Born September 8, 1850, died January 18, 1926. She was a Hungarian actress and singer, and was dubbed "the nation's nightingale."
Her father was an officer in the royal military. After his service, he became a traveling actor. Her mother traveled with him, and Louisa was born on the road, in a boot-maker's shop that her mother happened to be traveling near when she went into labor. They continued their traveling lifestyle, but Louisa's father succumbed in 1856 to cholera, dying in the middle of a performance. His widow remarried to a man who designed theater sets. Louisa went on stage throughout her childhood, her first performance taking place at the age of six.
When Louisa was 16, she married her first husband, a 37 year old conductor and soldier named John. He taught her to sing and gave her a musical formation. Although she would marry two more times after him, she kept his name throughout her life. She had two children, Sandor and Sarah.
After a tour in Austria, she was offered a permanent position in Vienna's performance halls, but she refused, saying that she wanted to be known as a Hungarian performer. She signed a contract back in Hungary and worked there regularly until 1901, after which her performances were sporadic. She became an avid supporter of her granddaughter, Gitta's, stage career.
From 1914 onwards, she lived a mostly secluded life with her sister and granddaughter, Mandy. She suffered from illnesses and became mostly homebound. Her last time on stage was in 1923, but she no longer sang. She never took a liking to the medium of films, and was especially disturbed by the silent movies of the era and the grotesque over-acting employed by actors of the time. She only made one appearance in front of the cameras, when at the age of 73 she accepted an award for the National Actor's Guild. On her 75th birthday in 1925, an orchestra serenaded her, but she tired quickly and retired to her apartment. She caught pneumonia, and "the Great Lady" died soon afterwards.
Arany János was born March 2, 1817 and died on Oct 22, 1882. He is one of the major literary figures of Hungary.
His parents were on the older side. Although his mother had given birth to ten children in all, only one sister and János made it past early childhood. At his birth, his only living sister was much older and already married, and he grew up in a quiet, peaceful home as an only child alongside his Protestant parents. He stood out early on for his academic achievements. By the time he entered school at six years old, he was an avid reader and knew Bible stories, songs, and was well-versed in popular literature. While he was still a student, he became known around the city for his poetry. To pay for his tuition costs he became an assistant to the teacher from a very young age.
At the age of 16 he moved to Debrecen to further studies to study poetry formally. However his money ran out and he had to drop out of school to go to work in the rectory of the Protestant church. He made friends with the bishop, who opened up his library to the young man. He read day and night and taught himself German, French, and Latin. He translated works into Hungarian and even tried to write poetry in those languages. After he saved up enough money, he returned to Debrecen to attend school once more. He impressed his teachers with his earnestness, and soon he was at the head of the class. To keep financially afloat he became a tutor, and even the nobles of the city wanted him to tutor their children.
Many assumed he would go on to become an academic, but he wanted something more exciting out of life and often said he wished to become a painter or sculptor. So, at the age of 19 he left the university. To the surprise of many, he joined an actor's guild briefly, and went on to tour with traveling actors, and saw some of the countryside through their journeys. However, he realized that many of the areas they were touring in were very impoversished. This left a strong impression on him.
One night, he had a disturbing dream about his mother, so he started off that day on foot towards his home. He learned much to his dismay that his father had gone blind, and two weeks before his mother had died of cholera. While he mourned their passing, his inner muse was silenced, and he did not create any art for a while. His parish and town felt sorry for his loss and gave him various positions including as a grammar school teacher, and various clerks' jobs at the town hall. While he did not write during this time, he still read avidly. During this time he favored Shakespeare and Homer as well as the works of various French poets. He also got married in 1840 to a young woman named Julianna, whom he had two children with. His son especially would follow in his father's footsteps and become a poet, and János was very proud of that.
In 1842, an old school friend, István, came to visit. He was surprised that János was no longer writing, and encouraged him to take it up again. János started translating various Greek tragedies into Hungarian, and learned English at this time as well, and started translating Shakespeare from the original texts as well. In 1845 he wrote a satirical piece that won him several awards. From this point on, he got further encouraged to write full-time, and went on to win many contests and became a popular figure among many. Famous writers and poets of the era wrote to him to welcome him into their circles. The famous Petőfi especially befriended him, and they started a lasting relationship which encouraged the man through dry periods. The poem "For my Friend" was written in 1847 and dedicated to Petőfi:
You're encouraging me to write more poetry And I wish I could obey your command But Pegasus is a wretched old nag It doesn't gallop, nay. It barely stumbles along.
It seems to me that yesterday I sat down to write But I only got to the point where I chewed up my pen But - crows tear apart an insubordinate horse - I couldn't encourage the words to giddy-up, move along.
Today I put on your kucsma [winter hat], so perhaps A little of your essence would stick to me I scratched a few "with" and "towards" down But the muse balks and chastises me: "Enough of this!"
Why am I even trying to bother with all of this effort When my heart is full of such turmoil? A guest has arrived at the house, and brought cares along. Every little feeling in me is fretting and fussing, obliged but unable to please.
Crazy windswept nation! The horses run without a goal And bump into one another constantly But it's no wonder, the guest of the heart is great And quite dear to it, because that guest is you.
During the 1848-49 revolution his themes turned more patriotic, and he wrote several speeches as well, and a few songs. The government founded a newspaper called the Nép Barátja (The Friend of the Nation) and asked him to be the editor of it. He turned the position down, however. He did contribute some poetry and political articles for it, but his heart wasn't in it. He put in military service briefly and then took various government posts. This provided him unwelcome political exposure however, and for a time he went into hiding, until officially giving up any association with public posts.
When the revolution failed, he went back to his passions of writing, translating, and teaching. In his early forties, his health began to fail, and he had frequent stomach problems. Despite these, he wrote prolifically. In 1865 his daughter passed away after a painful illness, and János was again plunged into grief. To make things worse, János and his wife adopted their grandchild, who also died at the age of 21 from illness. When he attempted to start writing poetry again, he stopped after the fourth line. He wrote in his journal that things were too painful and he couldn't write any more. For a decade onwards, the poet in him stayed silent, and his own health problems worsened. He continued teaching, writing, and directing various institutions.
Towards the end of his life, despite numerous painful health issues and the decline of his vision and hearing, the muse returned to him, and he wrote numerous poems and ballads, including some of his most famous works. Chronic bronchitis finally endangered his life. He caught a bad cold at the dedication of his friend Petőfi's memorial statue, and this turned into pneumonia. He died a few days later at the age of 65, after more than 40 years of marriage. His grave became a place of literary pilgrimage, and his likeness was memorialized in several works of art throughout the nation.
For the spiritual individual, all spaces are not created equal. It is fragmented and contains rifts; it possesses parts that are qualitatively different than other places. There exist spaces that, therefore, are more sacred than other spaces. They are charged with a different sort of energy. And then, there are spaces which are not sacred... (Mircea Eliade: "The Sacred and the Profane")
The concept of a "clean room" could be found, with minimal variations, through whichever region of rural Hungary we could have traveled through. The traditional rural commoner's house had two rooms. One of the rooms was used for everyday living. The second one, however, was rarely entered. It was considered a sacred sort of a space, closed off from mundane life. This room was called "the clean room" for reasons both literal and metaphysical.
The clean room mimicked the common room in what it contained, but everything was one step removed. Traditionally, there was a table in the middle of the room, with chairs around it. There were maybe two beds, and several cupboards and closets. There was typically a mirror (larger than that in the common room), and decorations, and containers of various sorts. But this room wasn't to be used for common, mundane activities. The beds were never slept in, and the table and chairs were never used to entertain house-guests. Men rarely entered into this room at all, and the women - who were in charge of keeping the house in order - only tended to go in there to get supplies in and out, or to clean - and never with shoes on. (Like its name implies, everything in the clean room had to be in immaculate condition.) The only two activities that traditionally took place here were laying a family member's body out for a funeral, and the "farewell" ceremony that took place before a bride was married off. Otherwise, the room was not used at all, even for important ceremonies such as christenings or weddings.
In a practical sense, the clean room held what was beautiful and pure. The beds were piled high with new sheets, blankets, quilts, down pillows, embroidered cushions, and dolls in traditional dresses. Closets held brand-new clothes - coats, pants, skirts, head-kerchiefs, underskirts, shirts -- as well as ceremonial outfits only worn for Sundays or special occasions. (On Sundays the women of the house would enter the room and reverently bring out the family's best clothes, to be worn to church, and then replace them at the end of the day.) Linen closets held towels, dish towels, and tablecloths. Cupboards held the fancy set of dishes only used once or twice a year for the "big" events like christenings, weddings, funerals, or family reunions. A girl and her mother could store her dowry here over the years before she was of marriageable age. Even the views into the room were kept pure, with curtains hung in front of the windows, and even wooden blinds or shutters covering those which faced towards the courtyard or the road. Every element in the room was well cared for, with dried flowers in vases and various richly embroidered cloths decorating the surfaces; on the walls hung crucifixes, paintings of saints, and in later times, wedding photographs.
In a purely religious sense, the clean room wasn't precisely a place of religion. For instance, despite its atmosphere of cultivated purity, it wasn't used traditionally as a room for prayer. Prayer took place in the village church, which was completely outside the mundane sphere. It was the center of the village, and in a slightly less religious but no less significant way, the clean room was the center of the homestead. It was a symbol of life itself. There was a space for every activity - and perhaps the most important space of all, the place where one kept the purest and most beautiful things, was a space that was nearly untouched, and not a part of practical life. It was a space reserved for what was most important. It was a place of rest, a place of zero, where everything was always in order.
The Csango people are a group of ethnic Hungarians living in Romania. While the origin of their name is debated, a popular theory is that it is derived from a word meaning "wanderer" or "one who became lost due to mischief." Their reputation amongst Hungarians does suggest that they had a streak of rebelliousness. One of the charges levied against the Csango people by outsiders was that they did not "respect the sanctity of marriage", for example. (Another explanation is that "chango-ing" is an onomatopoeia for making noise to frighten away enemies from the Hungarian border, and thus they were a group placed on the borders of the kingdom of Hungary proper.)
The Csangos origins go back in history. By the middle of the 15th century Christian missionaries were already sending Hungarian editions of the New Testament into Moldavia. By the mid-1500's the Csangos were accepted as a recognized and established ethnic group in the region. During the course of the centuries they faced differing levels of acceptance and persecution. At times the rulers of the land ordered them to change their religion and took away their government; in other eras, they were given more freedoms. Because of their religion, they maintained a separation from the largely Greek Orthodox Romanian people around them. In time, certain ethnic Romanians converted to Roman Catholicism and thus took up some of the Csango culture, but most of them never affiliated themselves with the minority in other ways - most importantly, the language.
Most Csango speak a dialect based on Old Hungarian, even though most of them today mostly speak Romanian. The dialect is difficult to understand for many speakers of modern Hungarian because of their unique pronunciation of consonants and vowels alike that do not have counterparts in traditional Hungarian. They also have a significantly different vocabulary with unique words and sayings. The Hungarian language underwent major changes during the Age of Enlightenment, but the Csango dialect, due to the isolation of its speakers, did not. Rather, it was influenced by the language of the Romanian people they lived amongst.
The Csango were largely unschooled and illiterate, but possessed a rich folk culture of stories, dances, songs, and customs. Many of these customs were intertwined with their Roman Catholic religion, and their children grew up learning Hungarian as their native language, regardless of what the official language of the countryside was at the time. Csango music has many characteristics of Hungarian music, and the lyrics are in a Hungarian dialect as well. However, the Csango remained stuck in time in a way. Due to their isolation and lack of a nobility or intelligentsia, they never went through the various philosophical changes that Europe as a whole (including Hungary proper) underwent as the centuries advanced.
Traditionally the Csango territory encompasses around fifteen towns and their surrounding villages in western Moldovia. It is estimated that there are about 60,000 to 70,000 people who speak the distinct Csango dialect, but it is hard to pin the number of members of the Csango community down more accurately because there are different definitions of who is Csango and who is not, based on factors such as ethnicity, religion, and language. What is known is that in the 1850's, almost 40,000 individuals registered as Csango in the census. By 1900, the number dropped to about 25,000. In 1992, the number was down to slightly over 3,000, and in 2002, less than 1,500 people identified themselves as Csango on an official Romanian census. [Other sources suggest that roughly 4,300 people declared themselves Romanian Hungarians and not even 800 declared themselves Csango in that year.] However, the answer is not that clear. Some people might identify as primarily Romanian due to fear of governmental retribution. To complicate matters further, other sources have counted all Roman Catholics in the general region as belonging to the Csango group, and that number comes in at almost 120,000. However, most of this latter group consider themselves to be fully Romanian, and reject the Csango label.
The Council of Europe released statements regarding their concern over the treatment of the Csango minority by the Romanian people, and expressed that their unique culture is an asset to the landscape of European heritage. The Csango people have stated that they do not want to make political demands but rather wish to be recognized as a distinct culture and be allowed to educate their children in their native language. When parents petitioned the government in the 1990's to allow Hungarian lessons in the area's public schools, they were ignored or met with refusals, and in 2001 the Romanian government banned Hungarian lessons even in private houses, and tried to intimidate mothers from teaching their children Hungarian. When the Council of Europe protested, the government defended itself by saying that they wanted to prevent nationalistic ambitions from the local populace, who ought to consider themselves Romanian. When the European Commission appointed teachers to the area schools to teach Hungarian, many students did not show up and the teachers were banned from many towns, with the villagers showing hostility to them.
Religion has also been a big issue, with the Csangos wanting to go to church services in their native language. Between the world wars, the Romanian government attempted to force the Csangos to assimilate and give up their Hungarian loyalties. The Romanian Catholic Church in the area was afraid that if it didn't cooperate with the local authorities, they would be banned from the area, and all the people would be forced to convert to Greek Orthodox. As a result, the Roman Catholic Church stopped providing education or religious services in Hungarian. The Vatican has since expressed its support in reintroducing services in Hungarian to the Csangos. When the Romanian government refused, the Vatican sent missionaries to the area to convert the Romanian populace into Roman Catholics in hopes of increasing the Csango minority's numbers. (The missionaries, like the teachers, did not tend to be well-received by the locals.)
In 2006, Romania rejected communism and since then, the government has started trying to more objectively analyze the situation of the ethnic groups within its borders to see in what ways they might have been persecuted or oppressed, and also to analyze the effects of the historical involvement of the Roman Catholic church.
This country has died a little bit. Many people have died as well. I as well? I as well, I died a little as well. Everything is different now, but I'm still Magyar. Still? As long as I live, yes, I am!
When the homeland rises again, The people will rise with it too The light will rise, And I will rise with it too.
We won't let our lands be stolen anymore We won't be shamed to our very cores anymore.
We will sow the seeds and water them With the shimmering waters of our rivers We still believe in the power of our nation We will plant trees in place Of those that were cut down.
This country has died a little. Many people shut their eyes to the sight Of the Magyar race dwindling. The rivers cry all the way To the Carpathian Basin I do too - I cry a little too.
This country has died, and many people died in it But we haven't, have we? We will still fight regardless When the nation rises anew Its people and light rise with it too We won't let our lands be stolen And our ancestors be shamed They cannot insult us to the blood anymore They cannot insult us to our core.
The Kingdom of Hungary has existed for more than a thousand years, and through its existence, its borders were redefined repeatedly. The most recent change took place during the Treaty of Trianon, at the end of World War I. It left Hungary with only 28% of its pre-war territory; five of its ten major cities and two thirds of its population lived outside the new borders, and it was left without access to the sea. The treaty also eliminated its navy, reduced the majority of its army, and wreaked havoc with its economy. The intent of the Allies was to weaken the country of Hungary significantly, and eliminate it as a major player in Europe. (For the large part, it worked.)
Some areas that were formerly a part of Hungary have Magyars as the ethnic majority, and many others see Hungarians as a very significant minority population. Sadly, many of them live under persecution of their new governments, who sought to eradicate the Magyar culture from their lands. Many Magyars were also deported, voluntarily immigrated to other countries (such as the new borders of Hungary, or to the United States, Australia, Canada, or to other European countries), or slowly assimilated with their new national identities. However, others have held on to their ancestral heritage. Today, there are still several million ethnic Hungarians living outside the current-day borders, many of whom preserve the language, culture, and national identity of their Magyar heritage.
Many people, especially those belonging to the older generations, are still bitter about the treaty and hope for a day when the older borders are restored, although this doesn't sound like a very realistic possibility. Still, it never hurts to look back and see what contributions to the Magyar culture the people in these regions made. HunMagyar.org is an awesome site, and its Regions and Folk Art section explores the different culture and folk art of all the different regions of Hungary, including those that are no longer a part of the official country.
