Vörösmarty Christmas Fair

«Vörösmarty tér», 2009

Les nuages oranges du couchant éclairent toute chose du charme de la nostalgie; même la guillotine.

In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine.

— Milan Kundera, L’insoutenable légèreté de l’être

The annual artisanal Christmas Fair on Vörösmarty square dismantled its chalets two days before the New Year. Passing by the stalls with merchants selling their last wares or folding them away, I felt with sudden intensity the year drawing to a close.

On days I cross the river to the Pest side, a tour of the fair is always obligatory, perhaps because time itself slows there, and because the handmade traditions delight me in a way no sleek Kindle or iPad ever could. At the risk of sounding kitsch, the souls of these handmade entities seem to mingle with the wide-eyed children and adults of the square, inhaling the smoke of grilled sausages and the cinnamon-coated kürtőskalács pastries of Transylvania. Just like the child who abandons the screen when he spies a black teddy bear laying in wait of his arms under the Christmas tree, we still long for these warm things we can touch and smell, things we can really care about.

Exquisite crimson embroideries from Kalotaszeg, sheepskin capes, felt vests adorned with cord and polished buttons, black and white postcards of ancestors carving musical instruments from wood or standing in front of a cauldron of goulash somewhere on the great Hungarian plains, wrapping paper with ink motifs of hot-air balloons hovering over Budapest, kaleidoscopes, hobby horses, leather purses stamped and gilded, like the ones carried by the horsemen of Hortobágy or some Byzantine lord, shadow theatre, fairytale marionettes, gothic mirrors framed in wood and painted birds and flowers in enamel, ceramic teacups graced with tiny foxes and hedgehogs, Halás lace….

The best of the chalets clustered around the statue of romantic poet Mihaly Vörösmarty betrayed nostalgia for an era before the dawn of mass production, while fighting vigorously for a place in the present world.

L'Homme révolté

«L'homme révolté», 2010

«La lutte de l'homme contre le pouvoir est la lutte de la mémoire contre l'oubli.»

The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against oblivion.

— Milan Kundera, (Le Livre du rire et de l'oubli, p.14, Folio nº1831 / The Book of Laughter and Forgetting)

I remember one day, in a library in Bohemia, putting down Camus’ book and staring into the distance. The image that formed before me was that of Spartacus bound and struggling to free himself from his chains. A year later, in another country, I sketched a model who coincided with this image in my mind.

In support of the current struggle of the Egyptians and the Syrians, of all those past and present who have struggled for freedom.

And... in memory of Václav Havel, a man greater than his small country, face of the Velvet Revolution, who passed away yesterday at 75 in Prague. A man who strived “to live always in truth,” in his words, and whose legacy will be misunderstood, rejected, hijacked, by the powerful he deplored in his writings, in East and West alike...


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L'Insoutenable légèreté de l'être

«Ma rêverie liquide, mon amour liquide», 2005 (acrylic on paper)

Le plus lourd fardeau nous écrase, nous fait ployer sous lui, nous presse contre le sol. Mais dans la poésie amoureuse de tous les siècles, la femme désire recevoir le fardeau du corps mâle. Le plus lourd fardeau est donc en même temps l’image du plus intense accomplissement vital. Plus lourd est le fardeau, plus notre vie est proche de la terre, et plus elle est réelle et vraie.

En revanche, l’absence totale de fardeau fait que l’être humain devient plus léger que l’air, qu’il s’envole, qu’il s’éloigne de la terre, de l’être terrestre, qu’il n’est plus qu’à demi réel et que ses mouvements sont aussi libres qu’insignifiants.

Alors, que choisir ? La pesanteur ou la légèreté ?

Das schwerste Gewicht beugt uns nieder, erdrückt uns, preßt uns zu Boden. In der Liebeslyrik aller Zeiten aber sehnt sich die Frau nach der Schwere des männlichen Körpers. Das schwerste Gewicht ist also gleichzeitig ein Bild intensivster Lebenserfüllung. Je schwerer das Gewicht, desto näher ist unser Leben der Erde, desto wirklicher und wahrer ist es.

Im Gegensatz dazu bewirkt die völlige Abwesenheit von Gewicht, daß der Mensch leichter wird als Luft, daß er emporschwebt und sich von der Erde, vom irdischen Sein entfernt, daß er nur noch zur Hälfte wirklich ist und seine Bewegungen ebenso frei wie bedeutungslos sind.

Was also soll man wählen? Das Schwere oder das Leichte?

The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man's body. The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life's most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become.

Conversely, the absolute absence of burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant.

What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?

— Milan Kundera (The Unbearable Lightness of Being / Die unerträgliche Leichtigkeit des Seins)