Into Another Channel? Literature and Politics in Hungary
Gábor Schein, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
In the essay below, translated from Hungarian by Ottilie Mulzet, Gábor Schein discusses the impact Hungary s recent political developments have had on the country s literary landscape.
Again and again in Eastern Europe, previous generations with their mute, often invisible tragedies suffered the truth of these lines by Anna Akhmatova:
I, like a river,
I am a substitute. My life has flowed
Into another channel from Northern Elegies, trans. D. M. Thomas
The poet who spoke these lines demonstrates to all that an individual, seemingly powerless and alone if she is free to the depths of her soul can nonetheless defy power, with its tanklike arrogance, its warlike cynicism. And yet she says that her life has been turned aside by this harsh age ; she is a substitute. Akhmatova never intended to become a symbol of unbending integrity, of solitary people mourning friends and l