REVIEWS 533 language’ (p. 28). This points both to the importance to him of zakonomernost´ (Gesetzmässigkeit) — there seems to be no one-word equivalent in English, ‘regularity’ obviously being inadequate — and to John 1.1 (‘In the beginning was the Word...’), which Stalin might have been recalling from his earlier days. In addition to their joint Introduction, in which they may overestimate the role of language in the USSR and underestimate the role played by fear (which goes unmentioned in this book), the two editors shed light, respectively, on ‘the peculiarities of generic statements in Stalinist officialise’ (pp. 40–62) and on ‘linguistic mnemonics’ (pp. 169–95). Petre Petrov provides some excellent examples of socialist surrealism, wishful writing and ideological mumbo-jumbo published during the period of collectivization, without even mentioning the not unimportant simultaneous (k)holodomor, which caused the deaths from hunger of several million ‘ordinary’ children and adults, not least in Ukraine and Russia. Lara Ryazanova-Clarke shows how ‘communist speak’ has been increasingly ventriloquized in recent ‘post-Soviet’ (perhaps in this respect ‘neo-Soviet’ would be more appropriate?) public discourse. Her article leads into Ilya Kukulin’s demonstration of the use of ‘Soviet’ Russian after 1991. Without mentioning the recent devastating blow to ‘historical materialism’ (Is socialism, however defined, still a future possibility?), he uses the term ‘neoSoviet ’ only once, but ‘post-Soviet’ some eight times, despite concluding that the language of the current ruling elite ‘is beginning to acquire a functional resemblance’ to Soviet rhetoric (p. 213). All in all, and despite some poor editing, this is a book that should be read not only by students of linguistics but also by anyone interested in the problems of the ‘captive mind’, so eloquently revealed at the time of Stalin’s death by Czesław Miłosz. University of Glasgow Martin Dewhirst Gömöri, George and Gömöri, Mari (eds). The Alien in the Chapel: Ferenc Békássy, Rupert Brooke’s Unknown Rival. Poems and Letters. Skyscraper Publications, Bloxham, 2016. 256 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. £14.95. On the wall of the Memorial side-chapel of King’s College Chapel, Cambridge, there is a large plaque commemorating many of the members of the college — some 774 in total, according to Peter Jones’s informative and elegant Epilogue to this volume — who died in action in the First World War, the poet Rupert Brooke among them. On the left-hand wall at right angles to this plaque, carved in the stone quite low down is the inscription ‘Pensioner Ferenc Békássy’ (‘pensioner’ meaning he was not on a scholarship), honouring a young student SEER, 95, 3, JULY 2017 534 from Hungary (the ‘Alien in the Chapel’ of the title) who tragically fell at the tender age of 23 in a hail of bullets in Bukovina, fighting in the same war as his fellow Kingsmen — but on the opposite side. The plaque is clearly visible, and the Békássy inscription can just be made out, if one takes the virtual tour of the side-chapel on the King’s College Chapel website. Ferenc Békássy was born in 1893 at his family’s seat in Zsennye, western Hungary. Though not nobility, the family was affluent enough, and his mother inparticularenlightenedenough,tosendallsixBékássychildrentobeeducated at the then newly established and very progressive coeducational school, Bedales, where Ferenc especially soon made his mark as well as a number of lifelong friends. From Bedales the handsome and intelligent young man went on to study at King’s, catching the attention of many in the Bloomsbury set, notably the economist John Maynard Keynes, as well as contemporaries such as Ludwig Wittgenstein. Remarkably, he soon became the first foreigner to be elected to the famously exclusive intellectual society known as ‘The Apostles’. Békássy is almost certainly a unique figure, in that he not only wrote in English as well as in Hungarian, but was highly regarded as a most promising poet by his contemporaries in both countries. A complete Hungarian edition of his works is currently in preparation; meanwhile, the poet and former Cambridge academic George Gömöri, well-known for his work...
Read full abstract
Mar 30, 2020
Yulia Kirik + 2
Open Access
