<![CDATA[ CAN YOU GO HOME AGAIN? A BUDAPEST DIARY 1993
by
SUSAN RUBIN SULEIMA
Dept. of Romance Languages and Comparative Literature,
Harvard University
_Postmodern Culture_ v.3 n.3 (May, 1993)
pmc@unity.ncsu.edu
Copyright (c) 1993 by Susan Rubin Suleiman,
all rights reserved.
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INTRODUCTORY NOTE:
[1] The excerpts that follow are from a diary I have been
keeping since early February [1993], when I began a six-
month residency at the Collegium Budapest, a new Institute
for Advanced Study modeled on those in Berlin and Princeton
When I was invited last year to come to Budapest during this
inaugural year of the Collegium, I accepted immediately.
Besides the usual luxuries of such a Fellowship period, th
invitation offered me what I thought of as a near-
providential opportunity to continue the autobiographical
project I had started some years back, and which was
assuming increasing urgency.
[2] I left Hungary with my parents in the summer of 1949,
and rarely thought of it again until thirty-five years
later, when I decided to return as a tourist with my tw
sons, then aged 14 and 7. That return triggered a desire to
reconnect with my childhood and native city, a desire that
took the form of writing. I published two short pieces I
occasionally allude to in the diary ("My War in Four
Episodes," _Agni_, 33, 1991; "Reading in Tongues," _Boston
Review_, May-August 1992). Then, as a preparation for my
current trip, I wrote a longer memoir, still unpublished,
about the 1984 return and the memories it brought back. The
decision to write the diary did not crystallize until after
I arrived here--I simply found myself writing on my
computer, sometimes for hours, at other times for a few
minutes, from the first day on. After a while, I realized
that I was writing "for a public" as well as for myself, an
the project of a published diary began to take shape
Since these excerpts have had to be radically excised from
much longer text that is still in process, I decided t
limit my selections to a few themes, chief among them the
current resurgence of nationalism and anti-Semitism in
Hungary (as in Eastern Europe in general), and, not
unrelated to the first, my personal history. Out of a
desire to protect the privacy of people I mention, I have
used only first names or initials, which are not necessarily
factual. In the case of public figures, I cite their full
real name. I have tried to keep the writing very close to
that of the first draft, but have not resisted makin
occasional stylistic changes. The order and tenor of th
entries have not been modified. Some of the major cuts ar
indicated by suspension points in brackets.
[3] A few Hungarian words: %utca% means street, %ut% means
avenue, %ter% means square (like "place" in French), %korut%
is a round avenue, %korter% or %korond% a round "square,"
%villamos% means tramway. Hungarian names are cited last
name first, given name second. Hungarian vowels have
variety of diacritical marks, but they cannot be reproduced
in this electronic publication.
[4] I would be interested in readers' responses to this
work. Please send them to _Postmodern Culture_, which will
forward them to me.
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY
[5] My apartment is the whole top floor of a three-stor
building, very big and nice.
[6] [...] I didn't want to sleep in the middle of the
afternoon, so after taking a hot bath and changing clothes,
I went to the Collegium. I walked part of the way, down
toward the Gellert Hotel on Bartok Bela ut, a wide, bus
avenue lined with shops. I stopped at one to buy a
toothbrush and some paper handkerchiefs. It felt strange to
be speaking Hungarian to the young woman in the store. I
thought I was speaking badly, like a foreigner. After
walking a while longer I took a taxi, which cost 240
Forints--just under three dollars.
[7] The Collegium occupies a historical monument, an 18th-
century building, newly renovated, in what is surely one of
the most beautiful spots in Budapest--on Castle Hill abov
the Danube, across the square from the Matyas Church. The
Church and square look positively dreamlike when they are
lit up in the evening. My first sight of them was that way,
for it was dark by the time I got there.
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 5
[8] Had a chat with the downstairs neighbor this morning, a
woman of about 65. She and her husband have been living in
this house for over thirty years. It was a state-owne
building, but three years ago the tenants were given th
option to buy their apartments. The couple who own mine
bought two--this one and a smaller one on the ground floor,
where they now live. They spent several years abroad, which
may account for the fancy electronic equipment in my
apartment. Everybody had their place redone inside, bu
they have no money left to repair the outside, which still
bears the marks of World War II. The front was just one
street over, she said: Germans on one side, Russians on the
other. The pockmarks on our facade are due to flying
shrapnel. It looks very bad, but would cost too much to
repair. There are six apartments in the building. Theirs
was divided, that's why it's smaller than mine.
[9] Shall I go back again to Akacfa utca and climb again
the three flights of stairs to our old apartment, now
divided? Maybe the couple who lived there nine years ago no
longer lives there, or maybe they have bought the place and
had it redone.
[10] After lunch at the Collegium I took a taxi to the hom
of B., one of the editors of a recently founded monthl
journal, whose name was on my list of people to call. He
had told me on the telephone yesterday that he lived in an
old-style building with a balcony surrounding the courtyard,
and asked whether I was afraid of heights. No I wasn't, I
assured him--and a good thing, too, because really his
balcony is very narrow and from the third floor where he
lives one has a plunging view. The building reminded me of
Akacfa utca, but it was less nice--narrow balcony, n
wrought iron, a smallish courtyard full of parked cars.
[11] The man who opened the door was tall, around 50
pleasant face, almost bald and what hair he had, white. The
apartment's clutter matched the exterior mess. He invited
me into the tiny kitchen while he made coffee. He has a
very charming, informal manner and a boyish air which
suspect he cultivates, as if he didn't want to flaunt his
authority or power--or perhaps as if he didn't want
completely to grow up. After the coffee was made, he
invited me into his study, a large pleasant room lined with
books which we reached by crossing a small bathroom. His
computer was still on, and he showed me the database he has
been working on for the past fifteen years, just finished:
a complete %repertoire%, in French, of Hungarian poetry
written before 1600. A true work of erudition, which
somehow didn't fit in my mind with his image as an editor of
a chic journal. But B. turned out to be a man of many
interests and talents ("Je n'ai pas un violon d'Ingres, j'ai
un orchestre d'Ingres," he joked at one point), and we spent
a pleasant few hours talking about everything from opera to
French structuralism, with which he feels a great affinity.
At first we spoke Hungarian, but when things got really
interesting we settled into French, which he speaks ver
well with a heavy Hungarian accent.
[12] I asked him about the journal. "Well, I think you have
great areas of empathy in you, but you simply cannot imagine
what it was like to be an intellectual here around 1987-88.
Suddenly, everything seemed possible. I had purposely
chosen to specialize in literature before 1600, just to mak
sure I would never have to write anything about politics.
Under the communist regime, that was the only way I felt I
could survive. But then, when things began to change, I
felt I could and should take an active role." So he and
some friends founded the journal, in the very room where we
were sitting--and he didn't even have a telephone at the
time
[13] After looking at the "Contents" of _Subversive Intent_,
which I had xeroxed for him (the book is on its way), h
asked: "Are you close to feminism?" Yes, I answered. H
smiled broadly: "I wrote one of the first feminist articles
in Hungary--about a 16th-century poet, the first Hungarian
woman poet, who wasn't mentioned in any of the official
literary histories." But now, he no longer considers
himself a feminist because all the ones he knows are to
angry. He likes women, but not feminism. Are there an
women on the editorial board of the journal? I asked. (
knew full well there aren't any, I had read the masthead.
No, he answered. There are too many "fistfights"
(%bagarres%) among the editors, and in a woman's presence
they might not turn out the same way. Some men become to
wildly competitive if a woman is present, as if to prove
themselves to her. What did I think about that? That it'
very hard for men to think of women as equals, I answered
[14] He gave me his latest book--about three kinds o
readers, all of them "played" by himself. As he was tellin
me about his three readers I couldn't help thinking of th
four sons at the Seder, especially since he had mentioned a
short while before that both of his paternal grandparents
were Jewish. He said neither he nor his father thought of
themselves as Jews, though of course, at the first sign of
anti-Semitism, he identifies himself as one. He inscribed
his book, in Hungarian, "To Zsuzsa, with much affection--B.
the feminist." I gave him some of my essays. The visit
lasted more than four hours.
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 6
[15] Spent the afternoon in my office, reading final papers
for my "War and Memory" seminar. The first one I read was
K.'s interview with her father, about the last year of the
war he spent in Budapest. He is three years older than I,
so he was eight years old in the harsh winter of 1944-4
when all the fighting was going on. Many parallels between
our stories, including the fact that all of his immediate
family survived. K. writes that she has always known he
father was a Holocaust survivor, and he told her many
stories when she was a child. The stories were always
doctored, or as she put it "filtered," in such a way tha
they were tales of good luck and triumph, not of fear or
anxiety. It was only now, in this formal interview, that
her father, with her prompting, spoke about his fears.
[16] Reading her essay, I wondered why I never told suc
stories to my children--why, in all innocence or
thoughtlessness, I never considered myself as a survivor al
these years. I finally decided it had something to do with
the fact that I left Hungary in 1949, not 1956 like K.'s
father. He was 20, he has an unmistakable accent when he
speaks English--there was no "forgetting" his past. I, on
the other hand, looked and spoke like many other smart
middle-class American Jewish girls by the time I graduated
from high school. So I could easily pass, "forget" where I
came from or consider it irrelevant, and want other people
to consider it that too.
[17] The funny thing is, these days I am irritated when I
discover that someone I know thinks of me as "just another
American," or even an American Jew. The other night, at the
dinner for Ruth Wisse in Cambridge, D. expressed surprise
when I told her I was born in Budapest. So I immediately
sent her my two memoirs, as soon as I left the dinner
[18] Two days ago I bought _Magyar Forum_, the weekl
newspaper of the ruling Magyar Demokrata Forum--or more
exactly, of the party's far-right wing, led by Csurka
Istvan. I finally read it this morning. Csurka's column i
on page 2--a piece extolling the Hungarian people (Magyar
nep), the "silent majority" against the political "elite."
Since the column starts out by talking about a former head
of the National Bank who seems to have been mixed up in some
scandal and who "has an Israeli passport," I think "elite"
may be a code word for Jews, or groups that include a lot of
Jews.
[19] A pretty piece of populist rhetoric, on the whole. I
imagine it's the kind of thing that the grocery store lady
of this morning whom I overheard complaining about the price
of life might find comforting. But maybe I am jumping to
conclusions about the poor lady. At any rate, Csurka is not
a nice man. His name should be Csunya, for he stirs up ugly
feelings (%csunya% means ugly).
MONDAY, FEBRUARY
[20] Last night all the Fellows were invited by the Recto
to a concert at the Kongresszus hall, a kind of Conventio
hall that also serves as a concert hall. Our host, V., wa
most affable, and also invited us to dinner at a small
restaurant not far from the Collegium. We had a wonderful
time, talking about frivolities, but also after a while
about Csurka and the reasons for the resurgence of
nationalism in Central Europe. V. enumerated the usual
political reaons: a reaction to the internationalism of the
Communist regimes, economic and social inequalities that
cause resentment (but B. had told me that it was under
Communism one saw the greatest and most unfair
inequalities), and generally the recession. But that still
doesn't explain the deep psychological attraction of
nationalism and xenophobia in these parts. We agreed that
this was an important subject of discussion for the
Collegium.
[21] Things noticed: People can be awfully touchy in stores
around here. Last Wednesday, on my first day here,
stopped to buy some shampoo in a small store on Bartok Bela
ut, which was quite crowded with customers. A young woman
near the cash register was surveying the clients, and at one
point she said to a woman: "Don't handle the merchandis
too much." The woman got terribly upset, and stalked out o
the store without buying anything: "You're too
disrespectful (%pimasz%), so I won't buy from you," she said
in a huff. Similar scene the next day, at the flower vendor
stall on the corner of Bartok Bela and Bocskai. The old
lady told a young woman not to handle the flowers, and the
young woman went away saying, "Then I won't buy any."
Finally, a similar scene at the concert at the French
Institute on Saturday night. During intermission, many
people were swarming around the bar ordering coffee, tea, or
other drinks. A young man calls out to the waitress: "One
coffee, please." His friend, another young guy, adds:
"Some cream," and then "A milk." The waitress thought he
was ordering a glass of milk, which was a little bit strange
for that time of night for a young adult. She was about to
give it to him when he said, very rudely, "Didn't you
understand I was asking for milk in my coffee?" She said:
"But you didn't say that, you didn't say 'a coffee wit
milk.'" He then replied: "Well, you heard me ask for cream
didn't you? What did you think I wanted to do with it, pour
it behind my ear?" At that point she got very angry and
threw his change at him on the counter. He grumbled, "You
don't have to throw things at me, madam."
[22] The whole scene was imbued with a degree of aggression
I found quite astonishing, directed largely by the young man
at the young woman. In the other scenes, it was two women
who were involved each time, so it's not a gender issu
(though in this instance I think there was some gende
tension as well). One thing all this shows, I guess, i
that Hungarians have easily bruisable egos; another,
perhaps, is that under the new democratic regime, they won't
"let themselves be pushed around anymore"; or, finally, tha
they're feeling generally anxious, especially about things
related to money.
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 9
[23] Very interesting TV program, this evening--the first of
two films on what appears to be the political history of
Hungary from the 1930s to 1956 (I came in late, so I
didn't see the beginning). Tonight's installment stopped in
1949. It's based entirely on interviews with men who were
involved in politics, non-Communists of course. The three
this evening were Nyeste Zoltan, who was a leader of the
Kisgazdasag (Smallholders) Party after the war--for a while,
part of a democratic coalition with the Communists; Fabry
Pal, a journalist and diplomat who stayed out of Hungar
after 1949; and someone whose name I'm not sure of, who was
a chemist and then an opera singer. They all talked about
the war--by 1944, when the Germans occupied Hungary, it was
time to resist. Nyeste, a big bearded fellow, had a good
story: he and some other students composed a text protesting
the German occupation (March 1944), and their plan was to
have it made up in posters and post it all over the city.
The plan was never realized because the young man carrying
the text to the printer was arrested by the Hungarian secret
police. But nobody got hurt or even thrown in prison,
because the police chief found out that not a single
Communist or a single Jew had been among the plotters. "You
understand, the myth was that only Communists and Jews wer
resisting Hitler--no authentic Hungarian would dream of suc
a thing. So, they preferred to hush up the whole affair
rather than have to admit the truth." And he gave a big
laugh.
[24] After the war, all these men were involved in a
democratic alliance, and their story is essentially the
story of how Rakosi and the Communists succeeded in taking
over the country. There was some very interesting footage
of mass demonstrations of the time, huge crowds gathered on
Hosok Tere, addressed by Rakosi and other orators. In one
around 1946, just before the elections that brought the
Communists into a position of power (though not into a
majority yet, if I understood right), people chanted "Long
live Stalin!" and carried huge photos of him as banners
floating above the crowd. I must have seen some crowds like
that. The film (or this first part) ended with a bunch o
children, boys and girls, dressed in their %Uttoro% (Young
Pioneer) uniforms, white shirt, navy blue pants or skirt,
string tie, singing a song about the smiling future
Reminded me of the time I recited Petofi's poem about
hanging all the kings, on Prize Day in 1949 at the end of
fourth grade, my last year here. I really believed in tha
stuff--and so, judging by their uplifted faces, did the
children who were singing that song.
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 10
[25] Took my first %villamos% ride this morning--I rode fro
Kosztolanyi Dezso ter all the way to Deak Ferenc ter,
traversing a good part of the inner city, or rather its ri
formed by Muzeum korut, Karoly korut, etc.. From Deak
Ferenc I went to the bank, in a small street off Jozse
Attila utca; opening an account didn't take long, so I
strolled over to Vorosmarty ter, which is truly a wonderful
space--no cars allowed, and in the middle is a large statu
of the poet, now wrapped in burlap to protect it from th
cold. From Vorosmarty ter I walked toward the river with
the intention of finding a taxi, but as none came I ended u
near the Chain Bridge, on a beautiful big square with
elaborate buildings facing it, and yet another statue in the
middle. The square is so big and full of traffic that I
didn't cross over to see who the statue was of. Instead, I
crossed the bridge. It's quite magnificent, heavy granite
and elaborate ironwork, with a superb view on both sides
even today, when it was a bit hazy. Walking on the narrow
passageway for pedestrians, I thought I felt some memories
stirring of having crossed there as a child. But when, and
with whom? Mother used to take me for walks, and so did
Madame, after the war. Would we have walked this far from
home? Maybe to go up to the Castle, on a Sunday afternoon.
[26] Right in front of the bridge is the Budavar siklo, the
cable car to the castle. It goes up at almost a 90 degree
angle, quite impressive--drops you off very close to the
National Gallery and the theater, about a five minute walk
from the Collegium, where I arrived tired but happy at 3:30
p.m.. I felt elated by the beauty of the city. "It really
is a great capital, it really can be compared to Paris," I
told myself at various moments during the day. That thought
somehow makes me feel very proud, and also in a strange way
"integrated"--since Budapest turns out to be a city I can
put up there with the city I find most beautiful and
seductive of all, and that has been part of my mental and
emotional life during all the years when Budapest was
totally outside it. Finding the link of beauty is a way to
connect Budapest to my whole life, the life I spent not
here, which has nothing to do with here
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 14
[27] Saw a new Hungarian movie, _Roncsfilm_ ("Junk Movie"),
which turned out to be a cross between Monty Python and the
French hit of two years ago, the gross _Delicatessen_, "film
bete et mechant." This one was funny and postmodernly self-
conscious (people speaking directly into the camera,
"testifying" about the action we are in the process of
seeing), but it got a bit tiresome because almost all the
episodes involved some kind of violent confrontation--
between men, between men and women, between women. In
keeping with postmodern humor, though, no matter how badly
people were beaten up or stabbed or burned, they always
reappeared in the next scene perfectly fine. The idea was,
I think, to show the pent-up frustration and rage in people,
always there just below the surface. The film starts wit
the breaking down of a wall, intercut with actual footage
from the taking down of the Berlin wall. But the
implication is, nothing has really gotten better--the
subtitle of the film is "Vagy mi van ha gyoztunk?" "Or how
are things now that we've won?" They're not too good, is
the answer. The theater, incidentally, was full, mostly
very young people. I was one of the few people above 25
there.
[28] Afterwards, I walked down Terez korut to the Oktogon,
where the busiest place was the Burger King, again full of
very young people. I actually went in, but when I saw tha
everybody was around 20, I decided to come home and make an
omelette. I walked down Andrassy ut to the Opera House,
very elaborate but dark (no performance tonight) and took a
taxi from there. The taxi driver was extremely talkative,
the first one like that I've met since coming to Budapest.
He asked if I had seen _War and Peace_ on the TV last night
I said no, which one was it? The American one with Audrey
Hepburn and Gregory Peck. He said Audrey Hepburn was not
his type, he finds her ugly. We spoke about her death, and
about illness and how doctors can't necessarily cure you if
you're sick. Then he asked me what I did for a living, I
wasn't a doctor by any chance? No, I said, I'm a %tanarno%,
which can mean either a %gymnazium% (high-school) teacher or
a university professor. He said it's a nice profession, on
that requires heart--only people with real heart can be good
teachers. I asked him whether he had gone to university.
Yes, he said, he had studied for five years there. Really?
And what did he study? Engineering--he's an engineer. An
now? "Now I drive a taxi." I didn't want to probe any
further, and besides we had arrived home. But if what he
said was true, that gives one pause: since when do
engineers drive taxis for a living?
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 15
[29] Long lunch with G. today. She told me it was hard for
her and N. to readjust to life in Budapest after their year
in the States--as I imagine it will be hard for me to
readjust after my six months in Budapest. But in their case
it was more than just the "return to routine after a time o
freedom elsewhere" syndrome, because life in Budapest is
harsher in economic terms. After ten years of teaching and
a good scholarly reputation, N. is on the second rung of
four-rung ladder that ends with the title of Professor, and
he earns 15,000 Forints a month--less than $200. G. was
also offered a regular teaching job at the University this
year, at a salary of 13,000 Forints a month, which shows th
double absurdity of the whole thing: first, because no one
can possibly live on that amount, and second, because the
difference between a starting salary and the salary of one
who has been teaching for ten years is 2000 forints pe
month, or $25. In fact, everybody who teaches in th
university has at least one more job, often two or three
more, to make ends meet. G. turned down her offer and
accepted a private administrative job instead, in which she
earns three times as much. "At least you can live on that,"
she said. But in the meantime, she feels every day that
"nothing is happening" to her, because she doesn't like that
kind of work. She'd much rather be in the library, reading,
or else translating an American novel into Hungarian. "I
feel this job is good for my present, but not for my
future," she said. But for now, she has no choice. She
simply cannot afford to take a university job
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 16
[30] Read Csurka's column in last week's _Magyar Forum_,
which I only bought yesterday. His rhetoric is disgusting,
but so clever (and at the same time so predictable) that it
fascinates me. This time, his theme was: The good
Hungarian Christian people are being silenced by "George
Konrad-type liberalism" (he actually named him: "Konrad
Gyorgyek-fele...liberalizmus")--that is, the old leftist
and Communists who now call themselves liberals, but it's
still the same old clique. Once again, it's those Jews wh
are trying to keep us true Magyars, Christian Magyars, down
They control all the media, radio and television, plus al
the major papers, and they have all the wealth and power.
The current talk about the renewal of anti-Semitism in
Hungary is just a smokescreen--what really should be talke
about is the "robbing of the country" ("az orszag
kirablasarol kellene szot ejteni"). In fact, this clique
would like to hound the Christian Magyars not only out o
politics and public life, but out of life %tout court%:
"without persecution, there is no liberalism. They nee
space."
[31] Note how, first of all, he equates the current liberals
and the old Communists--conveniently forgetting that someone
"like George Konrad," or more exactly Konrad himself, was
during all his adult life a dissident in relation to the
Communist regime. Csurka implies (more than implies, almost
states outright) that all the Communists were Jews, hostile
to true Magyar thought and spirit. He speaks of "Nag
baloldali liberalis kommunista nyilvanossag," "great left
liberal communist declarations," as if all the adjectives
were interchangeable--and at one point he mentions the name
of Revai, who I think was a much feared cultural commissar
in the 1950s, the man for whom B.'s father worked. "Revai
and his culture band, Aczel and his %shameses% jumped at the
throat of the national culture," writes Csurka. He never
actually uses the word "zsido," "Jew," but %shames% (Yiddish
for "sexton") is about as explicit as you can get. I assume
Revai and Aczel were both Jewish, or if not, had lots of
Jews working for them. Indeed, a few paragraphs later
Csurka makes a nasty dig at some of today's liberals who
"sing the song of Let's forget the past, it's no use looking
backwards, we have to look forward." That's because, he
says, some of them "had a Daddy who tore people's nails
off."
[32] I wonder who Csurka's Daddy was. On the same page as
his column there is an ad for the Magyar Forum publishing
house, which has just reissued a 1938 novel about provincial
life at the turn of the century, by one Csurka Peter. Any
relation to Csurka Istvan?
[33] Saw the second half of the documentary about the three
men which started last week. It turns out that what the
all had in common was that they left Hungary in 1956 an
went to the United States--so the film was a documentary
portrait of these men rather than a film about the political
history of Hungary, but of course the two subjects ar
closely linked, since the reason they left Hungary in th
first place was because of politics. Fabry Pal was the most
successful, becoming a big businessman in New Orleans--
founder of the first World Trade Center in 1962. The
chemist/singer, Kovesdy Pal, did all kinds of physical work
and eventually ended up as an art dealer in New York, where
he now owns an important collection of works by the
Hungarian avant-garde of the 1920s, which he is trying to
sell to a museum. As for Nyeste Zoltan, it's not clear what
he does--he seems to have been in some kind of publishing
venture. He is the least assimilated into American life,
the most "true Hungarian" of the lot. But curiously,
neither he nor the others have hurried back to Hungary, now
that communism is gone. Fabry comes often, but with a
American wife and American children, he can't possibly com
back to live here, he says. Kovesdy is thinking about it,
waiting to see how things turn out; and Nyeste says he never
stopped being Hungarian for a single day or a single minute
since he left--perhaps implying that he doesn't need to come
back, for he carries Hungary with him wherever he is.
[34] In tonight's program, like last week, there was ver
interesting newsreel footage from the 1950s and later: at
Stalin's death, for example, newsreels showed mournful
workers assembled, then marching in silent funeral parades;
there were several other mass marches and demonstrations
with enormous portraits of Stalin and Rakosi floating abov
the crowd. As late as 1985, one party speaker (was it
Kadar? I didn't recognize him), discussing Hungaria
politics at what looked like a dinner meeting, stated tha
experience in Hungary has shown a one-party system is best
There is nothing wrong in principle with a multi-part
system, he said, but Hungarian history shows that in thi
country it hasn't worked. Doesn't leave much hope for
Hungarian democracy, it would seem.
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 17
[35] It snowed today. I had another very long Hungarian
visit, this time with A., who teaches literature at the
University and has two other jobs as well, like most
Hungarian academics. [...] A., a woman about my age,
received me in her office on the ground floor, which she
shares with another person who was not there. She is a very
pleasant and warm person, who immediately asked if we could
"tegez" each other (say "te," like the French %tu%)--i
makes life so much simpler, she said. I was delighted, of
course. We chatted for quite a while, then she took me up
to look at the library, which has a good collection of
French literature--plus, of course, an excellent collection
of Hungarian literature. A. introduced me to the librarian
and obtained permission for me to borrow books. Great! I
immediately borrowed _The Oxford History of Hungarian
Literature_ by Lorant Czigany, which she recommended. I've
been reading it all evening.
[36] After the library we went back to her office an
chatted for another hour. [...] Earlier, we had spoken
about feminist criticism, and she confirmed my sense that
people here know very little about it. But she also sai
that right now, with so many bigger problems that also
affect men, she doesn't particularly want to dwell on
women's problems or pit women against men. This sounde
like the Marxist-feminist thesis in France during the 1970
("First the revolution, then women's problems"), and I
didn't want to engage in an argument about it at this point
I did, however, remark that not all feminist criticism i
directed against men. She still wasn't fully convinced
however.
[37] We spoke at some length about Csurka. Csurka Peter, as
I suspected, was his father and was also a right-winger. It
seems that Csurka himself wrote ("Alas!" A. said) some very
good plays during the %ancien regime% (that too was he
expression), and no one could tell from them that he was an
anti-Semite. In fact, he and Konrad considered themselves
on the same side! "You have to understand, that was in the
good old days when we were all together in opposing th
regime. Our opposition was so strong that none of us
realized our differences--it was only afterward that we
found ourselves split into two hostile camps." "But didn'
anyone notice his anti-Semitism?" "No! Oh, there were
stories occasionally, about how he got drunk at the writers'
club and started to 'Jew' (%zsidozni%, you see we even have
a verb for it in Hungarian--to badmouth the Jews), bu
otherwise, he kept it all under wraps. Maybe if we went
back and reread his plays now, we would find indications
...." He also wrote some good stories, she said. He i
around 60, the same age as Konrad. I should read some of
his stories and plays--it pays to know your enemies well.
[38] The Czigany literary history is very interesting--I
could hardly put it down. It makes many things come to
life, including the place names of Budapest, of which an
extraordinary large number are those of writers: Vorosmarty
ter, so central, is named after Mihaly V., a 19th-century
poet, the first of the great poets after the language reform
of the early years of the century. Kazinczy utca, which I
had always associated with Jewishness--no doubt because of
the synagogue there--is named after one of the architects o
the language reform, which involved, mainly, standardizing
orthography and expanding the vocabulary so that abstract
concepts and technical terms would no longer have to be
borrowed from Latin or German. The Eotvos of the Eotvos
Collegium and the University was both a writer and a
political figure. To an American, it's astonishing how man
streets and squares and institutions are named after writers
and intellectuals: Jozsef Attila, Moricz Zsigmond
Kosztolanyi Dezs, Arany Janos, Madach Imre, Karinthy
Frigyes, Jokai Mor and many many others, including of cours
the hero Petofi.
[39] [...] I kept thinking about Mother this evening,
especially when I spread out the map of Hungary to look for
Nyiregyhaza, after reading the _History_. What a pity that
she's not alive now, for her and for me! I would so much
have loved to ask her about her childhood, and some of th
small towns she knew besides Nyiregyhaza. A few names in
the same region sound very familiar, for exampl
Hajduboszormeny and Hajduszoboszlo. I want to find Mother's
birth certificate, though I couldn't say exactly why.
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 18
[40] Exhausted. I must have walked miles today, all around
my old neighborhood. %Villamos% to Deak Ferenc ter, then up
Kiraly utca to the yellow church, then right on Akacfa utca.
Kiraly utca has some beautiful turn of the century buildings
on it, or even older--from the last third of the 19th
century, I was told later by T.. Very interesting an
varied decorations on all of them. Some look in bad shape,
others look redone, and it's the same in that whole
neighborhood. Kiraly utca itself is a grab-bag: some
decrepit shops and some newfangled ones selling computers,
electronics, etc.. Akacfa utca is mostly decrepit, at least
the part I walked on, from Kiraly to number 59, in the
middle of a long block. The first two houses on the odd-
numbered side are black with soot and practically crumbling,
though once they must have been quite noble, with columns
and other elaborate decorations. Then comes a long low
building which I didn't remember at all, and after that no
59, which could be quite beautiful. I don't think I
noticed, last time--at least, I didn't remember--that there
are three statues decorating the curved top of the facade.
The three balconies, including our old one on the top left,
look as if they're ready to fall down--I don't remember that
from 1984.
[41] I went into the courtyard, which is very rectangula
indeed, and then into the stairwell. The wrought iron
railings are still there, still very fine. An elderly woman
dressed in red was crossing the courtyard when I walked in
and looked at me curiously. I felt odd, a bit like an
intruder. No question of going up to the third floor and
knocking on the old apartment door again, though I may do it
one of these days--maybe if someone else is with me. In th
meantime, standing at the bottom of the stairwell, I
remembered the time after Daddy's heart attack when he ha
to be carried up the stairs every day, since there was n
elevator and he was forbidden to climb. He had hired tw
men who would come and join hands to form a seat, on whic
he sat with his arms around each man's neck. I think this
must have gone on until we left the country--or rather
until we moved out to the summer house in Romai furdo, wher
he didn't have to worry about stairs. That was around June
1949.
[42] He had the operation for his ulcer in March o
thereabouts, then the heart attack a few days later
followed by the long recovery, first in the hospital and
then at home. It must have been around May or early June
that he gave the "thanksgiving" dinner for all the Talmudic
scholars, of which I have a photograph at home: a large
table full of men dressed in black caftans and black hats,
with Daddy the only one wearing a regular suit. He wrote a
learned speech for the occasion, a textual commentary he
practiced for weeks beforehand while I listened. It was i
Yiddish, so I didn't understand a word, but every time he
said the word "Rambam" I would go into gales of laughter-
for some mysterious reason, I found that inner rhyme
hilarious. After a while it became a whole production,
would laugh even though I no longer really thought it was
funny, because I thought he expected me to. What did i
matter that Rambam was Maimonides, a great scholar of
antiquity? All I cared for was that Daddy should find m
rapt and charming
[43] Coming out into the street again, I noticed that the
building directly across, no. 60, had been knocked down--
they seem to be getting ready to build a new house there.
crossed the street and stared intently at the facade again
A little girl, walking home from school, went by and turned
around to look at me. I felt too self-conscious to take out
my camera again (I had photographed the statues on the
facade before going into the courtyard), as if people would
notice and not like it. I noticed, or maybe only imagined,
that a man standing in front of the building was staring at
me suspiciously--what was I doing there, inspecting the
place so closely? I suddenly felt tired and hungry, and
besides I had had enough nostalgia for one day. [...]
[44] The "Evening with Vajda Miklos," sponsored by the
journal _2000_, was very interesting, but I'm too tired to
report on it in detail. Suffice it to say that VM was born
in 1931 of a Greek Orthodox mother and converted Jewish
father, and is the editor of _New Hungarian Quarterly_,
whose mission it is to publish Hungarian authors in English
translation. He said he thought of the war, including the
"ostrom," the last terrible year, as an adventure; Torok
Andras, who was doing the questioning, remarked that just
last month George Soros, who had been the invited guest, had
used the same word ("kaland"), and I thought of what I say
in "My War" about adventure. It must have something to do,
I think, with having been so %choye% before the event, so
loved and surrounded by adoring relatives, that we thought
we were invincible. That, at least, is how Vajda explained
it (his parents had very powerful friends, including the
great actress Bajor Gizi, who had been his father's
girlfriend and was his own godmother), and I tend to agree
with him. In my more modest way, I too was a totally
spoiled and adored child who took all the adulation as her
due.
[45] The other thing worth noting is that the evening lasted
almost three hours! Unheard of, back home. Scheduled to
start at 7 p.m., it actually started at 7:20, with about 100
people in the audience. The two men sat on the stage with
microphones and talked--or rather, Vajda talked about hi
life with just a few well-placed interventions and question
from Torok. At 8:40, Torok announced we would take a break,
just as I thought the thing was going to end! Break lasted
around twenty minutes, and then we were back for another
hour. The audience sat patiently on the uncomfortable
chairs, listening intently. Vajda said, at one point: "To
be here in the darkest period of the Rakosi era [ca. 1953],
one could only survive by laughing a lot"--which is what he
and his friends did. Around five minutes before ten, Toro
asked the audience if they had questions. I had been
reflecting for close to an hour that this kind of dialogue
could never happen in the U.S., where questions from the
audience would have taken up at least half the time. Here
sure enough, there were only two questions. As if one could
get a discussion going with an audience that had sat through
almost three hours of its own silence!
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 2
[46] Party at T.'s apartment, a huge place across from the
American Embassy. There must have been hundreds of people
there--writers, academics, politicians, plus a large
contingent of foreign visitors. I saw Michael B., and G.,
who was coiffed and made up quite provocatively, very rouge
cheeks, spikey hair--she was wearing tiny black lace glove
plus a fox collar over her loose-fitting culotte dress
Michael introduced me to an interesting woman, Judy S.,
journalist from Toronto whose life story resembles mine
except that she's a few years younger--she left in 1956
after three years of elementary school. Her Hungarian is
pretty good, somewhat like mine in that she doesn't know
many abstract words
[47] She told me about one of the men there that he had
published a moving essay in a Canadian journal last year,
about how he had discovered that he was Jewish. Another
Hungarian "of Jewish origin"! %Zsido szarmazasu%: I'v
heard or read that expression half a dozen times since I go
here. Few are ready to affirm, simply, "I am a Jew." Bu
to be "zsido szarmazasu," of Jewish origin, is quite
admissible
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 21
[48] %Hovirag%, snowdrops. Small white bouquets wrapped i
green leaves, beckoning at the flowerstands. Evening on the
boulevard, the shops are still open when darkness falls. I
stop with Madame and we buy a bunch of %hovirag%,
snowflowers for the end of winter. A few weeks later it
will be %ibolya%, violets nestled against velvety leaves--I
bury my face in them, inhale the sweet smell. How I love
the coming of spring!
[49] I bought some carnations at a stand on the way to th
tram stop this afternoon, to put in the vase on my desk. A
the young man was wrapping them, I noticed the bunches of
snowdrops, dozens of them with their stalks in a shallow
pan. These flowers are smaller than the ones we have in
America, so you need quite a few to make a tiny bouquet. It
must be a huge amount of work to make dozens of bunches,
each one wrapped in a green leaf and tied with string. I
wasn't sure of the flower's name, so I asked the vendor.
Until then, I think he took me for a Hungarian, but my
question obviously told him I wasn't. "%Hovirag%," he said,
looking at me curiously. Snowflower. I took a bunch out of
the pan and gave it to him to wrap up. "Are you from
England?" he asked. "No, from America." After that, he
spoke to me only in English.
[50] Neither a foreigner nor a Hungarian, but something i
between. Just a little off-center, not quite the real
thing, but sometimes close to passing for it. One could
make this into a sign of unhappiness, or on the contrary
sign of uniqueness, special status. Except that there are
whole armies of people like me--not unique, unless it's a
collective uniqueness. Is that what we call history?
[51] Most of the current issue of _Magyar Forum_ is devoted
to the founding meeting of the %Magyar Ut% movement, th
Hungarian Way. So Csurka got to be on page 1 in a larg
photo showing him on the platform at the meeting, on page
with his weekly column, and pages 3-4 which printed th
complete text of his speech. There is a close-up of him a
the podium, a thick, blunt-faced man with receding hairlin
and double chin. ("His name really should be Csunya," I
said to myself with some satisfaction while studying the
photo). He wears tinted glasses. Looks a bit like Le Pen-
why do all these right-wing demagogues look like beefy
parodies of "real men," the kind that would never in a
million years eat quiche
[52] Well, anyway. The page 2 column is about the
ministerial shakeup of last week. Mr. Csurka is not happy
that the MDF may be contemplating a move toward the Young
Democrats (Fidesz), which would definitely require them to
squeeze out the "national radicals" whose leader he is.
National radicals, the phrase comes up at least four times
in his article--sounds ominously like National Socialists to
me. The usual theme: the People, the %Nep%, is being kep
down by the "nomenklatura," who used to be the Communists
but who are now the liberals. They will certainly do all in
their considerable power to keep the Hungarian Way fro
developing. But it will win out in the end, because yo
can't keep the People down, etc. etc..
[53] The speech? More of the same. True Hungarians have
"Hungarianness" (%Magyarsag%), a matter of blood. They're
descendants of King Arpad. Christians. What all true
Hungarians detest is "Naphta-liberalism"--and here Csurka
the one-time playwright and short-story writer opens a
parenthesis to explain about Naphta. Thomas Mann, he tells
us, modeled this character in _The Magic Mountain_ on the
philosopher George Lukacs, who "as everyone knows liked to
vacation in Swiss resorts" during the years before "he threw
his lot in with the terror and with the Hungarian Red
soldiers"--that's an allusion to the short-lived Bela Kun
government of 1919. And of course everyone also knows that
Lukacs was Jewish, or rather, "of Jewish origin," as were
all the other members of the Kun government. So basically
liberals=Communists=Jews, the tried and true formula. But
he says that the %Magyar Ut% is neither right nor left, just
Hungarian.
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 24, 1993
[54] Second visit with B. this morning, almost as long as
the first! And very interesting. We spoke in Hungarian
this time, and a lot about the current situation here. My
head was spinning by the time I left, he mentioned so many
names and factual details I wanted to retain.
[55] He looked somewhat younger today, and in fact he
mentioned later that he was younger than I, born after th
war. His manner was still charming and somewhat
scatterbrained, but not quite so "bumbling" as last time--
and certainly not after we went into his study, where the
really intense conversation began. "So, what do you think
about what's happening--the extreme right and all that? Ar
you worried?" I asked him. "No, I'm not. I'm optimistic,"
he answered. That's because, in his opinion, things are
very different from what they were in the 1930s: most
importantly, there is now a counter-offensive to nationalism
and anti-Semitism. "We are here too," he said. Well, of
course, there were anti-nazis in the 1930s too, I pointed
out. But I don't recall his responding to that.
[56] About anti-Semitism: "I think it's time to become
aggressive. Paradoxically, I have become much more aware of
being a Jew because of it--you know that Hungarian Jews have
generally been very much assimilated, and my family
certainly was. But this changes things." His idea is to
write an article in which he will defend not the idea of
tolerance ("Let's be good Magyars and tolerate difference,
those who are not like us"), but rather the idea of a
"loose" [%laza%] Hungarian-ness: "I am not Magyar the wa
Petofi was--and if Csurka is a Magyar, then I'm not one at
all. We should love difference, not tolerate it," he said.
I liked that.
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