Amerikai Magyar Szó, 1955. július-december (4. évfolyam, 27-52. szám)
1955-09-15 / 37. szám
September 15, 1955 AMERIKAI MAGYAR SZÓ 15 <) * v> Lion Feuchtivanger: Thomas Mann Family Page ARCHIE MOORE WANTS TO 'ESTABLISH IDENTITY’ NORTH ADAMS, Mass.—Archie Moore, boxing’s light heavyweight champion, has announced through the press that he desires his Sept. 20 challenge for the heavyweight crown to be shown on home television throughout the country. In doing so, Moore sounded the millions of men-in- the-street and women-in-the-kitchen who have been deprived of viewing, via the comfort of their living rooms, Rocky Marciano’s defenses of his heavyweight title. As light-heavyweight king, Moore received a minimum of public attention. Even after his most recent knockout defense against BOBO OLSON MOORE’s accomplishments were passed off with decorum not proper to a champion. It was only when he was matched with Marciano that the fight fan started to become aware that Archie Moore was a celebrity. The fact is that those who take their boxing at home have not had anything but a nebulous, fragmented view of Marciano in combat. The living room record shows that he has puffed through 10 rounds of aimless and futile swinging against Savold and tiptoed through 56 seconds of just-being-present against Walcott. In this do-it-yourself age, the fight fan—and most everyone who owns a television set is one— wishes to make his private appraisal of the particular merits of a fighter, and especially so concerning the pugilist who owns the heavyweight crown. That such an appraisal in Marciano’s case must be made on the basis of the above mentioned 10 and a fraction rounds may or may not be entirely fair to Rocky, but it is certain that his manager and the JBC seem to want it that way. It seems an injustice to the American audience on the one hand, and to Archie Moore on the other, that the September title show will be restricted to those paying few in the pews of Yankee Stadium or in scattered theaters displaying a “closed” showing. Nevertheless, the powers behind the champion deem that this be the case. LONDON. — Let us cheer the end of the opium traders. Jardine Matheson and Co. recently announced they had surrendered their Shanghai establishment to the Chinese authorities. Their resident director made a few peevish comments in Hongkong. It was the last of their establisments in China. Flick back the pages 120 years or thereabouts Wiliafn Jardine. the great tycoon of the China trade, is seeing Palmerston, the British Foreign Secretary, to demand war. He presents him with maps of China, details of its armed forces and forts, and demands in writing that a British naval force be sent there to blockade its coast and seize coastal islands till four named ports are opened for trade. A fortnight later the order is given for the assembly of a force in India to open up the very same Chinese ports. The First Opium War is about to begin. Jardine was a Scot, a- ship’s surgeon who turned to trade, first in London, then to Bombay and finally Hongkong. His partner, James Matheson, was in trade first in Calcutta and then in Hongkong too. Opium was what both were interested in. “Foreign mud” the Chinese called it. One hundred years ago, with another firm. Dents, they handled' two thirds of the China trade. Matheson was the first to' start direct smuggling of opium into China in British ships. Previously British merchants had sold to Chinese smugglers. In the first year of this century Thomas Mann sprang into German literature completely matured, as Minerva did from the brow of Jupiter. At the age of twenty-two he had started on his great novel, “Buddenbrooks”; at twenty-five he published it. There is scarcely a book among the early works of any great writer that shows so much maturity and detachment. The gift of observation is astounding, and the mastery of the artistic medium is of a perfection usually attained only after decades. The basic attitude of the book, too, is rather of an older man. It describes the decline of a family; the older generation is still sturdy and stands unequivocally by tested principles. The younger generation is weak and unstable, poetically inclined, meditative, and susceptible to intellectual and artistic influences. Viewed as a whole, “Buddensbrooks” is a parable of vast dimensions illustrating the wisdom of Goethe’s words: “He who acts is always without conscience; conscience is only for the contemplative spirit.” Gradually, howeyer, after Germany’s defeat in World War I. and during the years of the Weimar Republic, Mann’s attitude changed. Most men are radicals when young, and turn conservative with age. With Thomas Mann, the more hé experienced, the younger he became, and as his age increased, so did his desire for action. He rejected, the practical but unprincipled attitude which would have assured him a quiet life and a rich harvest. He stepped out of his ivory tower. He did not confine himself to the medium of his own art to express what he had to' say. The aging Thomas Mann 'strode out into the market places and spoke up. He fought actively for his heretical opinions: with lectures, with challenging pronouncements, with the electrifying effect of his personal participation. It cost him many an inner struggle to decide upon this course of action. He had always been preoccupied with the problem of the writer and his attitude toward everyday politics. For a long time he even nursed the idea of writing a novel about Erasmus of Rotterdam, the great Ship-building firms of 14 countries responded to a call for tenders issued by the Syrian Government. The competition was won by a tug built at the Óbuda Shipyards, Budapest. Jardine Matheson was the best known name in the China trade — but their fortunes were not spent in China, nor were they alone in founding their immense riches on opium. Barings were the chief bankers of the opium firms. A few years before Jardine-Matheson started there had even been a Baring and Co. handling opium direct. John Jacob Astor, who owned a principality in New York real estate, was also an opium trade banker. Jardine was good at manipulating British diplomats too. When Lord Napier was sent as British official representative, Jardine was his constant adviser, pushing him into positions that he knew would speed the war he (Jardine) wanted. • “The more he (Lord Napier) was insulted, the more the Crown he represented was humiliated, the easier it would be lated on to persuade Parlament to sanction the use of force, which, they did not doubt, could soon open the whole China market”, an historian has writen about Jardine and Matheson. “Their share Ojf that market would be admittedly large, their firm would grow enormously rich." Now the Chinese people have rubbed them out of their history. “Our eleven” is the title of a full lenght documentary film on the over fifty years of Hungarian football now being shot at a Budapest studio. scholar of the Reformation, who all his life anxiously avoided taking an unequivocal stand either for the pope or for Luther. Thomas Mann rpde forth and he had to pay the price. It is true that many people in America appreciated his stand. The young intellectua's looked up to him with honors. But the demagogues mounted “smear attacks” against him, and his “creative mood was oppressed by the political atmosphere of the country.” He ioved California, its people, and the house he had built there, and he knew how good California’s climate was for his health. But the sensitive artist could not bear the political climate of the McCarthy years. He fled to Europe to resume his product- tive work. He frequently wrote me how much he missed California’s climaté. In Europe he was revered as an elder statesman. Peoples and governments regarded him as the ambassador of literature. He assumed this role with a degree of reluctance; one, might say it was imposed upon him by people, by events, by his ov7n conscience. He who was first and foremost an artist, came to recognize as he grew older what his brother Heinrich had proclaimed decades earlier: human relationships are drenched with politics, and the writer cannot depict a truthful picture of the world if he ignores the troubled waters of politics. Thomas Mann, the man and the poet, had a rich, fulfilled, and happy life. After his return he was permitted to see that the two hostile German camps were unanimous in their understanding and praise of his work, recognizing him as the “praeceptor Germaniae.” The last thing he wrote — the beautiful inner- depth-ring of his Schiller speech — was the crowning of his life’s work. West Germany, where Schiller was born, had called on him to celebrate, the poet’s anniversary. The East, where Schiller had lived, did the same. Thomas Mann, the octagenarian, responded to both calls. It was his last priviledge: to do something for tha unification of Germany, in the name of the great liberal poet. Schiller. Thomas Mann’ Last Letter to His Hungárián Readers I was pleasantly surprised to learn that th% New Hungarian Publishing House is not only preparing a new Hungarian edition of “Buddenbrooks” but also the publication of my shorter and longer stories and tales in a number of volumes. I was glad to hear this news and to learn that the publishers are counting on the interest of the Hungarian public in this venture, because it makes, me feel proud that my books have a life of their’s in the language of Petőfi, Madách’ Endre Ady. It warms my heart that my life \ work is enjoying the esteem of Hungarian ini o'- lectuals and the sympathy of the Hungarian reading public. Political events have brought in their wake regrettable tension, fissure, and alienation, yes I am more convinced than ever of the riece^s:‘ ■ of universalism about which F. Schiller spoke when in his day there was no escape either, in speech or writing, from the persecuting demon of politics. In the public announcement of h * magazine “Die Horen”, he wrote: “The great r the tension engendered in the souls by the limited interests of the present, the more the sou’s are constrained and suppressed, the more urgent is the need to release them once again and to reunite the politically split world under the banner of truth and beauty.” These concepts are too sublim0 to be app’i V o my life and work. But my existem-e is inland mv strivinvs are guided, by the very ro d need which Schiller saw with such urgency: t) release ^the constrained souls and to unite t’ ? politically split world under a sublimer sign, tl 1 sign of “truth and beauty”. That is why it ;; gratifying to have friends not only in the We" - Europearf countries and in the “politically sn1'-'’ world of'my own language, but also behind the unfortunate “iron curtain”. And not because I want to please the whole world with whit [ have, but because I see in it the possibility of man’s understanding and self-relation, in or.a word — peace. The rise and fall of an opium trader
