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INTERVIEW WITH BRUCE BERLIND
By Rebekah Presson Mosby
B
ruce Berlind began translating Hungarian poets
thirty years ago, while the Cold War was still
being waged. In addition to falling in love with the
work itself, Berlind possessed just the sort of
adventurous spirit needed for the job of translating
work from a communist country. He fully enjoyed the
frisson of working in a place where informers lurked
and the phones were bugged and drank in the rock star
treatment that he sometimes enjoyed as the friend and
collaborator of Hungary’s most famous poets. As a
widely published poet himself, he embraced the
challenges of exposing the subversive subtext of the
poets while simultaneously veiling the political nature
of their ideas in the interest of the poets’ safety.
Berlind has published six volumes of poems by
Hungarians and hundreds of individual poems. His
books include Charon’s Ferry: Fifty Poems of Gyula
Illyés (Northwestern University Press, 2000), The
Journey of Barbarus by Ottó Orbán (Passeggiata
Press, 1997), Birds and Other Relations: Selected
Poetry of Dezsö Tandori (Princeton University Press,
1986), and Selected Poems of Ágnes Nemes Nagy
(International Writing Program, University of Iowa,
1980). Berlind lives in Hamilton, New York, with his
wife, Jo Anne Pagano, a Professor in the Education
Department at Colgate University. Bruce Berlind is
Charles A. Dana Professor Emeritus of English at
Colgate University. He spoke with Rebekah Presson
Mosby.
Rebekah Presson Mosby: In your introduction to the
Ottó Orbán book, you said that poetry is the national
art form of Hungary. Is that an official designation
Bruce Berlind: No, it’s not official. But everybody
would acknowledge that it is because it’s so intimately
connected to the history of the country. The poet that I
think most Hungarians would say is their greatest is
Sándor Petöfi, who died at a very young age, in his
twenties. He was a colleague of Kossuth in the 1848
Hungarian rebellion, and that was a landmark in
Hungarian history even though it was unsuccessful, as
it was everywhere else in Western Europe. So, since
then, or perhaps earlier, poetry has been considered
the prime art form, in the same way that music is so
important to Austrians, to Viennese.
RPM: What was it about Petöfi that captured people’s
imaginations so much
BB: His patriotism. His “National Song” is the
equivalent of the French “Marseillaise.”
RPM: Do people in Hungary go around quoting
poetry Do most people know poetry
BB: Less in the past quarter-century or so than earlier.
What’s happened now is that Hungary, especially
metropolitan Hungary, has become Westernized, so
kids are more interested in blue jeans than they are in
learning poetry. But, yes, the first time I was in
Hungary, which was in 1977, waiters would be able to
quote poetry. And, so being a poet and being able to
translate poets, I was a figure. I was interviewed by
Hungarian journalists and television as if I was a
personality.
RPM: Did Hungary find you or did you find Hungary
as a venue for translation
BB: That’s a long story. Want to hear it
RPM: Yes.
BB: Okay. I got interested in Hungary in 1975 when I
was visiting Ted Hughes and his wife Carol in
Devonshire. It was Easter Sunday, I remember this
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