introduction
17
Relative to the grandiose Wiener Schnitzel of so-called historic Hungary, which existed until the end of the Great War, contemporary Hungary is a well set-up, appetizing piece of meat fried in breadcrumbs, which can be fairly precisely folded along the EsztergomKiskunhalas axis. Yet Hungary can be made up of cork, red pepper, ikebana, butterfly, ketchup, things fried and drawn in, the sweet earth of the motherland, and also from the figures of a Rorschach test. Magyarország – MagyaRorschach: this word, probably the most vigorous word of this volume, is probably untranslatable. HungaRorschach? Perhaps – but what’s up with the orschach ?
Budapest-galaxis | Budapest Galaxy Madarassy Anikó
* Of course, the nature and essence of the orschach can be described only in an inadequate and incidental manner. What is the motherland? The motherland is, for instance, its language. In Hungarian, the word “nyelv” of Finno-Ugric origin means both the bundle of muscles in the mouth known as the tongue and the set of signs that best carries people’s identity – language. Hungarian is therefore a language where the abstract and the concrete, the sensual, come to the vicinity of meat and blood within a moment. Clearly, this is the case. The country is a million scents, flavours, fragrances, sweetness, bitterness, inflamed sincerity and sour unmentionables, a cobweb in time and space, intellectual and emotional matting, of which without a pretence at or even spasm of completeness and being representative, the stock comes into being which we define as “Hungary”, here and now, within the front and back covers, naturally subjectively, and again, right from the very beginning.