Ádám Makkai passed away
Ádám Makkai was a retired professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago who did much to promote the international recognition of Hungarian literature. The MMA considers Ádám Makkai as its own dead.
Ádám Makkai was born on 16 December 1935 in Budapest, his father, János Makkai, was a member of Parliament and a journalist, and his mother, Rózsa Ignácz, was a writer. He began his studies in the humanities at ELTE in Budapest, and after leaving the country in 1956, he continued his studies at Harvard and Yale in the United States. From 1958 to 1960 he taught at the University of Hawaii, from 1963 to 1964 at the University of Kuala Lumpur, and from 1965 to 1974 at several American universities. From 1969 to 2004, he was an Associate Professor at the University of Illinois, but taught linguistics in Singapore from 1985 to 1986 and at the Baptist College of Hong Kong from 1988 to 2002.
In 1974, he founded the American Linguists Association, of which he was also Executive President. He is also the founder of the Forum Linguisticum journal, and his anthology of Hungarian poets in English is a work of cultural historical significance. His 1965 dissertation on the idiom structure of the English language was published in book form in 1972 by Mouton in The Hague. In 1995, he founded Atlantis-Centaur in Chicago.
He wrote metaphysical, ironic poems. His most important volumes are Thirst and Vinegar (1966), K=13 (1970), The Eye of Jupiter (1991), Cantio Nocturna Peregrini Aviumque (1996), Lord God! Let me die! (2002), The Force (2003), Jesus and the Prayer of the Demons (2005). The Most Beautiful Thousand Poems (2002) is a selection from eight centuries of Hungarian poetry. His work, Cantio Nocturna Peregrini Aviumque, which was exhibited at the 1999 Frankfurt Fair with the support of the Hungarian state, contains 12 variations in eight languages on Goethe’s poem A similar poem, which is an appendix to his poem A Wanderer’s Night Song.
In 2002, his thousand-page anthology of poems, The Most Beautiful Thousand Poems from Eight Centuries of Poetry, was presented in Budapest, and was also recommended as a textbook, as the collection also includes short biographies of the poets.
Ádám Makkai was awarded the Kossuth Prize in 2011 for his work as a literary translator, for his poems written with an extraordinary formal culture and unparalleled linguistic ingenuity, in recognition of his career. In 2016, he was awarded the Kossuth Grand Prize in recognition of his highly appreciated translations of Hungarian poetry, his unique style and invention, his exceptional artistic career, and his value-creating teaching and academic public life. In 2015, he was awarded the Janus Pannonius International Grand Prize for Literary Achievement by the Janus Pannonius Foundation, and in 2016 he was awarded the Order of St. Stephen of Hungary. In 2019 he was elected a full member of the Hungarian Academy of Arts (MMA).
(after Magyar Nemzet)