{"id":7433,"date":"2022-08-25T02:14:47","date_gmt":"2022-08-25T02:14:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/?p=7433"},"modified":"2022-08-29T10:24:28","modified_gmt":"2022-08-29T10:24:28","slug":"borbely3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/borbely3\/","title":{"rendered":"We Say \u201cAluminom\u201d \u2013 Books by Szil\u00e1rd Borb\u00e9ly in English"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Portrait\"<\/a>
Szil\u00e1rd Borb\u00e9ly (Photo: Lenke Szil\u00e1gyi, courtesy Kalligram Press, Budapest)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In addition to Borb<\/span>\u00e9ly<\/span>\u2019s poems sporadically published in English in online journals, full volumes written by him have also been masterfully translated, starting with <\/span>Berlin-Hamlet<\/span><\/i><\/a> (Bo<\/span>rb\u00e9ly, 2008): <\/span>a book of poetry, which is, to some extent, considered as a predecessor to <\/span>Kafka\u2019s Son.<\/span><\/i> Commemorating his own visits to Berlin, Borb<\/span>\u00e9ly<\/span> follows in the footsteps of literary father figures such as Franz Kafka and Water Benjamin in a book with a similar format to <\/span>Kafka\u2019s Son <\/span><\/i>(Borb\u00e9ly, 2017; Borb<\/span>\u00e9<\/span>ly 2021), a collection of fragments, and building on letters written by Kafka to Felice Bauer. Turning to Hamlet to express his vulnerability and helplessness also places his work in a broader international literary context (for more on the context of Borb<\/span>\u00e9ly<\/span>\u2019s work in world literature, see Kulcs\u00e1r-Szab\u00f3, 2019).<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

His next book, translated into English under the title <\/span>The Dispossessed<\/span><\/i><\/a> (Borb\u00e9ly, 2016), was not only a literary success in Hungary but was also translated into several other languages, receiving outstanding reception worldwide. In this fictitious memoir narrated by an unnamed little boy in the first person, Borb\u00e9ly capitalizes on the power of language to express powerlessness, to which he later returns in <\/span>In a Bucolic Land<\/span><\/i><\/a> (Borb\u00e9ly, 2022). Growing up in a rural village, the author is intimately familiar with the miserable conditions in an environment deprived of any future potential. Poverty, ignorance, indifference, listlessness, and cruelty mean new challenges every day. Making the most of the \u201ccouleur locale,\u201d he has a way with the language, depicting a gray desert with an abundance of linguistic and poetic tools. Every adjective is in place, every verb is used in its most natural habitat to express trauma, suffering, and grieving. A true challenge for the reader and translator, the novel also put numerous words to use from the dialect spoken in Szabolcs-Szatm\u00e1r county in the Northeast of Hungary, untranslatable into English and barely comprehensible for the native Hungarian speaker unless born there. Resolving them with a <\/span>Mi \u00fagy mondjuk<\/span><\/i> (English: We call it\u2026 or We say\u2026), the author, again, rushes to aid the reader without breaking the narrative.\u00a0<\/span>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\"books<\/a><\/p>\n

In a recently published volume entitled <\/span>Final Matters: Selected Poems, 2004-2010<\/span><\/i><\/a>,<\/span><\/i> Borb\u00e9ly\u2019s primary translator, the award-winning Ottilie Mulzet, selected works from two volumes of Borb\u00e9ly\u2019s poetry (Borb\u00e9ly, 2019). The first, <\/span>Halotti Pompa<\/span><\/i> (English: The Splendors of Death), included two books of sequences first published in 2004 in response to his mother\u2019s death, extended with a third book in the second and third editions in 2006 and 2014. The titles of the three books, <\/span>Sequences of the Holy Week, Sequences of Amor and Psyche<\/span><\/i>, and <\/span>Hasidic Sequences,<\/span><\/i> suggest their background as well as the challenges for the translator. Poems from the second volume, <\/span>A testhez: <\/span><\/i>\u00d3d\u00e1k <\/span><\/i>& legend<\/span><\/i>\u00e1k<\/span><\/i> (English: To the Body: Odes & Legends) voice the sufferings of Holocaust survivors and women who endured intimate partner violence or the loss of a child from the perspective of the physical human body (Borb\u00e9ly, 2010). The incredible challenges to interpret and translate can be traced in the bilingual edition.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The latest title, also translated by Mulzet, <\/span>In a Bucolic Land<\/span><\/i> (Borb\u00e9ly, 2022a) was published in English before the Hungarian version (Borb\u00e9ly, 2022b). Reusing components from several of his other books, it features a more detailed, poetic account of the miseries in the forlorn village of <\/span>The Dispossessed<\/span><\/i>, infused with elements from mythology, history, ethnography, and local dialect. The sequences with autobiographical inspiration are accompanied by two poems mourning the death of Lajos Szuromi, a former professor and then colleague at the Department of Hungarian literature in Debrecen, who instilled a respect of structure and form in all of his students.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But every life is so weightless <\/span>
\nin the eyes of another. Only silence<\/span>
\nhas weight [\u2026]\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

[\u2026] Time, <\/span>
\nthough is interrupted silence. It is merely form. <\/span>
\nA structure. There is no time in the body, therefore it is mortal.<\/span>
\nOnly speech is immortal, and the I. <\/span>
\nThe <\/span>I<\/span><\/i>. Short-long. . . That\u2019s an iamb. Speech <\/span>
\nholds form. Therefore it is immortal. Like every thought <\/span>
\nthat once was granted sound. (Borb<\/span>\u00e9ly, 2022a, p. 5)<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The volume \u201ccombines autobiography, ethnography, classical mythology, and pastoral idyll in a remarkable central poetic sequence about the starkly precarious and yet strangely numinous liminal zone of his youth\u201d according to the <\/span>publisher\u2019s description<\/span><\/a>. It should be noted a close friend and publisher of many of Borb\u00e9ly\u2019s works in Hungarian, S\u00e1ndor M\u00e9sz\u00e1ros, recalls in Borb\u00e9ly\u2019s obituary that Borb\u00e9ly considered the publication of <\/span>In a Bucolic Land<\/span><\/i> a higher priority than <\/span>Kafka\u2019s Son<\/span><\/i>.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

References<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/h4>\n