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hostility on us. A woman came up and asked me if I
would take some medicine to a son in Budapest, and I
said, “If they agree here I will do it.” And that was the
last I saw of her. I think there was a testing operation
going. It was spooky.
RPM: Oh, so she was really working for the
government.
BB: That’s my guess. And finally somebody came
out, all smiles, and said we have your visas. Have a
nice trip. At which point another woman came over
with some flowers for us. So we got on the boat, went
to Budapest, and we were met by the secretary of the
PEN club. I was wringing wet from all this. In a way
it was an adventure. We were regaled for the first
week we were there; somebody would pick us up
every day and take us to a different place, a different
city. Illýes’s son-in-law took us to Lake Balaton,
which is a wonderful body of water; it’s the largest
lake in Europe. And Illýes wasn’t there, but we saw
his house and somebody else took us to Szentendre,
which is an artsy town up the river, and so I didn’t
start working for close to a week. And I went to the
PEN club and to this huge conference room, which
was to be my office. Märia Körösy was at the desk,
and my immediate reaction was that she reminded me
of an actress in some movie about German
concentration camps. I don’t think she would like to
hear this, but I found her at first in a way frightening,
though that feeling passed very quickly, and we’re
now friends. But, yes, I knew the hotel where we were
put up was bugged, as well as the office. So this was
exciting.
RPM: At this point you had done no translation. They
just knew you were coming.
BB: No, I had done a first draft of Ágnes’ poems,
which accounted for my invitation, and I went over it
with her. There was an Americanist from the
university who was with us to make sure that there
was no language problem. Incidentally, it wasn’t a
case of a language problem. It was a case of this
Americanist not really understanding what Ágnes was
up to in her poems.
RPM: And neither of you could say it right out.
BB: That’s right. At one point Ágnes said, “Bruce
understands the poem, let’s go on to another one.”
RPM: So let’s go back to where we were a little while
ago. In addition to this sort of spy adventure going on,
there was also the aspect of poets being stars. Can you
talk about how that manifested itself
BB: One of the experiences that may not have been
typical was when we were in a restaurant — it was a
wonderful restaurant — and the waiter asked me in
French what we were doing there. And I said I was
there translating, and this excited him and he asked
me who I was translating. When I said Ágnes Nemes
Nagy, his eyes lit up. He said, “Have you met her” I
said, “Yes, yes, I had lunch with her today.” Well, I
was his hero. And that may not have been typical. But
it impressed the hell out of me at the time. And
photographers were all around. It wasn’t exactly a
paparazzi bit, but guys would come in and shoot us.
And when I gave a reading, it was reported. I felt
more important than I’d ever felt here.
RPM: But you never encountered any difficulties,
nobody ever tried to stop you or change what you
wrote
BB: Well, wait a minute. Yes. My introduction to
Ágnes Nemes Nagy’s book was published in what
was then the New Hungarian Quarterly. I’d made a
reference to Pasternak, and the editor, Miklós Vajda,
said, “Come on, Bruce, you know better than to think
I can utter that name on paper.” Pasternak was a nonperson.
It wasn’t any major thing, so I said, “I’ll cut it
out.”
RPM: Had it been unconscious on your part
BB: I think it was unconscious. I guess I knew that
Pasternak hadn’t been published in Hungary. But just
to mention the name didn’t strike me as that bad, but it
would have been bad. I should add that Vajda was as
critical of the regime as anybody. He was just
exercising the sort of self-censorship that enabled him
to do his job.
RPM: When I was a student in 1973, I went to
Hungary and hung out with some Hungarian young
people, and what they did when they wanted to break
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