223 E 52nd Street, NY 10022
Organized by the Liszt Institute New York and the Consulate General of Hungary an exciting literary presentation will take place on May 8, 2025 at 6PM at the Consulate General of Hungary in New York featuring Professor Anna Barker.
On February 18, 2025, fans of Hungarian literature and culture celebrated the bicentennial of Hungary’s greatest 19th century novelist, Jókai Mór (1825-1904). As prolific as Dickens, Balzac, and Tolstoy, Jókai dedicated over 80 volumes to the exploration of Hungarian culture for whose independence he fought on the barricades of the Revolution of 1848, along with Hungary’s greatest poet, Petőfi Sándor, and Hungary’s greatest patriot, Kossuth Lajos, who visited the United States 1851-1852 and advocated for Hungary’s independence.
Professor Barker’s presentation is dedicated to her Hungarian roots and her Hungarian father’s lifelong interest in history and explores the bewildering complexities of Hungary’s past - from the Roman province of Panonia and the city of Aquincum (today’s Budapest) where the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote his “Meditations”; to the great Hun migration to Europe and Attila’s impact on the history of Paris and Rome; the great Magyar migration and the role of Árpád in the founding of the Hungarian state; Saint István’s Christian conversion; the Mongol invasion under Batu Khan; the Turkish invasion under Suleiman the Magnificent; the Austrian Hapsburg liberation of Hungary and the origins of the Revolution of 1848 - which are explored in Jókai Mór’s 1869 novel “A Köszívú Ember Fiai”(“The Baron's Sons”), the subject of Professor Barker’s January-March, 2025 Substack commentary.
The presentation concludes with a discussion of the Hungarian cultural revival in the aftermath of the catastrophic defeat of the Revolution of 1848 - from the popularity of Petőfi’s “János vitéz” to Kodály’s “Háry János” - plus Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies, Brahms’ Hungarian Dances, Bartók’s Hungarian Pictures, Erkel operas, Strauss and Kálmán operettas, Hungarian art from Munkácsy to Hollósy, and the international recognition of Hungarian culture - Herend at the Great Exhibition in London (1851), Zsolnay at the Paris World Fair (Grand Prix, 1878), Fadrusz János’ Matthias Corvinus Statue at the Paris World Fair (Grand Prix, 1900), etc...
About the presenter
A native speaker of Russian and Hungarian, Professor Barker completed her PhD in Comparative Literature and Translation Studies at the University of Iowa in 2002. She teaches courses on 19th-century Russian and European literature, history, and culture and publishes a monthly Iowa City Press-Citizen column entitled "Anna's Thinking Cap, " dedicated to Iowa’s history and the Napoleonic period.
A 2011-2014 Research Fellow at the University of Iowa Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, Professor Barker has given presentations on Russian literature and translation at numerous conferences, including at Yasnaya Polyana, the Tolstoy Literary Estate and Museum, Tula Region, Russia. In 2021 she initiated a Russian literature lecture series, “Russian Literary Journeys with Anna,” at the Minneapolis Museum of Russian Art. She is looking forward to giving a presentation on the depiction of Napoleon in literature at the International Napoleonic Society conference in Paris, France in July, 2025.
In collaboration with the University of Iowa Libraries Special Collections, Professor Barker curated the exhibits "Goya's Disasters of War and Tolstoy's War and Peace: A Dialogue Between Art and Literature" (2019) and "From Revolutionary Outcast to a Man of God: Dostoevsky at 200" (2021). The Dostoevsky exhibit attracted over 5,000 visitors.
Her 2024-2026 Substack commentary focuses on the works of Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Demons), Dumas (The Three Musketeers and its sequels), and Jókai Mór (The Heartless Man's Sons or A kőszívű ember fiai and The Golden Age In Transylvania or Erdély aranykora).
Professor Barker’s upcoming publications include “13 Notes from Napoleon, Iowa: Musings on the Edge of the French Empire” (2025) and “Twenty Tales from Tolstoy: For the Young and the Young at Heart” (2028), both from Ice Cube Press.