Bringing Nyugat to Life: A Student Exhibition at the SSEES Library

By Hayley Anderson. Hayley is a fourth-year European Social and Political Studies student and one of the Student Ambassadors at the UCL Europe Institute for 2024/25. With her specialism in Hungarian and History, she has focussed her research on the experiences and identities of communities in Eastern Slovakia and the wider Central East Europe region. She is also a Student Associate for the UCL Platform for Linguistic and Epistemic Justice (PLEJ)

As a student of Hungarian and History, SSEES’s library collection is one which I find myself using regularly. However, it wasn’t until we had a language class dedicated to exploring the Hungarian section of the library that I realised just how sprawling this collection is. In the course of an hour, we tracked a timeline of translated fiction and historical sources, frequently finding overlap with the literatures and cultures of the surrounding countries. But there was one section which particularly piqued our curiosity, the Nyugat literary journal. Of course, the bold advertisements and illustrations which adorn the pages of the paper were eye-catching and refreshing amongst a sea of text. But there was also something exemplified within this hundred-year-old journal that reflected our own multilingual experiences at SSEES.

To provide a little background, Nyugat [West] was a Hungarian literary journal first published in Budapest at the beginning of 1908. To say that Nyugat influenced the Hungarian literary sphere would be an understatement, it platformed influential writers such as Endre Ady  (1877-1919), Dezső Kosztolányi  (1885-1936) and Mihály Babits (1883-1941), and was overseen by such legendary editors as Ernő Osvát (1876-1929), Miksa Fenyő (1877-1972) and the critic Pál Ignotus (1901-1978).

As the journal’s title suggests, the authors and editors sought inspiration from west of Budapest. Specifically, the writers were fascinated by France as the traditional stage for radical social and cultural change. This was something they wished to inspire within the Hungarian setting. The contributors found purpose in the thought that their writing could compel a shift in society, a progression towards modernity.

Many of the writers and editors of Nyugat were already respected names, but the newspaper served to fully establish them in a setting which prioritised stylistic and symbolic experimentation. In some cases, the writers echoed popular discourse of the period, encouraging liberal voices, including the fight to achieve universal suffrage and to free Hungarian society from the restraints of its feudalistic order. However, despite not picking a particular political battle, the journal was a relatively subversive force. There was continuous support for the Jewish editors and calls against mounting antisemitism. When war broke out in 1914, bold antiwar writing soon followed.

Despite Nyugat’s monolingual profile, Hungarians did not exist in an ethnically homogenous setting. In this regard, Nyugat took an ambivalent stance. Some drew attention to the struggle of other nationalities, and the increasing intolerance of the Hungarians, such as editor Ignotus and writer Endre Ady. But overall, progressiveness was not applied to the nationalities question as it was to other matters. Nyugat was cosmopolitan. But its cosmopolitanism included little concern for the ethnic groups and nationalities of Eastern Europe and Hungary. Indeed, even the form of the journal, while including translations and reviews of works from the west, was written purely in Hungarian.

It was this point which inspired us to create this exhibition. We wanted to prioritise the backdrop of the journal’s setting by bringing it into the foreground. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the journal represented a pathway to the west and engaged in a debate about what it meant to be “western”. We, however, were inspired to reflect on what it meant to be part of this multilingual region of the symbolic and aspirational “west” and “all that it holds”- as became the title of our exhibition. So, we repurposed these wonderfully illustrated advertisements, not only to relate them to speakers of other languages, but also to bring them into the modern day. History can be tracked in the designs, with the colour draining from the pages during the First World War, or if there was a lack of funding. We reproduced this linguistically diverse multiculture by collaborating with students across UCL to translate the ads into many languages of the region, thus bringing them into the modern day.

Something which surprised me about the collection is how the artistic scope went far beyond literature. For instance, Nyugat had frequent involvement by the renowned Hungarian composers Béla Bartók (1881-1945) and Zoltán Kodály (1882-1967). Nyugat’s logo, a man sat at desk, refers to a sculpture by Ö. Fülöp Beck (1873-1945), a Hungarian Jewish artist who was noted for his medal sculptures of Endre Ady, Sándor Petőfi (1823-1849) and Ferenc Liszt (1811-1886), among others. For Nyugat, in his Post-Impressionist style which also fit with the journal’s taste for the Art Nouveau, he produced a relief of Kelemen Mikes (1690-1761), a Transylvanian-born Hungarian political figure and writer, known for his rebellious activities against the Habsburg monarchy. This intersection between literature, art and artefact was of particular interest to me, and I was inspired to recreate some of the designs to make parallels between the original text and my translation, and to draw the changing Nyugat logos to highlight a timeline of design. Having the original source material to achieve this was invaluable. It was incredibly special to reference historical materials to get an idea of what mediums I could use to ensure my own reinterpretation was faithful to the original. In the exhibition itself we utilised the Nyugat collection to create a timeline of the journal’s design and history; a clear demonstration of the value in object-based learning.

Ultimately, through the object of this literary journal, we have tried to reimagine Nyugat in the context of the region it was published in, rather than the western region which inspired it. We believe it can represent something of a vessel which holds expanding linguistic engagement and an ever-flourishing literary scene. After all, Nyugat is a mosaic of culture; continuously critiqued, reconstructed and reclaimed as time goes on. The publication of Nyugat ended in 1941, but here we present a living text, remade through new translations.

I hope this acts as evidence for how truly boundless the SSEES library collection is. If I were to ‘translate’ one lesson from this exhibition into advice for students, it would be to make the most of the SSEES library collection! Not only is it an unparalleled treasure-trove of potential, but the librarians are wonderful and so knowledgeable. Zuzana Pincikova who is the Area Liaison Librarian for the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary, gave us so much helpful guidance and support along each step of the way. Journey into SSEES’s collection and you will undoubtedly find yourself inspired by its contents and perhaps even compelled to produce a project of your own.

THE WEST AND ALL THAT IT HOLDS

A SSEES Library exhibition inspired by the Hungarian literary periodical Nyugat (West, 1908–1941) and celebrating Central Europe’s multilingual history ran from 13 March to 30 April 2025, with an opening reception and curators’ talk held on Wednesday 19 March at 3pm.

Curators:

Hayley Anderson (BA in in European Social and Political Studies with Hungarian)

Joe Bates (BA in Hungarian and Italian)

Richard Hayward (BA in Hungarian and Russian)

Simon Wattson (BA in Hungarian and Russian)

Advisors:

Dr Eszter Tarsoly (Associate Professor in Hungarian and Applied Linguistics)

Zuzana Pinčíková (Area Liaison Librarian for the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary, SSEES Library)