From Belle Epoque to Eastern Bloc – Hungary, October 2013

 

I could easily wander the wide avenues and river banks of Budapest and be swept along by an innocent cosmopolitan romance. Much of the architecture speaks of the golden Renaissance years – a century or more of Austrian rule over traditional Magyar Hungarian settlers that saw Budapest evolving into Vienna’s likeness. Wide boulevards are lined by lamplights and punctuated by wide squares and elegant classical fountains. Renaissance and gothic architecture is resplendent in the buildings – Roman gods look down from building corners, floral friezes decorate window frames and lintels, carved stucco facades and wrought iron balconettes adorn buildings. The river banks that entwine the twin cities of Buda and Pest are an architectural masterpiece: a sculpted stretch of the Danube River that is a tribute to a millennium of civilization.

But from Belle Époque to Eastern Bloc.. Nazi and Soviet tanks have rolled down these same wide avenues. I have never personally known war or oppression – perhaps barely a ‘recession’ so living under the iron fist is a context I find hard to grasp. But the X generation in Hungary grew up under communist rule- so called ‘soft’ tyranny. Soft harks to a passive oppression with enforced restriction of personal and civil liberties like freedom of speech and travel and restriction of wealth creation. You were given your dream to live inside a box. Luckily in Hungary less knew the ‘hard’ tyranny and terror of possibly being declared an enemy of the state as was common in the soviet states where hundreds of thousands were simply exterminated or sent to ‘gulag’ labour camps.

The past is not forgotten and Hungarians may in future laugh at a short but less civilized occupation by Soviet communism than under the decadent Pashas of the Ottoman Empire (who built Turkish baths all over Budapest) or the artistic construction bonanza of the Austrian monarchy.

There is now a graveyard of ugly soviet communist statues and monuments on the outskirts of Budapest that recalls the recent past. A poem by Hungarian writer Illyes Gyula is emblazoned on the gate of the graveyard that expresses a life lived under communist rule. It is called “One Sentence on Tyranny”. These are some of his words. Like me you may read it and come to know what you take for granted.

“Where seek out tyranny? There seek out tyranny, not just in barrels of guns, not just in prisons,  …

Fanfares and opera stalls; Just as crude, just as false, Monuments, art-galleries, Though cast in stone, speak lies;  …

There, more discreet, it is In a wife’s parting kiss, Near you and at your back; “When, dear, will you be back?” …

Making your lover’s face Found in the meeting place Freeze on the instant Because it is present

Not only in the interrogation But too in the lover’s confession, in the word’s sweet wine Like a fly in the wine …

It is in the plate, the glass, In the nose and the mouth, It is in the cold and the dark, In the outside air and in your house

As if through an open window Came the reek of carrion Or somewhere in the house There was a leak of gas

Talk to yourself and hear Tyranny your inquisitor; You have no isolation Not even in your imagination …

In vain you try to escape its wrath Prisoner and jailer, you are both; It works its own corrosive way Into the taste of your tobacco …

Where seek tyranny? Think again: Everyone is a link in the chain; Of Tyranny’s stench you are not free: You yourself are tyranny ..

Because it is standing From the first at your grave, Your own biography branding, And even your ashes are its slave.”

 

 

This entry was posted in Hungary and tagged , . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *