Márton Istvánovits

Marton Ishtvanovich [Márton Istvánovits] (September 15, 1930, Budapest – April 7, 1991, ibid.) was a Hungarian folklorist, Kartvelologist, and translator. He served as the head of the Folklore Department at the Institute of Ethnography of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

From 1955 to 1959, he pursued his postgraduate studies in folklore at Tbilisi State University (TSU). In 1959, he defended his candidate's dissertation on the topic The Genesis of the Georgian Local Recension of the Fairy Tale “Plot Concerning Gender Metamorphosis".

In 1968, within a compendium dedicated to a jubilee of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, he published a study on Georgian folk poetry, which comprehensively analyzed Arsenas Leksi (The Poem of Arsen) and the Gurian Piralis Eposi.

Ishtvanovich translated Georgian folk tales, which were published in Budapest under the title The King and the Lark (1958). He additionally translated works by S.S. Orbeliani, A. Tsereteli, G. Tabidze, and G. Leonidze. Together with the poet Márton Kalász, he translated I. Chavchavadze’s poems.

K. Sikharulidze