pop out.

When users click on the names of Gryffindor, Slytherin, Ravenclaw, and Hufflepuff- or type in Harry Potter – an animated wand appears.

Once the post is live, other users can click or tap the words and see the animation again.

The animation works on both the website and the app.

The names of other characters such as Dumbledore, Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley do not have animations and appear as normal.

‘Harry Potter fans! We have a delightful surprise for you today in honour of the 20th Anniversary!’, the Books on Facebook page posted.

‘Simply tell us what Harry Potter means to you using ‘Harry Potter’ to find out what it is …’

A few Harry Potter facts:

The book, which was first published in 1997, has been translated into more than 79 languages and sold more than 450 million copies.

When it was first published 20 years ago the initial hardback print run of Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone was just five hundred.

For the entire Harry Potter series J.K Rowling wrote 1,100,086 words. Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone contains 77,887 words.

The seven Harry Potter books have sold 500 million copies worldwide.

Sirius Black is named after the brightest star in the Earth’s night sky, also known as the Dog Star.

This is very apt since when Sirius used his skills as an animagus he turned into a big black dog.

source: Daily Mail

A videóban szereplő nagykövetek:

Iain Ferrier Lindsay, Egyesült Királyság

Batbayar Olkhonuud Zeneemyadar, Mongólia

Maximiliano Gregorio Cernadas, Argentin Köztársaság

Juraj Chmiel, Cseh Köztársaság

Jerzy Snopek, Lengyel Köztársaság

Eric Fournier, Francia Köztársaság

Liubov Nepop, Ukrajna

Marie-France André, Belga Királyság

Aliaksandr F. Khainouski, Fehéroroszország

Gordan Grlic-Radman, Horvát Köztársaság

Rastislav Káčer, Szlovák Köztársaság

Gajus Scheltema, Holland Királyság

Ksenija Škrilec, Szlovén Köztársaság

translated by Watson Kirkconnell

The Bards of Wales is a ballad by Hungarian poet János Arany, written in 1857. Alongside the Toldi trilogy it is one of his most important works.

Arany was asked to write a poem of praise for the visit of Franz Joseph I of Austria, as were other Hungarian poets. Arany instead wrote about the tale of the 500 Welsh bards sent to the stake by Edward I of England for failing to sing his praises at a banquet in Montgomery Castle. The poem was intended as a metaphor to criticise the Habsburg rule over Hungary after the Hungarian Revolution of 1848. It was a method of passive resistance to the repressive politics of Alexander von Bach in Hungary, and the planned visit of the monarch.

The poem was written “for the desk drawer” and was first published six years later in 1863, disguised as a translation of an Old English ballad, in order to evade censorship.

The poem is considered to be a manifesto of the passive resistance which led to the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867. Arany wrote his own preface to the poem:

The historians doubt it, but it strongly stands in the legend that Edward I of England sent 500 Welsh bards to the stake after his victory over the Welsh (1277) to prevent them from arousing the country and destroying English rule by telling of the glorious past of their nation.

The royal form of bardic tradition ceased in the 13th century, when the 1282 Edwardian conquest permanently ended the rule of the Welsh princes. The legendary suicide of The Last Bard (c. 1283), was commemorated in this poem from 1857, as a way of encoded resistance to the suppression of the Habsburg politics of his own time.

The best-known English translation was made by Canadian scholar Watson Kirkconnell in 1933.

In the 6th grade of elementary school, every Hungarian student is required to learn “The Bards of Wales”.

when we were kids

there was a strange house

all the shades were

always

drawn

and we never heard voices

in there

and the yard was full of

bamboo

and we liked to play in

the bamboo

pretend we were

Tarzan

(although there was no

Jane).

and there was a

fish pond

a large one

full of the

fattest goldfish

you ever saw

and they were

tame.

they came to the

surface of the water

and took pieces of

bread

from our hands.

our parents had

told us:

“never go near that

house.”

so, of course,

we went.

we wondered if anybody

lived there.

weeks went by and we

never saw

anybody.

then one day

we heard

a voice

from the house

“YOU GOD DAMNED

WHORE!”

it was a man’s

voice.

then the screen

door

of the house was

flung open

and the man

walked

out.

he was holding a

fifth of whiskey

in his right

hand.

he was about

30.

he had a cigar

in his

mouth,

needed a shave.

his hair was

wild and

and uncombed

and he was

barefoot

in undershirt

and pants.

but his eyes

were

bright.

they blazed

with

brightness

and he said,

“hey, little

gentlemen,

having a good

time, I

hope?”

then he gave a

little laugh

and walked

back into the

house.

we left,

went back to my

parents’ yard

and thought

about it.

our parents,

we decided,

had wanted us

to stay away

from there

because they

never wanted us

to see a man

like

that,

a strong natural

man

with

beautiful

eyes.

our parents

were ashamed

that they were

not

like that

man,

that’s why they

wanted us

to stay

away.

but

we went back

to that house

and the bamboo

and the tame

goldfish.

we went back

many times

for many weeks

but we never

saw

or heard

the man

again.

the shades were

down

as always

and it was

quiet.

then one day

as we came back from

school

we saw the

house.

it had burned

down,

there was nothing

left,

just a smoldering

twisted black

foundation

and we went to

the fish pond

and there was

no water

in it

and the fat

orange goldfish

were dead

there,

drying out.

we went back to

my parents’ yard

and talked about

it

and decided that

our parents had

burned their

house down,

had killed

them

had killed the

goldfish

because it was

all too

beautiful,

even the bamboo

forest had

burned.

they had been

afraid of

the man with the

beautiful

eyes.

and

we were afraid

then

that

all throughout our lives

things like that

would

happen,

that nobody

wanted

anybody

to be

strong and

beautiful

like that,

that

others would never

allow it,

and that

many people

would have to

die.

Charles Bukowski

German-born, Los Angeles-based poet and author who is remembered for his works of dirty realism and transgressive fiction. A writer of novels, poems, short stories, and screenplays, he is known for works such as Factotum, The Last Night of the Earth Poems, Notes of a Dirty Old Man, and Barfly.

Suspected of draft dodging, he was arrested by FBI agents in Philadelphia, and he spent nearly a month in prison during the World War II years.

His poetry deals with the subjects of love, alcoholism, Los Angeles, and poverty.

His memoir Ham on Rye describes his childhood with an abusive father. Bukowski married health food restaurant owner Linda Lee Beighle nine years before his death from leukemia. He had a daughter named Marina.

Actor Mickey Rourke played Bukowski in the 1984 film Barfly.

Nobel Prize permanent secretary Sara Danius said:  “He is a great poet in the English tradition.”

Dylan is the first American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature since author Toni Morrison in 1993.

Speaking after the announcement, Danius compared Dylan to the Ancient Greek poets: “Homer and Sappho – they wrote poetic texts that were meant to be performed with instruments…. it’s the same with Bob Dylan,” she said.

Best known for his early hits such as Blowin’ in the Wind and Like a Rolling Stone, Dylan was a key member of the 1960s alternative folk movement, though he shocked his contemporaries by being one of the first folk musicans to “go electric” in 1965.

Sara Danius added that he was “a great sampler … and for 54 years he has been at it, reinventing himself.”

The 75-year-old American songwriter follows writers including Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter and Alice Munro in receiving the prestigious award. Dylan has previously won 11 Grammy Awards, and an Oscar for his song Things Have Changed, used in the 2000 film Wonder Boys.

Though best known for his extensive career as a singer-songwriter, and his role as a pivotal figure in 1960s counter-culture, Dylan has also written a collection of experimental prose poetry, 1971’s Tarantula.

Bob Dylan is the first musician to win the award, and his selection is perhaps the most radical choice in a history stretching back to 1901. In choosing a popular musician for the literary world’s highest honor, the Swedish Academy, which awards the prize, dramatically redefined the boundaries of literature, setting off a debate about whether song lyrics have the same artistic value as poetry or novels.

Some prominent writers celebrated Mr. Dylan’s literary achievements, including Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates and Salman Rushdie, who called Mr. Dylan “the brilliant inheritor of the bardic tradition,” adding, “Great choice.”

But others called the academy’s decision misguided and questioned whether song writing, however brilliant, rises to the level of literature.

Bob Dylan has often sprinkled literary allusions into his music and cited the influence of poetry on his lyrics, and has referenced Arthur Rimbaud, Paul Verlaine and Ezra Pound.

Literary scholars have long debated whether Dylan’s lyrics can stand on their own as poetry, and an astonishing volume of academic work has been devoted to parsing his music. The Oxford Book of American Poetry included his song “Desolation Row,” in its 2006 edition, and Cambridge University Press released “The Cambridge Companion to Bob Dylan” in 2009, further cementing his reputation as a brilliant literary stylist.

In giving the literature prize to Bob Dylan, the Academy may also be recognizing that the gap has closed between high art and more commercial creative forms.

“It’s literature, but it’s music, it’s performance, it’s art, it’s also highly commercial,” said David Hajdu, a music critic for The Nation who has written extensively about Bob Dylan and his contemporaries. “The old categories of high and low art, they’ve been collapsing for a long time, but this is it being made official.”

It’s not the first time the Academy has stretched the definition of literature. In 1953, Winston Churchill received the prize, in part as recognition of the literary qualities of his soaring political speeches and “brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values,” according to the Academy. And many were surprised last year, when the prize went to the Belarussian journalist Svetlana Alexievich, whose deeply reported narratives draw on oral history.

Bob Dylan, whose original name is Robert Allen Zimmerman, was born on May 24, 1941, in Duluth, Minn. He emerged on the New York music scene in 1961 as an artist singing protest songs and strumming an acoustic guitar in clubs and cafes in Greenwich Village. But from the start he stood out for dazzling lyrics and an oblique song writing style that made him a source of fascination for artists and critics. In 1963, the folk group Peter, Paul and Mary reached No. 2 on the Billboard pop chart with a version of “Blowin’ in the Wind,” whose ambiguous refrains evoked Ecclesiastes.

Within a few years Bob Dylan was confounding the very notion of folk music, with ever more complex songs and moves toward a more rock ’n’ roll sound.

After reports of a motorcycle accident in 1966 near his home in Woodstock, N.Y., he withdrew further from public life but remained intensely fertile as a songwriter. His voluminous archives, showing his working process through thousands of pages of song writing drafts, were acquired this year by institutions in Tulsa, Okla.

source: The Telegraph

Can you match Bob Dylan’s lyrics with the title of his songs?

Key

1. e.

2. d.

3. b.

4. c.

5. a. 

Harry Potter, the bespectacled boy wizard, has sold nearly half a billion books worldwide over the past two decades. This weekend he’s been resurrected for a new adventure.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child–Parts I and II, a play about adult Harry’s son Albus, premiered Saturday (July 30) in London, hours ahead of the midnight release of its script. With the return of the franchise come the pre-orders, launch parties, costumes, and all-Potter mania.

In Books of Wonder, the Manhattan store where JK Rowling herself promoted her first three books, five magicians, two face painters, a circus juggler, and three live owls entertained Pottermaniacs waiting for their copies Saturday night. The 36-year-old children’s bookstore ordered 1,200 copies of the script, and expected anywhere between 300 and 1,000 people to show up for the midnight release party.

New York’s massive Strand Bookstore ordered 1,000 books for its midnight launch party, and communications director Whitney Hu said that selling even half would mean they’ve had a great turn out.

The US initial print run of the script is 4.5 million, compared with the 12 million of the last original book, so it seems unlikely that the script will do quite as well as its predecessor. Still, the fervor around such a strange release has reached impressive levels.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is the most pre-ordered book of the year, in print and Kindle, on Amazon, and the most pre-ordered book at Barnes & Noble since 2007, when the final volume came out.

Barnes & Noble reported that “Cursed Child” is the most heavily pre-ordered book since “Deathly Hallows.” On Amazon, “Cursed Child” has held steady at, or near, the top of the best-seller list since publication was announced in February, making it the site’s best-selling book so far this year.

The book stands apart from its early counterparts. For one thing, it’s a script, not a novel, and it wasn’t written by Rowling, although she is co-credited along with the writer, Jack Thorne, and director John Tiffany with conceiving the story. And the story focuses on Harry’s son, not the familiar boy hero and his gang.

Ms. Rowling worked on the play’s plot with the playwright Jack Thorne and the director John Tiffany, and while she helped shape the story, she has made it abundantly clear that she did not write the script.

The idea for the play, which explores Harry’s life as an adult and parent, didn’t originate with Ms. Rowling, either: She merely agreed to it when two theater producers proposed the concept.

Though it’s been nearly a decade since Ms. Rowling ended her beloved series, devotion among hard-core fans has never waned. While Ms. Rowling has moved on to writing adult fiction, she has continued to embellish the Potter universe, not just with material on her Pottermore website but also through public pronouncements about the characters.

The fans’ fervor has been steadily fed by a stream of blockbuster movies, theme parks, new short stories about the wizarding world released on Pottermore, and now, “Cursed Child,” which picks up with a scene from the epilogue in “Deathly Hallows,” as a grown-up Harry watches his own sons depart for Hogwarts.

Some booksellers and librarians say that the story’s format could introduce young readers to the pleasures of reading drama for entertainment. While most high school students are exposed to classics by Shakespeare, Sophocles and Arthur Miller, children and teenagers rarely pick up plays for fun.

“They’re going to discover how much their own imagination can add,” said Peter Glassman, the founder and owner of Books of Wonder in Manhattan.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is the eighth story in the Harry Potter series and the first to be presented on stage. The play received its world premiere in London’s West End on Saturday, 30th July – (just in time for Harry’s and JK Rowling’s birthday on Sunday, 31st July) – but preview performances had already been hailed as a huge hit.

The show is already sold out until next May but 250,000 more tickets will be released next Thursday for performances up until December 2017.

source: qz.com, Irish Times, New York Times

Do you know all seven of the Harry Potter books? Can you match the short plots with the titles?

Key

1. e.

2. f.

3. a

4. f.

5. b.

6. d.

7. c.

In the drawing room of an English country house a little old lady sits knitting and discussing the dangers of prescription drugs. Upstairs, a blue poison bottle containing several lethal doses of strychnine is hidden in a drawer. Outside in the kitchen garden some unusual plants are growing among the herbs. On the hall table sits a bag full of pills left behind by the visiting nurse. In the kitchen what looks like sugar has been spilt on a tea tray, or are the small white crystals something else? At the front door a man in a pair of immaculate patent-leather shoes pauses to brush an invisible speck of dust from his lapel before ringing the bell. We are, in all likelihood, in Agatha Christie-land.

Christie, the Queen of Crime, is known the world over for her puzzling plots, fiendishly deceptive clues and, of course, her use of poisons. Her toxic tally tops 30 killer compounds, which she used in a staggering array of creative methods for murder. But what I find most impressive is how accurately she employed them. Few other novelists can claim to have been read by pathologists as reference material in real poisoning cases, as Christie was in the case of the St Alban’s poisoner, Graham Young. Her knowledge came from direct experience with poisons and a lifetime interest in the subject, though not in the criminal sense.

During World War I, Christie volunteered as a nurse in a hospital in Torquay but it was suggested she might enjoy working in the pharmacy. Then, and for many years afterwards, all prescriptions were prepared by hand. The work was skilled and carried a high degree of responsibility – it was essential to ensure the correct dosage was delivered. The role therefore required further training and Christie had to pass a number of exams before she could take on the work of dispenser or apothecary’s assistant. She set about studying both theoretical and practical aspects of chemistry. She also took tuition from a pharmacist working in a commercial pharmacy in the town, the sinister Mr P, a person who liked to carry around lumps of curare, or arrow poison, in his pocket to make him feel powerful. This rather disconcerting figure was resurrected nearly 50 years later in Christie’s novel The Pale Horse.

Back in the dispensary, after making a bet with her sister that she would write a detective novel, Christie considered the possibilities. Given her considerable knowledge of chemistry and as she was constantly surrounded by poison bottles, it is hardly surprising that she chose poison as her method of murder in what became The Mysterious Affair at Styles. After publication, Christie received her most cherished compliment when Styles was reviewed in the Pharmaceutical Journal. “This novel has the rare merit of being correctly written,” the reviewer stated.

Christie’s success grew, and knowing nothing about ballistics, she often used poisons in her plots. She maintained her interest in drugs throughout her writing life, and the scientific details of her chosen poisons were well researched. Christie built up a considerable medico-legal library over the years, with Martindale: The Extra Pharmacopoeia the most well-thumbed book in her collection. Her knowledge came from direct experience with poisons and a lifetime interest in the subject.

During World War II, she volunteered again as a dispenser at University College Hospital, London. After renewing her training, Christie put in regular hours at the dispensary. Her work at the hospital kept her up to date with new developments in drugs and pharmaceutical practice. At the same time she was inventing new stories and working out her devious plots.

At the start of her career, substances such as arsenic and strychnine were still in medical use – though they were being phased out as new drugs, among them barbiturates, were introduced at a rapid rate. Administering overdoses of prescribed drugs, as well as switching prescriptions, are common ploys on the part of Christie’s fictional poisoners, many of whom work in medicine.

But Christie also made use of many poisons that were not, and never have been, used as medicine – compounds such as cyanide and ricin. Cyanide was fairly readily available in the 1930s and 40s in the form of pesticides that could be bought over the counter. She also employed toxic plants such as yellow jasmine, foxgloves and hemlock, which grow easily and legally in gardens in the UK. The 1930s poisoner had to look no further than the medicine cabinet, garden shed or the garden itself to find a ready supply of dangerous compounds. No one can be beyond suspicion in a Christie story.

Anyone today thinking of using Christie as inspiration when plotting a murder, however, should know that they will find it considerably more difficult to obtain poisons. Methods of detecting them in a corpse, though well developed in Christie’s day, have also vastly improved, thanks to the work of dedicated pathologists and toxicologists. In short, you are very unlikely to get away with it.

I read Christie novels as a teenager and fell in love with their gentle humour. Even the many irritating habits of Hercule Poirot had their charm, though what I enjoyed most was trying to solve the murder/s (I seldom got it right). The scientific content of her work is so well incorporated into the storylines that it is easy to overlook – but it shouldn’t be.

source: The Guardian