After the great success of Spanish Voices/Voces en Español in December 2023, the Mechelen non-profit association Cultural Bridges in Belgium (CBiB) is organising Hungarian Voices/Magyar Hangok in October 2024, in cooperation with International Literature House Passa Porta and theater arsenaal.
It will be a special episode: Hungarian Voices will be the closing event of city festival Construct Europe. After all, in June, our country passed the baton to Hungary as president of the Council of the European Union. There’s no better occasion to turn the spotlight on Hungarian literature and culture and listen to its critical voices.
Hungarian Voices/Magyar Hangok aims to highlight the richness and beauty of Hungarian language and literature. Therefore, we invite four contemporary writers, poets and translators to Mechelen, to recite from their own oeuvre or make a selection from their personal canon.
András Forgách (1952) got his international breakthrough with Zehuse (The Act of My Mother), a monumental, autobiographical novel about family secrets in a communist dictatorship. Before the fall of the Iron Curtain, he was known as a dissident, but nowadays this author of novels and plays and visual artist is considered a prominent figure of Hungary’s cultural world.
Ádám Nádasdy (born 1947) is both writer, poet, translator, essayist and linguist. He is a master of the short story, which does not prevent him from having translations of Dante and Shakespeare to his name. In Mechelen, he will perform new work alongside fragments from his translated collection of poetry De Suikerspinverkoper.
Flemish poet and translator Sven Cooremans (b. 1970) pays homage to the renowned Hungarian-Jewish poet Miklós Radnóti (1909-1944) who met a tragic end during a death march from a Nazi concentration camp. Cooremans draagt voor uit de wereldberoemde gedichten die postuum werden ontdekt toen Radnóti’s lichaam uit een massagraf werd geborgen. He further performs his own poems inspired by Radnóti’s death march, which he walked himself. The impressions of this extraordinary journey have since been translated into Hungarian by Péter Boszik and Judit Gera.
Dutch-Hungarian Mari Alföldy (1962) is incontournable as a translator and connoisseur of contemporary Hungarian literature. She received awards for her translation of Nobel Prize for Literature winner László Krasznahorkai, and was one of the editors of ‘Where Does Hate Live?’, a collection of critical essays by Hungarian writers and other opinion makers, expressing concern about the intellectual climate in their country. Alföldy, as fluent in Hungarian as in Dutch, brings a selection of prose and poetry to Mechelen.
Bilingualism is essential at Voices. While authors read in Hungarian, the translation is synchronously projected on a large screen. Afterwards, they will discuss their work with moderator Nicky Aerts (VRT, Klara). Hedwig Gerits (CLT – cvo PRO) is in charge of the bilingual presentation in Dutch and Hungarian.
No Voices without music. We found none other than the brilliant and adventurous violinist Tcha Limberger (1977) willing to grace the programme with music that cannot be pigeonholed, but in which the Balkans with its rich Roma sounds will certainly resonate.
The programme will last from 3pm to 6pm. Hungarian delicacies will be offered during the interval and after the performances. This time, we present the Voices in the beautifully restored church of Het Predikheren.
