Sunday, March 27, 2011

Hungarian students as Americans

I've had the opportunity to work with the drama students here on an American play about test anxiety. This gives me a peek into Hungarian perceptions about Americans as well as straight comparison of interpretive choices of how a student might react to anxiety.

The twelfth grade students were working with a translated text in Hungarian while the ninth graders were working, partly with me, on the original English version. I am fortunate to see the first public performances of both, each as part of a separate contest, whose results I'll know soon.

Praises to Nagy Barnabás, their director and teacher. Barna seems to be all over the school all the time, organizing, building, set-directing: whenever there is any kind of assembly, like the 1848 assembly pictured in the last blog, he's in the middle of it; and his students are always rehearsing and preparing for performances little and big at any hour of the day, singing in the big hall, dancing, enunciating; and he seems often to be taking calls from various people around the country and outside it in ongoing programs planned or sought for the theater students. He somehow finds the time during all this to teach Stephanie and me some Hungarian also. Above all, his performances are creative and energetic and make great use of materials at hand.

For this particular play, not only did Barna introduce several new subplots and relationships into the story and direct the students with flavor and discipline, he also built and painted a paper-mâché head for a Chinese dragon dance he researched and choreographed (his own idea); designed a sign reading 9d or 12d out of spoons and scissors and other things mentioned and placed during the performance (seen in the first picture); and engineered a remote-controlled car to collect and deliver notes from student to student on the stage.

In this play, the main character is an insecure bundle of nerves facing a test that quickly gets away from him. At least, this is the way I've always thought of him. The first instinct of the boys playing this character, though, was to see in his distress anger everywhere at everybody. Hungarian men, I may have said before, are more chivalrous in deed and attitude than American men; and perhaps this is the same piece. When we watch television, Stephanie and I have noticed that what happens to the voices dubbed over American actors is a gruffifying, deepening in almost every case. Homer Simpson's voice in America isn't high, but it has a charming infantile lilt; here, it is dubbed with manly poise, and the humor is retained by his obliviousness and not childishness. And so the character in our American play likewise loses a familiar insecurity to which we might relate, but gains an unhinged quality we might recognize and fear.

In the two pictures below, Marci's character demonstrates the manly rage of a student about to fail a test.


Ricsi, also featured in the 1848 blog, had originally interpreted the character much the same way. But over time, his portrayal softened, a point I will emphasize below with a soft light photograph. 


One feature of American schools everyone seems to know about is its cheerleaders. Dráva Völgye Középiskola has cheerleaders, except they don't lead at games, and they don't perform gymnastic or acrobatic feats, or sly erotic gestures mixed in their choreographed routines; they are what I think of as a drill team or majorettes, with white boots and batons, and they perform during town events and festivals. But American cheerleaders, people around the world see from movies, are the popular girls with long legs and cleavage so worshipped and feared that they call for and get away with anything. While there were no cheerleaders in the original play, a male character who walks into the classroom late and leaves with a perfect score in less than two minutes quickly evolved into a female cheerleader.


While the ninth grade performance above captures the cheerleader stereotype well enough, despite much experience with the activity in Hungarian schools, the twelfth grade performance below goes the saucy step further. The video below captures something else, too: the teacher and her crush on a student. I don't think we would risk making this kind of joke on a school stage in America, at least not as a casual sub-plot. Maybe we would. Gréta received special recognition from the jury for her role as the teacher, so her courage (and moves?) were perhaps rewarded as well as her acting. Meanwhile, back in Seattle, a math teacher was charged Tuesday with her own misbehaviors with a student, while another pled guilty the same week. Gréti was shocked when I told her, much to my relief. 


In terms of stereotypes, though, nothing prepared me for what another school was performing during the English play festival which I attended with Barna and the ninth graders. While other participating schools chose things like Oscar Wilde adaptations and capitalism allegories and existentialist confrontations with death, a school from Hungary's northeast adapted a Canadian play from Manitoba, a highly ironic play clearly written by a Native American, and intended, most assuredly, to soak an audience in ugly stereotypes and confront Natives with their reification of such types. It's not the kind of irony or self-criticism non-Indians can pull off easily... or Hungarian teenagers...

Below is a picture of a character named N----r. He's the one in blackface. He's bleeding from the leg where a dog attacked him (see his torn pant leg?); he's shot himself by accident too; he's got a toothache, and the woman below is preparing to pull his tooth with pliers but will end up straddling him, and, after recommending alcohol, gambling, and sex, will punch him in the jaw instead. Later they will smoke cigarettes rolled from pages of the bible. 


A final part of the festival experience was going before the jury and listening to their criticism, which lasts about 40 minutes. As an American, I think I am unsuited to the patience and grace that such listening requires. The twelfth graders in Pécs faced three very unsmiling men who continued not to smile while they delivered their feedback and advice; and the students, in turn, received the criticism, which lasted as long as the play itself, with silence and poise. The ninth graders received their feedback in the cellar below, and I was grateful for the smiles and laughter of the first two judges, and wondered about the third, who sat as gravely as those judges in Pécs, and who finally opened his mouth to criticize the heavy Hunglish used by our students, for 15 straight minutes, tearing into them for not taking the English of the English festival seriously enough to learn how to pronounce better. And, because I am an American, and because I understood enough Hungarian finally to be insulted, I wanted nothing more than to defend our students, who are ninth graders new to the language, and to defend me, me!, because wasn't he talking about me? 


It wasn't an anxious, nervous response: it was a manly rage. But I kept it in, trying to match the quiet grace and chivalry of the fifteen year olds around me.

Thursday, March 17, 2011

1848 Hungarian Revolution

Two days ago marked the anniversary for Hungary's 1848 Revolution, one of three uniquely national holidays celebrated here. In 1848, led by heroes such as Kossuth Lajos and poet Petőfi Sándor, as well as Széchenyi István -- discussed in the last post -- Hungary fought the Habsburgs in Vienna for national independence, and they won it, for over a year, until the Austrians returned with Russian allies and took control once more.

This was not only an independence movement. This was a democratic movement, an intellectual call to modernity. Among Hungarian demands were freedom of the press (accounting for holiday rally against the current media law), freedom of religion, parliamentary representation, and justice by jury. These are demands of self-governance familiar to Americans, which may be why Kossuth, during exile that led him to the United States, was so welcome -- by abolitionists, anyway  (although President Fillmore was forced to apologize to Austria for Kossuth's remarks during a dinner held in his honor by the United States Congress).

1848 marked a time of upheaval throughout Europe. In addition to the Hungarians, the Habsburgs faced nationalist revolts from Croats, Czechs, Germans, Italians, Poles, Romanians, Serbs, Slavs, and Ukrainians. France overthrew a constitutional monarchy and created the French Second Republic. Germany followed France's lead, demanding political freedom and constitutional reform, while Marx's Communist Manifesto was published in German on February 21, 1848. In the north, Denmark shed its absolute monarchy for constitutional monarchy. All over Europe, people fought for suffrage and independence, for nationalized militias and monies, for freedoms of assembly and speech. While most revolutions were turned back in the end -- France for example, turned from Second Republic to the Second French Empire in only four years -- liberal democratic ideals became foundational ever since.

Are revolutions infectious? In 1989, people shredded the Iron Curtain in most of Europe in a wave of rebellion against Sovietized control. And now, 2011 is a year for the history books. Tunisia. Egypt. Bahrain. Libya. Jordan. Oman. Yemen. Strongman dictatorships may yet give way to the people. While Qadhafi's military arm is longer than that of the rebels, and while the global heavyweight Saudi Arabia is stepping in to tamp down protest in tiny Bahrain, perhaps the battles will be lost but the wars won, as in 1848. An op-ed piece in The New York Times suggest that Qadhafi, armed with only "diehard allies and foreign mercenaries," will lose in the end, because beliefs are more powerful than bullets.

March 15th is the day chosen to memorialize Hungary's 1848 revolution because this is the day mass demonstrations forced an imperial governor to give way, and this is the day that inaugurated massive reform of government and a Hungarian prime minister. On this day, Petőfi Sándor read aloud the poem read every year since. Wikipedia provides this unsourced description: "Petőfi read the poem aloud on March 15 in Vörösmarty Square in Budapest to a gathering crowd, which by the end was chanting the refrain as they began to march around the city, seizing the presses, liberating political prisoners, and declaring the end of Austrian rule." And it continues to breathe a Hungarian fire of pride and defiance.

RISE UP MAGYAR, translated by Adam Makkai
Rise up, Magyar, the country calls!
It's now or never what fate befalls...
Shall we live as slaves or free men?
That's the question - choose your "Amen"!
God of Hungarians,
we swear unto Thee,
We swear unto Thee - that slaves we shall
no longer be!

For up till now we lived like slaves,
Damned lie our forefathers in their graves -
They who lived and died in freedom
Cannot rest in dusts of thraldom.
God of Hungarians,
we swear unto Thee,
We swear unto Thee - that slaves we shall
no longer be!

A coward and a lowly bastard
Is he, who dares not raise the standard -
He, whose wretched life is dearer
Than the country's sacred honor.
God of Hungarians
we swear unto Thee,
We swear unto Thee - that slaves we shall
no longer be!

Sabers outshine chains and fetters,
It's the sword that one's arm betters.
Yet we wear grim chains and shackles.
Swords, slash through the damned manacles!
God of Hungarians,
we swear unto Thee,
We swear unto Thee - that slaves we shall
no longer be!

Magyars' name will tell the story
Worthy of our erstwhile glory:
We must scrub off - fiercely cleansing
Centuries of shame condensing.
God of Hungarians
we swear unto Thee,
We swear unto Thee that slaves we shall
no longer be!

Where our grave-mounds bulge in grey earth
Grandsons kneel and say their prayers,
While in blessing words they mention
All our sainted names' ascension.
God of Hungarians,
we swear unto Thee,
We swear unto Thee - that slaves we shall
no longer be!

Below are pictures from the 1848 celebrations. The photographs start with Vank Ricsi reciting at the school assembly and end with the same ninth grader reciting before town dignitaries at the 1848 memorial stone.

 



Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Sopron


I don't drink much beer in Hungary. I've grown used to the grainy micro-brews of Seattle and the beer here is Coors-like. Two brands you'll easily find in Hungary are Dreher and Soproni; and while we were in no hops for a brew pilgrimage, I was very excited to head to Soproni's town, Sopron, a small city in the northwest corner an hour away from Vienna that Lonely Planet calls a little Prague.
In most of our travels lately, we have been very happy to take a train, more relaxing on the way in and much more relaxing once there. But we took a car this time and made several other stops: Sümeg and its 13th century hilltop castle; Sárvár, home to the Blood Countess Báthory Erzsébet, a possible source for Dracula's legend; Fertőd, site of the lavish Esterházy party palace; Nagycenk, home of the more civic-minded Széchenyis and "the greatest Hungarian"; and Kőszeg, called the jewelry box of Hungary.

Once we emerged from the chaos of the Balaton district, past some quiet fields, we turned a corner, and there rising from the plains beside a Lidl and a Tesco, was a stunning fortress on a hill. According to its website, the Sümeg castle was home to King Béla IV during the Mongolian invasion (1241-1242) and it is the "only fortress in Hungary that the Turks were unable to capture." They also sold kürtős kalács there for 400 forints.

We have visited some spectacular palaces, fortresses and castles in our travels around Europe so far, but this one -- small, broken, open to the elements -- this visit was one of our most delightful. True, it didn't have the two hour long cutlery tour we encountered in Vienna's Hofburg palace and no cartoonist ever based a logo on its profile, as was true of Germany's Neuschwanstein, but its wind and stones and uncrowded paths allowed us to open ourselves up to it in ways we didn't in the more properly touristed sites.


Not far from  Sümeg we stopped by another castle, in Sárvár. Báthory Erzsébet (1560-1614) who lived here after her marriage to the so-called Black Knight, was considered to have killed 600 peasant women, based on her handwritten lists and descriptions, and she was convicted of killing eighty; she was witnessed biting chunks out of women's breasts and necks; and she was thought to bathe in the blood of virgins as a means of maintaining her youth. The Rough Guide to Austria has a well-written, brief description. The BBC has a longer description and more careful analysis of facts, and it includes several eye-catching eye-witness descriptions from Dracula was a Woman. There's a good blog entry about Báthory, even if it is from a site called vampirelegends. Each of these provide more specific and vivid descriptions than I provide here. Finally, here is a preview of the movie referenced in the above blog. Below is a picture of the castle that so bored Erzsébet that she began torturing and eating women for fun.


So why is Sopron considered a little Prague? Its buildings are the right vintage and colors, its churches are several and dramatic, and its squares provide a similar charm. Because one of the girls' favorite things we did here, in addition to the walking around the beautiful curved streets, was visit the archeology museum, we did get a feel for some of the history of this town. Before there were Hungarians, before there were Christians, Sopron was Scarbantia, a town on the Amber RoadArtifacts from the Roman Empire and even from the Celts before them were plentiful. Above all, Sopron also has a place in the heart of most Hungarians because, in 1921, the city actively chose to be remain a part of Hungary in defiance of a treaty awarding it to Austria.

Sopron also boasts a connection to Franz Liszt. Liszt Ferenc was born in what was then Sopron County. While he spent most of his life in Paris, Liszt gave a concert in Sopron at the age of 9; he returned for a second concert in 1840; and then, to absolutely cement Sopron's claim on Liszt forevermore and stock museums and concert halls and festivals and coffee houses in his honor, Liszt had a third concert in Sopron. We loved the Liszt Salon, where we were served gorgeous hot drinks on trays with shots of cold water in a comfortable room with dark wood furniture and Liszt history and murals covering the walls. My hot chili chocolate drink was outsanding. Below you can glimpse the aesthetics of the experience.


Another coffee shop exceeded the first in fine furnishings and cake selection, and Amelia loved her apple rétes there (strudel), loved it, but I missed the calm and hospitality (and spicy cocoa) of the Liszt salon. Even so, what welcome luxuries are the coffee shops of the world!

Stepping outside, this is what you might see of Sopron:


We left Sopron for a day trip to visit the Esterházy Palace, a place designated a UN World Heritage Site in 2004 and called the Hungarian Versailles, and for 30 years, the working home to composer Joseph Haydn. Much of it was under construction during our visit, which is good for the palace, I suppose, and the humble fences and dirt and scaffolding did nothing to hide the immensity of wealth represented by the place. Prince Nikolaus II (1765-1833) built the palace in this aristocratic impulse: "Anything the (Habsburg) emperor can afford, I can afford too." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe called it the "fairy kingdom of the Esterházys" after attending a ball at the palace. Nikolaus -- throwing parties, debauching women, sequestering composers, raiding the world of masterpieces via the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars -- is certainly an emblem of 18th century Hungarian power.


Perhaps I am unkindly coloring the Esterházys as self-indulged patricians. It is very hard not to do when only a few kilometers away is the Széchenyi household. While the Széchenyis were a noble, wealthy family, just like the Esterházys, they were interested in very different things: the common good, for instance. Count István (1791-1860), a contemporary of Nikolaus, came to be known as the Greatest Hungarian. In a visit to Budapest's Academy of Sciences on February 4th (where I took the picture of the painting at right, and more importantly, which he established after conferring all of his estate's income to the project), we learned some of the reasons why: He engineered a path to modernity politically, attacking aristocratic privilege and imagining an egalitarian Hungary; he engineered the rivers themselves to open trade routes, even straightening the Tisza River and rescuing much of Hungary from flooding; he connected Buda and Pest with the construction of the Chain Bridge, the Lánchíd; and much more, certainly.

While visiting the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, I was thrilled and almost ashamed to be given the opportunity to not only view but to handle Széchenyi's diary, of which you can see two pictures below, including sketches of a bridge. He wrote in German, in French, in English sometimes, but not, surprisingly, in Hungarian, which, as a nobleman educated in Vienna, he knew only sparingly. This is the kind of unembarrassed access the great Hungarian hero imagined for the world.


So, below we see the Széchenyi mansion, kilometers and light years away from the Esterháza.

On our way from Sopron, we went to Kőszeg, a town just a few hundred heads smaller than Barcs. Sophie stepped out of the car, groggy from reading, and frowning at a stop far from home. But she was soon open and bright, as we all were, after an encounter with a sparkling town perhaps few Americans visit. 

Kőszeg's history dates to the 13th century, which you can read on the town's website, and this history includes a claim that they saved Vienna from the Turks. From caboodle.hu: "Suleiman the Magnificent and his one-hundred-thousand-strong Turkish army laid siege to the town in August 1532. Impressively, they were held off by just four hundred Hungarian troops under the command of Captain Miklós Jurisics, putting the brakes on any Turkish advances on Vienna. The Turks fled at 11 a.m. on August 30th, and the victory is commemorated every morning in Kőszeg with the pealing of church bells."

We were there for the eleven o'clock bells. Amelia shot arrows for the second time. We walked the moat of a castle. We ate bismarks and rétes. And we headed home, satisfied, full, happy.


Meanwhile, today is the Ides of March and a Hungarian holiday, commemorating the freedom fight against the Habsburgs occurring in 1848.

Japan, you are on our minds. A travel blog such as this presents itself as focused always on adventure, always on a legacy of joy. But certainly you must know it is not a whole truth.