review
Karádi Zsolt. Franciák és magyarok: Tanulmányok a francia és a magyar irodalomról. Nyíregyháza: Örökségünk, 2018.
This collection of essays is an important contribution to the field of French literary studies of the second half of the 19th century and of the 20th century. Zsolt Karádi, an excellent specialist in the history of Hungarian literature and theatre, head of the Department of Literary Studies at the University of Nyíregyháza, offers in this book his French-related studies written over the past two decades.
Like the volume The French Spirit Around the Review Nyugat (1925–1935) by Piroska Madácsy in 1998, it will become a valuable resource for students and scholars in the field of French-Hungarian literary relations. Divided into three sections, it begins with studies on François Gachot and the French-Hungarian literary and fine art relations between the two world wars. The second section focuses on the poetry of Baudelaire and Rimbaud, and studies the issues of French-Hungarian translation stylistics in connection with the Hungarian translation of one of their lyrical works. The third section has no Hungarian relevance: three studies deal with Baudelaire’s prose works, Paradis artificiel, the poetry of Francis Jammes, and Yann Andréa’s book on Marguerite Duras (Je voudrais parler de Duras, 2016).
This volume demonstrates that literary comparative studies are fully interdisciplinary: the analyses should be based on a combination of disciplinary studies, such as the history of diplomacy, research of international student mobility, institutional history, emigration research, and military history. French influences play an important role in the entire Hungarian literature of the 20th century: French literature is a constant inspiration for Hungarian culture. The studies of the first section present the twenty-five years Gachot spent in Hungary (1924–1949) by exploring, studying and analysing manuscript and printed sources in public collections (the Manuscript Departments of the Petőfi Literary Museum, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the Széchényi National Library). The poet, writer, French teacher and diplomat taught French language, literature, and culture first at the Eötvös College in Budapest, then at several grammar schools and at the College of Fine Arts. In addition to his teaching and diplomatic activities, it is relatively rare to talk about Gachot’s literary works, although he has written in all three genres and translated. His first volume of short stories was published in Paris in 1924 under the title Jeux de Dames, before his arrival in Hungary. In 1943, the Madách Theatre presented his drama Szép Fülöp (Philip the Fair). He translated several Hungarian works into French.
Thanks to the interviews conducted by Ilona Fodor, Csaba Nagy, Ágnes Kelevéz and Lóránt Kabdebó with Gachot in the 1970s and 1980s, as well as to Zsolt Karádi’s studies and book from 1998, Gachot’s activities in Hungary and his friendship with contemporary Hungarian artists became relatively well-known. Karádi mainly analysed Gachot’s writings in periodicals and books, as well as the letters kept in the Manuscript Archive of the Petőfi Literary Museum. Karádi’s studies contribute significantly to the earlier image of François Gachot’s literary work and his relationships with artists. Of course, the exploration of newly available sources can provide significant new data for Gachot’s French-Hungarian network of contacts.
Another important dimension of this volume is the literary translation analysis. Two articles of the second section compare three Hungarian translations of the Correspondances of Baudelaire by Árpád Tóth, Lőrinc Szabó and József Tornai, or the two versions of the Hungarian translation of Une charogne by József Tornai. Another two articles deal with the Hungarian translation of Baudelaire’s Chant d’automne by Jenő Dsida and that of Rimbaud’s Michel et Christine by László Nagy.
This volume testifies to the growing scholarly interest in Hungarian translations of French texts during the 20th century. Karádi’s volume goes to the core of a number of important problems. Who are the most successful translators of French lyrical works into Hungarian in the 20th century? Where is the boundary between translation, adaptation, transcription and interpretation? How did the ideal of translation change over the century? One work has been published in several different Hungarian translations over the course of the century: translations made in the late 19th century or the first decades of the 20th century no longer proved to be publishable after fifteen or fifty years. For example, Jules Verne’s novel Mrs. Branican was translated twice; three Hungarian translations of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince are known; five translations of Émile Zola’s Germinal were made during the century.
In French and Hungarians, the author has brought together a number of excellent articles that will no doubt greatly contribute to the ongoing interest in the role of translation. Together, the articles emphasize the many and complex processes that can take place as literary texts are translated through language, time, and place. These essays also warn us against the risk of neglecting the importance of French literary studies in university curricula.
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