萨博·玛格达

萨博·玛格达（Magda Szabó，1917年10月5日—2007年11月19日）是一位匈牙利小说家。

生平

1943年和1944年期间，她霍德梅泽瓦沙海伊一个加尔文主义女子文理中学任教。她的丈夫也是一位作家兼翻译家。

Magda Szabó (Hungarian pronunciation: [ˈmɒgdɒ ˈsɒboː] 5 October 1917 – 19 November 2007) was a Hungarian novelist. Doctor of philology, she also wrote dramas, essays, studies, memoirs, poetry and children's literature. She was a founding member of the Digital Literary Academy, an online digital repository of Hungarian literature. She is the most translated Hungarian author, with publications in 42 countries and over 30 languages.

Biography

Early life

Magda Szabó was born in Debrecen, Austria-Hungary in 1917. Her father, Elek Szabó (1879–1959), an academic and public official, taught her to speak Latin fluently from childhood, gave her the foundation of her extensive knowledge of European antiquity and an appreciation of ancient Roman and Greek history and literature. Her mother, Lenke Jablonczay (1884–1967), was herself a writer, although her works were never published. The influence and example of her parents played an important part in Szabó’s life. Storytelling and playing theatre were everyday activities in her childhood, both with her parents and by herself.

Szabó graduated from secondary school in 1935 in the Dóczy Institute for Girls’ Education of Debrecen (today Dóczy Gymnasium of the Reformed College of Debrecen), where she had studied for twelve years. She studied to become a teacher of Hungarian and Latin at the István Tisza Hungarian Royal University of Science (today University of Debrecen), graduating in 1940. She rarely commented on her tertiary education, except for stating that she considered it to have been ‘conservative’ and ‘old-fashioned’, and that she received little support to develop as a writer. She wrote her thesis on cosmetic practices in ancient Rome. She referred to this as a doctoral dissertation, but literary historian Endre Bakó claims not to have found documentation of Szabó pursuing a doctorate.

Adulthood

In 1943 and 1944, she taught in the Reformed (Hungarian Calvinist) girls' gymnasium of Hódmezővásárhely. She wrote a verse novel titled Szüret (‘Harvest’) about her experiences during World War II, which she only published in 1975. After the war, she moved to Budapest. From 1945 until her dismissal in 1949, she worked as an officer on film, then literature at the Ministry of Religious and Public Educational Affairs. She married fellow writer and translator Tibor Szobotka (1913–1982) in 1947.

Multiple books by Szabó are autofictional, including Ókut/‘The Ancient Well’ (1970), Régimódi történet/‘Old-Fashioned Story’ (1977), and Für Elise (2002). Their (unacknowledged) fictional elements, which are incompatible with each other, make details of Szabó’s personal life, childhood, and family relationships difficult to ascertain.

Writing career

Szabó began her writing career as a poet and in 1947 she published her first book of poetry, Bárány ("Lamb"), which was followed by Vissza az emberig ("Back to the Human") in 1949. In 1949 she was awarded the Baumgarten Prize, which was immediately withdrawn when Szabó was labelled an enemy to the Communist Party. She was dismissed from the Ministry in the same year. The Stalinist era from 1949 to 1956 censored any literature, such as Szabó's work, that did not conform to socialist realism. Since her husband was also censored by the communist regime, she was forced to teach in a Calvinist girls' school until 1959.

She wrote her first novel, Freskó ("Fresco") during these years, and it was published in 1958. The novel tells the story of a puritan family coming together for a funeral, and examines questions of hypocrisy and Hungarian history. In the same year, she published another book of poetry, Bárány Boldizsár (" Balthazar the Lamb"), and a novel for younger female readers, Mondják meg Zsófikának (translated into English as "Tell Sophie ...").