Itt-Ott, 1994 (27. évfolyam, 1. (123.) szám)
1994 / 1. (123.) szám
Life that rolls on majestically. They scrutinize the deep-voiced serious engines, the fishing boats, fashioned from wood, that come and go. Puffing. The modern ones are made of steel — the yellow ones, the brown ones, the blue ones. The men are startled by the muscular but slender bodies of the rescue ships. On the ramp, the bottle travels from hand to hand. Moss gently blooms on the snow-smudged curves of the mountain. The houses, painted in shrieking blues and greens, huddle on the mountainside, one above the other like nets. Even after 20 years, things are alien to my eyes but also familiar. I loiter in this mild noon, scented with salt and fish. I shuffle in this gorgeous peace that streams around me, through me. Forever familiar, forever alien. Country, Mother Tongue [Hazád és anyanyelved] What will happen to the language, the one from your other life — your mother tongue? What happens to it during the decades of your residence abroad? Everything exists only to assault it, to seek its ruin. TV, radio, the text of ads and the new language itself that you incorporated, this new tenant of your mind. You use it in the streets, at work — this necessary alien tongue. Still, it can be lovely, even tempting. It is a tool of your survival. You need it tó buy a house, a car, to earn money. Gradually it becomes a texture of your dreams, a vehicle of your goals. But what will happen to your mother tongue, this fabric of your past, this precious weight you carried from your homeland? It will be battered, it will fade. It will drop words, phrases. It will lose its fragrance. It will absorb foreign cells; it will levitate into the subconscious, this deepest well. It will only rise into daylight through memory. A familiar book, a line from a beloved poem will resurrect it briefly. Pity the man who has been tom out of the flesh of his country. His mother tongue.But pity him tenfold, who willingly forgets both. The nation where you’re a guest will not offer you new gifts. This new language, this new country is not yours no matter how intertwined they becamewith your daily existence. As long as your name is Hungarian, you’ll be a stranger. As long as your past is Hungarian, you’ll be a stranger. No matter where you are. 7. Géza Thinsz Almost Mother Tongue [Anyanyelvi szinten] You belong to this city. You became interwoven although it shows in your face you’re an intruder. Your stares betray you, your hips, your movement. The way you fill the room, the manner in which you begin to speak. You’re an intruder, yet you belong to this city. The walls bear the traces of your hands, your face, your laugh. Your eyes. Other people carry your traces. The phone booth in the old section of the city. The depths of a cab, the tables in a restaurant. Even on you pillow, on the pillows of others. But they all know you’re an intruder who speaks the language of being human at the level of the mother tongue. You became interwoven with Stockholm: you belong to me! As we know, since 1989 momentous changes have taken place in Hungary. A democratically elected government was established in 1990. Of those poets whose verse you have read only the octogenarian Faludy returned. He found that it is difficult to readjust to a homeland left a long time ago. In this he shares the experience of other intellectuals who tried to re-settle. Faludy has experienced double alienation and rootlessness in Canada and in Hungary. He wasn’t given any awards in Budapest. It is worth mentioning that Faludy, along with Hungary’s other leading poet, György Petri, was denied the Kossuth Prize. One wonders if alienation and neglect would have been the fate of all Hungarian emigre poets had they decided on re-patriation. It is a comfort to know that their poems tell us about our own world here in the West: they hold up a unique, three-dimensional mirror. So to speak, these poems are an imaginative record of our lives. □ 42 ITT-OTT 27. évf. (1994), 1.(123.) szám
