George Gömöri
Budapest Love Song
Michael Blumenthal: When History Enters the House:
Essays From Central Europe. Port Angeles: Leasure Book Studio, 1998, 219 pp.
$15.00 ISBN 0-9651413-2-2.
The author is an American writer and poet of Jewish background; he has so far published six volumes of poems and one of fiction; he is also a university teacher. For reasons which are more accidental than romantic, he lived in Hungary from 1992 to 1996 and while he managed to learn a smattering of the country’s "lyrical albeit impenetrable language", he nevertheless led the life of a (temporarily) expatriate American scholar. He did not stop writing during these years—his short essays and feuilletons, here collected, attest to his interest in observing the new environment with humour and much empathy. His book can be read as an introduction to present-day Hungary seen through the eyes of an intelligent and, on the whole, perceptive American.
Blumenthal’s collection is divided into seven parts, following a rough chronological pattern: the first chapter deals with "The Sins of the Fathers" and discusses such issues as anti-Semitism, and, more generally, xenophobic policies in Germany and in other countries of Central Europe, including Hungary. For Blumenthal this largely belongs to the past, and though he is concerned with the anti-Semitic remarks of certain Hungarian politicians such as István Csurka and others, he rejects "labelling" and avoids the mild paranoia (persecution complex) which affects many older Jewish immigrants in the United States. He finds strength in the democratic mass-movement which set a limit to right-wing rhetorics and vindictiveness even in the Hungary of 1992 and interprets the results of the 1994 Hungarian elections, won by the ex-Communist Socialists, as the expression of nostalgia not so much for an ideology as for a "sense of security". It is, however, not so much his understanding of Hungarian politics but his close reading of Hungarian culture and, even more so, everyday life, that makes Blumenthal such an interesting observer and participant of (metropolitan) Hungarian reality.
Culturally, he is closest to those people with whom he shares opinions and experiences. There is only one long interview in this collection and that is with György (George) Konrád, one of the Hungarian writers best known abroad and ex-President of International PEN. It was originally printed in The Paris Review and does not contain much that is new to readers of Konrád, though it has a number of odd misprints ("Var" for "Hvar", "Nadasda"
for "Nadezhda", "vishni" for "lishni" and "Gombrowitz" for "Gombrovicz"); but it shows Blumenthal’s interest in exploring the thoughts of one of Hungary’s best
contemporary writers. Other literati mentioned or quoted by him elsewhere include Attila József and Arthur Koestler, György Petri and Péter Esterházy, and, of course, Árpád Göncz who, apart from being a very popular President, is also a translator from English and a writer in his own right. This is done in a piece in which Blumenthal sings the praises of "beautiful, battered, grimy" Budapest, a "city of Túró Rudis (small chocolate-coated cream-cheese bars) and grime-caked stained-glass windows" (p. 112), a place with a great past and still unrealized future. "In Budapest," says Blumenthal, "the future beckons to us with hope precisely because it is not yet realized, not yet perfected". In other words, what he likes about the place is that it is so much unlike his home, the (ever-Braver) New World.
The funniest parts of When History Enters the House are those where the author draws comparisons between Hungary and America, or returns home on a short visit to realize that in some ways the "working future" is also full of contradictions and ridiculous social rules. I sympathize with his dislike of "political correctness" which dampens the natural expression of sexual attraction and agree with the censure of the phoney (turn-on-your smile) friendliness exhibited by most Americans vis-ŕ-vis strangers. I also appreciate Blumenthal’s sentiment for the Hungarian lángos which tastes so much better than the artificial-smelling and-tasting products of the Dunkin Donuts chain. In a sense our American escaped to a pre-technological world in Hungary and enjoyed himself greatly for a while; but everything seems to come back full circle and the last two essays in Blumenthal’s collection, entitled "Homesick at Last" and "What I Loveth Well Remains American", shows that ultimately he finds relief from both the rat-race and sophisticated/politically wayward Central Europe in the deep forests of Montana. The exile returns home to re-interpret the values of his homeland.
These essays and sketches read well, even though in some cases the style is a bit journalistic and the wit focuses, somewhat predictably, on comparisons between American progress-cum-decadence and cosy Hungarian backwardness. There are flashes of original humour, too, for example in the sketch on the swimming-pool attendant Uncle Józsi (not "josi", as given on page 118) and the ingenious use of the elaborate wire hanger on which the customer has to place all his clothes. The caustic piece on the O.J. Simpson trial (how it reflects American values) and the sketch on the excellent Budapest Bábszínház (a puppet-theatre), one of the positive legacies of Socialism, are exhilarating. While many of these essays were written for the English-language press in Hungary (Budapest Week, Budapest Sun), so that they are truly "occasional" and, in a sense, ephemeral pieces, they can be read with profit by anyone interested in the Hungary of the post-1989 years, a country steeped in culture and politics, slowly adapting itself to a world of commercial values and to global consumerism.
George Gömöri
is a Budapest-born poet, translator, critic and scholar living in Britain since 1956 and teaching Polish and Hungarian literature
at the University of Cambridge. He has published several volumes of his own
poems in Hungarian as well as translations of Polish verse and English translations of Hungarian poems.
