On November 6, 2023, the walk exploring Kossuth Square commemorated the 1956 revolution within the framework of the Hungarian history lesson. Students in the Hungarian studies gained new information in an interactive form about the statues in the square, the Hungarian Parliament Building, and the events related to the square during the 1956 revolution. At Attila József’s statue, we discussed the main ideas of the poem “By the Danube”.
By the Danube
excerpt (translated: Vernon Watkins)
1
On the bottom step that from the wharf descends
I sat, and watched a melon-rind float by.
I hardly heard, wrapped in my destined ends,
To surface chat the silent depth reply.
As if it flowed from my own heart in spate,
Wise was the Danube, turbulent and great.
Like a man’s muscles bending at his toil,
Hammering, pitching, leaning on the spade,
So bulged and then contracted in recoil
Each wave that rippling in the current played.
It rocked me like my mother, told me a wealth
Of tales, and washed out all the city’s filth.
And drops of rain began to fall, but then,
As though their fall had no effect, they stopped.
Yet still, like one who stayed at the long rain
Out of a cave, my gaze I never dropped
Below the horizon. Endlessly to waste,
Drably like rain fell all bright things, the past.
The Danube just flowed on. And playfully
The ripples laughed at me as I reclined,
A child on his prolific mother’s knee
Resting, while other thoughts engaged her mind.
They trembled in time’s flow and in its wake
As tottering tombstones in a graveyard shake.
On the bottom step that from the wharf descends
I sat, and watched a melon-rind float by.
I hardly heard, wrapped in my destined ends,
To surface chat the silent depth reply.
As if it flowed from my own heart in spate,
Wise was the Danube, turbulent and great.
Like a man’s muscles bending at his toil,
Hammering, pitching, leaning on the spade,
So bulged and then contracted in recoil
Each wave that rippling in the current played.
It rocked me like my mother, told me a wealth
Of tales, and washed out all the city’s filth.
And drops of rain began to fall, but then,
As though their fall had no effect, they stopped.
Yet still, like one who stayed at the long rain
Out of a cave, my gaze I never dropped
Below the horizon. Endlessly to waste,
Drably like rain fell all bright things, the past.
The Danube just flowed on. And playfully
The ripples laughed at me as I reclined,
A child on his prolific mother’s knee
Resting, while other thoughts engaged her mind.
They trembled in time’s flow and in its wake
As tottering tombstones in a graveyard shake.
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