Publication
There has been some dispute as to whether Szathmári wrote the novel first in Hungarian or in Esperanto, and this issue is unlikely to ever be fully resolved. But most leading scholars in Hungary today believe he first wrote it in his native tongue, Hungarian, and that once he became sufficiently fluent in Esperanto, he then translated the book into that language as well, with some assistance from Kálmán Kalocsay. The less probable counter theory goes that after writing some of the book in Hungarian, Szathmári rewrote it and, with Kalocsay's help, finished it first in Esperanto. According to this view, when the Esperanto journal Literatura Mondo, which had accepted it, went out of business at the start of the Second World War, he rewrote it or translated it into Hungarian, resulting in its publication in that language in 1941. In any case, it seems all but certain that the author's Esperanto version was essentially complete or at least well underway before the book's first publication in Hungarian, even if the Esperanto edition did not appear formally until 1958.
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Famous quotes containing the word publication:
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