Budapest, a golden city

Lao Shu Huahua: “Jiangling is a thousand miles away, yet it is only one day”

This verse, illustrated by the popular contemporary Chinese artist and media professor Lao Shu Huahua, is from the great Tang-era poet Li Bai’s Early morning departure from Baidi (759). Li Bai in this poem, getting to know that he had received the emperor’s pardon in his exile, feels an exuberant joy and considers himself able to return to his distant home within a day. Lao Shu represents this dreamlike travel with his constant figure, Mr. Minguo, floating above the mountains. But the Air China airline company, by including this drawing as an advertisement in the October issue of their board magazine Wings of China, provided it with a new meaning, almost declaring that they could have helped Li Bai in really getting to his home in one day.

At least they helped me to do so. Not that much the company, since I read the October issue on the inverse way, by traveling from my homeland to the country of Lao Shu Huahua and Li Bai. But rather the magazine itself. Each monthly issue of Wings of China focuses on a different city, entrusting a known author to write an essay about it, and provides short reviews and useful information about it on dozens of pages. And the city in the focus of the October issue is none else but Budapest. 布达佩斯，金色城池, Bùdápèisī, jīnsè chéngchí – Budapest, the golden city. And the author who writes an essay about it is the most important Chinese writer living in Hungary, Yu Zemin – the Chinese translator of Péter Esterházy, Imre Kertész, László Krasznahorkai, Sándor Márai and Péter Nádas, and author of eight volumes of essays written mainly on Hungary (but never translated to Hungarian), as well as of three European travelogues.

We can be grateful for this text not only because it brings close Budapest to eight million people – that is, one twelfth of the 90 million annual travelers of Air China, the readers of the October issue. But also because it shows to us, how beautiful, how intimately close it is considered by someone who had lived half of his life in a different culture on the other side of the Earth. His vision, however, is very close to ours, who have learned in Budapest how to see a city, and now we look at every other city in this way. As he slowly moves from place to place in the city, evoking history and musing on the details, and as the past, coming alive, merges with the present which is seen as soon becoming a nostalgic past.

Yu Zemin: Budapest, a golden city

As every man has a different smell, so every city has its own color. If Athens is enamel blue, and Rome is green, like old bronzes, and Vienna is coffee brown, then Budapest is the purest gold.

Twenty-six years ago, on a late autumn morning, a train from Moscow to Vienna rolled into Budapest’s Eastern Railway Station. As soon as I opened the door, and looked out, I was immediately grasped by the impressive golden view, the walls of golden shades pierced by opaque glass windows, and the huge glass dome, like that of the temple of a rich deity. The bright, but not burning autumn sunlight broke with golden bars through the metal and glass structure of the roof, and reflected on the solid golden walls. The air in the station trembled in one golden dazzle.

The main façade of the Eastern Railway Station. Photo by Péter Visontay

The eclectic-style Eastern Railway Station was built in 1884, during the heyday of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. “Eclectic” does not mean compromises in the spirit of the building, but rather that it combines the form language of multiple styles, instead of rigidly sticking to one of them. If I go to travel, and pull my suitcase along the halls of the station, I always look around like in a museum, and every time I found new details. I spend the most time in the Lotz Hall, attached to the long corridor of the international ticket office. Károly Lotz was one of the greatest Hungarian academic painters of the 19th century, and as the name of the hall shows, the frescoes here are his masterpieces, imbued with a rich symbolism.


Later I discovered an even more stunning Lotz Hall on the upper floor of the Parisian Supermarket, between the Opera House and Liszt Ferenc Square, along Andrássy Avenue, which is a local equivalent of the Chang’an Avenue in Beijing. The supermarket’s predecessor, the Terézváros Casino was a renowned dance and music venue, built in the same year as the Eastern Railway Station. In 1910, the casino was converted into the Parisian Supermarket, then it went through the smoke of the war, and was reborn in the 1990s as a member of the Alexandra Bookshops’ network. Coffee was also served, and the well-known bookstore café was open until late evening. They had many regulars, and I also often came here. Unfortunately, the network recently closed down, and the bookstore café became history. Nevertheless, I hope it does not take long, and the Lotz Hall will be again filled with the scent of coffee.

Most of Budapest’s visitors dutifully visit the Chain Bridge, the Fisherman’s Bastion, the Royal Palace and the Heroes’s Square, but very few know the charm of the underground city. The metro lines in Budapest are marked with four colors, yellow, red, blue and green. The history of the “yellow subway” goes back to the oldest times, since this is the second oldest underground line after that of London. But it is the first two respects. It is the first electric subway line, and the first one that was awarded the World Heritage title. It is also called “millennial subway”, because it was built in 1896, on the millennial anniversary of the Hungarians’ ancestors coming to and settling in the Carpathian Basin. Franz Joseph, Emperor of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy personally tested the line. Some years ago the renowned British film critic and film historian David Robinson came to Budapest to watch some movies, and he invited me to keep with him on the yellow subway. The yellow wagons shook incredibly, but exactly that’s why we felt much more like traveling through space and time.

Not just the yellow subway, but the trams running on Budapest’s surface are also yellow. They meander between the old houses, there is almost no distance between two stops, and they follow each other by short intervals. This makes easier the life of the locals, and it also shows the small size of the old town. The yellow trams form a kind of yellow landscape on the boulevards, the banks of the Danube, and in the junctions connecting the old city to the suburbs. To me, they are much more lifelike symbols of the city life than the Chain Bridge or the Fisherman’s Bastion. The latter live in static, two-dimensional form in my memory, while these are dynamic and three-dimensional.


“This is a yellow city. Yellow is the tram convoy with rusty spots, which writhes with metallic noise between the yellow façades, blue-gray roofs, high-rise palaces with deep doorways and high windows, dang-dang, ding-ding, it is heard in both stops, as it passes from the one to the other. In this city, every sound is also yellow, a golden yellow sun casts ocher yellow shadows, the dim yellow street attracts yellowish moths. The park under the spring sky is full of yellow flowers, autumn leaves, dead leaves, yellow-green moss. Even the air tastes yellow, as it is penetrated by the sour smell of rusty river water and decomposing plants. A girl with long wheat-colored hair walks with her golden-brown beagle on the uneven, glittering dark cobblestones, the proud shining of both filling the whole unpopulated little street…”

This is the beginning of my novel 纸鱼缸 Zhī yúgāng (Aquarium), which I wrote in the yellow color of Budapest, from inside to outside, from near to far, from me to him, from the moment to the history. I emigrated here twenty-six years ago, and the number of years that had passed before it and after it is the same. The first half of my life I lived in the red-walled capital, the second half belongs to this golden city. To me, even the blue Danube is golden in color. If you come to this city, go to the golden-glittering Opera House for a performance, to the yellow-walled Széchényi Bath, where you can bathe in hot springs for a half day, or just sit down somehwere in the golden shade, drink a cup of coffee or a glass of beer, and let the golden time slowly infiltrate and settle in your memory.

Photo by ḆΞ₪¡

The Armenian alphabet

In spite of his age – next year he will be eighty –, Andrei Bitov is a prominent figure in Russian postmodern literature. In 2006 his collection of surrealist short stories Дворец без царя (A Palace Without a Tsar) received the Ivan Bunin Award. However, his first major work was the Уроки Армении (Lessons about Armenia), published in 1978, at the age of forty-nine, in which he compiles a subjective encyclopedia of his everyday observations and reflections gathered during his Armenian journey. Last year, this book was awarded the Yasnaya Polyana Prize, a most prestigious Russian literary recognition. Below we translate a part of the entry “Alphabet”.


“If not the first, but at least the second question that had been asked of me after arriving on Armenian soil, was: ‘Well, how do you like our alphabet? Beautiful, isn’t it? Tell me, but really, which one you find prettier, yours or ours?’

“It is a great alphabet, in which the sound is perfectly matched by the graphical representation. The whole is directed to one purpose, the circle closes up. The stubborn sound of the Armenian speech (‘the Armenian language is a wild cat,’ writes Mandelstam), coincides with the forged iron shape of the Armenian letters, the words mounted in writing clank like a chain. I can clearly imagine how these letters were created in the smithy: The metal bends under the hammer blows, the slag burns out of it, and only the bluish luster remains, which for me is present in every Armenian letter. With these letters you could shoe a living horse. Or you could carve them out of stone, because in Armenia the stone is just as natural as the alphabet, and neither the hardness nor the malleability of the Armenian letters is in contrast to the stone. And the upper arch of the Armenian letters is just as similar to the shoulder or vault to the ancient Armenian churches, as this same arch appears in the outline of their mountains or the contours of the female breast. So, to the Armenians, this surprising merging of hardness and softness, rigidity and flexibility, male and female, both in the landscape and in the air, in the buildings and in the people, and, of course, in the sound of the language, is universal.

“This alphabet was created once for all, in an ever-valid perfect form by a brilliant man, who deeply felt the spirit of his birthplace. This man was the image of God in the moment of creation. After the creation of the alphabet, this was the first phrase he mounted in writing:

Ճանաչել զիմաստութիւն եւ զխրատ, իմանալ զբանս հանճարոյ

Čanačʿel zimastutʿiwn ew zxrat, imanal zbans hančaroy

“And this phrase exactly means what it includes:

For gaining wisdom and instruction; for understanding words of insight.

(Solomon’s Proverbs, 1:1-2)

“When he mounted in writing – not ‘wrote down’ or ‘drew’ – this sentence, he discovered that one letter was still missing. Then he created it. Since then, 405 A.D., the Armenian alphabet ‘stands.’

“To me, there can be no more compelling story. You can find out a man, and you can also find out a letter, but you cannot find out a man who has forgotten a letter. It could only happen like this. So, this man did exist. He is no legend, but just as historical a fact, as the alphabet itself. His name was Mesrop Mastots.

“If it were up to me, I would erect a monument to Mastots with a statue of this last letter as solid evidence that he was right.”

However, to the Armenians all letters are equally important. Therefore, they commemorate Mashtots with the statues of each letter, carved in the form of a khachkar (medieval Armenian stone cross) in Oshakan, in the monastery founded by him, where, since 440, his tomb has been a pilgrimage site to all the Armenian faithful, as well as in the nearby “Field of the Armenian alphabet”.

The other images are from Ganzasar monastery, Karabagh, where Mastots first established a monastic school for the teaching of the Armenian script

Sett'ispadas de dolore

Eva Lutza (trumpet, song): Sett’ispadas de dolore (Seven swords of pain) (video here). Medieval Lamentation of Mary in Sardinian language, still sung in the towns of Sardinia on the Holy Week.

Eva Lutza (trompeta, voz): Sett'ispadas de dolore (Siete espadas de dolor) (vídeo aquí). Lamentación medieval de la Virgen, sardo. Aún se canta en las ciudades de Cerdeña durante la Semana Santa.

Pro fizu meu ispriradu a manos de su rigore sett’ispadas de dolore su coro mi han trapassadu. Truncadu porto su coro su pettus tengo frecciadu de cando mi han leadu su meu riccu tesoro fui tant’a cua chignoro comente mi es faltadu sett’ispadas de dolore su coro mi han trapassadu. In breve ora l’han mortu pustis chi l’han catturadu bindig’oras estistadu in sa rughe dae s’ortu e bendadu l’ana mortu cun sos colpos chi l’han dadu sett’ispadas de dolore su coro mi han trapassadu. Morte no mi lesses bia morte no tardes piusu ca sende mortu Gesusu no podet vivever Maria unu fizu chi tenia sa vida li han leadu sett’ispadas de dolore su coro mi han trapassadu.

For my son, who died at the hands of violence seven swords of pain have pierced my heart My hart is broken my chest pierced by arrows since they have taken away my precious treasure with such fury, that I do not know, how he disappeared seven swords of pain have pierced my heart In short time they killed him after they captured him it lasted fifteen hours from the garden to the cross they killed him blindfolded with the beating they gave him seven swords of pain have pierced my heart Death, do not leave me alive death, do not delay more because being dead Jesus, Mary cannot live any more: from the only son I had they took away the life seven swords of pain have pierced my heart

Por mi hijo que ha muerto a manos de la violencia, siete espadas de dolor han traspasado mi corazón. Tengo el corazón roto el pecho asaeteado desde que me han robado mi tesoro precioso con tanta saña que ignoro cómo se me ha ido, siete espadas de dolor han traspasado mi corazón En breve tiempo lo mataron después de capturarlo, pasaron quince horas desde el huerto a la cruz, atado lo mataron  con los golpes que le dieron, siete espadas de dolor han traspasado mi corazón Muerte, no me dejes viva, muerte, no te tardes más pues estando Jesús muerto, María no puede vivir: un hijo que tenía le han quitado la vida, siete espadas de dolor han traspasado mi corazón.

Giovanni Tedesco: Fragment of a Crucifix. Perugia or Siena, ca. 1460. Berlin, Bode Museum
Giovanni Tedesco: Fragmento de Crucifixión. Perugia o Siena, c. 1460. Berlín, Museo Bode

The Sultan’s new clothes

Kemal Atatürk in janissary uniform

We have recently written about the troubled fate of the Turkish translation of The Little Prince. Speaking about the discovery of the B-612 asteroid of the Little Prince, Saint-Exupéry illustrates with the story of the Turkish astronomer, how much the clothes make the man in the eyes of the adults:

“Fortunately, however, for the reputation of Asteroid B-612, a Turkish dictator made a law that his subjects, under pain of death, should change to European costume. So in 1920 the astronomer gave his demonstration all over again, dressed with impressive style and elegance. And this time everybody accepted his report.”

The “Turkish dictator” is of course Kemal Atatürk, whose respect is required by the law, so the Turkish translators have twisted this way and that for seventy years in order to circumvent the violator formula. Sometimes they translated it as “the great leader of the Turks”, then as “a peremptory Turkish leader”, until in this January, at the seventieth anniversary of the author’s death a new Turkish edition was finally published with the exact translation. This one, however, was censured by none less than the trade union of the Turkish educational and scientific workers’ labor union, who demanded the removal of the book, which contains the banned word, from the list of books recommended for the school by the Ministry of Education.

The story, however, does not end here.

The story ends here. Sultan Mehmed VI Vahideddin leaves Constantinople, 1922

The post has been taken over from us by Dmitry Chernishev’s Russian-language blog Ответы на незаданные вопросы, naturally quoting the text of Saint-Exupéry from the Russian translation:

“К счастью для репутации астероида В-612, турецкий султан велел своим подданным под страхом смерти носить европейское платье. В 1920 году тот астроном снова доложил о своем открытии. На этот раз он был одет по последней моде, – и все с ним согласились.”

“Fortunately, however, for the reputation of Asteroid B-612, the Turkish Sultan commanded to his subjects, under pain of death, to wear European costume. In 1920 the astronomer gave an account again about his discovery. This time he was dressed in the last mode – and everyone agreed with him.”

The translation was made in the 1950s by the excellent Nora Gal (if you remember, we have seen her memorial plaque on the wall of her birthplace during our Odessa trip). I wonder why she replaced “Turkish dictator” with “Turkish Sultan”? Perhaps in order not to hurt the sensitivity of the Turkic peoples of the Soviet Union? At that time, around the time of the deportation of the Meskheti Turks and the Crimean Tatars, this was not particularly relevant. Or to correct Saint-Exupéry’s error? In fact, in 1920 the Sultan was still in power in the Ottoman Empire. But if this was her intention, she planted another error in the text, since the Sultan had no reason, in 1920, to order that for which Atatürk had much more reason in 1925. It would have been easier to transfer the fictitional astronomer’s fictitional presentation to 1925. True, then the translation would have openly deviated from the original text.

Sometimes it is just unnecessary to mull over the unsolvable problem hidden in the original text. You should simply translate it as it is.

Little princes

El traje nuevo del sultán

Kemal Atatürk in janissary uniform

Hablábamos no hace mucho de de la complicada historia de la traducción al turco de El Principito. Comentando el descubrimiento del asteroide B-612, Saint-Exupéry ilustró con la anécdota de un astrónomo turco hasta qué punto el hábito hace al monje a ojos de la persona adulta:

«Afortunadamente, sin embargo, para la reputación del asteroide B-612, un dictador turco promulgó una ley por la que sus súbditos, bajo pena de muerte, debían adoptar el traje europeo. Así que en 1920 el astrónomo volvió a exponer su demostración vestido con un estilo y una elegancia impresionantes. Y esta vez todo el mundo aceptó su informe.»

El «dictador turco» es, por supuesto, Kemal Atatürk, cuyo respeto va obligado por ley, de modo que los traductores turcos durante setenta años tuvieron que hacer mil circunloquios para eludir la fórmula culpable. A veces traducían «el gran líder de los turcos», otras «el perentorio líder turco», hasta que en enero de este año, en el septuagésimo aniversario de la muerte del autor, por fin una nueva edición turca se atrevió con la traducción exacta. Pero esta vez la censura le vino nada menos que del sindicato de trabajadores de la investigación y la enseñanza, que exigió la retirada del libro de la lista de lecturas escolares recomendadas por el Ministerio de Educación por contener el término prohibido.

La historia, sin embargo, no acaba aquí.

La historia acaba aquí. El Sultán Mehmed VI Vahideddin deja Constantinopla, 1922

Este post lo tomamos del blog ruso de Dmitry Chernishev, Ответы на незаданные вопросы, que naturalmente cita el texto de Saint-Exupéry en su traducción al ruso:

“К счастью для репутации астероида В-612, турецкий султан велел своим подданным под страхом смерти носить европейское платье. В 1920 году тот астроном снова доложил о своем открытии. На этот раз он был одет по последней моде, – и все с ним согласились.”

«Afortunadamente, sin embargo, para la reputación del asteroide B-612, el sultán turco ordenó a sus súbditos, bajo pena de muerte, que llevaran traje europeo. En 1920 el astrónomo expuso de nuevo su descubrimiento. Esta vez iba vestido a lal última moda – y todos estuvieron de acuerdo con él».

La traducción fue hecha en 1950 por la excelente Nora Gal (si os acordáis, vimos su placa conmemorativa en la pared de su casa natal durante nuestro viaje a Odesa). Me pregunto por qué cambiaría «dictador turco» por «sultán turco». ¿Tal vez para no herir la sensibilidad de los pueblos turcos de la Unión Soviética? En ese momento, en la época de la deportación de los meskheti turcos y los tártaros de Crimea, esto no era particularmente relevante. ¿O para corregir un error de Saint-Exupéry? De hecho, en 1920 el Sultán aún detentaba el poder sobre el Imperio Otomano. Pero si esta era su intención, plantó otro error en el texto, ya que el Sultán no tenía mayores razones en 1920 para dar esta orden que las de Atatürk en 1925. Habría sido más fácil trasladar la presentación ficticia del astrónomo imaginario a 1925. Cierto, entonces la traducción se habría desviado abiertamente del texto original.

A veces es del todo innecesario rumiar sobre un problema irresoluble escondido en el texto original. Uno simplemente debe traducir tal como está.

Principitos

The European costume

One of the world’s best language books is The Little Prince. It has been translated into even the smallest languages, and almost all have an audio book version. Its structure, as if it had been really intended as a language book, moves from the simple towards the complex. In the army to kill the dragging time, I learned French from it, and I still know the first few chapters by heart. Later I used it to learn Chinese, to practice Persian, in the beautiful translation and recitation of the great modern poet Ahmad Shamlou, and to teach Italian. I have it in several translations, including Viennese dialect, Basque, Roman slang and an Assyrian version. But in Turkish I somehow have not yet seen it. Not that it would be difficult to obtain. At the end of last year the copyright on the works of Saint-Exupéry, who died in 1944, expired, and in the first days of January, thirty Turkish editors published the book in new translations, in more than 130 thousand copies, the cheapest edition being sold for 1 lira, less than half a euro.


If anyone needs a Turkish-language Küçük Prens, should buy it now. And not just because of the price, but also because – as Kaya Genç points it out in his blog – this is the first edition that finally fixes a translation error ingrained for seventy years. The error is, accidentally, in the very chapter where the author mentions the Turks, as follows:


“I have serious reason to believe that the planet from which the little prince came is the asteroid known as B-612. This asteroid has only once been seen through the telescope. That was by a Turkish astronomer, in 1909.

On making his discovery, the astronomer had presented it to the International Astronomical Congress, in a great demonstration. But he was in Turkish costume, and so nobody would believe what he said. Grown-ups are like that…

Fortunately, however, for the reputation of Asteroid B-612, a Turkish dictator made a law that his subjects, under pain of death, should change to European costume. So in 1920 the astronomer gave his demonstration all over again, dressed with impressive style and elegance. And this time everybody accepted his report.”


The “Turkish dictator” is of course Kemal Atatürk, the creator of the Turkish secular state, who in his “Hat Law” of 1925 prohibited the wearing of the fez, the veil and other traditional garments. However, dictators have the strange habit of not liking being called dictators. In Turkey there still exists a law which punishes insulting Atatürk with up to three years in prison. It is understandable, therefore, if the translators have so far avoided this term.

Ahmet Muhip Dıranas, the Turkish translator of Baudelaire, who in 1953 first translated The Little Prince for the Çocuk ve Yuva (Child and Home) magazine, set up to support the orphaned children of WWI soldiers, tried to prevent the displeasure of the orphans who at that time were already over forty:

“Fortunately, Turks had started dressing like Europeans afterwards, with help from a great leader…”

The next translation, prepared by Tomris Uyar and Cemal Süreya in 1995, is slightly differently worded:

“A peremptory Turkish leader had issued a law one day: from now on all would be dressed as Europeans, and others sentenced to death.”

The translation of 2015, writes Kaya Genç, already renders accurately the original French sentence. “No complaints have yet been filed”, he ends his post. However, in reality, this is not exactly so.


An official protest has been made against the book, and not from the clearly secular-minded army, or from some committed Atatürk fan club. The site of the Turkish education and scientific workers’ labor union published the claim to remove the book, which contains the banned word, from the list of books recommended for the school by the Ministry of Education.

Dictators have long arms, and they try to prevent even from a distance naming things as they are. This is exactly how they are revealed as what they are.

Cartoon by Selçuk Erdem

Continuation…

Bergoglio's List

On 24 March 1976, the army in Argentina seizes power. On the pretext of a fight against the far-left guerilla organizations, they introduce dictatorship, and carry away – “sniff in”, as contemporaries say – from their homes, jobs, the streets, or even from the churches, those tinged with the slightest shadow of suspicion of disagreement with the system: students, workers, trade unionists, social workers, catechists and priests working in slums, as well as their relatives. The vast majority of those deported are tortured, and then thrown from airplanes into the Atlantic Ocean. Between 1976 and 1983 – until the dictatorship falls in the inglorious Falklands War – an estimated thirty thousand desaparecidos disappeared in this way.

The leaders of the Argentine Catholic Church, who were also afraid of the strengthening of the pro-Communist movements, did not openly act against the abuses of the junta, which they considered the less evil, or even the savior of the nation. This is why they have been severely criticized after the fall of the dictatorship by of the resurgent Argentine democracy. The persons criticized also include Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who also had an important position in the hierarchy of the Catholic church in Argentina, as the Argentine provincial of the Jesuit order. Although the court investigating the sins of the dictatorship has repeatedly declard him clear of suspicion of the collaboration with the regime, the press still publishes various statements, according to which he could have at least stood up more vigorously for those persecuted by the regime, including the Hungarian Jesuit Francis Jálics, who spent several months in detention for his work done among the poor.

This photo, with the falsified caption “Bergoglio administers sacraments to the Argentine dictator General Videla”, was for many years one of the clichés of the anti-Bergoglio press. Although it has long been established that the priest in it is not Bergoglio, it still regularly appears – though, with no caption – as an illustration of the articles attacking Bergoglio.

On 13 March 2013, when Jorge Mario Bergoglio is elected Pope Francis, these reproaches gain a new impetus in the international press. This inspires Nello Scavo, journalist of the Italian daily Avvenire, to investigate the truth of these charges. And in the course of a series of detailed interviews with the former acquaintances of Bergoglio, he reaches a startling conclusion. Not only did the Jesuit provincial not assist the dictatorship, but, by building an extensive secret network, he even saved, regardless of their political affiliation, several hundred people who faced the risk of deportation and death by the regime. He usually gave shelter to them in the Jesuit house of Buenos Aires on the pretext of “spiritual exercises” for a few days, while he organized a way to secretly get them over to Brazil, where his acquaintances working in the embassies assisted them in acquiring European visas.

The title of the book – Bergoglio’s List, which, after appearing already in eight other languages, has now my Hungarian translation has also been published by the Academic Publisher – obviously refers to Schindler’s List. The Hungarian reader will probably browse with special interest the chapter on Francis Jálics, because since the election of Pope Francis, the Hungarian press, otherwise uninterested in South America, loves to warm up the many-year old canned news of the international press. According to the charge spread by journalist Horacio Verbitsky from New York Times to the Argentine Página 12 – which he finally publicly withdrew –, it was the Provincial who denounced the two Jesuits, Jálics and Orlando Yorio, working in the slums; or, in another, mitigated version, he only “cut off his support” of them, thereby facilitating the job of the dictatorship. However, Jálics clearly states in this chapter: “Yorio and I were not denounced by Bergoglio”, and in the nineties he concelebrated a public Mass with Bergoglio to silence the accusations. Without much success, it seems: sensationalism is always more exciting than reality. Which latter was in this case, as this chapter documents it in detail, that Bergoglio personally intervened with the representatives of the dictatorship, threatening with the pressure of the Jesuit order and the Vatican, for the release of the two Jesuits, which eventually took place. As an amazing rarity, in fact, since the regime was well known to leave no witness alive, and once it sniffed in someone, he or she would never come to light any more.

In this volume, Nello publishes only a dozen of his interviews made with the several hundred survivors on “Bergoglio’s List”. But from these few, it is apparent that Bergoglio, as a Jesuit Provincial during the dictatorship, confessed and did the same as after the election as Pope: stood on the side of the poor and persecuted.

Pope on the subway

Photo: María Elena Bergoglio

Written for the November edition of the Hungarian book review Könyvjelző.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Archbishop of Buenos Aires, the future Pope Francis, like every day, travels on the subway. Where does he go? To the periphery. This is one of the key words of his volume now published in our translation by the Európa Publisher (original edition: La Chiesa della misericordia, ed. Giuliano Vigini, 2014).

The periphery primarily means the edge of the city, where “there is suffering, loneliness and misery”. To go there every day is a self-evident duty of the Archbishop of Buenos Aires, as well as that of any other Christian. And not for the sake of the everyday complacency that, because one made this sacrifice with the one hand, and with the one hand because one is, thank God, not like those to whom one went. But because of two things, whose importance seems to have been somewhat thrust into the background in today’s Christianity. These are solidarity and freedom.

As to what solidarity is, Francis explains it with a simple example. It is precisely these simple examples, as an easy-to-grasp and hard-to-forget lesson, that provide the basic structure of the writings collected in this volume:

“When I go out to hear confessions – here I cannot go out, but this is another problem –, so when in my previous bishopric I went to hear confessions, and someone came, I always asked the question: “Do you give alms?” “Yes, Father.” “Very good, very good.” And then I always asked two more questions: “Tell me, when you give alms, do you look in the eyes of him or her whom you give?” “Oh, I don’t know, I have not yet observed it.” And the other: “And when you give alms, do you touch the hand of him or her whom you give, or you just throw the money there?” That’s the point: the body of Christ, to touch the body of Christ, to keep alive in us the pain for the poor. Poverty for us Christians is not a sociological or philosophical or cultural category: no, but primarily a theological category. I would say, category number one, because our God, the Son of God, when came among us, came poor, and so he comes with us along the way.”

The key for Francis is not to “practice charity”, to give something, either just some alms from our surplus, or more than that. This is only about us. But rather to see the person in him or her whom we give, to enter in an equal relationship with him, and even to be thankful and feel honored that we can enter in relationship with him, because, being poorer than us, is closer to that Christ, who not by chance wanted to be born among the poor and live all his life in poverty.

And this basic concept of solidarity leads to a radically new worldview:

“The term “solidarity” has been considerably worn out, and often misinterpreted, but it is definitely a lot more than a few sporadic manifestations of generosity. Solidarity calls for a new mentality which thinks in community concepts, and which puts the lives of each member of the community much before the expropriation of the goods by a few. … The encounter and solidarity – this word, which has been so much hidden by our culture, as if it had been a dirty word –, solidarity and brotherhood make our civilization truly human. … This is why we must rethink solidarity, not just for the support of the poorest, but for the global reshaping of the whole system, to transform and improve it in accordance with fundamental human rights, with the rights of every human being.”


But to go to the periphery – and in this sense the term refers not only to the edge of the city, but also to the peripheries of our existence – also means that we undertake to exit from the habitual, to encounter the unknown and the unexpected. And in return we obtain creativity and freedom. Francis illustrates this with the reinterpretation of the story of Jonah, and these creatively reinterpreted biblical passages provide another value of the volume:

“Jonah is a particularly interesting figure for our time, the age of changes and uncertainties. Jonah is a man of faith, who lives a peaceful and orderly life: therefore he developed his own clear patterns, and judges everything and everyone on the basis of these rigid patterns. He sees everything clearly, this is the truth. And rigidly. Therefore, when the Lord addresses him, and tells him to go to preach to Nineveh, the great pagan city, Jonah first leaves the thing unheard. What, go there?! Away from where he is in possession of the complete truth? He does not want to… Nineveh falls outside his routines, is at the periphery of his world. So he prefers to flee. … What does this story teach us? To not be afraid to step out of our routines for God, because God is always beyond them. … We are afraid of God’s surprises. But He will always surprise us, because He is like this.”

Or when he reinterprets a verse of the Book of Revelations in the same unexpected way, encouraging in us the same freedom:

“Think about what the Book of Revelation writes, that extremely beautiful passage, where Jesus is standing at our door, knocking at it, calling us, to enter in our hearts (cf. Rev 3:20). This is the meaning of the Book of Revelation. Now ask yourselves: how many times Jesus is standing inside, knocking on the door to exit, but we do not let Him go, for the sake of our own certainty, because so often we close ourselves in transitory structures, which are only good to make us servants, and not the free sons of God.”

Solidarity and community, freedom and creativity, the acceptance and joy of novelty. These few basic concepts are the subjects of the writings collected in this volume. Of which the third great value is credibility. Francis as a writer does not take on the role of the theologian, the teacher or the authority, but writes for us like one who travels on the subway to other fellow travelers, about those few things that he has been thinking about during the many mileages covered, and about which he can speak with conviction. Which is the most an author can give.

The Czech sea

Lahvová pošta, a message in a bottle. It seems almost absurd that such a term has been also coined for it in a language where you can never meet such a thing. Nature has refused a sea to Czechia. So it was up to literature to bestow one upon her: Shakespeare in The Winter’s tale, and Radek Malý in his recently published children’s poetry book Moře slané vody, Sea of salty water.

Zavřete oči. Slyšíte, jak šumí? Nadechnĕte se té vůnĕ. Zašeptejte: Čechy leží u moře.

Close your eyes. Do you hear its sound? Inhale the scent. Whisper: Czechia lies on the sea.

As a native of another landlocked country, I can fully understand the desire towards the sea, as one tries to conceive on the basis of the blue sky that other infinite, dreams about shells, ships, islands, prepares to be a sailor in Kőbánya, and, finally, the first encounter.

První vzpomínka Oči mám plné veliké slané vody Objala zemi kolem pasu Plujeme

The first memory My eyes are filled with the great salty water It girds the earth at her waist We swim

Blessed shore, says Shakespeare about the Czech coast, and so should it verily be. But he also adds: unpathed waters, undreamed shores, which cannot be true, since it emerges so often in dreams, one travels across it time and again.

O cestĕ Zeptej se moře na cestu Řekne ti: všechny cesty jsou tu Vítr tĕ vezme do všech koutů a není snadné nalézt tu jednu která nevede ke dnu nekončí včera nevede k zemi lidožroutů Ale já ji najdu, tati najdu ji, a pak se vrátím

About the way Ask the sea about the way it will say: all ways are here the wind takes you to every corner however, it’s not easy to find the one that does not take you to the deep does not end yesterday does not lead to the land of man-eaters But, father, I will find it! I’ll find it, and then I’ll return

In these children’s poems what is beautiful, is that they are not pedestrian, not artificial, not affectedly funny, like most poems written by adults for children. They are spacious and personal and to be continued, like the sea, like a dream. And the two merge with one other on the Czech shore.

Velrybo velrybičko Vidĕl jsem velrybu bylo to ve snu byla jak ostrov Byla noc Dlouze se dívala až na dno klesnu pak připlula mi na pomoc Dokud jsou velryby nebudem sami na moři ani za noci Ale až nebudou co bude s námi? Kdo připluje nám pomoc?

Whale, little whale I saw a whale it was in a dream it was like an island. It was night it gazed long into the depths then it swam over to save me As long as there are whales we will not be alone on the sea, nor in the night But once they are gone what will come of us? Who will swim over to save us?

Even the illustrations, by Pavel Čech, are like dreams. Like children’s dreams: from a little salt, a little ink, a basin of water – the endless sea. And like Czech dreams. In front of the crumbling wall, the worn frame, who could fail to recognize Josef Sudek’s basin, and from now on, who will not see in Sudek’s basin and glasses the sea of Pavel Čech?