A new Ukrainian translation of Gyula Illyés’s poem “Egy mondat a zsarnokságról”

Abstract

The article provides an overview of the life and literary career of the Hungarian poet, prose writer, and dramatist Gyula Illyés, a representative of the Hungarian népi írók (“populist writers”) movement, whose oeuvre reflects the complex history of twentieth-century Hungary, marked by revolutionary events, emigration, and his subsequent disillusionment with the socialist system. It is noted that several works by Gyula Illyés have become available to Ukrainian readers in translations by Yurii Shkrobynets and Ivan Petrovtsii. The article examines the history of the composition and publication of his poem One Sentence on Tyranny (Egy mondat a zsarnokságról, 1950), written during the dictatorship of Mátyás Rákosi and first published during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, as well as the decades during which the poem was suppressed under the socialist regime. It is emphasised that the poem is one of the most powerful and courageous political works of twentieth-century Hungarian literature, directed against Rákosi–Stalinist despotism while at the same time addressing tyranny more broadly as an anti-human phenomenon of universal relevance. Within this context, the article analyses the new Ukrainian translation of the poem by Lesia Mushketyk, entitled Slovo pro tyraniiu (A Word on Tyranny), published in 2025 in the journal Vsesvit (Universe). The artistic structure of the poem is examined, with particular attention to the refrain “tyranny dwells there”, which develops an image of total oppression extending from the material world to the most intimate movements of the human soul, affecting both private life and childhood. Special attention is devoted to Lesia Mushketyk’s translation strategies, including her use of free verse, the partial preservation of rhyme through compensation, and the rendering of grammatical features of Hungarian, particularly the inessive suffixes (-ban, -ben) and the sublative suffixes (-ra, -re), which contribute to the rhythmic and semantic structure of the original text. Selected examples illustrate a range of translation transformations, including semantic development, grammatical substitutions, and lexical additions, all of which serve to reproduce the expressive force and emotional intensity of the source text. Lesia Mushketyk’s translation successfully conveys the atmosphere of the original and communicates to Ukrainian readers the striking lines of this lament-like poem. The article also emphasises the continuing relevance of the poem in the context of contemporary threats to democracy and the growing presence of authoritarian tendencies worldwide. It concludes that the translation adequately recreates the atmosphere of the original and its appeal for freedom, while remaining the first complete Ukrainian translation of the poem.