The Bear King

However, the Hungarian crown is known not only to Iranians since their childhood, but also to the inhabitants of such far away, exotic and improbable countries like Austria.

I have seen this book cover in the shopwindow of my favorite bookshop in Vienna, the Morawa in the Wollzeile street, and although I would have entered anyway, now I was immediately looking for this book, an anthology of 101 folk tales by the Grimm brothers with 150 exquisite illustrations by Nikolaus Heidelbach.


Strangely, in the book itself I have not found this bear from the cover with the Hungarian crown in its mouth. And what is more, not even a folk tale to which it could have belonged.

After a serious consideration I came to the conclusion that this picture on the cover is a tale in itself, a charming and absurd extra tale, free from any moral lesson, for adults.

Treasures

I bought this book in Tabriz, just one corner from that church at the bazaar which was already described by Marco Polo. We were accompanied to the church by an unknown old-fashioned Azeri gentleman with little laughing wrinkles in the corner of his eye, whom we approached for directions on the street. The church was closed so that we could not enter, but a very kind elder Azeri woman offered us exquisite Tabriz chocolate in the courtyard. Tabriz is the capital of chocolate as we experienced it in the neighboring confectionery where, while we were having a chat with the pastry-cook, two beautiful local girls praised me for my beard. I don’t know whether they did so because I wore beard like good Muslims, or, on the contrary, because I had cut it short unlike they.

Treasures in the bazaar of Tabriz

And as if so many treasures found were not enough for a morning, in the bookshop – where we had a long conversation with the extremely intelligent young shopkeeper – I found just this volume entitled Gench-hâ, that is “Treasures” of the series Bâstân-shenâsi (Science of antiquity), introducing with several pictures and well-written concise texts to schoolboys the most remarkable treasures of the world, from those of the Pharaons, of the Scythians and of Troy through those of the pirates, of the Great Armada and of the Titanic to the Aztec golden statues and the treasures robbed by the German army. But Tabriz, with the characteristic generosity of Iranian hosts, managed to add in this volume even to all the treasures of the world two extra treasures that only a Hungarian guest can properly appreciate.

The first one is the title of the book itself. If we omit the -hâ sign of the plural, we get the word gench, which is identical in meaning and similar in sound to Hungarian kincs (pronounced kinch), and even more to its Medieval form kench.

kincs 1213/1550: ? „Iudice Paulo curiali cõite de Bichor, pristaldo Boncy, Cunsudu portato ferro cum solui deberet”, sz. szn. (VárReg. 153.); 1291-4: ? Kuncheý sz. hn. (MNy. 22: 222); 1301: Kynchus sz. hn. (Györfy 1: 731); 1358-9: Kenches sz. hn. (MNy. 16: 38); 1372 u./1448 k.: „kyt en aloytok nagÿ kencznek holot semmÿ” (JókK. 130). J: 1. 1213/1550: ? ’(felhalmozott) anyagi érték, ingó vagyontárgy, értékes, becses valami vagy valaki; Schatz’ (l. fent), 1372 u./1448 k.: ’ua.’ (l. fent); 2. 1416 u./1466: ’kincstár; Schatzkammer’ (MünchK. 40). – Sz: ~es 1301: hn. (l. fent); 1495 e. kinLos hazaba (GuaryK. 111) | ~ez 1416 u./1450 k.: kenLeznèc gr. ’kincset gyűjt, szerez’ (BécsiK. 219). —— Ismeretlen eredetű. 2. jelentésében a lat. thesaurus ’kincs; kincstár’ tükörszava. – Iráni és török származtatása nem fogadható el, a kéj ~ kény szóval való egybekapcsolása is téves. —— CzF.; Vámbéry: NyK. 8: 188; Munkácsi: NyK. 17: 97, 28: 267, 29: 20, AkÉrt. 5: 133, KSz. 1: 242, ÁKE. 412; Miklosich: TENachtr. 1: 74; Asbóth: NyK. 34: 106; Tagányi: MNy. 20: 138; Sköld: UngJb. 5: 435; Melich: AkNyÉrt. 25/4: 35; Fokos: Balassa-Eml. 56; Rásonyi Nagy: UngJb. 15: 551; Horger: MNy. 33: 247, 36: 322; SzófSz.; Kardos: MNyTK. 82. sz. 55. – Vö. köz~.

When checking the roots of the Hungarian word in the A magyar nyelv történeti-etimológiai szótára (Historical-etymological dictionary of the Hungarian language, 1977), there we read: Of unknown origin, and somewhat later: Its Iranian and Turkish etymology is unacceptable. But this affirmation itself seems to be unacceptable, as almost all the great names in the following bibliography stand up for the Iranian and/or Turkish etymology of the word. The names of the Western Hungarian village Gencsapáti and the Eastern Hungarian village Gencs (this latter now in Romania) are both officially said to come from the Iranian/Old Turkish word ‘genj’ = ‘treasure’, and the authoritative Ókori lexikon (Lexicon of Ancient Scholarship) also writes about the name of the Iranian city of Gaza, where the treasure of the Persian kings used to be conserved: “it comes from Sanskrit gandsha, that is treasure, like New Persian gendsh, which gave origin to Old Hungarian gench, treasure.” (This Iranian word is also the root of the Hebrew genizah, of the attic of the synagogue where the manuscripts including the name of God are being accumulated in the course of the centuries, and Dávid Kaufmann could say a lot about what a great treasure this is.) Such bias is a sad, but characteristic feature of this great dictionary of Hungarian etymology, compiled by “hardcore” Finno-Ugrist academicians who will do anything but recognize the Turkish or Iranian roots of “a word of unknown origin”. This has been eloquently and bitterly set forth by Hasan Eren, head of the department of Hungarology at the University of Ankara, honorary member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and redactor of the great Turkish dictionary of etymology, in his recension written about the Hungarian dictionary.

But another, much bigger surprise is the other extra treasure to which the book dedicates a special place on the two pages written about the treasures dragged off by the Nazis from the occupied countries.


“The crown of Hungary (Tâdj-e Madjâristân). Among the treasures found in the repository of Merkers, there was also the ancient crown of one of the Hungarian kings, Saint Stephen (Santestefan pâdishâh-e Madjâristân) who died in 1031. Before it got to the hands of the Nazis (nâzi-hâ), several kings of Hungary wore it on their heads.”

True, Saint Stephen died in 1038, but let the first stone be cast on the author by him who can tell the year of the death of King Dareios or Shah Great Abbas with the accuracy of at least one century. This little illustrated description appeared in a popular series, published in a high number of copies in Iran, where everyone we met could tell what the capital of Hungary was. Raise your hand if you have already heard about the Peacock Throne which is of the same importance for Persians, or if you know that the diamond called in Persian Koh-i-Nur, ‘the Mountain of Light’ – the largest one in the world at its times – adorned the crown of Persian rulers before it fell in 1877 into the hands of another occupying army, and from there into that “repository” of London where it has been preserved till our days, the Buckingham Palace.

Two poems by Miroslav Holub

Composition by Aleš Veselý (1935-) in the Egon Schiele Art Center of Český Krumlov

Napoleon Děti, kdy se narodil Napoleon Bonaparte, ptá se učitel. Před tisíci lety, říkají děti. Před sto lety, říkají děti. Loni, říkají děti. Nikdo neví. Děti, co udělal Napoleon Bonaparte, ptá se učitel. Vyhrál válku, říkají děti. Prohrál válku, říkají děti. Nikdo neví. U nás měl řezník psa, říká František, jmenoval se Napoleon. Řezník ho bil a pes umřel hlady před rokem. A všem dětem je ted líto Napoleona.	Napoleon Children, when was Napoleon Bonaparte born, asks the teacher. Thousand years ago, the children say. Hundred years ago, the children say. Last year, the children say. Nobody knows. Children, what did Napoleon Bonaparte do, asks the teacher. He won a battle, the children say. He lost a battle, the children say. Nobody knows. At us the butcher had a dog František says, he was called Napoleon. The butcher used to beat him, and the dog died of hunger last year. And now all the children feel sorry for Napoleon.
(1960)
Jdi a otevři dveře Jdi a otevři dveře. Třeba je tam venku Strom nebo les, Nebo zahrada, Nebo magické město. Jdi a otevři dveře. I kdyby tam byla jen tikající tma, i kdyby tam bylo jen duté vanutí i kdyby tam nic nebylo, jdi a otevři dveře. Jdi a otevři dveře. Třeba tam pes zaškrabe. Třeba je tam tvář, Nebo oko, Nebo obraz obrazu. Jdi a otevři dveře, Když je tam mlha, Spadne. Aspoň Průvan Bude.	Go and open the door Go and open the door. Perhaps outside there is a tree or a forest or a garden or an enchanted city. Go and open the door. If there was only the ticking darkness if there was only the empty wind or if there was absolutely nothing, go and open the door. Go and open the door. Perhaps a dog is scraping there. Perhaps a face is there, or an eye, or the image of an image. Go and open the door. If there is mist there it will clear away. If nothing else, a draught of air there will be.
(1962)

It is already ten years that Miroslav Holub has died. He was born in 1923, almost at the same time as my father. “By profession an immunologist, by vocation a poet”, as Kapuściński would say. From 1956 a founding member of the avantgarde circle and review Květen (May). I first met his enchanting poems at the beginning of the 90s in the little book and tea shop near to the Hussite Bethlehem Chapel of Prague, where they sold avantgarde publications in printed, stenciled and handwritten brochures as well as cheap Indian silk scarves and also a living parrot. Holub would have remained satisfied if he saw it. Perhaps he saw it indeed. In any case, he lived to see that his admirers in the observatory of České Budějovice officially gave his name to the asteroid no. 7496. discovered in 1997.

Twenty-four

the foundations flew up on high
the altitudes dove down in the deep
Libeň, November-December 1916
Ladislav Klíma, in: Bohumil Hrabal: In House Weddings

The house I was looking for had a generally pleasant impression, a gas street lamp stood in front of the gate, the sidewalk paved with cobblestones must have been rolled up long ago, and the ditch was recently covered again. The gas lamp was already burning, I could see that the number was the correct one, twenty-four. I entered. The hallway smelled of spilt wine and coldness. The plaster was crumbling from the damp walls like flaky pastry. As I entered the courtyard, I could barely leap aside. A blonde woman in a bra and purple pants was pouring water by the pailsful up to the window-boards, then she pushed it with a broom into the small sewer. I waded through a long puddle to the stairs, I went up six steps, and I arrived in a second, smaller courtyard. Upstairs, an external corridor decorated with cast iron railings appeared along the first floor, and above it towered the wall of the neighboring building, nothing but a two-story high bare wall with crumbling plaster, a gigantic wall without windows, and so long that it weighed down the house with the external corridor and with the lit up window. To the left there stood a frame on which carpets are beaten, and behind it, the open door of the laundry yawned and exhaled the smell of washing-powder and sewage. And I went forward, seduced by that light on the ground floor, the cold light of the lamp that could be pulled up and down. In contrast to the pleasant atmosphere of the small courtyard, that window on the ground floor sent forth such a coldness that I was shivering. Two woodbines grew in front of the wall, running along the wires stretched across the little courtyard, their trailers and tendrils hanging down and then turning back and growing upwards again, easily touching my shoulders, and I screwed up my courage and stepped to the window.

I was given accommodations in Libeň, v Domě Vědeckých Pracovniků, in the House of Scientific Workers, at least at that time this is how they called the ten-story concrete tower rising as a solitary obelisk in the outskirts of Prague on a hilltop, in the middle of an improbably empty field, above the vineyards, meadows, small cottages and the highway running in the distance. Vysočanská street continued from Sokolovská meandering, soon the “Beware of the dog” and “No admittance” signs were left behind, the dirt road went on in the open field, I had to turn back twice to ask whether I was correctly informed. But before that and before everything else I wanted to make my pilgrimage to the house which at that time meant for me Libeň and Prague, all the good and creative power, by way of which one could prevail over the sea of evil in that period.

I followed a relatively new map, the best you could buy in Budapest, but at that time, one year after the revolution, it was already transcended by reality; Prague was stretching its cramped members as if just awaken from a dazed sleep after a messy and drunken party, the fabric of the streets was cracking, the foundations flew up on high, the altitudes dove down in the deep, I was looking for Na Hrázi, the Street of the Dam, the Dam of Eternity, as Hrabal, Vladimír and Egon Bondy called it, at the gate of Libeň, near the backwater of the Vltava, where Tekla, the Hungarian countess, the wife of Vladimír

bathed naked at noon, the fishermen cast their nets astray, a cyclist flew through the riverbank weeds and voluntarily jumped into the water, what a body she had, eh, tell me, what a body,

but I could not continue on Zemklová, because it was a one-way from the opposite direction, only for trams, I parked the Trabant at the small bus terminus behind the recently built Palmovka metro station, where I found some free place between the clumsily placed new curbs and the piles of building rubble, and as I was getting out of the car, I immediately knew that I was in the right place, because the large five-story brown building with its emptily gaping windows and closed ground-floor shops and with the art deco globe and inscription SVĚT formed of rusty iron on top, that building was

the fast food, palace, restaurant and cinema bearing the name ‘World’, where we went to every screening. In that neighborhood called Židý there was an estate whose owner was called World. After long ruminations he found that it was by no chance that he was called World. So he sold everything he had, he even contracted a loan, and he built the palace World. At the premiere of the cinema, an American film, The Flood, was screened. While on screen it was pouring down rain and the Ark of Noah was floating on in the tempest, the subsoil water of the Vltava broke into the basement of the cinema, the audience was sitting in water, but the film had to be screened to the end. This is how mister World wasted one million crowns on the World cinema. He blew his brains out. Now you can hear the pumps working beneath every screening, and the building is adorned with an iron globe and the inscription ‘World’,

but the little street had no name, so I went forward along Na Žertvách, after the synagogue I turned right, and then to the right again along U Synagogy, to the left onto Ludmilina, and then I was right there on Na Hrázi, the numbering of the houses grew on the right side, eighteen, twenty, twenty-two, and then I arrived at the little bus terminus behind the recently built Palmovka metro station, where at the place of number twenty-four, among the piles of building rubble, just as far from the clumsily placed new curbs as the entrance of a building, there stood the Trabant like a benevolent and patient old horse which every night carried the drunken coachman Hausmann exactly to the gate of his house in Běrkovice. And then I understood that I was late, that the flood of time splashed over the Dam of Eternity, the altitudes dove down in the deep, in the cavity of the Palmovka metro station, and the foundations already forever

hover above us like the clouds of the ideal buildings on a Baroque painting.


[The quotations are from Bohumil Hrabal’s autobiographic works that are mostly set in Libeň: the In House Weddings trilogy and the Tender barbar, his novel I have liked the most.]

Dos poemas de Miroslav Holub

Composición de Aleš Veselý (1935-) en el Centro de Arte Egon Schiele de Český Krumlov

Napoleon Děti, kdy se narodil Napoleon Bonaparte, ptá se učitel. Před tisíci lety, říkají děti. Před sto lety, říkají děti. Loni, říkají děti. Nikdo neví. Děti, co udělal Napoleon Bonaparte, ptá se učitel. Vyhrál válku, říkají děti. Prohrál válku, říkají děti. Nikdo neví. U nás měl řezník psa, říká František, jmenoval se Napoleon. Řezník ho bil a pes umřel hlady před rokem. A všem dětem je ted líto Napoleona.	Napoleon Chicos, cuándo nació Napoleón Bonaparte, pregunta el maestro. Hace mil años, dicen los chicos. Hace cien años, dicen los chicos. El año pasado, dicen los chicos. Nadie lo sabe. Chicos, qué hizo Napoleón Bonaparte, pregunta el maestro. Ganó una batalla, dicen los chicos. Perdió una batalla, dicen los chicos. Nadie lo sabe. El carnicero tenía un perro dice František, se llamaba Napoleón. El carnicero le pegaba y el perro murió de hambre el año pasado. Y ahora todos los chicos sienten lástima por Napoleón.
(1960)
Jdi a otevři dveře Jdi a otevři dveře. Třeba je tam venku Strom nebo les, Nebo zahrada, Nebo magické město. Jdi a otevři dveře. I kdyby tam byla jen tikající tma, i kdyby tam bylo jen duté vanutí i kdyby tam nic nebylo, jdi a otevři dveře. Jdi a otevři dveře. Třeba tam pes zaškrabe. Třeba je tam tvář, Nebo oko, Nebo obraz obrazu. Jdi a otevři dveře, Když je tam mlha, Spadne. Aspoň Průvan Bude.	Go and open the door Ve y abre la puerta. Quizá afuera haya un árbol o un bosque o un jardín o una ciudad encantada. Ve y abre la puerta. Si solo hubiera el tic-tac de la oscuridad si solo hubiera el viento vacío o si no hubiera absolutamente nada, ve y abre la puerta. Ve y abre la puerta. Quizá un perro esté rascando. Quizá haya un rostro, o un ojo, o la imagen de una imagen. Ve y abre la puerta. Si hubiera niebla, ya escampará. Al menos habrá un proyecto.
(1962)

Hace diez años que murió Miroslav Holub. Nació en 1923, casi a la vez que mi padre. «De profesión inmunólogo, de vocación poeta», diría de él Kapuściński. Desde 1956, miembro fundador del círculo de vanguardia y la revista Květen (Mayo). Me encontré por primera vez con sus delicados poemas a principios de los 90 en la pequeña librería y casa de té próxima a la Capilla Husita de Belén, en Praga, donde se mezclaban textos vanguardistas impresos, ciclostilados y manuscritos, con pañuelos baratos de seda india y un loro chillón. Holub se habría alegrado mucho de ver algo así. De hecho, quizá lo vio. Sí que vio, en todo caso, cómo sus lectores del observatorio de České Budějovice daban oficialmente su nombre al asteroide nº 7496 descubierto en 1997.

The Chechen girl

It will turn exactly 100 in this year, but it is just as fresh and vivid as when its author Tanburi Cemil Bey first recorded it on wax cylinder. In the reality its author was not Cemil Bey, and it was not Chechen by birth, but Greek from the nearby island of Midilli, or Lesbos by its Greek name. From there it was brought by those wandering Greek baglama players making music in the cafés of fin-de-siècle Istanbul who, after the collapse – the Katastrophê – of the Minor Asian Greek world in the 1920s fled to Athens to create there the music of rebetiko exactly from such half Oriental and half Greek melodies.

Fin-de-siècle Istanbul, however, was still the capital of an empire, with multicolored population and musical life. The true richness of this music can be estimated only in recent years, with Kalan Müzik publishing in row the music of the last decades of the Ottoman Empire from archive recordings and in the authentic performance of modern musicians. The cafés saw, apart from the Greeks also Armenian oud-players, Sepharadic female singers and Turkish male gazel-singers, Azeri kamanche-players, wandering Kurdish lutenist aşıks and the Slavic and Albanian bards described by Ismail Kadare in The palace of dreams, and still flourished the Ottoman court, dervish and military music which, melting with the Classical and entertaining music of the West, produced an infinite number of exotic local sports of this latter. Istanbul is even today imbued with spontaneous music, from the loudspeakers of the Muezzins calling to prayer again and again to the chanting of the sellers and to the music broadcasted by various Anatolian radio stations in every shop and café, and we can imagine how much richer this music was before the 1920s, that is before the collapse of the Ottoman empire, the extirpation, expulsion or oppression of the ethnic minorities, the disappearance of the court and of the traditional elite and the suppression of the dervish orders put an end to this richness.

Of this world was an estimated figure Tanburi Cemil Bey, the unrivalledly talented musician who with the same perfection played on the Turkish tanbur – this is where his name comes from –, the Azeri kamanche, the Greek lauta, the Persian kanoun and a number of other instruments, and he also melted the musical worlds belonging to these different instruments and ethnic groups in his compositions played all over Istanbul and the empire. The “Chechen girl”, just like the enchanting “Circassian women” of the Romantic novels or the Russian “кавказская красавица” is that rosy-cheeked, black-haired, large-eyed and unattainable Caucasian beauty who used to be remembered frequently and with desire by the poets and café musicians of the empire. The Greek song singing about her was to become famous all over Turkey in the version of Tanburi Cemil Bey and with his characteristic improvised introduction Hüseyni taksim. Unfortunately I don’t have exactly that volume of the archive phonograph recordings of Cemil Bey where he plays the Çeçen kızı, but in the traditional interpretation of the Kurdish Sufi musician Kudsi Erguner and his ensemble we can feel something from the force of the original song.


Kudsi Erguner, Çeçen kızı, from the CD “Tanburi Cemil Bey”

On YouTube one can find several versions of this song, a restrained Ottoman-style orchestral piece, the performance by Cihat Aşkin rewritten for Western orchestra, or other versions bearing testimony to its great popularity, like the jazz version by James Brown Funk and Emin Findikoglu, an anonymous kanoun piece introduced with Hüseyni taksim, another one apparently played in an interval of a musical evening, and an amateur recording performed, as its title says, “by a Turk from the neighborhood of Amherst”.

I especially like three versions. The first one is performed by Necati Çelik and his traditional ensemble in the TRT TV, introduced with the Hüseyni taksim.

The second one comes from a video series presenting the antique instruments of the estimated Istanbul musical instrument maker firm Veysel Music House (how much I’d like to have a lute of their production!). Here it is played by Alper Taş on an oud made in 1910 by Beşiktaşlı Vasil.

The third one is a fusion version by the Balkan Messengers, in the sign of the Balkan nostalgy flourishing in the last twenty years in Turkey. Perhaps this makes you feel the best the forceful impact that this song could have in its own bygone world.


Balkan Messengers, Çeçen kızı, from the CD “Balkan Messengers 2”

The real Trebitsch

“The former Jewish quarter is considered an urbanistically and historically unique monument in Europe, and is one of the most intactly preserved Jewish quarters in the continent.” – we read with Wang Wei in the encyclopedia 444 historických měst a městeček České Republiky (444 historical cities and towns in the Czech Republic, Prague, Kartografie 2004) and we immediately included Třebíč among the stations of our Southern Bohemian tour.


The Romanesque Benedictine monastery of the town and the Jewish quarter which, in the monastery’s protection and with its privileges has developed for centuries independently of the merchant town laying on the other side of the river, were included on the list of the World Heritage in 2003 (where the Jewish quarter is allegedly the only Jewish monument outside of Israel). The world heritage of the town is presented by a beautiful site made with characteristic Czech wit, which orders along the route of a walk the images of nine restored houses of the quarter. This site is ingenious also because it gives the impression as if the rest of the 123 surviving houses of the Jewish quarter looked like these nine ones, too.


But this is not the case. Anywhere we leave the tourist path that follows the two former main streets – the Lower and Upper Jewish Street – of the quarter, we see the traces of destruction everywhere. The destruction of the Nazi occupation when the last two hundred and eighty inhabitants of the quarter were deported (only ten out of them returned). The destruction of Communism, when the peasant and proletarian families that had settled in the houses practically weared them out. (It is interesting to see that the “style” of wearing out is so similar to how the same happened in Hungary, but definitely different in appearance how it happens in Romania or in the Italian South.)



But we probably also see the results of a third, much slower destruction. This one had started a century earlier, in the 1850s when, following their legal emancipation, the Jews began to flow to the dynamically evolving cities from the former “privileged towns” which by then had become too narrow and out-of-the-way. This is how the Jewish quarter of Třebíč, which in the Middle Ages with more than two thousand inhabitants was considered one of the four large Moravian Jewish centers, has lost most of its population by the beginning of the 20th century.



The Jewish cemetery is a fifteen minutes walk upwards from the highest point of the Jewish quarter. The path leads through a hillside covered with weeds and stunted robinia trees which is used by the masters of the neighborhood as a running place for their dogs, and then through a recently built small green belt housing estate. No sign indicates the way to the cementery until we arrive to the first houses. Whoever has not read about it in the guide will certainly not set out from the Jewish quarter to look for it.


Nevertheless, if someone is curious of the Jewish Třebíč, he will find it here. In the cemetery which has been in continuous use since the 13th century, 11 thousand tombs have been preserved, the oldest inscribed stones from the 1500s. This is the largest Jewish cemetery of the region. It was spared by the destruction of the occupation, and apparently it has been also taken care in the thereafter following decades. The pebble-stones accumulating at the feet of the tombstones indicate that several tombs are visited even today. It is strange to see that this hillside, the quarter of the dead has remained the only living part of the former Jewish quarter, the real Trebitsch.