Béla Hamvas

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Béla Hamvas (born March 23, 1897 in Eperjes , Austria-Hungary , today's Prešov in Slovakia, † November 7, 1968 in Budapest ) was a Hungarian writer.

Life

Béla Hamvas was born into an interdenominational marriage . As a Protestant pastor, his father was not allowed to exercise the pastoral office because of his Catholic wife and he worked as a teacher in the Lyceum in Pressburg . He also published. After the First World War, Bratislava was part of the newly established Czechoslovakia. When the father refused the Slovak oath of allegiance to the Czechoslovak Republic, the family was expelled and had to move to Budapest in 1918. Here Hamvas attended the Catholic Pázmány Péter University from 1919 to 1923 and enrolled in German philology. He also studied Hungarian literature, attended music theory seminars at the conservatory and attended lectures at the medical faculty. In 1923 he finished his studies. After that he was forced to work as a journalist for “Budapesti Hírlap” and “Szózat” for a few years. He felt the superficiality and sensationalism of this work as alienation. From 1927 to 1948 he worked in the National Széchényi Library .

Hamvas married Ilona Angyal on June 11, 1929, but separated from her in 1936. The following year he married Katalin Kemény. Between 1940 and 1944 he was called up for military service three times. In 1945, the year of the war, a bomb hit his home. All of his manuscripts, which had been completed by then, as well as his extensive library were destroyed. When the communists came to power in 1948, he lost his position as a librarian. A book about Hungarian avant-garde painting, published together with his wife, entitled Revolution in Art - Abstraction and Surrealism in Hungary, was subject to severe attacks by Georg Lukács . Hamvas was banned from publishing. In the form of samizdat , his writings were handwritten or copied by hand. Katalin Kemény, who outlived her husband by three decades, did a great job preserving and translating his writings. To protect his family from restrictions, Hamvas went to Szentendre . He signed up as a farm laborer and lived on the low yield of an orchard. In 1951 he found an unskilled job on the large construction site of a power plant. He became the administrator of the material distribution. He continued to work tirelessly on his translations and literary writings. Béla Hamvas died of a stroke in 1968. His wife had him buried in Szentendre.

In his memory, the Hamvas-Béla table company wreaths a table in Balatonfüred every year .

Memorial stone in Balatonfüred

plant

In 1943 the Invisible Story ("Láthatalan történet") appeared. In 1944 he finished the first part of "Scientia sacra". Between 1945 and 1948 he edited his "Antológia humana - 5000 years of wisdom" in the notebooks of the university printing house. In 1945 the "Philosophy of Wine" was also created.

In 1948 he was entered in the B-lista and forcibly retired. In Szentendre he resumed his work on “ Karnevál ” and wrote the writings “Unicorn”, “Silencium”, the “Secret Notebook” and the “Magia sutra”.

From 1951 to 1964 he was a warehouse worker in Inota , Tiszapalkonya and Bokod . There he wrote "Patmos", "The gates of the old", "Sarepta" and "New Year's Eve".

In 1964 he was retired again. The better-known works up to his death are: "Scientia sacra II", his "Five lectures not given on art". Posthumously in the 1980s, " Karnevál " and the "Antologia Humana" appeared, with which the veneration of his work began. In the second edition of “Carnival” 1985, essential passages were deleted. A complete edition of his works appeared from the 1990s, which has since grown to almost 20 volumes. According to some connoisseurs of his texts, it only covers almost half of his writings.

His entire work is extremely extensive, and only fragments are available to the German reader. However, due to the few German-language publications of his essays, as they are usually called, his texts can be divided into classic essays and narratives or stories. For example, Kierkegaard in Sicily belongs predominantly to the first category and the philosophy of wine to the second.

reception

So far only the "Philosophy of Wine", the two narrow essay volumes "Silentium" and "Trees" and the Berlin publishing house Matthes & Seitz under the title "Kierkegaard in Sicily" are in German - a more comprehensive collection of essays from different creative periods published. The essay "Direct morality and bad conscience" ("direkt moral és rossz lelkiismeret") is reprinted in a translation by Gabor Altorjay with the title: You cannot live like the stars in the magazine "Flur", 2006.

The work of Béla Hamvas is being researched at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz . The practical philosophy work area at the Philosophical Seminar under Stephan Graetzel organizes seminars on his German-language writings and in 2007 published an excursus on Hamvas. In 2008, the Practical Philosophy Unit, together with the International Maurice Blondel Research Center for Philosophy of Religion, published an introduction to the philosophical-literary motifs of Béla Hamvas based on writings accessible to German-speaking readers in its Praxis yearbook .

His writings are well known in some Eastern European countries. There are translations into Serbian, Croatian and Russian. The "Philosophy of Wine" has also been translated into English and French.

Several initiatives by translators and readers have set themselves the goal of making the two central literary works of Hamvas accessible to German readers. Karlheinz Schweitzer translates the six-volume "Scientia Sacra" in Budapest. A group around the Hungarian filmmaker Gabor Altorjay in Hamburg is trying to organize a translation of Karnevál as part of an online subscription .

Stephan Grätzel wrote in 2007, referring to the sensuality in Hamvas' texts:

“Without developing this new understanding of sensuality, we cannot succeed in giving food the culture it deserves. Béla Hamvas can contribute to such a new sensuality; his philosophy also shows the connection with nature through food. It can thus lead back to a culture of remembrance and gratitude. "

Works

(only German-language editions)

  • The melancholy of the late works. Berlin: Matthes & Seitz, 2008. (Excerpt from Kierkegaard in Sicily , 2 essays)
  • Kierkegaard in Sicily . Essays. Batteries, 76. Selected and provided with a foreword by László F. Földényi . Translated from the Hungarian by Akos Doma , Berlin: Matthes & Seitz 2006.
  • You can't live like the stars. Translated from the Hungarian by Gabor Altorjay and Carsten Dane. In: H. Dreissig, M. Hirth, L. Laule, F. Weigand (HG): Flur. Magazine. Lagrev Verlag: Brückmühl near Munich 2006, pp. 29-48.
  • Trees . Essays from the Hungarian by Wilhelm Droste . H-Szentendre: EDITIO M Verlag GmbH 2000.
  • Philosophy of wine . Translated from the Hungarian by Hans Skirecki . Published by Gerhard Wehr . Grafing: Editio Marika Marghescu 1999.
  • Silentium. Essays. Translated from the Hungarian by Jörg Buschmann. Published by Gerhard Wehr . Grafing: Editio Marika Marghescu 1999.

literature

In German language
  • Grätzel, Stephan: Ethical Practice. Application of practical philosophy in everyday life and at work . Basics of Practical Philosophy, Vol. III. Philosophical series. Joachim Heil (HG), London: Turnshare 2007.
  • László F. Földényi : Der Seelenführer , in: NZZ , February 8, 2000
  • Mario Scheuermann : Hamvas wrote his wine meditations for eternity hungry , in: Die Zeit , September 16, 2004
  • Gabor Altorjay: Hamvas´ masked ball - a guide for here and beyond , in: Lettre International , No. 67, 2005
  • Mario Scheuermann : In Search of the Lost Identity , in: taz , July 29, 2006
in Hungarian
  • Láthatatlan történet (1st kiad. Egyetemi Nyomda, 1943. 2nd kiad. Akadémia Kiadó, 1988.)
  • Enoch Apocalypsise / fordítás bevezetéssel / (Bibliotheca, 1945.) ( online )
  • Forradalom a művészetben / Absztrakció és szürrealizmus Magyarországon / (1. kiad. Misztótfalusi, 1947. 2. kiad. Pannónia Königyvek, 1989., ISBN 963-7272-15-1 )
  • A világválság (Magvető, 1983., ISBN 963-14-0074-3 ) ( online )
  • Karnevál (1. kiad. 2 kötben Magvető, 1985. 2. kiad. 3 kötben Editio M., 1997. 3. kiad 3 kötben Editio M., 2005) ( online )
  • Scientia Sacra I. / Az őskori emberiség szellemi hagyománya / (1. kiad. Magvető, 1988. 2. kiad. Editio M., 1995.) ( online )
  • Silentium - Titkos jegyzőkönyv - Unicornis (Vigilia, 1987.) ( online )
  • Hamvas Béla 33 esszéje (Bölcsész Index, 1987.)
  • Az öt géniusz - A bor filozófiája (Életünk Koenyvek, 1988.)
  • A bor filozófiája (Editio M, 2000., ISBN 963-85878-0-6 ) ( online )
  • Tibeti misztériumok / fordítás bevezetéssel / (Pesti * Szalon, 1990.)
  • Szellem és egzisztencia (Pannónia Koenyvek, 1988.)
  • Európai Műhely I – II. / Szerk., Benne: A száz Könyv, I. köt., 33–72. o. / (Pammónia Könyvek, 1990., ISBN 963-7272-23-2 )
  • Anthologia humana / Ötezer év bölcsessége / (1946 .; ISBN 963-85323-6-X , ISBN 963-7918-01-9 ) online
  • Szilveszter - Bizonyos tekintetben - Ugyanis (1st kiad. Életünk 1991. 2nd kiad. Medio, 1997., ISBN 963-85693-1-X )
  • Patmosz I-II. (2 keds. Életünk, 1992.) ( Part 1 , Part 2 )
  • A babérliget-Könyv - Hexakümion (Medio, 1993., ISBN 963-85693-6-0 ) ( online )
  • Tabula smaragdina - Mágia szutra (Életünk, 1994., ISBN 963-7918-06-X ) ( part 1 , part 2 )
  • Arkhai / és más esszék 1948–1950 / (Medio, 1994.)
  • Scientia Sacra II. / A kereszténység / (Medio, 1996., ISBN 963-7918-10-8 ) ( online )
  • Eksztázis (Medio, 1996.) ( online )
  • Szarepta. / Esszék, 1951–1955; 64-es cikkek, 1963–1964 / (Medio, 1998., ISBN 963-85693-5-2 )
  • A magyar Hüperion I. / A magyar Hüperion - Az ősök útja és az istenek útja –Magyar vonatkozású esszék / (Medio, é. N., ISBN 963-85693-8-7 )
  • A magyar Hüperion II. / Az öt géniusz - Bakony - A bor filozófiája / (Medio, é. N., ISBN 963-85693-8-7 )
  • A száz Könyv (Medio, 2000., ISBN 963-9240-07-9 )
  • Az ősök nagy csarnoka I. / India / (Medio, é. N., ISBN 963-9240-24-9 )
  • Az ősök nagy csarnoka II. / Kína-Tibet-Japán / (Medio, é. N., ISBN 963-9240-25-7 )
  • Világválság / Válogatás Hamvas Béla folyóiratokban megjelent írásaiból / (Hamvas Béla Kutató Intézet, 2004., ISBN 963-86682-0-2 )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Katalin Kemény wrote a biographical afterword in Silentium. Béla Hamvas (1897-1968) , Grafing 1999, pp. 121-125
  2. ↑ Stefan Grätzel: Ethical Practice. Application of practical philosophy in everyday life and at work , London 2007
  3. ↑ Béla Hamvas: Corporeality and Imagination. In: Practice. Turnshare Publishing House, London 2008
  4. ↑ Ethical Practice , London 2007, p. 187
personal data
SURNAME Hamvas, Béla
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Hungarian writer
DATE OF BIRTH March 23, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH Eperjes
DATE OF DEATH November 7, 1968
Place of death Budapest