The Sweetest Bird of My Youth And Other Stories by Peter Ortutay

Many of us here in Hungary still no doubt remember Tennessee Williams’ staggering play The Sweet Bird of Youth very well. We can do it for at least two reasons. The first one is that it was once, or even more often, staged by theaters in Budapest, and it always was a sold-out; and secondly, the translator was a no lesser figure than the well-known István Örkény, whose brilliant rendering of the text into Hungarian, especially of the climactic parts, was, perhaps, better than the original. But what’s the play about? In a nutshell, it’s a drama, a tragedy, and it is about life itself, and says that life can be hard and bitter, but still, it’s always sweet and beautiful while you are young and feeling young, and that’s why you want it to last for good, because you want to capture, to get hold of the hours, the minutes, the moments of those days, if it were possible. But time, be it sweet or bitter, flies away quickly, and as you become older, you are less and less able to get rid of the feeling that you must have spoilt something there in that remote past.