Obituary

On 9^th April 2018 died our former colleague, teacher for comparative literature, essayist and translator Andor Horváth.

He was born on 8^th March 1944 in Cluj. He graduated in the Brassai Sámuel High School (1961) and obtained a degree as Hungarian and French teacher at the Babeș–Bolyai University (1966). After four years of teaching at Turda, beginning with 1970 he became a co-worker of the literary magazine A Hét at Bucharest. At the beginning he was the redactor of the world literature column, then between 1975 and 1983 worked as deputy editor-in-chief. Andor Horváth regularly wrote prefaces to works from the world literature series of the Kriterion Publisher, a chief organ of the Hungarian book publishing from Romania, and edited the annuals of A Hét. Between January 1990 and September 1992 he was under-secretary in the Romanian Ministry of Culture. In this period had he made friends with Andrei Pleșu, the renowned Romanian philosopher, publicist and politician, and later translated several of his works. In 1990 with fellows Andor Horváth founded the Soros Foundation Romania. In 1995 he was elected the president of the Kolozsvár Society, a society dedicated for the culture of Cluj. He remained in this function until 1999. Between 1999 and 2004 he was the member of the Senate of the BBU. He (co-)authored numerous manuals, study- and essay-volumes and translated among others from Romanian and French.

Andor Horváth was a member of the teaching staff of our department from 1990 until his retiring. He practiced himself and taught the different branches of comparative literature and translation theories. He was also a tutor of our department’s vocational college Láthatatlan Kollégium [Invisible College].Generations may be grateful to him for that proficiency in world literature, friendly irony and balanced attention that characterized his work all along.

“Because living in the culture does not mean that one sets out each year and in half an hour visits the great cathedrals, so that in fifty years one spends in front of five hundred cathedrals half an hour per each. You may be living in a single cathedral fifty years in the culture.” (Andor Horváth on happiness)

We part from him with shaken hearts.