Life and tradition in rural Hungary [antikvár]

Hungárián writers, poets and thinkers have always been Between East preoccupied with the consequences on the Hungárián an(j West people and their folk culture of living in the centre of Europe. Assessing the positive and negatíve traits of a real or imaginary national character, they have tried to decide whether Hungárián culture should be classified as one bound to Eastern or Western Europe. A great deal has been written on the role of folk tradition, and the views formuíated in these works rangé from the undisputed acceptance of Western European cultural models to an unbridled enthusiasm for Eastern cultures, from concern over being on a noman's land between two cultures to the feeling of frustration arising from linguistic isolation, which sometimes culminates in taking pride in a kind of disdainful nationalism. Allocating a place for and defining the role of their folk culture is a problem that other European peoples, for instance the Finnish, the Polish, the Serbs and Croatians, have alsó been confronted with. Like the Hungarians, these people alsó live in the part of Europe which to this day is one of the most important cultural dividing lines and which, originally, separated the Román Catholic and the Greek Orthodox faiths, and for almost a thousand years, represented both the "East" and the "West" in Europe. Accordingly, the stand formuíated by the ethnologies of these peoples regarding this issue is similar to that expounded by Hungárián scholarship. Keeping this relativity in mind, we may define Hungárián culture as having been born at the intersection of the four cardinal points of the compass. However, the reason for this cannot be provided by the widely-held view that when the Magyars reached their homeland on the last waves of the Great Migrations, unlike several peoples before them, they retained their language and ethnicity when from an "Orientál" people they organized themselves into a state. As we shall see later on, though this Eastern origin has indeed made an impact on Hungárián civilisation, it cannot be considered as an essential component of it. What has been decisive, on the other hand, is Hungary's central geographical location in Europe, thanks to which it could always benefit from new cultural streams, freely integrating, rejecting or refor-