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In a Bucolic Land
A moving, posthumous collection of elegies and eclogues that meditate on nature, landscape, and history, by a great Hungarian poet.
Szilárd Borbély spent his childhood in a tiny impoverished village in northeastern Hungary, where the archaic peasant world of Eastern Europe coexisted with the collectivist ideology of a new Communist state. Close to the Soviet border and far from any metropolitan center, the village was a world apart: life was harsh, monotonous, and often brutal, and the Borbélys, outsiders and “class enemies,” were shunned. In a Bucolic Land, Borbély’s final, posthumously published book of poems, combines autobiography, ethnography, classical mythology, and pastoral idyll in a remarkable central poetic sequence about the starkly precarious and yet strangely numinous liminal zone of his youth. This is framed by elegies for a teacher in which the poet meditates on the nature of language and speech and on the adequacy of words to speak of and for the dead. Ottilie Mulzet’s English translation conveys the full power of a writer of whom László Krasznahorkai has said, “He was a poet—a great poet—who shatters us.”
Szilárd Borbély spent his childhood in a tiny impoverished village in northeastern Hungary, where the archaic peasant world of Eastern Europe coexisted with the collectivist ideology of a new Communist state. Close to the Soviet border and far from any metropolitan center, the village was a world apart: life was harsh, monotonous, and often brutal, and the Borbélys, outsiders and “class enemies,” were shunned. In a Bucolic Land, Borbély’s final, posthumously published book of poems, combines autobiography, ethnography, classical mythology, and pastoral idyll in a remarkable central poetic sequence about the starkly precarious and yet strangely numinous liminal zone of his youth. This is framed by elegies for a teacher in which the poet meditates on the nature of language and speech and on the adequacy of words to speak of and for the dead. Ottilie Mulzet’s English translation conveys the full power of a writer of whom László Krasznahorkai has said, “He was a poet—a great poet—who shatters us.”
- GenresPoetry
135 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2022
2 people are currently reading
65 people want to read
About the author
Szilárd Borbély
20 books34 followersSzilárd Borbély is widely acknowledged as one of the most important poets to emerge in post-1989 Hungary. He worked in a wide variety of genres, including essay, drama, and short fiction, usually dealing with issues of trauma, memory, and loss. His poems appeared in English translation in The American Reader, Asymptote, and Poetry. Borbély received many awards for his work, including the Attila József Prize. He died in 2014.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
July 24, 2023
I’ve always romanticised rural life as idyllic. A blissful place where at the end of the day, having worked the land, you can sit down on the verandah that surrounds the house and look over the vista of rolling hills dotted with animals, and the slow-running stream that runs dry over the warmer months. This feeling I have seems to encompass the word “bucolic” which I had to look up after finishing the book. So in that sense, the title was spot on.
Borbély lived in a rural village near the northeastern border of Hungary. He wrote this final book after the passing of his father who apparently did not want him to write about the village due to their prolonged suffering. However, the urgency within him obligated him to do so.
Borbély cleverly interwined his autobiography with classical mythology, whilst focussing on the pastoral setting. Although the nature of the events are tragic, the vibe was not oppressive, moreso the reader can choose to focus on the various farmstead jobs at close view or pay attention to the darker background.
Each chapter covers a main story that builds on the previous one. Just like in songs that have a common chorus to keep the story in line, and the verses that have the peaks and troughs. I guess that’s where the poetry comes from? The book is sort of described as a pastoral poem, but if it was, it didn’t feel like one. It was just good storytelling.
Some chapters included:
- The Deucalion Collective Farm
- The Grey Hair of the Graeae
- Dionysus and the Cocks
- Proteus at the Psychiatrist’s
Some of them were delightfully crass, yet sophisticated. Like bar-stool banter about mocking the opposite gender. No-one’s bits were taboo.
I was so impressed with this book that I hope there is such a thing as an archive for important Hungarian works. It belongs there. I read this as part of my reading challenge to read one book set in every country, and this was a good one. I got a sense of the time, place, and people.
Borbély lived in a rural village near the northeastern border of Hungary. He wrote this final book after the passing of his father who apparently did not want him to write about the village due to their prolonged suffering. However, the urgency within him obligated him to do so.
Borbély cleverly interwined his autobiography with classical mythology, whilst focussing on the pastoral setting. Although the nature of the events are tragic, the vibe was not oppressive, moreso the reader can choose to focus on the various farmstead jobs at close view or pay attention to the darker background.
Each chapter covers a main story that builds on the previous one. Just like in songs that have a common chorus to keep the story in line, and the verses that have the peaks and troughs. I guess that’s where the poetry comes from? The book is sort of described as a pastoral poem, but if it was, it didn’t feel like one. It was just good storytelling.
Some chapters included:
- The Deucalion Collective Farm
- The Grey Hair of the Graeae
- Dionysus and the Cocks
- Proteus at the Psychiatrist’s
Some of them were delightfully crass, yet sophisticated. Like bar-stool banter about mocking the opposite gender. No-one’s bits were taboo.
I was so impressed with this book that I hope there is such a thing as an archive for important Hungarian works. It belongs there. I read this as part of my reading challenge to read one book set in every country, and this was a good one. I got a sense of the time, place, and people.
October 6, 2023
"A nyelv személytelen, mégis édes áradása, amit
olyannyira szeretünk hallani. Mert a beszéd
a halál ellen védelem nekünk. De aki már nem
beszél, az mit mondhatna még? Vagy neki mit
mondhatunk mi itt, hol a hamunak az urna
kölcsönöz formát csupán? És e szavak keresnek
védelmet azoknak, akik itt maradtak a szakadék
szélén, ahol a sírüreg kinyílik. Itt állunk most,
a nyelv túloldalán, amely üzen."
Hát így.
(Noha van jó néhány kedvenc költőm, egyedül Borbélynál érzem azt amit EP-nél is, hogy a nyelv és ő egyek és elválaszthatatlanok; hogy van ez a fantasztikus eszköztár, a nyelv, amelynek a borbélyi regiszterei segítségével eléri, hogy az ártatlan olvasó (én) olvasás közben hangosan felsírjon. Hát így.)
olyannyira szeretünk hallani. Mert a beszéd
a halál ellen védelem nekünk. De aki már nem
beszél, az mit mondhatna még? Vagy neki mit
mondhatunk mi itt, hol a hamunak az urna
kölcsönöz formát csupán? És e szavak keresnek
védelmet azoknak, akik itt maradtak a szakadék
szélén, ahol a sírüreg kinyílik. Itt állunk most,
a nyelv túloldalán, amely üzen."
Hát így.
(Noha van jó néhány kedvenc költőm, egyedül Borbélynál érzem azt amit EP-nél is, hogy a nyelv és ő egyek és elválaszthatatlanok; hogy van ez a fantasztikus eszköztár, a nyelv, amelynek a borbélyi regiszterei segítségével eléri, hogy az ártatlan olvasó (én) olvasás közben hangosan felsírjon. Hát így.)
December 20, 2024
3.5 ⭐️ A wonderful way to check Hungary off my list. I always appreciate a writer who uses inventive structure, and isn’t afraid to break the structure they created for emphasis. This collection beautifully weaves mythology with the stark realism of rural poverty and childhood, writing about the two in complete parallel with extremely blurred lines. Overall, I really enjoyed this collection, even if a great many chunks went well over my head.
January 31, 2022
Szilárd Borbély’s In a Bucolic Land describes growing up impoverished in Hungary during the ‘60s and ‘70s as a member of a despised religious minority among despised minorities living under the thumb of atheist Soviet Union. The “bucolic” of the book’s title is ironic not elegiac—Nature is as brutal and unsympathetic as parents toward their children and the community at large toward each other as everyone struggles to exist at mere subsistence-level.
Borbély names as “the gods” the indifferent forces of whim and fate that seem to decide the lives and deaths of people toiling to get by. This is a tendency I’ve noticed among European writers unconvinced by Romantic, transcendental swooning over brooks and glens. Instead, writers I’ve recently reviewed—such as Jean Giono and Adabelt Stifter, and Inès Cagnati—illustrate the brutality needed to merely survive, where “Christianity” is a patina barely covering the avowedly pagan world the characters maneuver within.
Inès Cagnati in her novel Free Day, left an impression of poverty that has stayed with me since reading it: To send her daughter to school, where she has won a scholarship, the mother must sacrifice the only paper bag she owns for her daughter to carry her books in. Similarly, Borbély’s bucolic setting is barely discernable from medieval conditions: Borbély’s mother dreams of a home with a wooden rather than dirt floor, a twin bed with nightstands on either side, and—most importantly as a measure of living above mere needs—a dresser-and-mirror set:
“And when she finally had everything she desired,
there was no point anymore. On the ground, between
the left leg of the dresser and the door to the next room,
was a the largest pool of blood, congealed,
I scraped it off with a small shovel. I only conjectured that this was
my father’s blood. . .”
(This is as explicit as Borbély describes the in-home attack on his parents that killed his mother and significantly wounded his father, physically and psychologically.)
“Icarus in the Housing Project” describes that urban squalor that replaced the bucolic: “The thudding sound of kittens thrown out / of the tenth-story airshaft window produced only the / faintest of echoes.” “My buzzer rang after midnight, at that hour it was / the always cheerful gym teacher asking me / to let him in because his spouse and his small children were already asleep / and he could see through the light in my window I was up working. And so our / acquaintance in the urine-smelling lift began, then it continued next / to the garbage shut smelling of roach repellent / and disinfectant. I would have left, but he / held me back. Every one of his movements / begged me: Don’t leave me here.”
Translator Ottilie Mulzet’s afterword clarifies and situates the personal and historical background to Borbély’s works, in addition to conjuring lucid renderings of his poems.
Borbély names as “the gods” the indifferent forces of whim and fate that seem to decide the lives and deaths of people toiling to get by. This is a tendency I’ve noticed among European writers unconvinced by Romantic, transcendental swooning over brooks and glens. Instead, writers I’ve recently reviewed—such as Jean Giono and Adabelt Stifter, and Inès Cagnati—illustrate the brutality needed to merely survive, where “Christianity” is a patina barely covering the avowedly pagan world the characters maneuver within.
Inès Cagnati in her novel Free Day, left an impression of poverty that has stayed with me since reading it: To send her daughter to school, where she has won a scholarship, the mother must sacrifice the only paper bag she owns for her daughter to carry her books in. Similarly, Borbély’s bucolic setting is barely discernable from medieval conditions: Borbély’s mother dreams of a home with a wooden rather than dirt floor, a twin bed with nightstands on either side, and—most importantly as a measure of living above mere needs—a dresser-and-mirror set:
“And when she finally had everything she desired,
there was no point anymore. On the ground, between
the left leg of the dresser and the door to the next room,
was a the largest pool of blood, congealed,
I scraped it off with a small shovel. I only conjectured that this was
my father’s blood. . .”
(This is as explicit as Borbély describes the in-home attack on his parents that killed his mother and significantly wounded his father, physically and psychologically.)
“Icarus in the Housing Project” describes that urban squalor that replaced the bucolic: “The thudding sound of kittens thrown out / of the tenth-story airshaft window produced only the / faintest of echoes.” “My buzzer rang after midnight, at that hour it was / the always cheerful gym teacher asking me / to let him in because his spouse and his small children were already asleep / and he could see through the light in my window I was up working. And so our / acquaintance in the urine-smelling lift began, then it continued next / to the garbage shut smelling of roach repellent / and disinfectant. I would have left, but he / held me back. Every one of his movements / begged me: Don’t leave me here.”
Translator Ottilie Mulzet’s afterword clarifies and situates the personal and historical background to Borbély’s works, in addition to conjuring lucid renderings of his poems.
May 31, 2025
Mintha a Nincstelenek verssorokba tördelt, görögmitológiás remixe lenne - és ez nagyon is működik. A prozódia egészen magávalragadó, egészen hamar napirendre tértem a "miért ott van a sor megtörve" jellegű kekeckedésen, egyszerűen csak hagytam, hogy működjön: működik.
Nagyon meredek a tartalom. Ez nem is meglepő, ha nem először olvasol a szerzőtől. Ugyanakkor gyönyörű, ahogy a 60-as évek vidéki TSz-es antiromantikája egyfelől, és a görög mitológiai toposzok másfelől, egy egészen sajátos formai keretben egymásra találnak. Mesteri kötet.
Nagyon meredek a tartalom. Ez nem is meglepő, ha nem először olvasol a szerzőtől. Ugyanakkor gyönyörű, ahogy a 60-as évek vidéki TSz-es antiromantikája egyfelől, és a görög mitológiai toposzok másfelől, egy egészen sajátos formai keretben egymásra találnak. Mesteri kötet.
March 6, 2025
I am so very glad I read this collection of poems. I don’t think I have ever read anything so clearly and vividly describing the life of growing up in rural Eastern Europe post World War II. His imagines are straightforward and powerful. He sings the truth of the hard life forced upon the people by a government that doesn’t care, and yet lived among people who do. But it also reveals the power of the government to beat down the spirit of the people and the land.
August 23, 2023
~3.75
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews