Let's Turn Hegel from His Head onto His Feet: Hopes, Myths, and Memories of the 1960s in Tamás Cseh's Musical Album “A Letter to My Sister”

Abstract

This paper focuses on some salient features of the Hungarian “long sixties” through the rear-view mirror of a highly-acclaimed popular musical album by Tamas Cseh and Geza Beremenyi entitled “A Letter to My Sister” (1977). The article argues that the “Letter” owes its enduring success to its unique chronological and narrative arch: the years of childhood set in the sombrest Stalinist 1950s, while the opening up of the country's political and cultural landscape in the 1960s shaped the freedom and hope intrinsic to modern teenage life. Finally, in the portrayal of the crisis-ridden young adulthood set in the 1970s, it is impossible to set apart the failure of the “great generation” from that of Hungarian society and, more broadly, east European socialism. Implied in this narrative arch is that this local version of the “long sixties” carried the unprocessed legacy of the “short fifties.”