Book launch: Hotváth Janka visszaemlékezései és elbeszélései
2024-12-10On Tuesday, 10 December 2024, at 6 pm, the recently published volume of Janka Horváth's memoirs and narratives will be presented at the headquarters of our institution, jointly organized by our library and Kriterion Publishing. The volume, published in the Kriterion Téka series, brings together the memoirs of the sister of the Székely martyr Károly Horváth, under the care of expert Gréta Somogyi.
Zoltán Nagy, a historian, talks to Greta Somogyi about the book and the era it evokes, as well as about the life of the author and the characters in the book.
"Recollections and memoirs are very important sources for historians, as they express individual opinions, but for this very reason they should be treated with some reservations. Their publication is justified because they provide new social, family and contemporary historical information that helps scholars to understand and analyse events in a broader spectrum." - This is how Gréta Somogyi starts the foreword to the volume, in which she summarises the life story of the author, Janka Horváth from Oradea and Teleki, and the motivations behind the writing (or rather, the penmanship) of her memoirs. The memoirs, which record the struggle for freedom in '48 and its consequences from a subjective perspective, are a rarity in Transylvania anyway, but as the sister of Károly Horváth, who was executed 170 years ago in 1854 for her role in the Makk conspiracy, the author recalls the events and tries to interpret their consequences with an even deeper involvement than usual.