Winter 2024

If I were to meet with Irving Howe today, in a New York coffee shop, or at Drenka Willen’s* lovely dinner table, or in our kitchen here in Budapest, where my wife and I would invite a few friends to …

A moral being looks on other human beings as ends and not means. Is there such a thing as a moral being? Shrewd behavior implies inducing another to do what suits me. The other’s intention is to get me to …

What happened to us between 1956 and 1989? Not much, only our time passed by. We did go back to see the more tepid and longer version of the same old show. Restrictions on our freedom of expression and movement …

I have been living in Budapest for decades now, but I wouldn’t dare to say that I know the city. Everyone there seems to know something that I don’t. Simply looking at other people is enough to make me feel …

Hungary lost her independence four and a half centuries ago and has not regained it since. There was always a great power nearby that kept occupying troops on our soil in peacetime and held our people under its sway with …

Literature is an ironic mask. It knows that’s what it is. A nonironic mask is a lie. The mask is a metaphor for the face; it is at once sharp featured and enigmatic. The faces of others are a few simplified lines; when recalling them, …