Péter Pál Gulyás

“…I believe that Péter Pál Gulyás will reach the level of artistic thought exemplified by a poet from Debrecen, Árpád Tóth. And then he will soar on great wings and soar low.” (Sándor Weöres, Élet és Irodalom, 1974)

“I am reading Péter Paul Gulyás. Basically, I started out on a misunderstanding. I heard a very good recommendation of the Debrecen poet Pál Gulyás, who “if he had been born in Paris as a Frenchman, everyone would know three or five of his poems by heart”. He had a profound interest in myths, a particular pantheism, a divine depiction of plants, so I thought I might like him. (…) Now I found a book of poems by him on the NET, entitled AZ ANNA-RÉTEN by Péter Pál Gulyás. Well, at last, please, this is what I always knew about Pál Gulyás: yes, it’s to my taste, and it’s very deep mythology, and natural elements, indeed, it’s a pity that Pál Gulyás was from Debrecen and not Paris. Then my eye is caught by the date. Hm… written about sixty years after his death. After a bit of digging, the picture becomes clear: we are talking about two different people, Péter Pál Gulyás is a traditionalist, he also wrote on mythological and ethnographic topics, and he is still alive, at least I don’t see anywhere that he is dead. It is strange, though, that his poetry is even more Gulyás Pál than his Druze. Nomen est omen?” (www.world wanderer, 2007)

“Péter Pál Gulyás’s book – The ÁDÁMCSUTKA – makes us think, and this makes it unique in today’s highly anti-intellectual Hungary. It should be published for that reason alone. Of course, that is probably why it will not be published. Here today, everyone and everything from rock musicians and football players (not to mention fans) to professors, writers, academics, bishops, openly or covertly rage against thinking in the name of various political, economic, ethnic, quasi-philosophical, pseudo-historical mysticisms, and Adam’s apple proves that fairy tales, legends and myths are not mystical at all. “The ancients thought regularly.” Their creations and their actions cannot be interpreted emotionally, let alone sentimentally, but only rationally, with Cartesian clarity.

“A fascinating read on comparative mythology. The author breaks new ground by examining mythological motifs from the Bible, the Kalevala and the Kalevipoeg, Greek and Roman mythologies, Christian legends and Finno-Ugric folk beliefs, etc. This is a highly informative and deeply intriguing book.” Mihály Hoppál, president of the Hungarian Association for the Study of Religion (Adam’s Apple, 2012, European Folklore Institute)

“Péter Pál Gulyás’s book “Star of Bellybuttocks” has become extremely popular for its mythological description of the blessed state. The former songwriter, now film screenwriter, experiences the world of science as a whole, so that in the world of cultural history, folklore and beliefs he is forced to rethink again and again the ideas that cannot be ‘closed files. The apple was already the test of Adam and Eve, but the mythology of the ancient world, the Germanic world, the fairy-tale world, even Snow White, is also about the distinctive significance of the apple. By examining the intellectual-historical tradition of “apple eating” in the world myth and the Hungarian mythological tradition, even using the insights of astronomy, we can arrive at the realization of the system theory that appears in universal human thought. (István Antall, Kossuth Radio, Kultúrkör – Péter Pál Gulyás: On the Hungarian Myth of the World)

“From my childhood, I remember a conversation after a family lunch about the often seemingly unjustified ‘der-die-das’ of German nouns. My uncle, who was of Austrian descent, could not get his head around the issue either. He admitted he had no idea why der Honig (honey) was masculine. I had to wait seven or even eight decades to find out the reason, the probable truth, with the help of Péter Pál Gulyás, which only an exceptionally perceptive mind is capable of recognizing.