IT was about 1963 when Miklós Vajda's stroll was interrupted and he was summoned to the police station "to explain to the uniformed thugs what I was actually doing." In those days, "Being educated, politically suspect and jobless was no joke."
Vajda, who described the era in the fall issue of The Hungarian Quarterly, had to "prove to any policeman that I was not some idling truant, a 'parasite on society' or a counter-revolutionary conspiring to overthrow the system once again. Some neighbors actually reported me for walking the dog in bright daylight, when all decent workers were building socialism at work." In the police station, "Imagine their disgust and incomprehension when I confessed to being a freelance translator of Goethe, Eichendorff, Thomas Hardy, Sherwood Anderson, or to adapting Dickens for children's radio, or to transplanting Sir Gawain and the Green Knight from its 14th-century north-west-midland English into modern Hungarian."
Luckily for Vajda, he found a job in 1964. Iván Boldizsár, then editor of The New Hungarian Quarterly, hired him to be its literary editor. Luckily for the rest of us, Vajda stayed with the magazine and took over its editorship in 1990, after Boldizsár's death. Since then, The Hungarian Quarterly has joined the ranks of the world's very best intellectual periodicals, dedicated to the economy, culture, society and history of Hungary - all in English!
Recent issues include such delectables as an interview with János György Szilágyi, former head of the department of classical antiquities at the Museum of Fine Arts; an excerpt from a memoir about growing up Roma by István Kalányos, articles about Hungarian history by István Deák and John Lukacs, an article explaining with great clarity the history of political attitudes in Budapest; and several reviews of books, music, theater, film, and art (including an article about a Munkácsy exhibit). Not your typical journalism, by a long shot!
The magazine was founded in 1936, but put to sleep in 1941, when Hungary entered WWII. In its current form, it was reincarnated in 1960. Zsófia Zachar, the quarterly's current editor, explained that Iván Boldizsár persuaded the government of János Kádár that the magazine would be a "very good opening toward the West, following the reprisals of the 1956 revolution, and Hungary's isolation then." It would be "an indication that Hungary wants contact with the western world," she said.
"Boldizsár was a wonderful journalist, an influential man, a kind of go-between cultural ambassador who was regularly sent to peace conferences and things like that . It was still a very bad year, when executions were taking place. But it was just the beginning of a kind of softening of the climate."
As Zachar explained, during an interview, the Quarterly could be "subtle propaganda about the aims of Hungary in the world. It was image building in foreign policy . On the other hand, since Iván Boldizsór was a sophisticated and talented journalist, he was perfectly aware that no direct propaganda was useful, only quality material is useful."
Thus, it called for a sensitive balancing act. Boldizsár was able to fend off criticism from powerful politicians by "publishing party leaders' and ministers' unreadable pieces about socialist achievements and an ever-brightening future at the front of the journal," according to Vajda's account.
"But," said Zachar, "the rest of the journal included the best of Hungarian literature in very good translation; also very well produced articles on the art scene. It had an important music section - so important that a volume was published of articles on Bartók. So it became a reference, as well, for Hungarian culture. And also a tool for the diplomatic corps here and elsewhere, because they could get a hint of what was going on in Hungary. At the same time it was lavishly funded and produced. It had a huge editorial staff compared to the standards of today." Boldizsár's was not the first sensitive balancing act in the Quarterly's existence. When it was founded in 1936 by the liberal Count István Bethlen, who had been Hungary's Prime Minister 1921 to 1931, it was, in Vajda's words, "a decent, albeit naïve, plea in disguise (delivered out of the all-engulfing shadow of Nazi Germany), for help, understanding and future forgiveness." Bethlen has been described as "[p]robably the most talented and influential Hungarian statesman of interwar Hungary" by Tibor Frank, Professor of History at Eötvös Loránd University. Originally from Transylvania, he went to Britain in 1933 and delivered a series of lectures, arguing for the restoration of the integrity of "historical" Hungary.
When he returned, he gathered leading figures in Hungarian economics, politics, and scholarship - most of whom were his personal friends and political allies. They, too, had close ties to Britain. He proposed that they launch a periodical in English, The Hungarian Quarterly, "to introduce Hungary and Hungarian topics of interest to an Anglo-Saxon readership," wrote Frank. He wanted it to be in "impeccable English."
Furthermore, he insisted that "the lay-out of the periodical carefully comply with English taste: its make-up has to be equal to that of the best British periodicals." Also, "[t]he entire periodical, constructed in this fashion, would be in the service not of vulgarising and of cheap sensation hunting or propaganda, but would speak exclusively to the most educated in the Anglo-Saxon countries: to Parliaments, to universities, to the leading figures in economic and social life." A rather daunting expectation. He was able to persuade the government to underwrite 60% of the Quarterly's costs. And he launched the Society for The Hungarian Quarterly, "consisting of prominent people with strong ties to Britain or the United States. Apart from most of the people whose money helped launch the Quarterly, the list included Habsburg Archduke Albrecht," and a great many other aristocrats.
With WWII approaching, Zachar said, "The higher echelons of society were very much for an Anglo-Saxon orientation and felt the need to indicate that their sympathy lay in that direction." They set up advisory boards in London and Washington.
Bethlen chose, as his co-editor, an eminent scholar, József Balogh, the offspring of a Jewish-Hungarian family with a learned father and a highly educated background. "He converted to Catholicism and studied classical philology, becoming a translator of Saint Augustine and a scholar of Hungary's Christian heritage. Balogh was a student of Greek and Latin, but he also spoke German, French, English and Italian fluently," wrote Frank. He recruited members of British Parliament, writers, journalists and scholars to contribute to the Quarterly. According to Frank, "[Balogh] was a snob and thought in terms of the titled rather than the professional. In fact his tables of contents look a bit like a Central European combination of Burke's Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage and Dodd's Parliamentary Companion."
In January, 1939, Balogh proposed transferring the magazine to London. "It strikes me", he wrote to Bethlen in December 1940, "that the [Quarterly] may at any time be seriously endangered by Central European political necessities, and we have been perfectly aware for years that, at the behest of the government, we might possibly be compelled to cease publication." "But," wrote Frank, "it was too late. By April 1941 Prime Minister Count Teleki and his cautious policy of neutrality were dead (Teleki committed suicide), by June Hungary was at war with the Soviet Union. By November 1941 it became obvious that the war would no longer tolerate The Hungarian Quarterly." In December, under Prime Minister László Bárdossy, Hungary declared war on Britain and the United States. Balogh was killed by the Nazis in 1944, and Bethlen was captured by the Soviets and taken possibly to Moscow, where he most probably died in 1946, according to Frank.
Boldizsár, who resuscitated the magazine in 1960, was a skillful politician, supremely able to pilot this fragile craft through the shoals of communism. According to his New York Times obituary, he became undersecretary of the Ministry of Information after the communists came to power in 1947.
He was a government spokesman during the trial of Cardinal József Mindszenty in 1949. In 1951, he was purged and became active in PEN, the international literary organization; he was one of 17 PEN vice presidents. In 1971, Union College in Schenectady, NY, gave him an honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters. He died just before the change in government took place in 1990.
Miklós Vajda took over as editor, moving up from literary editor. He changed the name back to The Hungarian Quarterly from The New Hungarian Quarterly. Zsófia Zachar, who joined the staff in 1982, became deputy editor. A few months ago Vajda stepped down to become, once again, the literary editor. Zachar has taken over as editor. The quality has never faltered. If anything, it has enlarged.
