Hungary – The East or the West? The Image of Hungary in Contemporary Polish Literature and Popular Tourist Guides

Abstract

The image of Hungary in Poland has remained positive for centuries. There is even a famous proverb: “The Pole, the Hungarian are twobrothers...”. However, this image has been changing in the last decade depending on political conditions, on the point of view of the narrator, and, occasionally, on her political views. In the 1970s and 1980s, Hungary seemed a Western country to the Poles who visited it. In modern Polish literature, the Hungarian topic is present primarily in essays. A special place in this respect is taken by the series of three books by the writer of Polish-Hungarian origin, Krzysztof Varga, who talks about Hungarian history and modernity. In the documentary essays of Andrzej Stasiuk, Hungary is usually represented as a transit country. The writer expresses, among other things, the opinion that “to the East and South of Prague and Budapest begins something like terra incognita.” Ziemowit Szczerek describes Hungary differently. He emphasises that due to the affiliation to Habsburg Empire, it belonged to the Western civilization for a long time, but years of communism made it different from modern Western standards in many aspects.