The distinguished translator Lajos Pálfalvi has died
Lajos Pálfalvi (born 1959) was one of the most outstanding translators of Polish literature of the past half-century. Thanks to his translation work, from the mid-1980s onward the most important and up-to-date works of Polish belles-lettres and broadly understood humanities were regularly published in Hungary.
From the beginning of his translation career Pálfalvi was an active intermediary between Polish and Hungarian publishers and translators. It is in part due to his engagement and work that Hungary today ranks among the leaders in the number of translations of Polish literature. Also thanks to him, the works of young-generation Polish writers are regularly presented across the Danube. Pálfalvi was also a mentor to subsequent generations of young translators.
Pálfalvi’s academic career likewise focused on Polish literature. He earned his doctorate writing a dissertation on Polish émigré literature entitled Tény és metafora. A lengyel emigració prózairodalma, 1945–1980 [Fact and Metaphor. The Prose of the Polish Emigration, 1945–1980] (Budapest 1993), and completed his habilitation on the work of Gombrowicz (A Transz-Atlantik megállói. Gombrowicz [Transatlantic Stops. Gombrowicz]).
Since 2000 he headed the Department of Polish Philology at Péter Pázmány Catholic University in Budapest, and ten years later he became director of the Institute of Slavic and Central Europe Studies, under which Polish studies are organized. Many graduates of his faculty went on to try their hand as literary translators.
From 2000 to 2002 Pálfalvi was the head of one section of the literary magazine ‘Nagyvilág’ (the Hungarian equivalent of ‘Literatura na Świecie’). In 2003 he received the prestigious László Wessely Translation Prize awarded by Európa Publishing. He was an undisputed authority on Polish literature in Hungary — his translations and critical texts regularly appeared in cultural and literary periodicals.
Lajos Pálfalvi translated into Hungarian works by, among others, Władysław Stanisław Reymont, Sławomir Mrożek, Andrzej Szczypiorski, Czesław Miłosz, Witold Gombrowicz, Stanisław Vincenz, Gustaw Herling-Grudziński, Jerzy Stempowski, Antoni Libera, Kazimierz Brandys, Henryk Grynberg, Andrzej Stasiuk, Andrzej Bart, Olga Tokarczuk, Adam Michnik, Maria Janion, Józef Mackiewicz, Krzysztof Varga, Bogdan Wojdowski and Leszek Kołakowski.