DIARY G. M. TAMAS
The most interesting news to come out of England this year — apart from the two dons who actually came to blows over the merits of Moll Flanders, splendid fellows — was the item I read a few weeks ago about a village which changed its name in order that it should be easier for Japanese experts working in the local factory to pronounce it. Now as I come from a country which prides itself on such pretty place-names as Satoraljaujhely, Hodmezo- vasarhely and Oralja-Boldogasszony, I am acquainted with this problem. Still, I won- der whether there is any other country in the world capable of such courtesy. But I guess it was to be expected. It all began when the English started to call Salisbury, Harare and Ceylon, Sri Lanka; that is, they have accepted the decrees of foreign gov- ernments in linguistic matters. There is little doubt that Harare is the Shona word for Salisbury, and Sri Lanka the Sinhalese for Ceylon. I know that to the latter names a whiff of an unsavoury past is attached. But if those linguistic decrees are obeyed out of guilt for past conquests, why do you call Koln, Cologne and Aachen, Aix-la- Chapelle? Or is Napoleonic conquest all right? Streets on the Continent are not called Haymarket or Broadway, but Rue Victor-Hugo or Stalin-Allee. We do not only have Karl-Marx-Stadt, but the cun- ning East German government is trying to guide our associations in other cases as well through mandatory honorific titles like Lutherstadt Wittenberg and Goethe-und- Schiller-Stadt Weimar. I have seen in a railway timetable 'Jena, Geburtsort der Romantik' ('birthplace of romanticism'). When the appellation 'Stalingrad' became untenable, the town was not given back its ancient name, Tsaritsyn, but was rebap- tised Volgograd. Nevertheless, people in Leningrad call their city Pityer, an affec- tionate diminutive of St Petersburg. The Hungarians will call Bratislava, Pozsony while the Austrians call it Pressburg; no- body is offended. The linguistic whims of the Czechoslovak government lose their force beyond the border. But in an age which is supposed to witness the unparal- leled triumph of the English language worldwide — or should I say globally? — who is guarding your linguistic frontiers? I have heard an English, sorry, UK linguist on the BBC World Service saying that the ideal pronunciation of English should be that used by a Japanese businessman and a Swedish civil servant at Sheremetyevo airport, Moscow. I very much want to learn correct English, but unfortunately I have no hope of receiving a Soviet visa.
Serves you right. Alasdair MacIntyre, the brilliant Celtic philosopher, opines in his important recent book, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Duckworth) that the destruction of the wholesome moral order of old was caused by Hume's futile attempt to become an Englishman. In a chapter called 'Hume's Anglicising Subversion' MacIntyre says that obsession with proper- ty and rank is presented by Hume as universal human nature, although this is only (18th-century) English human nature. I remember Spengler saying (in his Prus- sianism and Socialism) that he did not mind so much the German Liberals being liberal, but their being English. A word of abuse, that.
But Louis Kossuth, the great Hunga- rian patriot, apparently thought otherwise when he wrote in a letter dated 1851 (as quoted in Lord Briggs's Victorian People): There is something in my mind, which tells me we are on the dawn of great events and must everywhere prepare to meet them in the best manner we can. We must crush Russia, my dear sir! We must, and headed by you we will. The letter was sent to that great English- man, David Urquhart. You know David Urquhart. Do you? I never heard of him before.
Last Saturday I participated in a round- table talk on Gorbachev's UN speech on the BBC Hungarian Programme. Present were Mr Siklos, the poet and broadcaster, Professor Peter from the School of Slavo- nic Studies, your obedient servant and in Budapest, a Mr Thurmer, foreign policy adviser to Mr Grosz, the Hungarian Party leader. Good heavens, an Adviser and an Enemy of the People. It is hard to under- stand, said I, what Mr Gorbachev's cuts will really mean. Russia has national ser- vice; every able-bodied male is a trained soldier. The demobbed 500,000 men will not cease to be soldiers. The mercenaries of the US and British professional troops cannot be replaced by draftees. But every Soviet conscript can be summoned within four hours. In short, fraud, and fraud again. What do you think was Comrade Thurmer's reply? 'I find your valuable comments extremely interesting.' One of the mysteries of the day: what do the communists think? And how will we talk to each other once I am back in Hungary? Will I be respectable if I am not speaking from London?
At an Oxford college dinner I made two terrible mistakes. First, I poured the port into the wrong glass. Second, I addressed the Warden, a distinguished German scholar of the old school that you can meet nowadays only in England, in German. He replied, politely, but with iron determination, in English. I did not know why this insignificant episode was torturing me for so long. Then I realised. It was no bad dream, only literature. Kosz- tolanyi's short story, Omelette a Woburn. The hero orders in French in a frightening- ly elegant Swiss garden restaurant.
He heard the waiters speaking Italian among themselves, so he changed over to Italian. The majordomo coolly replied in German, as if declining such familiarity. A gentleman ought to speak but one language.
But how to be a gentleman after 40 years of socialism? I recall the tweed-clad (Dunn & Co, 1926) and trembling elbow of Count Erno de Teleki (MA Cantab, 1927) in a pool of yoghurt in the Lacto-Bar, Jokai (Napoca) Street, Kolozsvar (Cluj), Trans- ylvania, Rumania, 1973. His silver stubble, frayed and greasy tie, Albanian cigarette, implausible causerie. The smell of butter- milk and pickled green peppers. A drunk peasant being quietly sick on the floor. This was the first time I saw a tweed jacket.
Previous page
