É. Apor , I. Ormos (ed.): Goldziher Memorial Conference, June 21–22, 2000, Budapest.
ORMOS, István: Goldziher's Mother Tongue: A Contribution to the Study of the Language Situation in Hungary in the Nineteenth Century
GOLDZIHER'S MOTHER TONGUE this last sentence was intended as a joke, an exaggerated mockery of existing habits. 12 4 References to Goldziher's mother tongue by himself and others In the sources consulted, Goldziher makes three explicit references to his own mother tongue. In the Tagebuch he refers to Hungarian as "ma belle langue maternelle ", 12 5 though the context leaves it open what he meant exactly. In the foreword to the Mythos he distinctly states that it was originally composed "in meiner ungarischen Muttersprache ". 12 6 In the draft of an answer to Lajos Lóczy dated 29 August 1919 he rejects Lóczy's claim that he might have totally misunderstood Lóczy's statement in the Academy: he says he cannot have misunderstood a statement which was uttered in his presence in his mother tongue. 12 7 While the first two statements are open to various interpretations to a certain degree, the last utterance can only mean that Hungarian was the language he knew best. These are weighty statements, but if they contradict all or most of the facts, they can at least be seen as proofs of Goldziher's Hungarian-ness, demonstrating that he 12 4 Ibid., 159. The context of this utterance is a sensitive one. In a conversation with his mother, purely by chance, young Géza Hegedűs happened to touch upon a subject which was regarded as a sort of family secret, of which nobody spoke and of which he himself was completely ignorant. It concerned a long and deep illicit affair between the grandmother and a Christian nobleman, which she had entered into after the death of her husband. The nobleman, who never married, lived as a tenant in the lady's flat until his death, and was regarded as a sort of uncle by the children of the family. After some reluctance and hesitation, the mother was at last ready to talk of this relationship, hut only in French, because she regarded it as the language most appropriate to the subject - and perhaps because French provided a suitable distance between herself and the subject. 12 5 Goldziher, Tagebuch..., 185. 12 6 Ignaz Goldziher, Der Mythos bei den Hebräern und seine geschichtliche Entwickelung. Untersuchungen zur Mythologie und Religionswissenschaft, Leipzig 1876, ix. 12 7 Goldziher-correspondence. Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In the general session of the Academy on 18 August 1919, Lajos Lóczy (1849-1920), geologist and geographer, spoke about the role of Jews in the Soviet republic of Hungary. Goldziher improvised a reply to "Lóczy's antisemitic revelations" on the spot. This rather unedifying discussion was subsequently carried on in written form. Cf. Goldziher, Tagebuch .... 313; Bernát [Bemard] Heller, 'Goldziher Ignác emlékezete' [Reminiscences of Ignaz Goldziher], in: Az Izraelita Magyar Irodalmi Társaság Evkönyve [Yearbook of the Hungarian Israelite Literary Society], 1932, 22; Low, 'Goldziher Ignác', in Id., Száz beszéd..., 305-306; A. S. Yahuda, 'Die Bedeutung der Goldziherschen Bibliothek für die zukünftige hebräische Universität', Der Jude 8 (1924), 591-592 (17-18 of the offprint); Akadémiai Értesítő 30 (1919), 267-268 (n° 72), 274-275 (n° 37). 229
