Allow me to deliver Endre Ady’s speech as museum director. Since we live in a continuous present. The entertainment industry and consumer idiocy compel us day after day to try new things, buy them, then throw them in the trash. Every morning, we wake up as if starting with a clean slate, forgetting what happened yesterday. Incidentally, medical science doesn’t call this a clean slate, but amnesia.
As Ady insightfully put it ‘now is the revelry of little men of the moment’.
Let’s ask the question that many men of the moment ask themselves: why do we need to dig up old relics of bygone eras when there could be a tennis court instead? Does it matter to us how our long-gone ancestors lived and died, or what material environment surrounded them?
That it matters to me as a museum director is perhaps understandable. But why does it matter to the millions of Hungarians who visit our museums annually? Because according to CSO data, our museums are among our most frequented cultural institutions, indeed, receiving more than ten million visitors annually.
Why does it matter to them?
I have an answer to this, which I usually chant like a thesis statement: if we go into a museum, we come out as better people. If we go into a Hungarian museum, we come out as better Hungarians. Consequently – I assume – millions of Hungarians want to be better people and better Hungarians. Or at least I’d like to believe so. I’d like to believe that from the fact that the world isn’t perfect, we Hungarians draw the conclusion that here’s an opportunity to make the world better. I dare to believe in this because wherever we dig in the Carpathian homeland, we find evidence of this.
It’s as if Endre Ady had formulated the following categorical imperative as a timeless command for every Hungarian who has ever lived and is yet to be born:
“Guardians, watch on the ramparts, / Life lives and wants to live, / It hasn’t given so much beauty, / For bloody and stupid ferocities / To wade across it now.”
If the Hungarian nation has a mission, this is it. For 1100 years, we’ve been watching on the ramparts, protecting and enriching Europe. For 20 years, as added value to the European Union, we’ve been doing the same. We did this in peacetime, we do it now, when we say more and more often, more and more naturally, the word against which the Union was created.
This word is: war.
Ady continues:
“It’s so sad to be human / And terrible are the animal-hero words / And the star-scattering nights / They still won’t let me forget / Man’s faith woven into Beauty / And you who yet remain, guarding, orphaned, / Guardians: watch on the ramparts.”
Ady wrote this poem in 1915, when we were already in World War I.
However, Endre Ady would have another directive, which he formulated before the world conflagration, but which overrides the revelry of men of the moment. I would close with this:
“Now is the revelry of little men of the moment, / But our stone is ready to build, / We come to accomplish great things. / Great and beautiful, human and Hungarian.”
Such is Hungarian orphanhood: we stand ready to build on the ramparts. This is what 1100 years of Hungarian history is about, and this is what our next thousand years will be about.
Notes:
Endre Ady: A significant Hungarian poet (1877-1919) who played a crucial role in modernizing Hungarian literature at the beginning of the 20th century. His work often dealt with themes of Hungarian identity, social issues, and love.
The text quotes from several of Ady’s poems, including “Őrzők, vigyázzatok a strázsán” (Guardians, Watch on the Ramparts) and “A Tűz márciusa” (The March of Fire).
These poems are used to illustrate ideas about Hungarian national identity and mission.
“1100 years of Hungarian history” refers to the traditional dating of Hungarian settlement in the Carpathian Basin (895-896 AD).
“20 years” likely refers to Hungary joining the European Union in 2004.
World War I is referenced, as Ady wrote one of the quoted poems in 1915.
“Hungarian orphanhood” (magyar árvaság): A recurring theme in Hungarian literature and thought, referring to a sense of isolation or uniqueness of the Hungarian nation.
The idea of Hungarians as guardians or protectors of Europe is a common theme in Hungarian historical narrative.
“Percemberkék” (men of the moment) is a term coined by Ady, literally meaning “little minute-men,” referring to people focused on short-term gains rather than long-term values.
Homeland Dictionary 