26 July 2014

Three Poems for Peter Meller (1923–2008)

The Hungarian Spring Festival of 1991 invaded Santa Barbara with a burst of cultural energy: our local Symphony conducted by the illustrious Yehudi Menuhin played Kodály’s Háry János Suite; the Art Museum displayed major works by a large number of early 20th century Hungarian artists; a scholarly conference was held, arousing, as was to be expected, strong feelings among academics; a poetry reading by the late, great, and widely lamented actress Éva Szörényi was held in an estate in Hope Ranch; and in a small gallery, now a realtor’s office, perhaps the most unexpected examples were to be seen: a good selection of the two- and three-dimensional works of Peter Meller. Professor Meller was known only as a highly regarded Art Historian at the University of California in Santa Barbara, but this show gave glimpses of his almost secret life as an artist in his own right.

The nature and quality of his work was so fully and accurately and sensitively described by Professor Robert Williams of the UCSB Art History Department in the March 2013 issue of this Review, that I can do no better than refer the reader to that superbly illustrated essay. I have discussed my initial luck in discovering Petőfi’s János Vitéz on the walls of the Erzsébet Hotel’s János Pince in 1987, both in the Corvina Press first edition of my translation, John the Valiant, and elsewhere, and explained my desire to make an English verse translation of it, despite my lack of Hungarian, after reading a merely serviceable prose version. My next stroke of good fortune was to meet Marta Egri-Richardson in the 1991 Santa Barbara Hungarian Festival, when I was asked to help her smooth down some rough translations of poems by, as I remember, Babits and Kosztolányi. These were to be read in Hungarian at the aforementioned Hope Ranch estate by Éva Szörényi; our translations were to be for the enlightenment of any English-only listeners.

During our sessions I mentioned to Marta Egri my interest in János Vitéz. “I love it!” she exclaimed (a sentiment almost every Hungarian I have met would echo), and after I had produced an awkward first draft, for a couple of years we faxed stanzas between London and Santa Barbara, Marta annotating and improving my efforts. As she grew too busy with other matters, I continued working over my English until I had a presentable version.

One of the first readers I presented it to was Peter Meller, with the presumptuous suggestion that he might like to provide a few illustrations – “on spec”, as they say, because I had no contract as yet. The few grew into thirty magnificent works of the illustrative imagination, which were accepted by Corvina Press, turning our 1999 bilingual edition into a visual treasure. (And they were printed again in Corvina’s German edition of “JV” and possibly others.) The techniques Peter employed were a closely guarded secret, which has finally been explained by Professor Williams in his Hungarian Review article, which follows the text and appropriately idiosyncratic layout of his monograph, The Zodiac of Wit: Peter Meller and the Graphic Imagination, published in 2012 by the Art, Design and Architecture Museum of UCSB.

The release of that book was accompanied by a double-barrelled showing of Meller’s works, in the main Gallery on campus, and, in town, at the Jane Deering Gallery. I was among the local poets invited to contribute and read poems at the latter opening. The others had all been Poets Laureate of Santa Barbara, but I had known Peter better and could speak more personally. My contribution was the trio of poems here presented.

On Peter Meller’s Self Portrait at Fifteen (1938)

Audacious? Confident, this young Hungarian.

Steadfast and serious, the face is a young man’s

not a teenager’s. He has already seen

plenty of Intimations of Mortality

while aiming to extend his name beyond

his lifetime, as he has done by dint of wit and work.

The portrait shows he’s ready to meet the world

and let it feel his force. Measure it he did,

although the world threw him in the first round,

Arrow-Cross Nazis tailing him to school;

that glare’s for them. Next round, the Russians threw him,

he wriggled free, hid in a snowy ditch

with his young daughter, escaping to The West.

Italians gave him part-time jobs, and he

loved Italy, but then UCSB

offered a princely seeming sum to live on.

He flew in, settled in, and looked around: This a University? Well, maybe

he could help make it one by over-teaching

these Gauchos what a Gaucho ought to know,

the History of Art.

Meanwhile, at night,

he stamped and whited-out, Xeroxed and markered

thousands of images.

His portrait was prophetic,

foresaw calamities soon to be known,

as History would tie all Europe down.

Too easy to be negative. Hungary’s troubles

have so much darkness in them that it bubbles

over in wild, extravagant, mocking wit:

self-mocking. Peter’s art survived on it,

he, on his art, which we can take to heart

as well as mind: the “Buddhist Monk Going Home”

asks us: How many rungs more to climb?

To what unearthly spiritual height?

Eleven to the top of the sheet, young monk.

Beyond, you’re on your own in that white space

we call the edge of the Universe’s dark matter,

both of which Peter imaged: light on dark,

like a cappuccino in Malpensa Airport.

Just one more thing. When you write “Peter Meller”

don’t call him “Art Historian and Artist,”

but “Artist. And Art Historian. And Hungarian.”

Arriving in Italy,

Peter Meller’s first stop in Malpensa Airport

was the espresso bar: “The best espresso

in Italy” – which is to say, in Europe,

the World, the Solar System, the Universe –

into which he is now expanding at the speed of sight

of all who went to see him off, and all

who still see what he made to be seen – but later:

too busy making more, to show them off

until he’d finished making all of them,

which he could never do because each day

brought him another image to stamp as his,

with one of his five thousand hand-carved stamps,

doodled from office supply materials.

How the purveyors of White-Out, when he died,

sighed their relief: “Meller’s been whited-out,”

and closed down several factories. And Xerox

stock dropped seven notches in the Market.

The Sharpie makers filed for Chapter XI.

Now he inhabits his cardboard villages,

address him: Poste restante, Pisolino,

meaning Siesta. He’s taking a long snooze.

Ah, Peter! How often we saw each other, how little

we talked – your reticence a match for mine –

a match that lit when we scratched it on János Vitéz,

which you made all your own with thirty pictures,

while I did what I could to English it.

That book we made together is more yours

than mine: the eyes hold onto images

better than ears do words.

So, in my mind’s eyes,

you stand in coat and necktie always, smiling

shyly and slyly, exiled from Hungary

to a busy Pisolino in our cardboard

culture. Leaving, you lift one eyebrow, as if

to say, Arrivederci! Viszontlátásra!

Peter Meller’s Old House on the Danube Bend

(Scenario for a documentary film)

A camera from the heavens pans upstream

along the Duna laden with tourist boats,

to the Danube Bend, a double crick in its neck

like our local Zoo’s beloved giraffe, then zooms

down on a hillside: many summer homes.

Focus on one house Peter Meller’s father,

Dezső, the architect, built. They lived in it

through World War Two. Peter designed a lamp,

wrought iron, his brother’s monogram: who forged it

and, picked up by the Russians, died in Russia.

Through a sequence of ingeniously contrived

and uncontrived snafus, a friend is driving

my wife and Peter up a narrow road

to Peter’s house. Peter is protesting:

“The Russians forced its sale at a low price,

then commandeered and trashed it. It would be,

for me, too painful seeing it after that.”

But at the top of the drive, the small sedan

is stuck. Only continuing to the house

could it be turned around. Too close

for Peter’s comfort, when, as if

being conjured up, the present owner stands

like a genie offering help, which gratefully

is accepted through the driver’s rolled-down window.

“Thank you, and by the way, this gentleman

helping John Ridland’s wife to push the car

is Peter Meller, whose father built this house.”

“You must come in. Come in. Please do come in”,

the present owner urges so politely

Peter, the soul of politeness, cannot refuse.

The house is charming: comfortable, spic and span,

a perfect country place, and Wonder of Wonders!

(as Petőfi wrote at the end of John the Valiant),

the house has been restored meticulously

to its original state. Even the lamp

of wrought-iron freshly painted hangs from the ceiling.

When Peter tells the owner he designed it,

further amazement: the owner says, “We kept it

for the initials – they’re the same as my wife’s.”

She and my wife are crying with joy. Then someone

notices: “A Menorah!” So they are Jewish,

as Peter’s father was. Some seventeen

family members perished in the Camps.

Meller has found his home, with a bit of luck

from Heaven – Jewish Heaven, everyone’s Heaven.

To celebrate, they drive to the nearest town,

Szentendre, to eat Peter’s favourite treat,

Lángos, heavy pancakes, deep-fried, indelicate

delicacies. The driver and my wife

split one, while Peter eats two – one each,

sweet and savoury. Next day he says, a little

sheepishly, they’d kept him up all night.