Márton Koppány
My Name Is (Not)
My Name Is (Not) ...
1. My father had Hungarianized his name before I was born. He thought that with a family name sounding more Hungarian I would be more safe in life.
2. My family name is not only Hungarian, it is so in the extreme.
3. I could never identify with it. I always thought, especially in my childhood, that people realized at once that I was hiding or I was as stupid as to suppose I could hide.
4. I was ashamed of thinking that they might think that I was ashamed.
5. In foreign countries my family name is meaningless.
6. That has still nothing to do with my "original" name which would disambiguate my background.
7. I have no family name. My first name is Márton, after my grandfather who was killed before I was born. I am Márton. I am either dead or not real.
8. Dependent origination is sunyata, sunyata is dependent origination.*
9. In Hungarian, family names come first. In my childhood, whenever I had to introduce myself, I gave my family name in a whisper, but it is much easier to give your family name in a whisper in those languages where the first name comes first.
10. I reached out because I wanted to get rid of my mother tongue (which actually wasn’t my mother’s mother tongue).
11. I wanted to become more real and to experience what it would be like.
12. Coincidentally, I knew that it was only another way to metacommunicate my dead-end with identification. Still, at least in the beginning, it was an ecstatic state of mind...
* "Szunya" (pronunciation of sz: like s in sunyata) is a colloquial word for sleep in Hungarian. Whenever I wanted Gertrude to go to sleep at the end of the day, I told her "Sunyata!" and she moved, slowly, close to my bed and fell asleep.
/Late March, 2021, Budapest/
Márton Koppány lives in Budapest, Hungary. He is running a (very slow) blog: https://booksbymartonkoppany.blogspot.com/
My Name Is (Not)
for Clark Lunberry
Hope you are doing well! There is nothing special to report, I just wanted to be in touch. We are still in the pandemic universe, the third wave has been the worst one in Central Europe so far. There is a vaccine shortage all over the EU. Our savior (aka The Criminal) bought a big bunch of Russian and Chinese vaccines, which is not necessarily bad in itself but he is using it for his usual anti-EU rhetorics, for lying and dividing. I have no idea when we will be vaccinated.
As for new projects, for a while I've been thinking about doing something with/on my name, more exactly with my very special family name that I could never identify with, and what it means and what it meant all my life. It has a visual element to it, too, because if I take a look at my old signatures (in identification cards, membership cards, passports etc.) I see a continuous shift toward asemicity and reduction as far as the family name is concerned. My signature has never been consciously controlled by me, I mean I didn't care what it looked like, so it is free of aesthetic control, but my inquiry is not psychoanalytic either. I'm simply contemplating the fact. The handwriting of my "first" name, on the other hand (which comes only second in Hungarian, and that is meaningful, too), has remained safe and sound all the time.
As for new projects, for a while I've been thinking about doing something with/on my name, more exactly with my very special family name that I could never identify with, and what it means and what it meant all my life. It has a visual element to it, too, because if I take a look at my old signatures (in identification cards, membership cards, passports etc.) I see a continuous shift toward asemicity and reduction as far as the family name is concerned. My signature has never been consciously controlled by me, I mean I didn't care what it looked like, so it is free of aesthetic control, but my inquiry is not psychoanalytic either. I'm simply contemplating the fact. The handwriting of my "first" name, on the other hand (which comes only second in Hungarian, and that is meaningful, too), has remained safe and sound all the time.
Yes, you are absolutely right, it is the same name thing I discussed with Geof (incomprehensible mumbling is more correct on my part), and although I had been aware of it and its pressure all my life (or at least from my early teens), that was the moment when I realized (inspired by pálinka, a traditional Hungarian brandy, as well) that I could use it as a metaphor for many events in my personal history. I wonder whether it will morph into an art project or simply remains a support of contemplation. At this point, all I have is a bunch of scanned graphic names and related photos plus a few notes.
My Name Is (Not) ...
1. My father had Hungarianized his name before I was born. He thought that with a family name sounding more Hungarian I would be more safe in life.
2. My family name is not only Hungarian, it is so in the extreme.
3. I could never identify with it. I always thought, especially in my childhood, that people realized at once that I was hiding or I was as stupid as to suppose I could hide.
4. I was ashamed of thinking that they might think that I was ashamed.
5. In foreign countries my family name is meaningless.
6. That has still nothing to do with my "original" name which would disambiguate my background.
7. I have no family name. My first name is Márton, after my grandfather who was killed before I was born. I am Márton. I am either dead or not real.
8. Dependent origination is sunyata, sunyata is dependent origination.*
9. In Hungarian, family names come first. In my childhood, whenever I had to introduce myself, I gave my family name in a whisper, but it is much easier to give your family name in a whisper in those languages where the first name comes first.
10. I reached out because I wanted to get rid of my mother tongue (which actually wasn’t my mother’s mother tongue).
11. I wanted to become more real and to experience what it would be like.
12. Coincidentally, I knew that it was only another way to metacommunicate my dead-end with identification. Still, at least in the beginning, it was an ecstatic state of mind...
...Yes, I understand why you hesitate. Gyöngyi has been tempted as well, but we postponed her DNA test because of the pandemic. As for me, I'm not too enthusiastic about it and am doubtful about its correctness. Also, if I turn out to be one half Babylonian and one half Ukrainian, what is the difference? :-) On the other hand, I would be immensely interested in Gertrude S’. (our late dog - a beautiful mongrel) ancestors. I couldn't imagine a more exciting thing than to see together the pics of all her forebears. Unfortunately, it is a wish I won't be able to fulfill.
* "Szunya" (pronunciation of sz: like s in sunyata) is a colloquial word for sleep in Hungarian. Whenever I wanted Gertrude to go to sleep at the end of the day, I told her "Sunyata!" and she moved, slowly, close to my bed and fell asleep.
/Late March, 2021, Budapest/
Márton Koppány lives in Budapest, Hungary. He is running a (very slow) blog: https://booksbymartonkoppany.blogspot.com/
previous page contents next page
posted by mark young at 10:39 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home