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Let's Turn Hegel from His Head onto His Feet: Hopes, Myths, and Memories of the 1960s in Tamás Cseh's Musical Album “A Letter to My Sister”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2019

Anna Szemere
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Abstract

This paper focuses on some salient features of the Hungarian “long sixties” through the rear-view mirror of a highly-acclaimed popular musical album by Tamas Cseh and Geza Beremenyi entitled “A Letter to My Sister” (1977). The article argues that the “Letter” owes its enduring success to its unique chronological and narrative arch: the years of childhood set in the sombrest Stalinist 1950s, while the opening up of the country's political and cultural landscape in the 1960s shaped the freedom and hope intrinsic to modern teenage life. Finally, in the portrayal of the crisis-ridden young adulthood set in the 1970s, it is impossible to set apart the failure of the “great generation” from that of Hungarian society and, more broadly, east European socialism. Implied in this narrative arch is that this local version of the “long sixties” carried the unprocessed legacy of the “short fifties.”

Type
Critical Discussion Forum: 1968
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 77 , Issue 4 , Winter 2018 , pp. 881 - 889
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 2019 

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References

1. Cseh, T., Másik, J., Novák, J., and Bereményi, G. Levél nõvéremnek (Budapest, 1977)Google Scholar. The album may be accessed on YouTube displaying the image of the original LP’s sleeve: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1_8vh-c4Us&list=PLvRZyNH1lMPHd5dBlqo4M4Y8QpHo9JEJN (last accessed October 10, 2018).

2. On the cultural movements and trends of the 60s and 70s, such as cinema, see Portuges, Catherine, Screen Memories: The Hungarian Cinema of Márta Mészáros (Bloomington, 1993)Google Scholar; Iordanova, Dina, Cinema of the Other Europe: The Industry and Artistry of East Central European Film (London, 2003)Google Scholar. On fine arts, see Sasvári, Edit, Turai, Hedvig and Hornyik, Sándor, eds., Art in Hungary 1956–80: Doublespeak and Beyond (London, 2018)Google Scholar. On folk and popular music, see Frigyesi, Judit, “The Aesthetic of the Hungarian Revival Movement,” in Slobin, Mark, ed., Retuning Culture: Musical Changes in Central and Eastern Europe (Durham, 1996), 54–75Google Scholar; Kovalcsik, Katalin, “The Romani Musicians on the Stage of Pluri-Culturalism: The Case of the Kalyi Jag Group in Hungary,” in Stewart, Michael and Rövid, Márton, eds., Multi-disciplinary Approaches to Romany Studies (Budapest, 2011), 55–70Google Scholar; György, Eszter, “A kisebbségi kulturális örökség létrehozásának kísérlete: A Rom Som cigányklub története (1972–80),” in Ignácz, Ádám, ed., Populáris zene és államhatalom:tizenöt tanulmány (Budapest, 2017), 209–38Google Scholar. Also Kūrti, László, Youth and the State in Hungary: Capitalism, Communism, and Class (London, 2002)Google Scholar. For alternative art movements, see Havasréti, József, Alternatív regiszterek: A kulturális ellenállás formái a magyar neoavantgárdban (Budapest, 2006)Google Scholar.

3. Boym, Svetlana, The Future of Nostalgia (New York, 2001), 1–3Google Scholar.

4. Names of resorts by Lake Balaton.

5. See “The Sixties” (“A hatvanas évek”) on the album Cseh, T., Másik, J., Novák, J., and Bereményi, G. Levél nõvéremnek (Budapest, Hungaroton 1977)Google Scholar. All the song lyric citations have been translated by me.

6. Cited by PZL in “1956 után a forradalom és az ifjúság összefonódásának gondolata megrémisztette a pártot.” Nullahategy, May 1, 2018, at https://nullahategy.hu/1956-utan-a-forradalom-es-az-ifjusag-osszefonodasanak-gondolata-megremisztette-a-partot-toth-eszter-zsofiaval-es-murai-andrassal-beszelgettunk-az-1968-magyarorszagon-cimu-konyvrol/ (last accessed October 2, 2018).

7. See Sándor Horváth “‘Wild West,’ ‘Gangster,’ and ‘Desperado’ Feelings: The Perception of the ‘West’ in Youth Subcultures in Hungary in the 1960s,” East Central Europe 38, no. 2–3 (2011): 180–98.

8. András Kappanyos, “Az ellenkultúra domesztikálása,” in Populáris zene és államhatalom, 54–72.

9. In Hungarian the “three Ts” stand for tiltás, tűrés és támogatás.

10. See Imre, Anikó, “Adventures in Early Socialist Television Edutainment,” Journal of Popular Film and Television 40, no. 3 (2012): 119–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11. The best-known examples come from the recordings of the groups Illés and Fonográf, Zsuzsa Koncz, and Locomotiv GT, all released in the early 1970s.

12. I know this is a disputable position but I believe that the Marxism professed by the regime was a distorted and rigidified version of what social and political scientists would call Marxism. Hence the quotes.

13. After all, the fledgling New Left—both in the “East” and the “West”—interrogated the manner W. F. Hegel was re-appropriated by the young Karl Marx, see Kovács, Gábor, “Revolution, Lifestyle, Power and Culture - Features of Political Thought in the Sixties,” in Rainer, M. János and Péteri, György, eds., Muddling through in the Long 1960s: Ideas and Everyday Life in High Politics and the Lower Classes of Communist Hungary (Trondheim, Norway, 2005), 27–52Google Scholar.

14. Horváth, “‘Wild West,’ ‘Gangster,’ and ‘Desperado’ Feelings,” 181.

15. “1956 után a forradalom és az ifjúság összefonódásának gondolata megrémisztette a pártot.” Nullahategy, online, as in n6.

16. The Hungarian word presszó is short for eszpresszó, which means both the coffee drink and the coffee house, where hard liquors are also served.

17. “A Coffee Joint” (“Presszó”) on the album “Letter.”

18. Ibid.

19. Ibid.

20. For a wonderful analysis of the distinctive relationship between public and private spaces under socialism and their subversive uses, see Edit András’s study on the work of neo-avantgarde artist Tibor Hajas, András, “Out of Private Public Opinion into Shared Personal Opinion: The Public, the Private and the Political,” in Art in Hungary 1956–80, 64–84.

21. The generation that came of age in the late sixties and thus most actively participated in the local version of art and youth cultural, political, and lifestyle movements of the sixties and seventies has frequently been referred to as the “big generation.”

22. See, for instance, the films The Big Chill. Directed by Lawrence Kasdan. Hollywood, CA: Carson Production, 1983, and Peter’s Friends. Directed by Kenneth Branagh. UK: Channel Four Films, 1992; or the Hungarian classic short story Meeting with a Young Man (Találkozás egy fiatalemberrel, 1913) by Frigyes Karinthy, in Tamás Ungvári, ed., Karinthy Frigyes Öszegyűjtött művei (Online edited collection of short stories) at http://mek.oszk.hu/06900/06980/06980.htm#22 (last accessed October 2, 2018).

23. Janos, Andrew C., review of Muddling through the Long Sixties: Ideas and Everyday Life in High Politics and the Lower Classes of Communist Hungary, eds., J. Rainer and G. Péteri, Journal of Cold War Studies 10, no. 4 (2008): 170–71Google Scholar.

24. Fürst, Julianne and McLellan, Josie, eds., Dropping out of Socialism: The Creation of Alternative Spheres in the Soviet Bloc (Lanham, MD, 2017)Google Scholar.