History, Hungary, & István Tamás

One of the lovely things about traveling in Europe (which for me has thus far been limited to one trip to Germany and three trips to Ireland) is the way that the past isn't even past. You drive down a road and you see something that has been there for a thousand years . . . maybe two thousand years. Maybe more. (I tried to find out how old the Templebryan Stone Circle--which I visited near Clonakilty, Ireland--was, but couldn't come up with anything. But I'm guessing that two thousand years is low-balling it.) And there's just not much of that going on around here in North America.

This morning I read this paragraph in The Students of Spalato:

"We climbed the hill to the Fortress of Clissa. This eagle's nest ruled over a region of steep cliffs, valleys and rock slides and was the haven where King Bela of Hungary and his two daughters had taken refuge when they fled from the Tartars in 1242. In the valley, where the warriors of Ghengis Khan had ridden wildly through on their ponies, a modern town with smoking chimneys now spread out."

And this was after a section where the narrator talked about seeing a Roman gravestone by the side of the road.

Can you imagine growing up in an environment like that? An environment wherein everything is not of the moment, disposable, rootless? How would that affect one's outlook on life? Wouldn't there be a closer bond with the place which would make it harder to be disrespectful to the environment, which would make it more difficult to feel isolated and alienated, which would make it easier to feel that you had a place in the world?

I can't help but think so. 

Maybe that's why I feel such a deep longing to return to Baltimore, Ireland. Or to visit Budapest. I'm thinking pretty seriously about doing both of those things in 2018. I don't know if I can afford it, but I also don't know if I can afford not to.

ANYway, I'm on page 138 of The Students of Spalato now, and I have decided that I definitely need more István Tamás in my life. There's nothing more in either of the university libraries here, but I've found his Sergeant Nikola: A Novel of the Chetnik Brigades on Amazon (and a couple of other sites as well) for a reasonable price,  and there's an old issue of Story magazine with one of his short stories, but it looks like that is it. Which makes me sad. The further I go into this Hungarian Writers cave, the more I see how ill tended it has been with respect to an English reading audience. If I'd known this when I was 20, I'd have learned Hungarian and gotten busy. Of course, I could do that now, couldn't I? Hmmm. About, my brain.

Hey, do you think anybody'd be down for a Go Fund Me type thing for translating forgotten Hungarian literature? Shit, I'd be there in a fucking heartbeat.