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Arts and Humanities journals’ primary focus is on presenting theoretical and empirical research in these respective fields. The main goal is to encourage educational research and connect academia to the scientific community. Researchers and scholars need to share their research findings with others to help better understand and act on the ongoing social changes in the field. The Arts and Humanities journals aim to provide a platform for everyone who shares a common interest in these fields and to group all the latest field findings in one place.

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Abstract

Jason's coming back to Iolcus embodies the return from exile after an unjustified usurpation. Pelias overthrew his half-brother Aeson, and he forced the latter's new-born Jason into exile. In the Fourth Pythian Ode for Arcesilaus IV of Cyrene, Pindar's mythical digression focuses on the perspective of the exile Jason coming back to Iolcus. Pindar focuses on this story in fuller detail because he favors the recall of the exile Damophilus, a disgraced member of the aristocracy from Cyrene. The mythical conflict of the Aeolid family corresponds to the historical internal strife among the Battiads. The opposition to this dynasty should shortly put an end to their power after the overthrow of Arcesilaus IV. Given his authority as initiated into poetry, Pindar has the right to advise the king to reconcile with his opponents. Finally, this Ode is written to support the right of Damophilus, who was a close friend of Pindar, to be allowed to return to his homeland.

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Abstract

As mythological figures, Demeter and Kore stand together as timeless symbols of this moment of transition between maidenhood, wifehood, and then motherhood. While contemplating these goddesses, historically situated and embodied women surely remembered — or learned soon enough — that pregnancies and babies would follow their marriage. The mythological narrative, however, focuses on this crucial transition rather than on the effective beginning of motherhood through pregnancy and childbirth. Kore is the maiden, the new bride, and the mother-to-be. She never becomes a mother.

The absence of offspring can be explained by the functional reading we just mentioned: she is a mother-to-be, not a mother. Demeter, in the Eleusinian myth, plays the role of the mother. There is, however, another way that can be explored in this regard and that is not necessarily in contrast with the first one: Kore/Persephone's marriage is sterile since it takes place in the underworld. There is no life in the afterworld; therefore, she can not give birth to a child. This paper will explore if the journey of Kore/Persephone to the Hades can be seen as a path to infertility.

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Abstract

“Hannibal's War” was what Carthage called the Second Punic War from 218–202 BCE because it was clear from the outset Carthaginian leadership was not fully participatory or even much engaged with him and his long Italian campaign. The signs of estrangement were seen at least as early as Hannibal's siege of Saguntum in 219 BCE when Carthage's Gerousia or Council of Elders took no responsibility with the envoy from Rome complaining about his “brutal” taking of Saguntum. But perhaps it is more important to examine exactly where – and when – Hannibal's real home might have been, since he could hardly call Carthage his true home, as this brief paper proposes. Discussion follows what Hannibal learned in Iberia and how important Iberia as his adopted homeland and its abundant silver meant to him instead – not Carthage – and how Iberia under his father Hamilcar prepared his lifelong stratagems for war, with Scipio as his eventual young rival student from Rome leading to Zama, which brought Hannibal back to Carthage under the worst circumstances and a periphery of his prior successes. Whether or not Hannibal's return to Carthage in 203–202 BCE can be called a “homecoming” is certainly moot in many ways, especially given that it was not his home for most of his life. Decades later, given his estrangement from Carthage, Scipio's famous epitaph could just as well be Hannibal's.

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Abstract

First, we will retrace the life and brilliant career of this Roman senator of Bithynian origins who came from an ancient family of public figures and who had served five or six emperors and been friends with several of them, having been twice appointed to the role of consul.

Then we will consider the nature of his role as Senator coming from an Eastern province and its relationship with Roman power. We will come to see that he represents the perfect example of his theory of the association of provincial élites coming to power, which was developed at length in his work, Roman History, which he produced in Greek for a Greek readership.

Finally, rather paradoxically, we will consider how he sees himself in a largely bi-lingual and bi-cultural empire and how he speaks of his homeland with a view to determining whether his attachment to his ‘little country’ is the stronger and if his numerous sojourns in Rome amount to little more than a ‘golden exile’ for him.

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Abstract

Livy's narrative, far from being a faithful and scrupulous account of historical facts, is first and foremost a piece of literary, a narration, a collection of exempla that should serve as models or anti-models for readers, as Livy himself says in his Praefatio (Liv. Praef. 10). In his writing work, he follows guiding principles, the most important of which is the dialectic of contrasts, inspired by oratory and rhetoric. On the basis of different examples from the first decade of Ab Urbe condita, the objective of this article is to examine how this principle of writing was applied to the theme of Returns (a motif well known in the imaginary and literature of classical Antiquity). Thus, it appears that each episode of return or attempt to return is systematically preceded by an episode of withdrawal from the civic community, with which it is contrasted in various ways. Examples of such withdrawal-return antagonist pairs are numerous, and they concern both individual characters (Tarquin the Proud, Coriolanus, Cincinnatus, Kaeso Quinctius, etc.) and collective ensembles (in the form of a secessio of an entire ordo).

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Abstract

In this paper I wish to analyze the impossible return home, namely that of Lucius in Book XI of Apuleius' Metamorphoses. Isis had decided that this would be so because she wished to wrest her new follower from the self-destructive passions he had developed in his home country, Corinth. She inspired him to leave his homeland and to make an initiatory voyage to Rome, where he would henceforth have to live as a perpetual exile among the priests of Isis (although he thereafter was safe from the evil passions he contracted in Corinth). I want to analyze this story. First of all, we will focus upon these passions which so beset Lucius in his homeland, then we will follow the voyage he took to Rome and finally we will see how he lives as an exile in Rome and, in conclusion, what are the benefits he obtains from his renunciation of a return to his homeland.

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Abstract

For Homer, Cicero, and Ovid, exile is equivalent to death, or even worse. Vergil's Aeneas is torn between his old homeland of Troy and the new home he must create in Italy, but he overcomes his nostalgia. Aeneas is consoled by the Stoic doctrine that he is obeying Fate, which governs the entire world, and by the Cynic view that he can carry his true self and identity with him anywhere he goes. In Book 6 of the Aeneid, he is given a revelation about reincarnation that is based on the Republics of Plato and Cicero. This teaching that all of life is an exile from heaven contrasts sharply with the worldly mission of conquest that Aeneas must follow in Italy. Vergil's sympathies lie with the exile rather than the conqueror.

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Abstract

Eurydice could not come back to this world because Orpheus looked back at her. Persephone had forbidden this, but Orpheus disobeyed. Is there a logic for such a rule? A relief in the Archaeological Museum in Naples shows Orpheus looking at his wife after having removed a veil from her face, and the face of dead persons was a sensible element in ancient funerary art. We find two forms of hiding their face: by veiling it or by depicting the person but not the face, by leaving it unwrought. Euripides and several Roman sarcophagi depict Alcestis with her head veiled after her return to the house of her husband. On the other hand, some funerary busts from the necropolis of Cyrene show deceased women with their face flat and many sarcophagi of the Roman period are completely sculptured except the face of the buried person. The current explanation based on an untimely death cannot explain the large number of such cases; it would have been absurd to wait for the death of the customer before carving his or her portrait. There was a religious rule forbidding the vision of the face of dead persons, but it is impossible to ascertain what kind of people abided by this law and what religious stream forbade this.

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Abstract

The nostos, the return home in Greek mythology, is most often a journey over the sea, and it is the god Poseidon who rules the sea, both ensuring the safe passage of fishermen and sailors and causing disasters to individuals like Ajax son of Oileus, sometimes through obstacles like his daughter Charybdis. Most famously, he uses his power to hinder the nostos of Odysseus, all the while knowing he cannot prevent him from reaching home. This example illustrates how a god who may once have been the most powerful deity can no longer control ultimate results. As his power declines over the centuries, that of Zeus increases.

It is also by sea that we see the ships in Isaiah 23, attempting to return to their homes in Sidon and Tyre on the eastern Mediterranean coast. In this Biblical passage from the eighth century BCE, the ships wail when they see that their seaport homes have been destroyed; there are no homes to which they can return. The great god of the Sea and the epichoric gods have failed to protect the cities which are considered their progeny. The Israelite prophet mocks their powerlessness and celebrates the power of his One God. There is no nostos, no homecoming for ships because they no longer have homes. Just as Poseidon could not prevent Odysseus from his nostos, the so-called Averter of Disaster has not prevented the disaster that has befallen his children.

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Abstract

This paper uses a corpus linguistic approach to investigate finite verbs co-occurring with infinitives. It aims to explore a range of similar verbs along a set of formal-distributional features based on Kálmán C. et al.'s (1989) study. We used hierarchical agglomerative clustering to analyze the data. The analysis identifies four clusters, two comprising verbs more auxiliary-like than the others. The results of this experiment are broadly similar to those of Kálmán C. et al. (1989); however, we also find remarkable differences. Most importantly, the so-called stress-avoiding verbs are likely to occur between the preverb and its associated infinitive, indicating that they are much closer to central auxiliaries than previously assumed.

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Ornas (also Hornach) appears in the mentions of several Latin authors in the mid-thirteenth century as an important city deep in Asia that had been conquered by the Mongols. There have been several past suggestions by scholars for its identity; the scattered mentions of Ornas (Hornach) have been variously suggested to refer to Tana, Otrar, or Konye-Urgench. The present paper argues that these references, though confused on matters of geography since the Western European authors were writing about largely unknown regions that they did not personally visit, are typically references to the city of Konye-Urgench. The Latin authors’ descriptions of its fall to the Mongols unquestionably draw parallels with Middle Eastern, Rus’, Chinese, and Mongol accounts. This paper argues that the Latin references to Ornas’ proximity to a nearby sea are related to the Aral Sea which had southerly stretches very close to Konya-Urgench as is indicated, for instance from Russian survey maps of the nineteenth century. This identification allows us to place John of Plano Carpini’s description of the fall of Ornas within a larger, cohesive narrative which, though confused on points, offers insights on the fall of the Khwarazmian Empire in the early 1220s.

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This paper focuses on a newly identified Sanskrit manuscript of the Saptaguṇavarṇanā parikathā (The Sermon Describing the Seven Qualities), which is currently preserved at the Drepung Monastery in Tibet. It presents the Sanskrit version of the text for the first time, provides a critical edition and translation, and offers a comparative analysis of the Tibetan translation and the Tangut manuscript, known as Инв. № 804. The paper addresses mistakes and omissions in the Sanskrit manuscript, Tibetan and Tangut translations, as well as related misreadings in the scholarship, thus advancing understanding of non-sūtra texts in Tangut Buddhism.

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The aim of the article is to explore the relationship between cosmo-anthropogony and the imamology of Shi’ism through its earliest sources in the pre-Buyid Hadith corpus. It shows that the figure of the Divine Guide is the axis around which creation revolves. Early Shi’ism thus appears to be heir to some of the great doctrines of the spiritual and intellectual traditions of late Antiquity.

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In this article I intended to further explore Jürgen Frembgen’s supposition about the late presence of the spotted hyena in South Asia with the help of available textual sources. My aim was to determine what kind of animal is meant by the word tarakṣu, which is the common Sanskrit name for the hyena.

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Abstract

Childhood nutrition is an important element of lifestyle research, since the regularity and nutritional content of our meals as children, and the way in which they are eaten, determine our physical and mental health throughout our lives. Prior to 2018, there was no basic interdisciplinary research on this topic in Hungary, thus to fill the gap, an interdisciplinary research group was established in 2018 at the Institute of Ethnography, which carried out nationwide research. The present study is based on fieldwork undertaken by the author in two schools — the János Lenkey Primary School in Eger (formerly Primary School No. 1) and the Tamás Bolyki Primary School in Ózd — as well as a large amount of information gleaned from questionnaires and interviews. My research was also extended in terms of a historical and geographical perspective: I studied archival sources and expanded the field of my investigations by including Salgótarján, a research location familiar from my earlier research, which provided a vantage point alongside Ózd and Eger, as a third city typical of Northern Hungary. Public catering for children has undergone significant changes in the last six to seven years, although prior to this it had appeared relatively uniform, in line with the ingredients available at the time. The obligation to provide public catering and the general obligation to work, which began in the Rákosi era and culminated in the Kádár era, significantly changed family eating habits. Traditional elements typical of a particular locality disappeared as the globalization efforts of socialism were accomplished. The ever-decreasing amount of time devoted to preparing, cooking, and consuming food moved society in the direction of canteens, fast-food restaurants, and later, after the regime change, global fast-food chains. Education on proper nutrition is not currently part of academic teacher training, thus for want of a better alternative, teachers organize children's school meals based on their own experience and socialization or following the school's regulations (where they exist), without having a unified concept. The number of meals eaten at home has been reduced to light breakfasts, lunches, and dinners, with families mostly sitting down together at the table for dinner, when they often consume ready meals. Lack of contact with foodstuffs and with the person preparing the food has a negative impact on children's psychological development. Relying on extensive basic research and participant observation, and through the joint efforts of specialists from several fields of the social sciences, a significant improvement could be achieved in both public catering and education on healthy nutrition.

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Abstract

In Hungary, about half of the 3–18 age group has regularly used school food service. This paper focuses on the operation and social embeddedness of school canteens and the at-home eating habits of the families involved. My conclusions are based on the findings of my interdisciplinary research group. Ethnographers from the RCH Institute of Ethnology and dietitians from the National Institute of Pharmacy and Nutrition have been studying school food from 2018 to 2023. We selected a few model settlements: in addition to the capital, Budapest, three smaller towns, and two villages. Through questionnaires, interviews, and fieldwork observations, we investigated cooking, serving, meal courses, meal time, eating habits, preferences, as well as the nutritional knowledge of students, teachers, kitchen staff, and parents. Our goal, among other things, is to collect best practices and facilitate communication between participants. Some examples from our research highlight the special role of the centrally regulated school food in local food culture, and difficulties with social and historical roots can occasionally hamper school lunches in becoming a socially accepted model of a healthy diet. The school canteen works best at sites where cooking takes place within the school premises. There is a strong connection between the kitchen staff and the teachers, and they work together in the interest of the children. The value of food and its appreciation is demonstrated by how it is treated and how it is talked about. Communication about food in the canteen should be based on food preparation at home, where parents and children work together. The operation of canteens has become particularly problematic following the measures introduced during the coronavirus pandemic. A sustainable, enjoyable canteen can only be realized through the regular communication of schools and school kitchens, as well as children and their parents. Our findings are presented to our respondents, along with providing them with a comparison of different examples.

Open access

School Meals on the Menu

Studies on the Practices of Children's Catering

Acta Ethnographica Hungarica
Author:
Anikó Báti
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Abstract

To explore if translation-intrinsic features are apparent in other types of bilingualism-influenced constrained language use such as non-native production, this study approaches syntactic and typological properties of constrained English translated from Chinese and written by native Chinese speakers via two cognitively-motivated dependency metrics, viz. mean dependency distance (MDD) and dependency direction (DDir). Results of this study show that translated English (both L1 and L2) and non-native English differ from the non-constrained native English in a similar way yet to a slightly different extent, but not from each other in both indicators. Syntactically, bilingually-constrained varieties exhibit reduced syntactic complexity with shorter MDDs, suggesting a simplification tendency. Typologically, cross-linguistic influences are detected in constrained varieties for being more head-final in word-order primed by the source or native language Chinese. Surprisingly, it seems that language directionality affects, albeit marginally, the affinity between constrained varieties, with non-native English being more syntactically and typologically similar to translated English from L1 than from L2.

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События 2014 и 2022 гг. в новой русской лексике

The Events of 2014 and 2022 in the New Russian Vocabulary

Studia Slavica
Author:
С. Д. ЛЕВИНА

Статья посвящена процессам в русской лексике и фразеологии 2014 и 2022 гг., вызванным важ-нейшим событием этих лет – конфликтом России и Украины, перешедшим в вооруженное про-тивостояние. В материалах группы словарей новых слов ИЛИ РАН эта тематическая группа круп-нейшая среди неологизмов 2014 г., а в 2022 г. и вовсе составляет 2/3 всего материала. Лексика этих лет интересна в первую очередь самим наличием такой явно доминирующей тематической группы, отсутствующей или малоактивной в другие годы. Цель работы – выявить некоторые тенденции, под влиянием которых появляются и функционируют слова и фразеологизмы, относящиеся к исследу-емой группе.

В статье рассматриваются способы маркирования чужого; деривация от ключевых слов 2014 и 2022 гг.; эвфемизация лексики этой тематической группы и сопротивление этой тенденции.

Типичная для ситуации острого конфликта лексика, в том числе относящаяся к языку вражды, часто создается в эти годы на основе политической, идеологической и военной лексики, связанной с предыдущими историческими периодами, прежде всего с периодом Второй мировой войны. Новые номинации образуются на основе таких слов, как фашизм, нацизм, хунта, сионистский, причем но-сителям языка более важна их коннотация, чем денотат. Развиваются новые значения у сниженной лексики, изначально обозначавшей понятия, связанные с ультраправой идеологией, чуждой гово-рящему. Для исследуемой лексики характерна идеологическая энантиосемия: употребление одних и тех же языковых единиц разными сторонами конфликта по отношению к оппонентам или упо-требление одних и тех же языковых единиц обеими сторонами конфликта по отношению к одному и тому же денотату. В голофрастических конструкциях, возникших в результате лексикализации высказываний, говорящий кратко формулирует чуждую ему позицию, выражая к ней собственное отношение. Таких неологизмов немного, но среди них есть частотные и являющиеся вершинами новых словообразовательных гнезд. Еще один способ дистанцирования говорящего от предмета речи – употребление чуждых говорящему языковых форм.

В результате деривации от слов крымнаш, СВО, символа Z, а также русской транскрипции на-звания этой буквы зет образуются сверхпродуктивные гнезда, причем в случае с крымнаш-, зет- и Z- – от нетипичных для русского словообразования основ. Рассмотрено также появление наимено-ваний самой буквы Z как символа военных действий России на территории Украины.

Крайне важная тенденция в лексике и фразеологии 2022 г. – эвфемизация. Причина появления эвфемизмов – экстралингвистическая: власть создает эвфемизмы, стремясь сформировать опреде-ленный дискурс для обсуждения происходящих событий, а часть носителей языка стремится этого дискурса избежать – и создает иные эвфемизмы. Ответом на эвфемизацию становится не только создание новых эвфемизмов, но и языковая игра с эвфемизмами существующими.

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Емоційний світ колоніального суб’єкта у прозі Г. Квітки-Основ’яненка і В. Наріжного

Феномен ресентименту

The Emotional World of the Colonial Subject in the Prose of Hryhorii Kvitka-Osnovianenko and Vasyl’ Narizhnyi: The Phenomenon of Resentment

Studia Slavica
Author:
Артур Малиновський

Обґрунтувано аспекти психопоетики і психоісторії як принципово нові дослідницькі стратегій в осягненні творчих здобутків української літератури. Застосована у статті методологія нового історизму дозволила розглянути втілені в літературі історичні образи крізь призму емоцій, колек-тивного психічного досвіду нації. Підкреслено конструктивну роль емоцій у транстекстуальних практиках, міграціях сюжетів, зіставлених у перспективі віддалених культурних епох. У площині культурного трансферу емоції досліджуються у творах Г. Квітки-Основ’яненка і В. Наріжного.

Розглянуто колоніальний ресентимент як національний психоемоційний комплекс, прояв колек-тивної чутливості, троп, фігуру мовлення, елемент контроверсійного письма в українській літерату-рі. Застосування емоціонологічного підходу до вивчення націй, етнічних груп вельми продуктивне з огляду на створення альтернативних психоісторій і психопоетики національних літератур, пост-колоніального прочитання традиційних наративів, локальної історії як картографованої чутливо-сті. Зосереджено увагу на ресентименті, варіативності його проявів у творах письменників, просте-жено зв’язок комплексу національно-історичної образи з психологією колоніальної впокореності і підімперським статусом самої української літератури першої половини XIX ст. Доведено доціль-ність антропологічного підходу до типології націй як емоційних спільнот з притаманними їм емо-ційними стандартами і режимами, обґрунтовано потужний вплив європейських романтичних док-трин, зокрема Й. Г. Гердера, на формування націєцентризму української літератури. Акцентовано національну специфіку емоційної поведінки і пов’язаних з нею проявів помсти, класової ненависті, насильства, соціальної агресії, виявлено вплив повстанських рухів, психології бунту на формування антиколоніального світогляду. Твори В. Наріжного і Г. Квітки-Основ’яненка проаналізовано з точ-ки зору антропологізації жанру, репрезентації національної історії в жанрових формах і в площині націєрозповідності.

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Abstract

Is György Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre (1974–1977/1996) a dystopian work, or rather one of utopia? Traditionally, dystopia and utopia have formed an alternative. Yet Ligeti and librettist Michael Meschke enact an intertwinement of dystopia and utopia, in a series of moves and countermoves: (1) Death threatens to eliminate all life. (2) The earth is saved from the fate of the destruction of life – “Death is dead” (II/4). (3) Yet “Breughelland” is and will remain a crude and cruel tyranny. (4) The farcical character of the whole calls into question whether any of the previous moves can be taken seriously. Ligeti's/Meschke's subversion of the antinomy of utopia and dystopia, introduced in the opening “Breughellandlied,” turns out to be in the spirit of Piet the Pot's namesake Pieter Breughel the Elder, as a closer look at his 1567 painting Het Luilekkerland, an inspiration already to de Ghelderode, reveals. The irritating role thus assigned to consumption, however, seems to trivially lose all ambiguity through the words of the opera's final stanza. While this is a weighty objection to the reading proposed here, the conclusion attempts to outline a rejoinder to it.

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Abstract

This article traces references to nature and naturalism (understood as an attempt to ground and legitimize art in natural phenomena) in Ligeti's writings, but also in selected aspects of his oeuvre. The references to nature recur here in various manifestations, with romantic depictions of nature appearing alongside more recent, modernist approaches. The concept of nature is associated with the romantic setting for human emotions, with the discovery of scientific laws, with listening to soundscape, with phenomena of auditory perception and with the spectral explorations of sound. Although nature is not a central, strategic concept for Ligeti, it remains a constant, even if hidden, context for his work, a point of reference.

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For the Honorary Doctorate of Sir John Eliot Gardiner

Liszt Academy of Music, January 15, 2023

Studia Musicologica
Author:
Katalin Komlós
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Studia Musicologica
Authors:
Anna Dalos
,
Julia Heimerdinger
,
Márton Kerékfy
, and
Heidy Zimmermann
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Abstract

Discussing his Horn Trio, György Ligeti imaginatively describes the second movement as a dance that was “inspired by different folk musics of nonexistent people, as if Hungary, Romania, and all of the Balkans were located somewhere between Africa and the Caribbean.” And in more general remarks about his works, he goes on to suggest that, rather than overtly referencing their stylistic features, he abstracted technical principles from various traditions and combined them into an idiosyncratically amalgamated musical language. This essay shows an expansive approach to hybridity in Ligeti's Violin Concerto and Hamburg Concerto, going well beyond previous remarks about African rhythmic influences. Ligeti's practice encompasses not only rhythm, but also texture, pitch, and tuning systems; it spans a wider breadth of traditions as well, including newly identified sources such as flute and panpipe ensembles from New Guinea and yodeling traditions from across the globe. An analysis of passages from these late concertos – undertaken alongside evidence from his ethnomusicological sources, recordings, and sketches housed at the Paul Sacher Stiftung – demonstrates the intricacies and patterns of Ligeti's late style and the compelling statement it makes about the role of hybridity and globalization in contemporary life.

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Abstract

György Ligeti was very interested in many artistic and scientific fields and drew inspiration for his compositional work from them (his engagement with mathematics – particularly fractal geometry and chaos theory – is perhaps the best known). In this chapter I compare the concept of artistic research with Ligeti's practice and oeuvre. While the notion of artistic research was only appearing in embryonic form during the latter stages of Ligeti's career, many – though not all – of his statements seem to be suitable for describing his artistic processes. The benefit of this investigation is expected to be twofold: applying the concept of artistic research to Ligeti's approaches and practices should yield new insights on the relationship between his work and his interest in other humanities and sciences. Yet this look at Ligeti may also help to refine the concept of artistic research as discussed and applied to the artistic output of today.

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Abstract

Like his fellow members of the Western European musical avantgarde of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, Ligeti often expressed himself in articles or lectures on theoretical and analytical topics. Unlike his contemporaries, however, he also wrote on matters autobiographical. Though his first self-examination, dating from 1971, is still concerned overwhelmingly with compositional theory, from the end of that decade he returned several times to personal experiences, especially those of his childhood years and early adulthood. These seemed to become important again now that the musical climate was turning from a hard objectivity that held the composer's personality to be almost irrelevant towards a fuzzier view of how composers could not but be subjectively engaged in their work. At the same time, in their variety of approach, Ligeti's autobiographical writings refuse to tell a single story.

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Abstract

The code word “Kylwiria” was mentioned by György Ligeti from time to time since the 1970s. At first, it functioned rather abstractly as a working title for the opera that had been in the making since the mid-1960s and eventually mutated into Le Grand Macabre. Later, Ligeti also shared details about the imaginary land of his childhood, providing glimpses of brightly colored maps of that land and underscoring the importance of his childlike fantasy world. This article explores the dimensions of this “private mythology” and its impact on the composer's creative thinking and work. Its documentary evidence – the description of the land of Kylwiria recorded in 1950 in a booklet of more than 70 pages – is presented in examples and examinated for its particularities. On the one hand, it seems that the pioneering exploration of geographical spaces is transferred as a model to the creative exploration of sound spaces. On the other hand, Ligeti's concept of a fantastic counterworld is to be seen in a literary and cultural-historical context, in which it is to be located somewhere between expedition report, travel guide and utopian design. Such an outline sharpens the meaning of Kylwiria as a cipher for creativity in a characteristic mixture of ratio and fantasy.

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Abstract

Sándor Weöres's poetry was a life-long passion and source of inspiration for György Ligeti. This article explores the role Weöres played in Ligeti's early development as a composer by providing insight into the genesis of all of his 13 early settings of Weöres, including the unpublished choral works Hajnal [Dawn] and Tél [Winter], the incomplete song “Nagypapa leszállt a tóba” [Grandpa descended in the pond], and the unfinished oratorio “Istar pokoljárása” [Ishtar's Journey to Hell], and by making some analytical observations on them. Ligeti's early settings of Weöres were composed in three periods. The first stage in 1946–1947 was his compositional discovery of Weöres's poetry, which seems to have acted as a fuel and a challenge for him, triggering something of a musical self-liberation. His Weöres settings in 1949–1950 may be seen as a sign of solidarity with the poet effectively silenced by Communist state authorities, while in 1952–1955, Weöres texts seem to have served specifically as material for Ligeti's experimentation with static music and serialism.

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“Some Sort of Machine without a Body”

György Ligeti and Antoinette Vischer Explore the Modern Harpsichord

Studia Musicologica
Author:
Elisabeth Reisinger

Abstract

From the mid-1950s, Basel harpsichordist Antoinette Vischer (1909–1973) promoted the harpsichord as a modern instrument, commissioning numerous composers to contribute to a new repertoire. To this end, she turned to György Ligeti, who completed Continuum for her in 1968. The composer had already used the harpsichord in ensembles several times, but now he had to think about it in a soloistic function for the first time, starting from a specific performer with her specific instrument. In this paper, I focus on this relationship between composer, performer-commissioner, and instrument, drawing primarily on the correspondence between Ligeti and Vischer preserved at the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel. These unpublished letters document their collaboration and how both negotiated their artistic positions and aesthetic concepts of the harpsichord as “some sort of machine.” An in-depth analysis of Ligeti and Vischer's exchange about the instrument's peculiarities and performance issues allows us to better understand their self-conception as artists and their ideas of “modernity.” Furthermore, this case study sheds light on a specific period in the history of an instrument that through the efforts of performers like Vischer was transformed from an artifact of the past to an emblem of the present.

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Conservative critic John Borstlap cited Ligeti as a partisan in his fight against the modernist myth of progress in the arts, based on the famous citation “I am in a prison. One wall is the avant-garde, the other is the past. I want to escape.” Ligeti's ambivalence reflected his distaste for art linked to utopian socialist ideals, and for all that was reactionary. Yet he admitted that his own youthful utopian strivings evolved into a desire for complex music that often defied audibility. This essay traces Ligeti's reception history from the late 1950s onward as a reaction to the thwarted utopian strains in his music. For some, Ligeti's music of the 1960s seemed to define “the contemporary problem itself.” But the composer's increased visibility in the 1990s led to demands that he deal with his Jewish heritage and wartime trauma, and cease writing music with a broad appeal. I argue that Ligeti's works reinscribe the past, the personal, and the extramusical as a conscious expression of his prison. They express the nonlinear notion of progress that defines modernism: a vast “tear in the historical process” able to lift music above the scrum of political-aesthetic skirmishes, to a “region which lies elsewhere.”

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On several occasions, Ligeti spoke about an early literary memory that he credited with the origins of his meccanico style. He recalled reading a short story by Gyula Krúdy (1878–1933) at the age of five, in which Krúdy supposedly wrote about a widow who lived in an old house filled with constantly ticking clocks. To date, the best Krúdy experts have been unable to identify the story in question, and it is reasonable to assume that in Ligeti's mind, actual elements from the writer's work were freely recombined and reimagined at a time when the compositions partly inspired by the Krúdy experience had already been written. Ligeti's published interviews contain references to Krúdy that go beyond the story with the clocks, it may be assumed that the writer's influence on the composer goes deeper than what has been acknowledged so far.

In addition, there is an aspect of Ligeti's recollection of the Krúdy story that has not received all the attention it deserves. In his conversations with Péter Várnai, the composer spoke of machines that were working or not working (emphasis mine), and elevators stopping at the wrong floor, or not starting at all. Some of the meccanico works are worth revisiting in search of such “malfunctions” as we try to reimagine the old house where not all the clocks might have been running like clockwork.

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Abstract

Children are a vulnerable group in terms of obesity: nearly 20% of Hungarian kindergarten and school-aged children are overweight or obese. School catering plays a decisive role in shaping children's nutritional behavior. To support the prevention of obesity and to increase the quality of children's diets, legislation passed in 2014 included provisions on school catering. This paper provides a qualitative content analysis of a roundtable discussion on the school catering system that took place at an interdisciplinary conference, with the aim of identifying the most important messages about school meals conveyed by the discussion. During the qualitative analysis of the roundtable discussion, seven main categories emerged: factors supporting the acceptance/implementation of public catering; factors hindering the acceptance/implementation of public catering; everyday problems in the implementation of public catering; the task of caterers and public catering; the transformation of public catering; cooperation among parties with an interest in public catering; and factors helping children to cooperate. The co-occurrence network of subcategories and values can be broken down into one large component and several separate, small components. Thus, it can be concluded that the majority of subthemes and values are grouped into a coherent system. The results point to the key role of school catering in healthy nutrition and nutrition education, and the importance of close cooperation among parties with an interest in school catering to promote the social acceptance of catering and the prevention of childhood obesity.

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Abstract

The starting point for the present study is the thematization of the concept of “Jewish cultural heritage” and, in this context, the outlining of the role and position of cemeteries in Jewish tradition. The case study focuses on the Hungarian village of Apc, which was home to a Jewish community of just over a hundred people before World War II. After the Holocaust, only a few survivors returned to the settlement; some of them emigrated, while others remained in Apc for the rest of their lives. In recent decades, what has become of the cemetery, one of the most important sites for the former Jewish community of Apc? This paper explores the process of the heritagization of the local Jewish cemetery, one of the activities carried out by the Together for Apc Association, a civil society initiative launched two decades ago. In 2003, the dilapidated and abandoned “Israelite cemetery” was the first of the settlement's deteriorating assets to be declared as local cultural heritage. With the involvement of various actors from the local community (volunteers and local entrepreneurs), and in contact with Jewish organizations (the Federation of Hungarian Jewish Communities, the Foundation for Hungarian Jewish Cemeteries), the cemetery was restored over a period of two years and was “inaugurated” in 2006 in the presence of a rabbi, a cantor, a Jewish secular leader, Holocaust survivors and members of the local society. In the fifteen years since then, care has been taken to ensure that the achievements are sustainable and maintained, and the cemetery has been kept open not only for the descendants of the Jewish community but for all interested parties. But the salvaging of the Apc Jewish cemetery is not only an example of the preservation of the built heritage of a single community: while for the village residents it forms part of their local identity, for the Jewish organizations it represents part of their Jewish identity. What happens when two communities stake a claim to the heritagization of the same site? As a shared goal, or “cause,” the “bipolar” process of the heritagization of the Jewish cemetery in Apc has provided an opportunity for dialogue, collective thinking, and problem solving between Jewish and non-Jewish society, even if the various heritagization goals, coming from different directions, have in many cases generated tensions.

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Abstract

Gastronomy and meals have always played a key role in shaping cultural characteristics, and it is for this very reason that cultural anthropology pays particular attention to these topics. In this paper, we present several analytical dimensions that can be applied to the analysis of food culture, partly from a cultural anthropological perspective and partly from a socio-semiotic perspective. Firstly, we review those aspects of gastro-semiotics that help us to organize foods according to various dichotomies and polarities. We discuss, on the one hand, those aspects that may indicate differences between cultures and subcultures, and on the other those that relate to temporal differences in food consumption and those that are rooted in material differences among foods. We then list the dimensions that, in the form of general status symbols, may also play a role in the analysis of food. In the present paper we also discuss our longitudinal study The Symbols of Hungarianness (1997 and 2021/22), conducted on a nationwide representative sample of 1,000 people, in which we asked about foods and drinks that are characteristic in terms of national identity and that are thus also suitable for presenting certain typical features of Hungarian cuisine.

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Egy új megközelítés az árokkeretek szarmata temetkezési rítusokban betöltött szerepének vizsgálatához

New approach to the study of the role of encircling ditches in Sarmatian burial rites

Archaeologiai Értesítő
Author:
Balázs Wieszner

Absztrakt

A tanulmány a szarmata árokkereteknek a temetkezési rítusokban betöltött szerepének újfajta megközelítését célozza meg, amely elsősorban a bennük elhelyezett különböző típusú deponálások strukturális mintázatait figyelembe vevő térhasználati modellen alapszik. Az árokkeretekben viszonylagos gyakorisággal kerülnek elő különböző típusú áldozati jellegű edény- és állategyüttesek. A korábbi kutatások ezeket a leleteket csak másodlagosan említették a különböző interpretációkban és azokat az őskultusszal vagy a halotti lakomával hozták összefüggésbe. Pedig az árokkeretekben elhelyezett deponálások egy olyan kötött, szelektivitáson alapuló, ismétlődő viselkedési mintázatot mutatnak, ami az árokkeretek strukturális különbségeinek ellenére is egységesnek tekinthető. Emiatt az árokkeretek temetkezési rítusokban betöltött szerepét célszerűbb a bennük elhelyezett deponálások, illetve azok ismétlődő, standardizáló térhasználati mintázatai révén értelmezni. Az elemzés eredményeként az árokkereteknek a temetkezési rítusokban betöltött szerepében egy olyan egységes társadalmi logika mutatható ki, ami hozzájárulhat a szarmaták társadalmi szerveződésének felvázolásához és megértéséhez.

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Abstract

Bronze vessels as grave goods in the burial of the Vicus at Biatorbágy. In the eastern area of Biatorbágy, north of the Autostrada / No 100, around the tenth kilometer stone in 1991, 1995, 2004 heading the planned construction works rescue excavations were carried out. Here several Roman bronze vessels, probably grave goods, were excavated. This necropolis belonged to the Roman vicus at Biatorbágy. Different types of vessels, a wine jug with a round opening, a handled dish for hand washing, on which are a depiction of a sleeping African and Bacchic attributes, a water jug with a spout, some fragments belonging to bucket or cauldron, a second water jug with sharp projecting shoulder, a jug with round mouth and decorated handle, a bath-saucer came to light. The first jug – compiled from old parts – a strange creation by a local master, was originally produced at the end of the 1st century A.D. The handled dish and the bath-saucer were fabricated at the end of the 1st century A.D.–beginning of the 2nd century A.D. Both water jugs were made around the middle of the 2nd century A.D.

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Abstract

Near Biatorbágy, along the northern side of Road 100, Éva Maróti, archaeologist of the Ferenczy Museum of Szentendre, excavated a part of a cemetery in 2004. 36 early and late Roman graves were found with Avar Period burials mixed in between. The cemetery was used from the second half of the first century to the end of the fourth one. An early Roman horse burial and several undamaged bronze vessels are among the most significant finds. The cemetery begins with three indigenous skeletal burials followed by four cremation ones from the 2nd and 3rd centuries and 27 skeletal burials appearing in the second half of the 3rd century. The richer part of the 4th-century population was buried in stone or brick walled graves. Most grave goods were in the stone walled graves. Glazed jugs and female jewellery must be highlighted amongst these grave goods. The cemetery most likely belonged to the Roman settlement excavated on the border of Biatorbágy and Törökbálint being inhabited for several centuries. The burials fit in with the cemeteries of the vici (Budaörs, Biatorbágy, Páty) in the southwestern area of Aquincum.

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Abstract

The paper is dealing with 194 Aucissa brooches from 27 sites in the Roman province of Pannonia, based on the results and methodology of international archaeological and historical research. Aucissa fibulae, as costume items, are one of the leading artefacts of the early imperial period, initially used mainly by soldiers (sagum), and are therefore an important archaeological source for the Roman expansion, occupation and Romanisation. In Pannonia 98% of the Aucissa fibulae were recovered from settlements, mainly from the early layers of military forts and later towns. The material of the fibulae is bronze, there is only a single known item being silver-plated. The formal, technological and chronological analysis of the Aucissa fibulae in Pannonia is followed by a costume, historical and archaeological analysis. The Aucissa brooches in Pannonia can be dated from the beginning of the 1st century A.D. to the first decades of the 2nd century A.D. The earliest types (subtypes A242.1,2,3) are found in military forts along the Roman expansion trail. The Aucissa brooches come from the areas of the East–West military expansion route (the Drava-Save interfluve, Siscia, Sirmium, Gomolava), the North–South expansion route to the Danube (Amber Road, Salla, Savaria, Carnuntum) and the Danube limes (Brigetio, Matrica, Rittium). The smaller number of later types of fibulae (subtypes A242.4,5,6) found in the interior of the province of Pannonia (vici) indicates a process of Romanisation of the local population (Bátaszék, Csákberény, Mezőörs). The Aucissa brooches can also refer to cultural and trade relations with the Barbaricum (Púchov culture); they can indicate the movement of the Roman army (Devín, Mušov) and also the mobility of people (Veresegyház, Szeged). In some places Aucissa brooches later appeared in the clothing of civilians and women (Emona).

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Abstract

Copper is one of the most important raw materials in the Carpathian Basin, and its extraction, processing and trade can be traced at least from the Bronze Age to the Middle Ages and beyond. Drawing on a variety of sources and research methods, the authors explore the patterns of distribution of this raw material in Europe. The aim of the diachronic analysis is to uncover the networks of connections – commercial, cultural, and migratory – that can be traced over the long term in the Central European region. It also draws attention to other, less stable links in the Carpathian Basin, which have also influenced the history of the region in certain periods.

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Abstract

This paper covers the mould-blown scallop bowls from Late Roman Pannonia (Hungary), which merit a discussion because compared to other regions of the Roman Empire, scallop bowls have a relatively dense distribution in this province (Fig. 6). All the bowls described and discussed here were part of the grave goods recovered from burials, providing a good context for these vessels.

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Abstract

Elephant ivory, a prestigious and valuable raw material in the post-Roman West and Byzantium between the 5th and 7th centuries AD, may originate from various sources. While both written and art historical evidence suggests that in the case of early medieval artefacts, African provenance is more likely than Asian, no data at hand is conclusive. The present paper investigates, with the help of FTIR and Raman spectroscopy, carbon and nitrogen concentration and nitrogen isotope (δ15N) analyses, the material resources of elephant ivory artefacts discovered in 6th- and 7th-century AD archaeological context in the Carpathian Basin to contribute to our understanding of late antique long-distance trade networks and economic relations.

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Abstract

The Gepid Period row cemetery at Tiszaug-Országúti bevágás was unearthed in 2018–2019. Grave 301 was one of the outstanding burials amongst the 194 graves unearthed thus far. It kept the remains of a 9–11-year old boy, who was laid to rest in a scale-down burial created according to the funerary customs of the area and era but dressed in a mortuary costume and provided with goods befitting adult men. He had a purse hanging from his belt, containing an iron knife, and some pieces of flint. A double-row antler comb was placed beside his head. A cast copper alloy belt buckle with a shield-shaped pin base and punch-mark decoration fastened his clothing on the front. While buckles of this type were widely used at that time, the closest analogies to the punch-mark decoration could be collected from the Carpathian Basin. Based on those, the burial could be dated to the mid or late 6th century AD. Another outstanding feature of the cemetery was the four burials (including Grave 301) where the deceased were laid to rest in coffins made from or imitating log boats.

Grave 301 also contained a rounded conical ivory object. The optical microscope and vibration spectroscopy analyses confirmed the initial hypotheses of the finders about the raw material of the artefact. Despite carrying out a comprehensive survey for analogies and an analysis of production and use-related marks, we could not determine what the object could have been used for; it may be a semi-finished product, but it could also be a toy or amulet. At any rate, it was made from a raw material which was extremely rare in the eastern part of the Carpathian Basin in the period in question. Grave 301 was positioned in a cluster comprising more child burials, with the graves of two adult women at the fringes; the ongoing archaeogenetical investigations may shed light on the connections between them.

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