Boris Pasternak

Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (10 February 1890 – 30 May 1960) was a Nobel Prize-winning Russian and Soviet poet, novelist and translator of Goethe and Shakespeare. In Russia, Pasternak is most celebrated as a poet. My Sister Life, written in 1917, is arguably the most influential collection of poetry published in the Russian language in the 20th century. In the West he is best known for his epic novel Doctor Zhivago, a tragedy whose events span the last period of the Russian Empire and the early days of the Soviet Union. It was first translated and published in Italy in 1957. He helped give birth to the dissident movement with the publication of Doctor Zhivago.
Pasternak was born in Moscow on 10 February, into a wealthy Russian-Jewish family. His father was the famous artist, Leonid Pasternak, professor at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture, and his mother was Rosa (Raitza) Kaufman, a concert pianist. Pasternak was brought up in a highly cosmopolitan and intellectual atmosphere: family friends and regular visitors to his childhood home included pianist and composer Sergei Rachmaninoff, composer and mystic Alexander Scriabin, existentialist Lev Shestov, poet Rainer Maria Rilke, and writer Leo Tolstoy. Pasternak aspired first to be a composer, turned next to philosophy and then eventually to writing as his vocation.

Inspired by his neighbour Alexander Scriabin, Pasternak resolved to become a composer and entered the Moscow Conservatory. In 1910 he abruptly left the conservatory for the University of Marburg, where he studied under Neo-Kantian philosophers Hermann Cohen and Nicolai Hartmann. Although invited to become a scholar, he decided against making philosophy a profession and returned to Moscow in 1914. His first poetry collection, influenced by Alexander Blok and the Russian Futurists, was published later the same year.

Pasternak's early verse cleverly dissimulates his preoccupation with Kant's ideas. Its fabric includes striking alliterations, wild rhythmic combinations, day-to-day vocabulary, and hidden allusions to his favourite poets like Rilke, Lermontov and German Romantic poets.

Pasternak spent the summer of 1917 living in the steppe country near Saratov, where he fell in love. This passion resulted in the collection My Sister Life, which he wrote over a period of three months, but was too embarrassed to publish for four years because of its novel style. When it finally was published in 1921, the book revolutionised Russian poetry. It made Pasternak the model for younger poets, and decisively changed the poetry of Osip Mandelshtam, Marina Tsvetayeva and others.

During the great purges of the later 1930s, Pasternak became progressively disillusioned with Communist ideals. Reluctant to publish his own poetry, he turned to translating Shakespeare (Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear), Goethe (Faust), Rilke (Requiem für eine Freundin), Paul Verlaine, and Georgian poets. Pasternak's translations of Shakespeare have proved popular with the Russian public because of their colloquial, modernised dialogues, but critics accused him of "pasternakizing" the English playwright.

Although Pasternak was widely panned for excessive subjectivism, Stalin is said to have crossed Pasternak's name off an arrest list during the purges, saying "Don't touch this cloud dweller." According to Simon Sebag Montefiore, "He recognized that Mandelstam, Pasternak, and Bulgakov were geniuses, but their work was suppressed. Yet he could tolerate whimsical maestros: Bulgakov and Pasternak were never arrested. But woe betide anyone, genius or hack, who insulted the person or policy of Stalin -- for the two were synonymous."

As the book was frowned upon by the Soviet authorities, Doctor Zhivago was smuggled abroad by his friend Isaiah Berlin and published in an Italian translation by the Italian publishing house Feltrinelli in 1957. The novel became an instant sensation, and was subsequently translated and published in many non-Communist bloc countries. In 1958 and 1959, the American edition spent 26 weeks at the top of The New York Times' bestseller list.
Pasternak's post-Zhivago poetry probes the universal questions of love, immortality, and reconciliation with God. Pasternak died of lung cancer on 30 May 1960. Despite only a small notice appearing in the Literary Gazette, thousands of people traveled from Moscow to his funeral in Peredelkino.

Borisz Leonyidovics Paszternak (Moszkva, 1890. február 10. – Peregyelkino, 1960. május 30.) Nobel-díjas orosz költő, esszéíró, műfordító, író.

Jómódú zsidó családban született, a nagyrabecsült művészettörténet és szépművészet professzor Leonid Pasternak és a híres koncertzongorista művésznő, Rosa (Raitza) Kaufman fia. Zeneszerzőnek készül, de történelmet és filozófiát hallgat a moszkvai egyetemen. 1912-ben a németországi Marburgba utazik. Első verseskötetén már látszik páratlan természetleíró képessége, úgy festi a kertet, a szelet, az esőt, a tavaszt, hogy azok róla, a természetben élő, ám a természetet kultúrává nemesítő emberi lényről valljanak. Munkatársa lesz Majakovszkij avantgardista folyóiratának, a Lefnek. Az októberi forradalmat helyesnek tartja, tisztítótűznek nevezi.

Az 1948 és 1955 között megalkotott nagyregényében, a Zsivago doktorban (ismert filmváltozata a Doktor Zsivágó) az 1903 és 1929 közé eső korszak, továbbá a háborús évek orosz történelmének átfogó képét kívánta megrajzolni. 1957-ben kijuttatta regényét az országból, ami meg is jelent Olaszországban és több más nyugati országban is, hatalmas világsiker lett, 26 héten át vezette a The New York Times besztszeller listáját. Amikor neki ítélték a Nobel-díjat, negatív lejáratókampány indult ellene. Művét szemétnek, őt magát árulónak titulálták. Belső emigránsnak nevezték, hozzáfűzve, hogy jobb lenne, ha valódi emigráns lenne belőle. Válaszút elé állították Paszternakot: vagy lemond a díjról, vagy száműzik hazájából. Az előbbit választotta.

Paszternak 1960. május 30-án peregyelkinói otthonában húnyt el.

Walter Benjamin

Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin (15 July 1892 – 27 September 1940) was a German-Jewish Marxist philosopher-sociologist, literary critic, translator and essayist. He was at times associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory. His Marxism was more influenced by Bertolt Brecht, who had developed his own critical aesthetics, which asked for the emotional distancing of the spectator (Verfremdungseffekt). An important earlier influence and friend was Gershom Scholem, who founded the modern, academic study of the Kabbalah and of Jewish mysticism. Over the last half-century the regard for his work and its influence have risen dramatically, making Benjamin one of the most important twentieth century thinkers about literature and about modern aesthetic experience. As a sociological and cultural critic, Benjamin combined ideas drawn from historical materialism, German idealism, and Jewish mysticism in a body of work which was a novel contribution to Western Marxism and aesthetic theory. As a literary scholar, he wrote his most famous essays on Charles Baudelaire, he translated the Tableaux Parisiens edition of Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal as well as Proust's In Search of Lost Time. His work is widely cited in academic and literary studies, in particular his essays The Task of the Translator and The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Influenced by Bachofen, Benjamin gave the name "auratic perception" to the aesthetic faculty through which civilization would recover a lost appreciation of myth.

Walter Benjamin and his younger siblings Georg (1895–1942) and Dora (1901–1946) were born and raised in a wealthy Jewish household in Berlin. The father, Emil, was a banker in Paris and subsequently moved to Berlin where he became an antiques trader and married Pauline Schönflies. In 1902, ten-year-old Walter was enrolled in Kaiser Friedrich school in Charlottenburg, concluding his secondary studies ten years later. The boy's health was fragile and, in 1905, his parents sent him to a country boarding school in Thuringia, where he spent two years. In 1907, upon his return to Berlin, he resumed studies at Kaiser Friedrich.

In 1912, at the age of twenty, he enrolled at the University of Freiburg, but at the end of the summer semester returned again to Berlin and enrolled at the Humboldt University of Berlin to continue his studies of philosophy. Elected president of the students' association, Freie Studentenschaft, he devoted his time to writing essays arguing for the need of educational and general cultural change. Failing to be re-elected, he once again turned his attention to his studies in Freiburg, paying particular attention to the lectures of Heinrich Rickert. During this period, he also visited Paris and parts of Italy.

In 1914, as World War I pitted Germany against France, Benjamin began translating with great care and interest the French poet Charles Baudelaire. The following year he moved to Munich, continuing his studies at the University of Munich (aka LMU), where he met Rainer Maria Rilke and Gershom Scholem, the latter of whom would become a lifelong friend. The same year he wrote a paper on the German poet Friedrich Hölderlin.

In 1917 he transferred to the University of Bern where he met Ernst Bloch and married Dora Sophie Pollak (née Kellner) (1890–1964), with whom he had a son, Stefan Rafael (1918–1972). In 1919 Benjamin earned his Ph.D. cum laude with the essay Begriff der Kunstkritik in der Deutschen Romantik [The Concept of Criticism in German Romanticism]. Beset with financial problems, he returned with his wife to Berlin, to live with his parents and, in 1921, published Kritik der Gewalt ["Critique of Violence"].

In 1923, as the Institute for Social Research (Frankfurt School) was being founded, he published Charles Baudelaire, Tableaux Parisiens. He also became acquainted with Theodor Adorno and befriended Georg Lukács, whose The Theory of the Novel, published in 1920, strongly influenced him. The postwar inflation in the Weimar Republic caused his father to have serious difficulty in continuing to give financial support. At the end of 1923 his best friend, Gershom Scholem, immigrated to what would later become the state of Israel, but was at the time the British Mandate of Palestine and, over the succeeding years, tried to persuade Benjamin to join him.

In 1924, Benjamin's paper, "Goethes Wahlverwandtschaften" "Goethe's Elective Affinities" was published by Hugo von Hoffmansthal in the magazine Neue Deutsche Beiträge. Together with Ernst Bloch, Benjamin spent a few months on the Italian island of Capri, writing his habilitation thesis, on The Origin of German Tragic Drama. There he read, on Bloch's suggestion, Lukacs's History and Class Consciousness, and first met Asja Lācis, a Bolshevik Latvian actress living in Moscow. She would become an important and lasting intellectual and erotic influence on him.

A year later, The Origin of German Tragic Drama was rejected by Frankfurt University, effectively closing the door to an academic career for the 33-year-old scholar. Working with Franz Hessel (1880–1941), he translated the first volumes of Marcel Proust's À la Recherche du Temps Perdu [In Search of Lost Time]. The next year he began writing for the German newspapers Frankfurter Zeitung and Die Literarische Welt, enabling him to afford living several months in Paris. In December 1926, the year of his father's death, he made a trip to Moscow to meet Asja Lācis, and found her in a sanatorium, suffering from an illness.

In 1927, he started work on Das Passagen-Werk [The Arcades Project], his monumental and unfinished study which he continued to work on until his death. The same year in Berlin he saw Gershom Scholem in person for the last time, and considered moving to Palestine. In 1928 he separated from his wife, Dora (they were divorced two years later), and published Einbahnstraße [One-Way Street] and Ursprung des Deutschen Trauerspiels [The Origin of German Tragic Drama]. In Berlin, the following year, Asja Lācis, at the time, Bertolt Brecht's assistant, introduced the two authors. Also that year, he briefly attempted an academic career as an instructor at the University of Heidelberg.

In 1932, during the turmoil preceding Adolf Hitler's election as Chancellor, Walter Benjamin left Germany to spend a few months on the Spanish island of Ibiza. Then he moved to Nice, where he considered committing suicide. With the Reichstag fire, in 1933, as Hitler assumed power and started the persecution of the Jews, Benjamin sought shelter in Svendborg, at Bertold Brecht's, and Sanremo, where his ex-wife lived, before moving to Paris.

As his financial situation deteriorated, he collaborated with Max Horkheimer and received some funds from the Institut für Sozialforschung [Institute for Social Research] which, by this time, had relocated to New York. He met other German artists and intellectuals who became refugees in Paris and befriended Hannah Arendt, Hermann Hesse and Kurt Weill. In 1936, L'Œuvre d'Art à l'Époque de sa Reproductibilité Technique ["The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"] was first published in French by Max Horkheimer in the Institute for Social Research's journal, Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung.

In 1937 Benjamin worked on Das Paris des Second Empire bei Baudelaire [The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire], met Georges Bataille and joined the College of Sociology. In 1938 he paid a last visit to Bertolt Brecht, now in Danish exile. Within a few months, Hitler stripped Jews of their German citizenship, and Benjamin, now stateless, was incarcerated by the French authorities for three months in a camp near Nevers.

Returning to Paris in January 1940, he wrote his Über den Begriff der Geschichte [Theses on the Philosophy of History]. In June, as the Wehrmacht broke through the French defenses, Benjamin fled to Lourdes with his sister, one day before the Germans entered Paris. In August, he obtained a visa to the United States, which had been negotiated by Max Horkheimer. Attempting to elude the Gestapo, Benjamin planned to depart for America from neutral Portugal, which he had hoped to reach via Spain. Through the nearly seven decades that followed, researchers have been unable to establish a clear timeline of the succeeding events, which culminated in his death. Sketchy and incomplete historical records seem to indicate that he reached Portbou, a French-Spanish border town in the Pyrenees, but the group of Jewish refugees he joined was intercepted by the Spanish Police and Benjamin apparently committed suicide by taking an overdose of a form of morphine.

Walter Benjamin (1892. július 15., Berlin, Németország – 1940. szeptember 26., Portbou, Spanyolország) német filozófus, irodalomkritikus, esszéista. Művei utóélete révén a 20. század egyik legnagyobb hatású művészetteoretikusa.

Jómódú zsidó családban született. Kereskedő apjával folyamatos a konfliktusa. A húszas évek derekán Goethe Vonzások és választások című regényéről készült habilitációs írását a frankfurti irodalomtörténész bizottság „homályosnak” találja és elutasítja, így nem sikerül akadémiai pályára lépnie.

A harmincas évek közepétől barátja, Theodor W. Adorno segítségével több írása megjelenik a Frankfurti Iskola társadalomfilozófiai lapjában, a Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung-ban. Francia írókról, nyelvszociológiáról, a műgyűjtő személyiségről, a műalkotás technikai reprodukálhatóságának kihatásairól ír. Benjamin „szabad kritikus” és „alkalmi fordító”. Ismeretségi körén túl alig élvez figyelmet és megbecsülést. Angelus Novus című lapja nem tud elindulni. 1926-ban a Szovjetunióba látogat, meglátogatja szerelmét, Aszja Lacisz lett kommunista színésznőt. Utazásáról naplót vezet.

Hitler hatalomra jutása után Franciaországba emigrál. Párizsban, a Bibliotheque Nationale-ban írja nagyszabású fő művét, a Passzázsok-at (Passagen-Werk), amely végül töredékes maradt. Többször felkeresi barátját, Bertolt Brechtet dániai száműzetésében. 1940-ben az előrenyomuló német csapatok elől Spanyolországon keresztül próbál Amerikába jutni, de azután a Pireneusokban lévő határátkelőnél tisztázatlan körülmények között öngyilkos lesz.

Ephraim Kishon

Ephraim Kishon (Hebrew: אפרים קישון‎, August 23, 1924 – January 29, 2005) was an Israeli writer, satirist, dramatist, screenwriter, and film director.

Born into a middle-class Jewish family in Budapest, Hungary, as Ferenc Hoffmann (Hungarian Hoffmann Ferenc), Kishon studied sculpture and painting, and then began publishing humorous essays and writing for the stage.

During World War II the Nazis imprisoned him in several concentration camps. At one camp his chess talent helped him survive as the camp commandant was looking for an opponent. In another camp the Germans lined up the inmates shooting every tenth person, passing him by. He later wrote in his book The Scapegoat, "They made a mistake—they left one satirist alive." He managed to escape while being transported to the Sobibor death camp in Poland, and hid the remainder of the war disguised as "Stanko Andras", a Slovakian laborer.

After 1945 he changed his surname from Hoffmann to Kishont to disguise his Jewish heritage and returned to Hungary to study art and publish humorous plays. He immigrated to Israel in 1949 to escape the Communist regime, and an immigration officer gave him the name Ephraim Kishon.

His first marriage, in 1946 to Eva (Chawa) Klamer, ended in divorce. In 1959, he married his second wife Sara (née Lipovitz), who died in 2002. In 2003, he married the Austrian writer Lisa Witasek. He had three children: Raphael (b. 1957), Amir (b. 1963), and Renana (b. 1968).

Acquiring a mastery of Hebrew with remarkable speed, Kishon started a regular satirical column in the easy-Hebrew daily, Omer, after two years in the country. From 1952, he wrote the column "Had Gadya" in the daily Ma'ariv. Devoted largely to political and social satire but including essays of pure humour, it became one of the most popular columns in the country. His extraordinary inventiveness, both in the use of language and the creation of character, was applied also to the writing of innumerable sketches for theatrical revues.

Collections of his humorous writings have appeared in Hebrew and in translation. Among the English translations are Look Back Mrs. Lot (1960), Noah's Ark, Tourist Class (1962), The Seasick Whale (1965), and two books on the Six-Day War and its aftermath, So Sorry We Won (1967), and Woe to the Victors (1969). Two collections of his plays have also appeared in Hebrew: Shemo Holekh Lefanav (1953) and Ma´arkhonim (1959).

His works have been translated into 37 languages, the majority of which were sold in Germany. Kishon rejected the idea of universal guilt for the Holocaust and had many friends in Germany. Kishon said “It gives me great satisfaction to see the grandchildren of my executioners queuing up to buy my books.” Friedrich Torberg was his congenial translator to German, until he died in 1979; thereafter Kishon himself wrote in German. Ultimately, he wrote over 50 books.

Kishon was a life-long chess enthusiast, and took an early interest in chess-playing computers. In 1990, German chess computer manufacturer Hegener & Glaser together with Fidelity produced the Kishon Chesster, a chess computer distinguished by the spoken comments it would make during a game. Kishon wrote the comments to be humorous, but were also carefully chosen to be relevant to chess and the position in the game.

In 1981, Kishon established a second home in the rural Swiss canton of Appenzell. He had come to feel somewhat estranged and unappreciated in Israel, believing that some native-born Israelis were against him because he was a Hungarian immigrant and that the literary establishment looked down on his best-selling "middle-brow" works. Kishon became increasingly conservative and continued to strongly support Zionism.

Kishon died in Switzerland at age 80, apparently of a heart attack. His body was returned to Israel and buried in the artists' cemetery in Tel Aviv.

Rosszkor és rossz helyen, az 1920-as években Magyarországon született Hoffmann (később Kishont) Ferenc. Zsidó bankár gyermekeként nem mehetett egyetemre. A zsidótörvények árnyékában ötvösnek tanult, majd Budapest erődítésein dolgozott, ahogyan nyilas őrei mondták: "a bolsevik pestis megfékezésén". Amikor a front elérte a város határát, megszökött, majd két hetet töltött a magyar–német és az orosz frontvonalak között egy pincében, paradicsomlén élve. Ekkor írta Hajvédők című regényét, amelyért díjat is kapott.

A felszabadulást követően a Ludas Matyi munkatársa lett, majd búcsút mondott a lapnak és hazájának is. Bécsből küldte el a szerkesztőségnek a következő üzenetet: "Üdvözlet a szabad Magyarországnak, a szabad Kishonttól!"
Izraelbe emigrált, ahol rövid időn belül ráébredt, hogy a kibuc közösségi életét nem neki találták ki. Ez a ráébredés kölcsönös volt, ahonnan a héber nyelvet már egészen jól beszélő Efraim Kishon (már t nélkül) Tel-Avivba ment. Újságírással foglalkozott, maró és éles stílusú írásaiban görbe tükröt tartott az éppen formálódó izraeli társadalom elé. Az 1967-es, hatnapos háborút követően megjelent kötete, amely a "Bocsánat, hogy győztünk!" címet viselte, s a külvilág reakcióit parodizálta.
Tíz éven keresztül Hollywoodban lakott, ahol forgatókönyveket írt és rendezett. Tel-Avivban saját kabaréja is volt. Hosszabb időn keresztül élt Svájcban élt, a halál is itt érte utol.
Házasságlevél című darabját néhány évvel ezelőtt a budapesti József Attila Színház mutatta be. Szatíráiból és humoreszkjeiből több válogatáskötet jelent meg Magyarországon.
Nyolc évtizedet élt, gyermekei és unokái mellett a humort kedvelő rajongók tömegei is érezni fogják hiányát. Hogy mennyire képtelennek érezték halálhírét, arra gyermekének, Rafinak szavai voltak a legtalálóbbak: "Amikor megérkezett a holttestét szállító gép Svájcból, arra gondoltam, hogy amint kinyílik az ajtaja, ott fog állni apa, mosolyog és annyit mond: »Csak kíváncsi voltam, mennyire szerettek!«"

Faludy György

György Faludy (September 22, 1910, Budapest - September 1, 2006, Budapest), sometimes anglicized as George Faludy, was a Hungarian-Jewish poet, writer and translator.
Faludy's translations of the ballads of François Villon, and even more prominent rewritings (as he admitted several times), brought him huge popularity on their initial publication in 1934, and have been since published about forty times. He could have hardly expressed these ideas in any other way in his time. He wrote several volumes of poetry as well, some of which were published in English. – His other outstanding success was My Happy Days in Hell (Pokolbéli víg napjaim), an autobiographical novel first published in 1962 in English translation, which was translated to French and German as well, but did not appear in the original Hungarian until much later.

Faludy completed his schooling in the Fasori Evangélikus Gimnázium and studied at the Universities of Vienna, Berlin and Graz. During these times he developed radical liberalist views, which he maintained till the very last days of his life.

In 1938, he left Hungary for Paris, and then for the U.S. During World War II, he served in the American forces. He arrived back in Hungary in 1946. In April 1947 he was among a group that destroyed a Budapest statue of Ottokár Prohászka, a Hungarian bishop who is respected by many but who is often considered antisemitic. [1] He only admitted his participation forty years later.

In 1949 he was condemned with fictitious accusations and was sent to the labor camp of Recsk for three years. During this time, he lectured other prisoners in literature, history and philosophy. After his release he made his living by translation. In 1956 (after the Revolution) he escaped again to the West. He settled in London, and was the editor of a Hungarian literary journal.

It was during his stay in London that Faludy wrote the novel, which was soon translated to English, by which he is still best known outside Hungary: My Happy Days in Hell. (It was only published in his native tongue in 1987, and since then in several further editions.) He moved to Toronto in 1967 and lived there for twenty years. He gave lectures in Canada and the U.S. and was the editor of Hungarian literary journals. In 1976, he received a Canadian citizenship and two years later was elected as an honorary doctor of the University of Toronto where he regularly taught. His poems were published in New York in 1980 (see below with the other collections).

In 1988 Faludy returned to Hungary. After the change of regime, his works, which were forbidden, confiscated, destroyed and distributed as samizdat during the Communist period, were at last published in Hungary. New collections of poems appeared in the 1990s, and several translations. In 1994 he received the most prestigious award in Hungary, the Kossuth Prize. In 2000 he published the sequel of My Happy Days in Hell: "After My Days in Hell" in Hungarian (no data available about any English translation), about his life after the labour camp. In the years preceding his death, Faludy was considered not only as a poet, a writer and a translator but as a living legend as well in Hungary.Renowned for his anecdotes as well as his writing, he was a celebrated wit whose life story attracted the attentions of many a foreign author. Besides the many European based authors who visited Faludy, there was the Canadian author George Jonas who penned Munich as well as the columnist and playwright Rory Winston, and Finnish author [H.M. Marttila].

Faludy's second wife, Zsuzsa Szegő, died in the 1960s. They had a son, Andrew. In 1963 Eric Johnson (1937-2004), a US ballet dancer and later a renowned poet in contemporary Latin poetry, read the novel My Happy Days in Hell, which captivated him, and he decided to seek Faludy in Hungary. He started to learn Hungarian and found Faludy three years later in Malta. He became his secretary, translator, co-author and partner for the next 36 years. In 2002, Faludy married a 26 year old poet, Fanny Kovács.^[1] Johnson left for Kathmandu, Nepal, and died there in February 2004. Faludy published poems written jointly with his wife.

By 2006, a memorial park will be built in his honor designed by the architect Scott Torrence, facing his former apartment. It was initiated by the Toronto Heritage Project to commemorate the outstanding cultural figures of the city. A bronze plaque will be placed in the park with his portrait, made by the Hungarian-born sculptor Dora de Pedery-Hunt. His poem Michelangelo's Last Prayer, chosen by the poet, will be carved on the plaque in English and in Hungarian.

Faludy György (Budapest, 1910. szeptember 22. – Budapest, 2006. szeptember 1.) magyar költő, műfordító, író.

Budapesten született zsidó polgári családban. Édesapja Faludy Jenő, vegyész, édesanyja Bieringer Erzsébet Katalin volt. 1928-ban érettségizett a fasori Evangélikus Főgimnáziumban. Ezután a bécsi (1928-1930), a berlini (1930-1931), a párizsi (1932), és a grazi (1932-1933) egyetemen tanult. 1933-1934-ben katonai szolgálatot teljesített zászlósi rendfokozatban, amelytől később megfosztották. 1937-ben jelentette meg a Villon-átköltéseket, mely jó időre meg is határozta pályáját.

1938-ban elhagyta Magyarországot, erre többek között az kényszerítette, hogy úgy érezte hazájának az a legrosszabb, ha a háborút a hitleri Németország nyeri meg, igy a németek oldalán semmiképp sem akart volna harcolni. Párizsig menekült, itt találkozott többek között Koestler Artúrral és az emigráns magyar művészek közösségével. Később a német megszállás miatt innen is távozni kényszerült. Marokkón keresztül az Amerikai Egyesült Államokba jutott, ahol a Szabad Magyar Mozgalom titkáraként és lapszerkesztőjeként tevékenykedett, majd három évig az amerikai hadseregben szolgált tisztként. Eközben húga az országban maradt, nem élte túl az ostromot.

1946-ban tért haza, a Népszavánál helyezkedett el. 1947-ben megjelent az Őszi harmat után című verseskötete, illetve a Villon balladák már a 14. kiadásnál tartottak. Noha baloldali érzelmű maradt (vezetésével döntötték le kommunista munkások 1947. április 26-áról 27-re virradó éjjel Prohászka Ottokár Károlyi-kertbéli szobrát), a kommunista hatalom is ellenségesen viszonyult hozzá, további művei nem jelenhettek meg. 1949-ben hamis vádak alapján 3 évre a recski kényszermunkatáborba zárták. Az itt írt versei 1983-ban Münchenben jelenhettek meg Börtönversek 1949–1953 címmel. Szabadulása után fordításokkal kereste meg a kenyérre valót, majd 1956-ban ismét elhagyta az országot.

Londonban települt le, ahol 1957-től az Irodalmi Újság szerkesztője. 1961-1962-ben írta a Pokolbéli víg napjaim című önéletrajzi visszaemlékezéseit, amely azonban először angol fordításban jelent meg 1962-ben. A könyv 1987-ben jelent meg először Magyarországon az AB Független Kiadónál – a kommunista cenzúra által betiltott, szamizdat kötetként. 1963 és 1967 között Firenzében és Máltán élt. 1967-ben költözött át Torontóba. Kanadában és az Egyesült Államokban különböző egyetemeken tartott előadást, miközben a Ötágú síp és a Magyarok Világlapja című lapok munkatársaként dolgozott. 1980-ban New Yorkban jelentek meg összegyűjtött versei. Közben Magyarországon tiltott költő volt, a könyvtárakban még a katalógusból is kiszedték azokat a cédulákat, melyen a neve szerepelt.

1988-ban másodszor is hazatelepült. A rendszerváltás után korábban szamizdatban terjedő műveit is ki lehetett adni. Új verskötetei és fordításai is megjelentek. Faludy 1994-ben a Kossuth-díjat is megkapta. 1998-ban alapító tagja volt a Digitális Irodalmi Akadémiának. Személyét többnyire érdeklődés övezte, bár 90 éves kora felett sem szűnt meg polgárpukkasztónak, meghökkentőnek lenni. Pokol tornácán című kötetének bemutatóját már nem érhette meg, a Kossuth-díjas költőt 2006. szeptember 1-jén, otthonában érte a halál.

Tiszteletére 2006. október 3-án, Torontóban, a közvetlenül az egykori ottani otthona melletti parkot hivatalosan is George Faludy Place-re keresztelték át. Bár az elnevezési procedúra még életében elkezdődött, a névadási ünnepségre időközben bekövetkezett halála miatt már nem tudott elutazni.

Díjak és kitüntetések:

• A Magyar Köztársaság rubinokkal ékesített Zászlórendje, 1991.
• A Soros Alapítvány Életműdíja, 1993.
• Nagy Imre-emlékplakett, 1993.
• Budapest Főváros Díszpolgára, 1993.
• Kossuth-díj, 1994.
• A MÚOSZ örökös tagja, 1997.
• Pulitzer-emlékdíj, 1998.
• Aranytoll, 2000.
• Don Quijote-díj, 2001.
• Obersovszky emlékplakett, 2002.
• Gundel Művészeti-díj, 2002.
• A Magyar Köztársaság Érdemrend Középkeresztje a Csillaggal, 2002.
• A Magyar Köztársaság Érdemrend Nagykeresztje 2006.

Karinthy Frigyes

Frigyes Karinthy (June 25, 1887 in Budapest – August 29, 1938 in Siófok) was a Hungarian author, playwright, poet, journalist, and translator. He was the first proponent of the six degrees of separation concept, in his 1929 short story, Chains (Láncszemek). Karinthy remains one of the most popular Hungarian writers. He was the father of writer Ferenc Karinthy.

Among the English translations of Karinthy's works are two novellas that continue the adventures of Swift's character Gulliver. Voyage to Faremido is an early examination of artificial intelligence, while Capillaria is a polished and darkly humorous satire on the 'battle of the sexes'.

Karinthy was born into a bourgeois family in Budapest. He started his writing career as a journalist and remained a writer of short, humorous blurbs until his death. He rose to instant fame in 1912 with the publication of his literary parodies called That's How YOU Write (Így írtok ti). He expanded the collection continuously during the following years. Among his early works, his collection of short stories from school life, Please Sir! (Tanár úr, kérem)^[1] also stands out for its grasp of the trials and tribulations of the average schoolboy. Another popular highlight is his translation of A. A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh, that made it a cult book in Hungary.

After the First World War, his writing became more serious and engaged, though never leaving a satirical bent. Karinthy cited Jonathan Swift as a major influence: from this arose the novel Voyage to Faremido (Utazás Faremidóba) and its sequel, Capillaria. Many of his novels and stories also deal with the difficulties of relationships between men and women, partly due to his unhappy second marriage.

Karinthy had a brain tumor for which he was operated upon in Stockholm in 1936. He describes this experience in his autobiographical novel, Journey Round my Skull, (Utazás a koponyám körül), originally published in 1939; a reissue appeared as a NYRB Classic in 2008). He died two years later, during a holiday at Lake Balaton.

Karinthy was married twice. He married the actress Etel Judik in 1913. The marriage was serene and happy and they had a son called Gábor. Tragically, Etel died very young during the Spanish flu pandemic in 1919. In 1920, he married the psychiatrist Aranka Böhm, with whom he had another son, the writer Ferenc Karinthy. Karinthy was an Esperantist, attending Esperanto congresses,^[2] and became president of the Hungarian Esperanto Society in 1932.^[3]

Karinthy Frigyes Ernő (Budapest, 1887. június 25. – Siófok, 1938. augusztus 29.) magyar író, költő, műfordító.

Édesapja Karinthi József (1846–1921) művelt tisztviselő, a Magyar Filozófiai Társaság alapító tagja. Családneve eredetileg Kohn volt, amit 1874-ben magyarosított Karinthira. 1886. január 3-án evangélikus hitre tért át feleségével és négy leánygyermekével, Elzával, Adával, Gizivel és Emiliával együtt. Doleschall Sándor, a Deák téri német evangélikus egyház lelkésze keresztelte meg őket. Fiúgyermekeik, Frigyes és József már kereszténynek születtek. Édesanyja, Engel Karolina (1850–1895) halála után Karinthi József egyedül nevelte a hat életben maradt gyermeket.

Karinthy Frigyes 1898 és 1900 között kezdett írni: színműveket, kalandos történeteket, verses meséket írt; emellett naplót vezetett. 15 éves volt, amikor a Magyar Képes Világ folytatásokban közölte a Nászutazás a Föld középpontján keresztül című regényét.

Érettségi után matematika-fizika szakon, bölcsészkaron és sebészeten hallgatott egyetemi előadásokat. Noha diplomát soha sem szerzett, egész életében élénk érdeklődéssel és feltétlen tisztelettel fordult a tudományok felé. Bajor Andor szerint "hitt az értelem erejében, sőt azt mondhatjuk: vakon hitte, hogy múló tünemény a vakság".

1906-ban Az Újság munkatársa lett. Ebből az időből ered legendás barátsága Kosztolányi Dezsővel. A következő években sorra jelentek meg novellái, paródiái, humoros írásai a különböző budapesti lapokban, de az ismertséget az Így írtok ti című paródiakötete hozza meg számára 1912-ben.

1913-ban vette feleségül Judik Etel színésznőt, aki 1918-ban spanyolnáthában meghalt. Gyermekük Karinthy Gábor költő. 1920-ban vette feleségül Böhm Arankát. Gyermekük Karinthy Ferenc (Cini) író.

Mesterének Jonathan Swiftet vallotta; az Utazás Faremidóba és Capillária című regényei a "Gulliver ötödik és hatodik utazása" alcímet viselik. Sok ismert mű magyar fordítása kötődik a nevéhez (elsősorban a Micimackóé), de valószínűleg a fordítások egy részét Mici nővére (Karinthy Emília) készítette, vagy legalábbis ő készítette elő az író számára a nyersfordítást.

1929-es Láncszemek című novellájában megalapozza a hat lépés távolság elméletét, mely később világhíres lett, főként a vele foglalkozó tudósok és művészek által.

1936-ban agydaganattal műtötte meg Stockholmban Herbert Olivecrona; erről írta az Utazás a koponyám körül című regényét. 1938-ban agyvérzésben meghalt.

Egyes szóalkotásai (például halandzsa) és kifejezései ("magyarázom a bizonyítványomat") a mai köznyelvet gazdagítják.

Műveinek kiadásában közreműködött titkára, az önálló szerzőként is nevet szerző Grätzer József is.

Eugène Ionesco

Eugène Ionesco, born Eugen Ionescu (November 26, 1909 – March 28, 1994), was a Romanian and French playwright and dramatist, one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd. Beyond ridiculing the most banal situations, Ionesco's plays depict in a tangible way the solitude and insignificance of human existence.

He spent most of his childhood in France, and, while there, had an experience he claimed affected his perception of the world more significantly than any other. As Deborah B. Gaensbauer describes in Eugene Ionesco Revisited, "Walking in summer sunshine in a white-washed provincial village under an intense blue sky, [Ionesco] was profoundly altered by the light."[3] He was struck very suddenly with a feeling of intense luminosity, the feeling of floating off the ground and an overwhelming feeling of well-being. When he "floated" back to the ground and the "light" left him, he saw that the real world in comparison was full of decay, corruption and meaningless repetitive action. This also coincided with the revelation that death takes everyone in the end.[4]Much of his later work, reflecting this new perception, demonstrates a disgust for the tangible world, a distrust of communication, and the subtle sense that a better world lies just beyond our reach. Echoes of this experience can also be seen in references and themes in many of his important works: characters pining for an unattainable "city of lights" (The Killer, The Chairs) or perceiving a world beyond (A Stroll in the Air); characters granted the ability to fly (A Stroll in the Air, Amédée); the banality of the world which often leads to depression (the Bérenger character); ecstatic revelations of beauty within a pessimistic framework (Amédée, The Chairs, the Bérenger character); and the inevitability of death (Exit the King).
He returned to Romania with his father in 1925 after his parents divorced. There he attended Saint Sava National College, after which he studied French Literature at the University of Bucharest from 1928 to 1933 and qualified as a teacher of French. While there he met Emil Cioran and Mircea Eliade, and the three became lifelong friends.
In 1936 Ionesco married Rodica Burileanu. Together they had one daughter for whom he wrote a number of unconventional children's stories. He and his family returned to France in 1938 for him to complete his Doctoral Thesis. Caught by the outbreak of World War II in 1939, he remained there, living in Marseille during the war before moving with his family to Paris after its liberation in 1944.
Ionesco was made a member of the Académie française in 1970 [2]. He also received numerous awards including Tours Festival Prize for film, 1959; Prix Italia, 1963; Society of Authors Theatre Prize, 1966; Grand Prix National for theatre, 1969; Monaco Grand Prix, 1969; Austrian State Prize for European Literature, 1970; Jerusalem Prize, 1973; and honorary Doctoral Degrees from New York University and the Universities of Leuven, Warwick and Tel Aviv. Eugène Ionesco died at age 84 on March 29, 1994 and is buried in the Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris. Although Ionesco wrote almost entirely in French, he is one of Romania's most honored artists.

Though best known as a playwright, plays were not his first chosen medium. He started writing poetry and criticism, publishing in several Romanian journals. Two early writings of note are Nu, a book criticizing many other writers including prominent Romanian poets, and Hugoliade, or, The grotesque and tragic life of Victor Hugo a satirical biography mocking Victor Hugo's status as a great figure in French literature. The Hugoliade includes exaggerated retellings of the most scandalous episodes in Hugo's life and contains prototypes for many of Ionesco's later themes: the ridiculous authoritarian character, the false worship of language.Like Samuel Beckett, Ionesco came to the theatre late: he did not write his first play until 1948 (La Cantatrice chauve, first performed in 1950 with the English title The Bald Soprano). At the age of 40 he decided to learn English using the Assimil method, conscientiously copying whole sentences in order to memorize them. Re-reading them, he began to feel that he was not learning English, rather he was discovering some astonishing truths such as the fact that there are seven days in a week, that the ceiling is up and the floor is down; things which he already knew, but which suddenly struck him as being as stupefying as they were indisputably true[citation needed].
This feeling only intensified with the introduction in later lessons of the characters known as "Mr. and Mrs. Smith". To his astonishment, Mrs. Smith informed her husband that they had several children, that they lived in the vicinity of London, that their name was Smith, that Mr. Smith was a clerk, that they had a servant, Mary, who was English like themselves. What was remarkable about Mrs. Smith, he thought, was her eminently methodical procedure in her quest for truth. For Ionesco, the clichés and truisms of the conversation primer disintegrated into wild caricature and parody with language itself disintegrating into disjointed fragments of words. Ionesco set about translating this experience into a play, La Cantatrice Chauve, which was performed for the first time in 1950 under the direction of Nicolas Bataille. It was far from a success and went unnoticed until a few established writers and critics, among them Jean Anouilh and Raymond Queneau, championed the play.

Ionesco's earliest works, and his most innovative, were one-act nonsense plays: La Cantatrice chauve (1950), La Leçon translated as The Lesson (1951), Les Chaises translated as The Chairs (1952), and Jacques ou la soumission translated as Jack, or The Submission (1955). These absurdist sketches, to which he gave such descriptions as "anti-play" (anti-pièce in French) express modern feelings of alienation and the impossibility and futility of communication with surreal comic force, parodying the conformism of the bourgeoisie and conventional theatrical forms. In them Ionesco rejects a conventional story-line as their basis, instead taking their dramatic structure from accelerating rhythms and/or cyclical repetitions. He disregards psychology and coherent dialogue, thereby depicting a dehumanized world with mechanical, puppet-like characters who speak in non-sequiturs. Language becomes rarefied, with words and material objects gaining a life of their own, increasingly overwhelming the characters and creating a sense of menace.

With Tueur sans gages translated as The Killer (1959; his second full-length play, the first being Amédée, ou Comment s'en débarrasser in 1954), Ionesco began to explore more sustained dramatic situations featuring more humanized characters. Notably this includes Bérenger, a central character in a number of Ionesco's plays, the last of which is Le Piéton de l'air translated as A Stroll in the Air.
Bérenger is a semi-autobiographical figure expressing Ionesco's wonderment and anguish at the strangeness of reality. He is comically naïve, engaging the audience's sympathy. In The Killer he encounters death in the figure of a serial killer. In Rhinocéros he watches his friends turning into rhinoceri one by one until he alone stands unchanged against this tide of conformism. It is in this play that Ionesco most forcefully expresses his horror of ideological conformism, inspired by the rise of the fascist Iron Guard in Romania in the 1930s. Le Roi se meurt translated as Exit the King (1962) shows him as King Bérenger 1st, an everyman figure who struggles to come to terms with his own death.

Ionesco's later work has generally received less attention. This includes La Soif et la faim translated as Hunger and Thirst (1966), Jeux de massacre (1971), Macbett (1972, a free adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth) and Ce formidable bordel (1973).
Apart from the libretto for the opera Maximilien Kolbe (music by Dominique Probst) which has been performed in five countries, filmed for television and recorded for release on CD, Ionesco did not write for the stage after Voyage chez les morts in 1981. However, La Cantatrice chauve is still playing at the Théâtre de la Huchette today, having moved there in 1952.

Like Shaw and Brecht, Ionesco also contributed to the theatre with his theoretical writings (Wellwarth, 33). Ionesco wrote mainly in attempts to correct critics who he felt misunderstood his work and therefore wrongly influenced his audience. In doing so, Ionesco articulated ways in which he thought contemporary theatre should be reformed (Wellwarth, 33). Notes and Counter Notes is a collection of Ionesco's writings, including musings on why he chose to write for the theatre and direct responses to his contemporary critics.
In the first section, titled "Experience of the Theatre", Ionesco claimed to have hated going to the theatre as a child because it gave him "no pleasure or feeling of participation" (Ionesco, 15). He wrote that the problem with realistic theatre is that it is less interesting than theatre that invokes an "imaginative truth", which he found to be much more interesting and freeing than the "narrow" truth presented by strict realism (Ionesco, 15). He claimed that "drama that relies on simple effects is not necessarily drama simplified" (Ionesco, 28). Notes and Counter Notes also reprints a heated war of words between Ionesco and Kenneth Tynan based on Ionesco's above stated beliefs and Ionesco's hatred for Brecht and Brechtian theatre.

Ionesco is often considered a writer of the Theatre of the Absurd. This is a label originally given to him by Martin Esslin in his book of the same name, placing Ionesco alongside such contemporary writers as Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, and Arthur Adamov. Esslin called them "absurd" based on Albert Camus' concept of the absurd, claiming that Beckett and Ionesco better captured the meaninglessness of existence in their plays than in work by Camus or Sartre. Because of this loose association, Ionesco is often mislabeled an existentialist. Ionesco claimed in Notes and Counter Notes that he was not an existentialist and often criticized existentialist figurehead Jean-Paul Sartre. Although Ionesco knew Beckett and honored his work, the French group of playwrights was far from an organized movement.
Ionesco claimed instead an affinity for ’Pataphysics and its creator Alfred Jarry. He was also a great admirer of the Dadaists and Surrealists, especially his fellow countryman Tristan Tzara. Ionesco became friends with the founder of Surrealism, André Breton, whom he revered. In Present Past, Past Present, Ionesco wrote, "Breton taught us to destroy the walls of the real that separate us from reality, to participate in being so as to live as if it were the first day of creation, a day that would every day be the first day of new creations." [5] Raymond Queneau, a former associate of Breton and a champion of Ionesco's work, was a member of the Collège de ’Pataphysique and a founder of Oulipo, two groups with which Ionesco was associated.
Eugène Ionesco (1909. november 26., Slatina, Románia – 1994. március 29., Párizs) román-francia származású francia író, az abszurd dráma és az abszurd színház egyik megteremtője. A Patafizikai Társaság egyik tagja.

1909. november 26-án látta meg a napvilágot az Olt megyei Slatina városában, Romániában. Apja román, míg anyja francia zsidó volt, így gyermekkorának jelentős részét Franciaországban tölthette, de a szülei válása után, 1925-ben visszatért apjával Romániába. A bukaresti egyetemen szerzett francia nyelvtanári diplomát 1933-ban, diplomamunkáját a francia irodalomról írta. Az egyetemen ismerkedett meg és lett életreszóló barátja Emil Cioran és Mircea Eliade.
1936-ban nősült meg, házasságából egy lánya született. 1938-ban családjával visszatért Franciaországba, hogy anyagot gyűjthessen a doktori cím megszerzéséhez szükséges munkájához. A II. világháború ezen gyűjtőmunka közben érte őket, ezért úgy döntöttek, hogy maradnak, Marseille-ben telepedtek le. Párizs 1944-es felszabadítása után nem sokkal azonban a tengerpartról a francia fővárosba költöztek. 1948-ban egy angol nyelvkönyv példamondatainak tanulmányozása közben döbbent rá a kispolgári lét abszurditására. Első abszurd darabját A kopasz énekesnő-t is ebben az évben írta, mely 1950-ben került színpadra, megteremtve ezzel az abszurd színház világát, ugyanis a darab színpadi rendezése is a könyvből áradó abszurditást tükrözte. (Egész addigi és azt követő életében is ódzkodott a „rendes” színházaktól). 1967-ben látogatást tett Izraelben, ezután tudomásul vette a félzsidó származását firtató pletykákat és híreszteléseket.
1970-ben az Académie française (Francia Akadémia) rendes tagjává választotta[1]. 1994. március 29-én, életének 84. évében érte a halál.
Mivel szinte kizárólag francia nyelven írt, joggal tekintik – félig román származása ellenére – francia írónak. Romániában ma az egyik legnagyobb tiszteletnek örvendő szerző.

Még életében díszdoktora lett a New York-i, a leuveni, a warwicki és a tel avivi egyetemnek, illetve számos díjat is kapott, közülük a legismertebbek:
a Tours Fesztivál filmdíja, 1959
Prix Italia, 1963
az íróközösség színházdíja, 1966
nemzeti nagydíj a színházért, 1969
monacói fődíj, 1969
osztrák állami kitüntetés az európai irodalomért tett szolgálatai elismeréséül, (1970)
Jeruzsálem-díj, 1973