Tuesday, March 03, 2009

Soha soha senki

Today's been hard. Nothing in particular, just one of those days when I didn't manage to do anything right. And as if that wasn't enough, I have this stuck in my head, which, well... you probably have to be Hungarian to get the full gloom value of it. Don't bother with the English version either--it's pointless, as most English translations of Hungarian poems are.

As a point of side interest, the poet (Jozsef Attila) once wrote love letters to my great-great-aunt, who was a psychiatric nurse in one of the hospitals in which the poet (Hungarian poet, remember) spent time. (This is less impressive if you are Hungarian. Apparently he wrote a lot of love letters.) She tossed them, because, well, he was crazy. He later killed himself by jumping in front of a train. (Not because of her, I assume.) And they named a university after him. (The one I went to, in fact.)

Only in Hungary. Seriously. I mean, just imagine that here. Sylvia Plath University? Not so much.

Listen to this instead. More fun.

4 comments:

penny said...

igaz.

Sorry life has been really rough lately. I've been thinking good thoughts for you and everyone and hope that's not why it's been so bad.

{hugs}

Anonymous said...

(I guess I'm too Hungarian not to think that the people who are the kind of crazy as Jozsef Attila was aren't on to something. Or Sylvia Plath - people with bipolar disorder.)

I really hope things get better for you very, very soon.

You lived in Szeged? My family lived there for six years. I still miss it sometimes. So different from Budapest and - though this might have changed since - so much less gloomy.

But sometimes the gloom turns funny: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWAv3nyytDQ

Real life gloom though: hope it turns sunny very soon.

uberimma said...

I went to JATE, and lived in an apartment in Ujszeged, a few blocks away from the city limits (on the very end of the number 2 bus, if that means anything to you!) I walked through the park where all the Serbian "businessmen" did their business.

Re: Jozsef Attila, you are much more Hungarian than I am.

OMG, she looks so young. Koncz Zsuzsa is my mental soundtrack to a certain summer in Budapest, when I had an alberlet near Moszkva Ter, a crazy crazy landlady named (of course) Erzsi Neni, and every time I heard the 4/6 go past I couldn't help humming "az elso villamos."

I was watching Hollo Szinhaz last night. I love YouTube so much.

Anonymous said...

There's something on NPR's Morning Edition that you'll find interesting. Alison Aubrey's piece on sleep disturbances/behavior/ and snoring including a segment on children. My niece has been a considerably healthier child following a tonsillectomy for sleep apnea.