- What do you think about the idea that the Catholic religion preserved the Moldavian Hungarians for centuries, and now, since the era has become secularized, globalization has done the dirty work that even the Romanians couldn’t completely accomplish?
The feudal state that characterized Moldavia from the Middle Ages until the late '80s has disappeared. The world has opened up, and the 21st century has descended upon the Csángós, with television, cars, and smartphones. Everyone wants to live well; the Csángó boy dreams of driving a Lamborghini and doesn’t dream of preserving his village’s language and customs. Even our peasants have shed their traditional ways, albeit belatedly, and so have those in Moldavia. Nowadays, in every village, only two or three elderly women still wear the traditional attire, while the others dress in city clothes.

- What captivated you about the world you entered in the late '70s?
Most of all, the archaic, old language—that is wonderful! One of their folk tales ends with the saying, "You don't joke with God" ("Isztenvel nem pogocsálsz"). The word "pogocsa" is from the era of the Hungarian conquest, and it lived on with them. Just as the "szültű" (a type of flute) did, which they use instead of the Slavic-style flute, and which has even faded from the language of Transylvanians. The "dzsézés" and "sziszegés" are all Old Hungarian sounds! And let me tell you an anecdote that proves how vibrant this language still was: In Szabófalva, in 1929, the Romanian postman’s motorcycle passed through for the first time, but it only went through the main street of the village; it didn’t deliver any letters or stop anywhere. Since it always made a loud noise, but they didn’t know what it was, they were forced to name it, and that’s how the word "tortogtató" was born, a word imitating the sound "trr-trr." As an artist, the visuality of this world also captivated me: the stamped earth floors, the sunlight streaming through small windows, the colorful skirt-wraps, the babies lying in wooden troughs, the flame of the kerosene lamp casting shadows on the whitewashed walls, beautiful, fair-faced people, young and old. I conversed with people, many of whom were almost illiterate, but wisdom and genuine, hard-earned knowledge flowed from their every word. This Csángó world touched me deeply, and I felt it was my moral duty to be one of the Hungarians who visits them and cares for them. Most Hungarians in Hungary desire to go to Italy or Spain, but I couldn’t have imagined anything more exciting and moving than recording the words of the last Hungarian speakers in a dying village. When I realized that the Hungarian-speaking people were dying monthly, I traveled around the area with a tape recorder, photographing them and collecting archaic prayers, incantations, and customs from them. Out of the four archaic prayers recorded among the northern Csángós, I managed to find one.

- Could you recite it?
"The holy bells are tolling in heaven, / Holy angels are flying to Calvary Hill / To attend the holy mass. / In the plowing (Osanatász) beautiful fruit trees in Gethsemane Garden / Our Lord Christ sits in his golden chair, His golden hand held up, His golden hair let down..."

- Beautiful.
Wonderfully beautiful. But the archaic world was also harsh! I had incredibly deep, moving conversations. Once I was on a train and talked for an hour and a half with a young Csángó woman in traditional dress. I asked her about this and that, and toward the end of the journey, she broke down in tears and said she couldn’t take it anymore; she was in such excruciating pain from menstrual cramps that she felt she would die. She said she was usually weak and powerless when her “time” came, but her husband and mother-in-law had so little consideration for her that they still forced her to work in the fields. There were times when she fainted, but they revived her and made her continue working. I felt great pity for her and decided to bring her medicine the next time, and I managed to get her enough Meristin tablets to last about five years. Needless to say, her husband eyed me suspiciously when I turned up like one of the Three Wise Men... It was a tough world, but they endured everything. If there was a lot of work and they didn’t know whom to leave the child with, they took the child to the field with them, placed them in a hollowed-out trough made of linden wood, or if the child was older, they buried them up to their waist in the ground—incidentally, this kept them cool in the summer heat and prevented them from wandering off, allowing their mother to hoe in peace.

- You mentioned you also found a folk song.
Uncle Zoli Kallós found six folk songs in Szabófalva, and I managed to find two more. One of them I discovered by getting into the home of an unknown, mentally sharp eighty-year-old woman. I asked her many things; she said good things, and when I felt I had squeezed her brain dry like a sponge, I asked if she knew any Hungarian songs. She quickly responded, “No!” I was crushed, but then I remembered to ask as a last resort if her grandmother used to sing. “Oh, yes!” she replied firmly. So, I asked if she could recall any of those songs. And she sang a song about the Turkish occupation, which must have been a “fresh” memory. It goes like this: “Turkey is far away, my love is in it, / The rosebush leaves are sprouting, my love is lying down, / Come, let’s go now, we shall never return, / There, the Hungarian word is heard, open the door, my rose.”

- Can anything from that old world still be seen today?
Barely. There are still a few dilapidated, unfortunate old people in their 80s or 90s living in the “old house,” but in most places, the men have gone abroad to work, saved money, returned home, and built houses with tiled bathrooms. This is a natural process, but they have discarded their traditional attire. Some return to their village feast from the city (Romanvásár, Bacău) or from abroad by car, bringing their now Romanian-speaking grandchildren with them. In fact, it’s becoming more common for a Csángó worker who works abroad to come home for Christmas, bringing along the grandchildren, and the old Csángó grandparents can’t communicate with them either in Hungarian or Romanian. When the grandparent asks the child something, the child indignantly responds, “I’m an Italian kid!” I’ll never forget when a dear, old lady said to me—after furtively looking around the room first—“Gergely, you must know, the Romanian language is a hideous language!” I burst out laughing, the old lady shared her long life’s experience with me. But what are we surprised at? There was no Hungarian education; the Romanian teachers beat the children, the Romanian-speaking Catholic priests refused to marry them because they didn’t know the catechism in Romanian...

- How serious is the situation?
Assimilation is unstoppable. When I started visiting Moldavia, there were known to be 120,000 Hungarian speakers; now, maybe 60,000 remain. However, among the northern Csángó villages, only in Szabófalva do they still speak or understand Hungarian, and the southern villages have also begun to switch languages... And even in Szabófalva, fewer and fewer people speak Hungarian, even though it is the most archaic, oldest village, and with the death of Csángó poet Demeter Lakatos, Hungarian consciousness also began to die out. As I said, they had no teachers, no priests, and the Romanian teachers beat the Csángó children.

- Why don’t they start Hungarian language education in Szabófalva? You succeeded in restarting Hungarian language education in Magyarfalu.
It required decades of trust. In the easternmost Hungarian village, they knew me well, and I had friends there. I visited the parents and explained to them that I wanted to teach the Hungarian language in the village and explained that it was also economically beneficial if their children learned Hungarian, as if they went to work in Hungary or Transylvania, they would need to speak Hungarian. By that time—2002—many young men from the village were already commuting abroad, and they were not as afraid of the priests as the elderly were. I went from house to house and had the parents sign a petition to officially request Hungarian language education. They agreed, they went for it, we did it. Of course, they tried to intimidate them; the village policeman and the Romanian school principal summoned them individually, but they resisted. When I used my savings to hire a minibus and organized a trip for the children to Csíksomlyó, the police officer visited the parents and told them, “We’ve been watching this Hungarian closely, and we know exactly that he’s an organ trafficker! He wants to take the children to the Csíksomlyó pilgrimage because refrigerated trucks are waiting at the city’s outskirts, and they’ll carve up the children with a big cleaver, freeze their hearts and livers, and sell them abroad for dollars!” The parents just laughed...

- Does it hurt that the magic of that world is gone?
It hurts, even though how many times they could have threatened the demon of illness by saying, “I cut off your Hydra, I give you your Sun,” when they put embers on the threshold, stood the sick child outside, and broke the embers with the back of an axe, marking the child’s forehead with the ashes. They also performed charming little spells in Moldavia, for example, they would change the child’s name if they were seriously ill. They would call over a neighbor woman who had healthy children, pass the sick child out through the window, the neighbor woman would take the child and recite the spell: “We called you Mary until now, from now on we’ll call you Luca.” When the sick child returned to the house through the door, they consistently called the child Luca in the family so that the demon of illness would not recognize them.

- Do you still visit?
I do. Demeter Lakatos died in '74; they made a concrete gravestone for him, but by now it has cracked and crumbled. With my friends, the three of us ordered a granite tombstone from a local stone mason, and if the authorities don’t interfere, we’ll try to set it up by the end of September. We managed to sneak one single Hungarian sentence onto the granite slab, and we hope it doesn’t catch anyone’s eye... This was the great experience of my life; Gauguin went to the Tahitian islands, among the tight Tahitian girls; that was not given to me; I was left with the Csángó women! Sometimes I replay some tape recordings, listen to my acquaintances, my friends, good Csángó people who have since passed away, and I shed a tear. This was my life; if I die, I’ll take many Csángós with me. But until then, do you know how the Csángós wish a good day? “Much life ahead of you,” meaning many living days forward, for your future life!