Sant Antoni

In the moments as I’m writing this, in Palma de Mallorca, on the large square at the cathedral on the sea front there are gathering all kinds of animals from the city and the nearby fincas in order to appear in solemn procession before Saint Anthony at the Claustro de Sant Antoniet in the old town. The route already has been carpeted with sand, the local dignities and the representatives of the farmers’ association already have taken seat on the occasional wooden platform in front of the church, and the crowd behind the bars and on the balconies is looking forward with excitement to the mounted policemen leading the procession and on this occasion having their animals blessed as well.






Unfortunately in this year I cannot be there, thus I am rehashing old times only with the pictures taken in the last year. I apologize for the quality of the images, as in the crowd I could only take a picture here and now with the camera lifted above my head. Thus the best moments are only fixed in my memory.





Several farms come in procession on a tractor and with a cage displaying the cream of the beast.

The car of the blind man’s dogs. In front of them went that of the policemen’s dog.

Between the other animals receive their blessing also the dimonis who on the previous night were busy on the temptation of Saint Anthony all over the island. And the masquerade figures receive theirs too. This cat bridegroom is leading a mouse bride.




The blessing was addressed not only to the animals present, but also to those absent. I took home the little picture of Saint Anthony which was distributed as a proof of this. While I’m writing this, it keeps its benevolent eye on the beast laying around my chair.

Rhinocerology 5. A distant relative

Although I wanted to speak about the Far Eastern occurrences of the rhinoceros only later, nevertheless now I have to lead forward a Japanese animal. On the one hand because I’m already late with its presentation, for I received it from Komaváry in Tokyo as a New Year present, and on the other hand because it fits very well here, at the end of the Dürer pedigree, as its farthest descendant both in time and in space.

True, the following comics is not about the rhinoceros, but about an elephant… however, wait till the end. And anyway I’m planning to add a post on the elephant and on the rhinoceros, so let this one be a trailer (coming! coming!) to it.

To understand the basic concept of the comics (why does the elephant work like this?) you have to know that the Chinese name of the elephant – 象 xiàng – also means ‘image, imagination’, and this is how it is used in Japanese, too. I don’t know why. It is quite rare in Chinese that a character has two meanings as distant as these. The character itself is simply the image of an elephant, rotated in 90 degrees to economize on space. From the inscriptions of ancient bronzes, oracle bones and stamps this is how we can reconstruct its etymology:


In vain I browse through the Chinese historical dictionaries, they do not give any hint as to the reason of this peculiar homonym. However, I seem to remember to have read somewhere in the great French sinologist Claude Larre that around the creation of this character the elephant was on the verge of extinction in China, and soon there was left none. Its Chinese character, however, remained, and in order to take some good use of it, they indicated with it the word ‘image, similarity, imagination’ pronounced in the same way as ‘elephant’: xiàng. By this they also referred, to some extent, to the elephant, for by that time it had become a fabulous, imaginary animal in China. Do you remember the Zen story where blind people feeling the elephant imagine it as a thick column, as a great wall or as a boa, depending on where they stand? 瞎摸象, xiā mó xiàng, “the blind is feeling the elephant”, as the proverb says. Nevertheless, in those times Chinese people with healthy eyes could not have more precise ideas about the look of the animal either.

There exists another character of a similar meaning 像 xiàng, in which the sign for “man” stands in front of the elephant. In Chinese this means ‘portrait, statue’ (surely as a result of the compound “man+image”), while in Japanese, writes Komaváry, it is a component of the word 想像力 sōzōryoku, “imagination.” Is it perhaps the blind man, he asks, feeling the elephant? While I imagine how much it could have stimulated the imagination of old Japanese people when, perhaps once in a life, an elephant appeared in the town and a man in front of it: a showman, a juggler, a tender. Someone like the protagonist of the following story.

The Japanese inscriptions have been translated by Komaváry. You can read them in a popup window by moving above them with the mouse. Images in a row are read from right to left according to the Japanese custom. Our javascript popups do not work in Google Reader, so reader addicts are invited to come in. The elephant will hunch up a bit.


This rhinoceros is the last one not only in the melancholic zoology of the comics, but also in the sense that this animal, published a month ago, in December 2008, is the last descendant of the Dürer woodcut known to me. Have you seen its armory and horn on the withers?

I think this similarity is intentional. For the author could have found a thousand images on living rhinoceroses, and nevertheless he decided to copy the figure of Dürer. This is because to his ingenious story on imagination – xiàng – he needed precisely an imaginary rhinoceros. How can we prove this? With the etymology of the Chinese – and also Japanese – name of the rhinoceros.

The Chinese name of the rhinoceros – 犀 xī – is a combination of the characters 尾 wĕi ‘tail’ and 牛 niú ‘cattle’, meaning something like ‘cattle with a tail’. That the rhinoceros is similar to the cattle is all right. But why did they emphasize just the tail, perhaps the least significant member of the rhinoceros? To understand it, we have to know that the rhinoceros in Chinese fairy tales – for a real one has been just as unknown there in the last thousands of years as a real elephant – has a long tail. And lo, can you see which tail does this one on the last picture try to conceal behind its tender?…

Perhaps even the elephant leaving on the wings is a reference to the flight of imagination, although I do not know whether this expression exists in Japanese. And although the rhinoceros seems to be a much more down-to-earth being, nevertheless… I only say you’d better take care.

Oleg Dozortzev: A house of the winged rhinoceros, 2008

2008

As at the beginning of every year, the flower beds of Hortus Carmeli have been increased by one. Kata has composed her selection of her photos made in the garden during the last year. As the garden is getting more and more mature, it is increasingly difficult to decide which pictures to omit from the bouquet. Nevertheless we hope that with these eighty and something we have managed to embrace the garden in space and in time.

Spring

Summer

Autum

Winter

Muska

The rest is to be seen here.

Rhinocerology 4. The truth suppressed

Evolutionary dead-end. This is how biological taxonomy calls those genotypes which branch off the tree of evolution, get stuck and then fall off (can you follow the metaphor?), or else they salvage their gene stock in ecosystems protected from evolutionary competitors and they continue far from the main stream of phylogeny their no longer purposeful race-preserving activity.


Of course one can establish only retrospectively which of the two branches became the main stream. In a given moment the other one may even have everything in its favor, it can be stronger, more intelligent or beautiful than the main stream. Like, for example, dinosaurs were in contrast to primitive shrew, the first mammal. The main stream, however, has one incomparably great advantage in contrast to the dead end. Namely the fact that retrospectively it was the other that proved to be the dead end.


Similar branching off happened in the first decades of the 16th century, during the naturalization of the rhinoceros in Europe.


We have seen that Renaissance representations of rhinoceros all derive, either directly or indirectly, from the 1515 engraving of Dürer. And through it from the above preparatory drawing preserved in the British Museum, made by Dürer on the basis of a drawing made from nature of the Lisbon beast.

No wonder that Dürer’s engraving had such success. Its convincing anatomy and statics give the impression of an authentic representation, while its compact modelling and stylized elaboration makes it a captivating picture and a marketable illustration. So much that – as we have already seen and will also see in other examples – even its inaccuracies, the „horn on withers,” the „armory” or the „dragon pattern” were transposed on the copies of other representations of the animal (ancient coins, pictures of different animals). The latest offspring of this engraving was born in December 2008 (!), less than a month ago, but this will be presented in the next post.

However, palaeontologists have recently unearthed also some fossil rhino specimens, which were all born in the same time as that of Dürer and apparently from the same parent, but they differ in some decisive details from the var. Düreris.


This woodcut has survived in one single copy in the Albertina of Vienna. Its maker Hans Burgkmair from Augsburg was a student of Martin Schongauer, the most important woodcutter before Dürer. Beginning with 1508 he made several hundreds of woodcuts for Emperor Maximilian I, similarly to Dürer, or often together with him.

The source of Burgkmair’s woodcut was apparently the same sketch as to Dürer’s (and probably also to that of Giovanni Giacomo Penni, here to the left). No wonder, for the imperial commissions were procured for both of them by Dürer’s friend, the court humanist Konrad Peutinger of Augsburg. It was probably him who handed over to both of them the original sketch and description sent from Lisbon to “the merchants of Nuremberg.”

It seems that the woodcut of Burgkmair stood closer to the original drawing. It maintained the leg-straps, also visible on Penni’s woodcut, on the forelegs (which contributed to the death of the animal during the naufrage), its skin is more similar to the hard wrinkles of the Indian rhinoceros than the armory drawn by Dürer, and even its pattern is more realistic. According to modern experts, the round spots might be the symptom of the inflammation of skin which can in fact occur among rhinoceroses.

The two woodcuts were made in the same time, by two comparably outstanding masters, for the same public. This public, however, accepted only Dürer’s stylized representation, even making an icon out of it, while rejecting that of Burgkmair, even though this stood much closer to the reality. This rejection was so definitive that had this single copy of the image not survived we would not even known it had ever existed.

The differences between their respective style are well displayed by the images of the monumental composition The Triumphal Procession of Maximilian I assembled of 135 woodcuts (1518-1522), which were made principally by the two masters. Well, if we are allowed culicem elefanti conferre, to compare a mosquito to the elephant, as their friend Erasmus wrote in the same time in proverb 3.1.27 of his Adages. For Burgkmair’s picture represents the charriot of the jesters, while Dürer’s that of Maximilian himself encircled by his virtues. However, this division of labor is not accidental, but it shows how much more the stylized woodcuts of Dürer alloying Gothic with Quattrocento were appreciated by the period than the more naturalistic, loose-limbed, Brueghelian figures of Burgkmair. (You are recommended to see the pictures also enlarged.)



As it often cannot be determined whether two fossils belonged to the same subspecies, so we cannot tell about another individual rhinoceros finding from this period whether it was made after Burgkmair’s woodcut and complemented with some elements of Dürer’s one, or it is rather a direct copy of the lost first sketch. But we think it must be rather this latter. This hypothesis is also supported by the fact that this drawing was made on the commission of Maximilian I, and its master was that most probably the same Albrecht Altdorfer who also prepared some of the woodcuts of the Triumphal procession. This animal survived in a marginal drawing of the prayer book of Maximilian I, made in 1515 and conserved in the Bibliothèque Municipale of Besançon. However, in spite of the distinguished niche and the greater closeness to reality, this representation also succumbed in the struggle for existence to its Dürerian evolutionary rival.


A rudimentary “horn on the withers” occurs in this picture, too. Thus there had to be something already on the first drawing which led to the stylized “second horn” of Dürer’s rhinoceros. I wonder so much what it could have been.

Finally also a third, isolated rhinoceros survived from these years, and in a sculptural form to that, in Westphalia, on the stall erected in 1520 in the choir of the Saint Martin church in Minden. This one was certainly not made on the basis of the original sketch, but of a woodcut, as it was customary in the period. Perhaps right after the woodcut of Burgkmair which thus did not remain without an offspring. This little figure is so plastic, so vivid, that I would gladly continue the phylogenic metaphor by saying that, similarly to the Jurassic fauna surviving on the island of the Pacific, it has also withdrawn to this silent island, rendering its phenotype somewhat piglet-like, and since then it has been living its calm life between two ever-yielding vine trees.

*

A: But why was it exactly the woodcut of Dürer to become so successful, and why were the others neglected?
B: I write under the drawing of Dürer that on the one hand it gave a very authentic anatomical and statical impression, and on the other hand it was both compact and stylized in a way very much appreciated by the period.
A: I think this is not enough. It also must have contributed to its success that this woodcut is like a jewel, so emblematic and subtly elaborated. The other drawings are so much “animal-like,” you can almost feel their smell.
B: I think this did not disturb the Renaissance at all, they were accustomed to this level of corporeality, and what is more they even required it. Even on the pictures. The great zoology of Gesner from 1551 is full of such pictures. There the illustrations of the ungulates are so similar to the image of Burgkmair that it would have been certainly included if the drawing of Dürer had not existed.
A: Well, that’s right. But even then, it is this stylized and jewel-like appearance that capturates you the most in it.
B: Perhaps we only feel so after the Art Nouveau. It is no chance that Dürer was rediscovered in the 19th century. True, also the Renaissance required a certain degree of stylizedness, especially then, in early sixteenth-century German court art, but this was only one of the ingredients of Dürer’s success, and perhaps not even the more important one. I rather think that his period loved those compact, statue-like figures constituting a space around themselves which were learned by Dürer from the “pathos figures” of the Italian Quattrocento. Such figures are used also in the Triumphal procession, and such is the rhinoceros as well.

La lingua più divertente del mondo

Nel post sulla storia di Bella ciao ho accennato all’eccellente sito di Riccardo Venturi, che vi ha raccolto le più popolari canzoni contro la guerra, accompagnate da traduzioni in varie lingue e da abbondanti documenti di storia e di stampa. Poco più tardi Riccardo mi ha fatto l’onore di includere nel suo sito la traduzione letterale di Bella ciao dalla versione ungherese del post, introducendola con delle parole calorose.

Ma la vera sorpresa è seguita dopo. Quando l’ho ringraziato – in italiano – e gli ho mandato l’indirizzo della versione inglese del post perché sicuramente avrebbe potuto essere capita da molti più lettori rispetto alla versione ungherese, Riccardo mi ha risposto in ungherese:

Szívesen köszönöm az egész munkádért a szép blogodon. Én is elfogadom, hogy az olvasók többsége könnyebben olvashat angolul, de én a magyar nyelvet mindig jobban szeretem, mint a “világnyelv”...Elkezdettem magyart tanulni 16 éves korában én részrehajló vagyok :-) Minden esetben remélem, hogy a blogod és a honlapom a jövőben is a magyar és olasz néphagyományok tanulmányáért és történetéért közreműködhetnek!

(Un ringrazio affettuoso per tutto il tuo lavoro nel tuo bel blog. Anch’io ammetto che la maggioranza dei lettori possa leggere con più facilità in inglese, ma ho sempre preferito l’ungherese alla “lingua del mondo”… All’età di 16 anni ho cominciato a imparare l’ungherese, e così sono parziale :-) In ogni caso spero che il tuo blog e il mio sito possano collaborare anche nel futuro per lo studio e la storia delle tradizioni popolari ungheresi ed italiane!)

Già il fatto che un ragazzo italiano di sedici anni scelga fra le migliaia di alternative proprio questa lingua estremamente difficile e di limitata utilità è abbastanza improbabile. Ma che poi arrivi a questo livello di perfezione – ovviamente con un bella dose di diligenza e di talento – è addirittura incredibile. Interrogato sulle cause della sua scelta, Riccardo ha risposto questo:

A magyar nyelv két legfontosabb szava: szerelem és szabadság. Mikor 16 éves voltam, voltam mint minden 16 éves: romanticizmus, elmezavar, eredetiség, “én-nem-vagyok-mint-a-mások” zűrzavara...s a többi. Továbbá a határtalan nyelvszerelmem volt, mert a nyelvek, mint mondta a híres olasz keleti nyelvész Alessandro Bausani, “a világ legszebb játéka”. Egy firenzei könyvesboltban Fábián Pál magyar nyelvtanát (“Manuale della lingua ungherese”) láttam meg, és a magyar nyelv a hihetetlen szerkezetével elbűvölt engem; de sajnos nem volt pénzem vásárolni, túl drága volt. Két honapot várnom kellett, és a napon, mikor a szükséges pénzem volt, buszsztrájk volt. Jól, hazámból a könyvesboltba gyalog mentem, hogy vásároljam: nyolc kilómeter. Szerelem első látásra. A magyar nyelv nem “nehéz”: különböző, másféle. Az elméjét különböző gondolatmódra, gondolatszerkezetre készteti; és a különbözés szabadság. Megtanultam és beszélek más nyelveket, de a magyar még kedvenc játszótársam, a világ legszebb, legszabadabb és legszórakoztatóbb nyelve. A szerelem és a szabadság nyelve.

(Le due parole più importanti della lingua ungherese sono: amore e libertà. All’età di sedici ero come tutti i sedicenni: in una confusione di romanticismo, follia, originalità, “non sono come gli altri”… eccetera. E poi c’era l’irrefrenabile amore verso le lingue, perché le lingue, come disse il famoso orientalista italiano Alessandro Bausani, son “il gioco più bello del mondo”. Ho scoperto in una libreria fiorentina il Manuale della lingua ungherese di Pál Fábián, e la lingua ungherese mi ha completamente affascinato con la sua incredibile struttura. Però, purtroppo, non avevo i soldi per comprarlo, costava troppo. Ho dovuto aspettare due mesi prima di avere i soldi, ma proprio quel giorno c’era sciopero degli autobus. Bene, sono andato a piedi da casa alla libreria per comprarlo: otto chilometri… Amore a prima vista. La lingua ungherese non è “difficile”: è differente. Apre la mente a un differente modo di pensare, a delle strutture mentali differenti. E la differenza è libertà. Ho imparato e parlo anche un paio di altre lingue, ma l’ungherese è tuttora il mio preferito compagno di gioco, la lingua più bella, più libera e più divertente del mondo. La lingua dell’amore e della libertà.)

Fábián Pál magyar nyelvtana (Budapest 1970, Tankönyvkiadó) az asztalomon, 30 év után... :-)
(La grammatica ungherese di Pál Fábián [Budapest 1970, Editore Libri Scolastici] sul mio tavolo, dopo 30 anni… :-) )

Anch’io mi ricordo bene di questo libro, con cui una volta ho insegnato, anzi due volte, e tutt’e due volte senza successo. Il mio primo studente è stato un ufficiale dei carabinieri molto simpatico, di Torino, nel mezzo del cammin fra i venti e trent’anni, che si era avvicinato a noi spinto dall‘attrazione per una ragazza ungherese, figlia di un famoso etnografo e studentessa al dipartimento di italiano. Alla fine degli anni ’80 una relazione ungherese era considerata un rischio per la sicurezza dello stato, e il ragazzo – con una carriera molto promettente dopo parecchi anni di servizio – è stato messo davanti a una scelta dai suoi superiori: o la ragazza o la professione. Ha scelto la ragazza. E dopo nemmeno sei mesi di studio dell’ungherese, la ragazza ha scelto qualcun altro al posto suo, mandandolo a casa perché cominciasse una nuova vita, la migliore che potesse.

La seconda volta abbiamo cominciato il libro con Bobo, il mio amico sardo-pratese, che negli anni ’90 ha trovato un’avventura eccitante aprire un caffé italiano a Budapest. Però questa è stata una breve parentesi. Bobo si è smarrito verso la terza lezione, nel corso dell’analisi morfologica della frase Hol vannak az amerikai turisták kocsijai? (“Dove sono le macchine dei turisti americani?” – in ungherese una costruzione un po’ prematuramente complicata per un principiante.) Bene, Dio abbia in pace il signor Fábián (è morto in questo settembre), ma se imparare ungherese è già difficile di per sé, allora impararlo di questo libro è addirittura un atto erculeo, per cui Riccardo merita veramente ogni riconoscimento.

Qualche giorno dopo il nostro scambio di commenti, il 6 di gennaio, quando la Befana porta i regali ai bambini, Riccardo ha fatto anche a me l’onore di farmi un regalo. Nella pagina del suo sito dedicata alla canzone Mio nonno partì per l’Ortigara di Chiara Riondino, ha tradotto in ungherese questa canzone con una dedica personale. In cima alla pagina ha anche incluso un link a una registrazione del canzone con Chiara, ma, dato che questo si può ottenere solo tramite diversi passaggi, qui sotto includo un link diretto.


Chiara Riondino: Mio nonno partì per l’Ortigara, registrazione fatta  in occasione all’evento organizzato dalla comunità di base fiorentina Baracche Verdi in piazza dell’Isolotto, il 13 di maggio di 2007.

Questa canzone – scrive Riccardo – parla anche di suo nonno, “ragazzo del ’98” che è stato altrettanto derubato della sua gioventù dalla prima guerra mondiale e dagli anni passati nelle trincee delle Alpi italiane, di fronte alle trincee dell’armata austro-ungarica.

In cambio anch’io mando a Riccardo la canzone di mio nonno, “ragazzo dell’88”, cantata negli stessi anni e fra le stesse montagne – però dall’altro lato dello stesso fronte. E, già che siamo, includo anche la canzone del mio altro nonno, che ha servito sul fronte russo, un canzone che è tanto piacciuta ai miei amici russi. Come la canzone italiana, così quelle ungheresi non parlano di nessun odio verso il “nemico”, ma solo di una vita insensatamente sprecata in una guerra insensata.


András Széles: Kimegyek a doberdói harctérre (Esco al campo di battaglia di Doberdò). Dal CD di Tamás Cseh - Péter Péterdi: Magyar katonadalok és énekek a XX. századból (Canzoni dei soldati ungheresi del 20mo secolo) (2000).

Kimegyek a doberdói harctérre, feltekintek a csillagos nagy égre: Csillagos ég, merre van a magyar hazám, merre sirat engem az édesanyám? Én Istenem, hol fogok én meghalni, hol fog az én piros vérem kifolyni? Olaszország közepébe lesz a sírom, édesanyám, arra kérem, ne sírjon.

Esco sul campo di battaglia di Doberdò guardo insù verso il cielo stellato: Cielo stellato, dov’è la mia patria ungherese, dove sta piangendo per me la mia dolce madre? Dio mio, dove morirò, dove si verserà il mio sangue rosso? La mia tomba sarà nel bel mezzo dell’Italia, mia dolce madre, ti prego di non piangere per me.

Zoltán Kátai and the Hegedűs Ensemble: Esik az eső, ázik a heveder (Cade la pioggia, la bardatura è umida). Dallo stesso CD. Tuttavia, la versione di mio nonno era molto più melancolica, proprio quella era la sua bellezza.

Esik az eső, ázik a heveder gyönge lábamat szorítja a kengyel bársony lekötő szorítja lovamat nehéz karabély nyomja a vállamat. Megjött a levél fekete pecséttel: megjött a muszka százezer emberrel kétszáz ágyúval áll a harc mezején így hát, jó anyám, elmasírozok én. Jön egy kapitány hófehér paripán fényes kard csillog annak az oldalán kardja megvillan, az ágyú mennydörög szép piros vérem a földre lecsöpög.

Cade la pioggia, la bardatura è umida i miei deboli piedi sono stretti dalla staffa una cavezza di velluto stringe il mio cavallo una mitra pesante pesa sulla mia spalla. È arrivata la lettera con il sigillo nero: sono arrivati i russi con duecentomila persone, con duecento cannoni stanno sul campo di battaglia perciò, mia buona madre, devo marciare via. Arriva un capitano su un cavallo bianco una spada lucente brilla al suo fianco la sua spada brilla, i cannoni tuonano e il mio sangue rosso stilla sulla terra.

Tante grazie a Francesca per la revisione del testo italiano.

The most entertaining language of the world

In the post on the history of Bella ciao I have mentioned the great site of Riccardo Venturi where he has been collecting a large amount of popular antiwar songs accompanied with several translations as well as historical and press documentation. Not much later I was honored by Riccardo’s having included on his page the verbatim translation of the Bella ciao from the Hungarian version of the post, introducing it with some warm words.

But the real surprise followed only next. When I have said thanks to him – in Italian – and sent to him the address of the English version of the post as it could be understood by much more readers than the Hungarian one, Riccardo answered to me in Hungarian:

Szívesen köszönöm az egész munkádért a szép blogodon. Én is elfogadom, hogy az olvasók többsége könnyebben olvashat angolul, de én a magyar nyelvet mindig jobban szeretem, mint a “világnyelv”...Elkezdettem magyart tanulni 16 éves korában én részrehajló vagyok :-) Minden esetben remélem, hogy a blogod és a honlapom a jövőben is a magyar és olasz néphagyományok tanulmányáért és történetéért közreműködhetnek!

(A warm thanks to you for all your work in your beautiful blog. I also accept that the majority of the readers can more easily read in English, but I have always loved Hungarian much more than “world languages”… I started to learn Hungarian when I was 16, and I’m therefore biased :-) In any case, I hope that your blog and my site could collaborate in the future too for the study and history of Hungarian and Italian folk traditions!)

It is already improbable enough that a sixteen years old Italian boy choose from thousands of alternatives precisely this extraordinarily difficult language of very limited usefulness. But it is completely unbelievable that he has reached – obviously with a great amount of diligence and talent – to this level of perfection. When asked about the reason of his choice, Riccardo answered like this:

A magyar nyelv két legfontosabb szava: szerelem és szabadság. Mikor 16 éves voltam, voltam mint minden 16 éves: romanticizmus, elmezavar, eredetiség, “én-nem-vagyok-mint-a-mások” zűrzavara...s a többi. Továbbá a határtalan nyelvszerelmem volt, mert a nyelvek, mint mondta a híres olasz keleti nyelvész Alessandro Bausani, “a világ legszebb játéka”. Egy firenzei könyvesboltban Fábián Pál magyar nyelvtanát (“Manuale della lingua ungherese”) láttam meg, és a magyar nyelv a hihetetlen szerkezetével elbűvölt engem; de sajnos nem volt pénzem vásárolni, túl drága volt. Két honapot várnom kellett, és a napon, mikor a szükséges pénzem volt, buszsztrájk volt. Jól, hazámból a könyvesboltba gyalog mentem, hogy vásároljam: nyolc kilómeter. Szerelem első látásra. A magyar nyelv nem “nehéz”: különböző, másféle. Az elméjét különböző gondolatmódra, gondolatszerkezetre készteti; és a különbözés szabadság. Megtanultam és beszélek más nyelveket, de a magyar még kedvenc játszótársam, a világ legszebb, legszabadabb és legszórakoztatóbb nyelve. A szerelem és a szabadság nyelve.

(The two most important words of Hungarian language are love and freedom. When I was 16, I was like any 16 years old boy: in a confusion of romanticism, madness, originality, “I’m not like others”… and so on. And I was fallen in love beyond limites with languages, for, as the renowned Italian Orientalist Alessandro Bausani told, languages are “the most beautiful toy of the world.” I found the Manuale della lingua ungherese, the Hungarian grammar by Pál Fábián in a bookshop in Florence, and the Hungarian language has enchanted me with its unbelievable structure. However, it was too expensive and I had no money to buy it. I had to wait two months, and on the day when I finally had the necessary money, there was a bus strike. Well, I went from my home to the bookshop on foot to buy it: eight kilometers. Love at first sight. Hungarian is not “difficult:” it is different. It opens your mind to a different way of thinking and to different mental structures. And difference means freedom. I have learned and have spoken a couple of other languages too, but the Hungarian language has remained my favorite playmate, the most beautiful, most free and most entertaining language of the world. The language of love and freedom.)

Fábián Pál magyar nyelvtana (Budapest 1970, Tankönyvkiadó) az asztalomon, 30 év után... :-)
(The Hungarian grammar of Pál Fábián [Budapest 1970, Schoolbook Publisher] on my table, after 30 years… :-) )

I remember this book well. I have taught with it. On two occasions, and both times without success. My first student was a very sympathetic twenty-and-some years old carabiniere officer from Torino who had been attracted to us by a Hungarian girl, the daughter of a renowned ethnographer and a student at the Italian department. As at the end of the 80’s a Hungarian connection was considered a risk of state security, the young officer – with a promising career after several years of service – was given a choice by his superiors: either the girl or the profession. The boy chose the girl. And then, after some six months of learning Hungarian, the girl chose someone else instead of him, and sent him home to begin a new life as best he can.

The second time we started the book with my friend Bobo who in the 90’s found it an exciting venture to open an Italian café in Budapest. However, this was a short round. Bobo lost track somewhere around the third lesson, during the morphological analysis of the phrase Hol vannak az amerikai turisták kocsijai? (“Where are the cars of the American tourists?” – in Hungarian a somewhat prematurely complicated construction for a beginner.) Well, may God give rest to signor Fábián (he died in this September), but if it is difficult to learn Hungarian, then to learn it with his book is a Herculean labor. So that Riccardo deserves all the possible credits.

Some days after our change of comments, on January 6 when in Italy the Befana brings gifts to the children, Riccardo also favored me with a gift of Epiphany. On the page of his site dedicated to the song Mio nonno partì per l’Ortigara (My grandfather set off to Ortigara) by Chiara Riondino, he translated to Hungarian this song with a personal dedication. On the top of the page he also included a link to a registration of the song with Chiara, but as this can be reached only through a number of steps, I also link the song here. While listening to it, you can read his English translation in parallel with the original Italian text of the song.


Chiara Riondino: Mio nonno partì per l’Ortigara, registration of the performance organized by the Florentine basis community Baracche Verdi on the Piazza dell’Isolotto, May 13, 2007.

This song – writes Riccardo – is also about his grandfather “of 98,” who was similarly robbed of his youth by the First World War, by the years spent in the trenches of the Italian Alps facing the trenches of the Austro-Hungarian army.

In return I also send to Riccardo the song of my grandfather “of 88,” which was sung in the same years and in the same mountains – on the other side of the same front. And since we are here, I also include here the song of my other grandfather serving at the Russian front, a song which was so much liked by our Russian friends. Similarly to the Italian song, its Hungarian counterparts are not about hatred against the enemy, but about life senselessly wasted in a senseless war.


András Széles: Kimegyek a doberdói harctérre (I go out to the battlefield of Doberdo). From the CD of Tamás Cseh - Péter Péterdi: Magyar katonadalok és énekek a XX. századból (Hungarian soldiers’ songs from the 20th century) (2000).

Kimegyek a doberdói harctérre, feltekintek a csillagos nagy égre: Csillagos ég, merre van a magyar hazám, merre sirat engem az édesanyám? Én Istenem, hol fogok én meghalni, hol fog az én piros vérem kifolyni? Olaszország közepébe lesz a sírom, édesanyám, arra kérem, ne sírjon.

I go out to the battlefield of Doberdo I look up on the starlit sky: Starry sky, where is my Hungarian homeland, where does my sweet mother cry for me? My God, where will I die, where will my red blood run off? My tomb will be in the middle of Italy, my sweet mother, I beg you not to cry.

Zoltán Kátai and the Hegedűs Ensemble: Esik az eső, ázik a heveder (The rain is falling, the girth is getting wet). From the same CD. However, the version of my grandfather was much more melancholic, exactly that was beautiful in it.

Esik az eső, ázik a heveder gyönge lábamat szorítja a kengyel bársony lekötő szorítja lovamat nehéz karabély nyomja a vállamat. Megjött a levél fekete pecséttel: megjött a muszka százezer emberrel kétszáz ágyúval áll a harc mezején így hát, jó anyám, elmasírozok én. Jön egy kapitány hófehér paripán fényes kard csillog annak az oldalán kardja megvillan, az ágyú mennydörög szép piros vérem a földre lecsöpög.

The rain is falling, the girth is getting wet my weak feet are pinched by the stirrup a velvet halter pinches my horse a heavy rifle weighs on my shoulder. The letter has come with a black seal: the Russians have come, a hundred thousand, with two hundred cannons they stay at the battlefield so my good mother, I have to march away. A captain is coming on a white horse a brilliant sword shines on his side his sword flares up, the cannons are thundering my beautiful red blood drips down on the earth.

Golden apples

Directly from the garden of the Hesperides – Vespertina, al-Sepharad, in short the Land of the Sunset –, what is more, directly from the Western Islands. The first crop.


The little tree from the garden sees the sea to the right, the mountains to the left and, down in the valley protected by the mountains, the olive tree plantation of Arabic origins of the estate Son Bunyola. In warm summer nights, when laying under the open sky near to the tree, you can hear the bells of the sheep grazing between the olive trees, and the breathing of the sea in the background.




Behind the mountains there live bears. Nobody has seen them in daylight, but at sunset they emerge from behind the mountain to the sky.


As Wang Wei dispatched the first fruit of the little tree from the Western end of the Mediterranean, so at the Eastern end of the Mediterranean a bottle with the majestic fruit of the Golan Plateau also set on the way thanks to Gyuri. The two ambassadors of the South met halfway, on our Christmas table.

The third ambassador of the South is the Iranian spice blend for the rice with almonds that we had received as a gift in the Isfahan bazaar. “Here only foreigners are served, or also Iranians?” a woman asked half-amusingly after the grocer having enthusiastically described to us for more than twenty minutes the subtle nuances between the different sorts of saffrons. “Only Iranians!” shouted merrily the grocer. “Cant’t you see that he’s Iranian, too?” he caressed with love my thorny beard, and he slipped a package of seven spices blend into the bag with the saffron.

The gorgeous wine of the Golan Plateau – according to Gyuri the best wine in Israel – perfectly matched Iranian rice and the fish steamed on ginger according to Zhen’s Chinese recipe.

And lemons were as tasty as no other we have hitherto tasted.

On the occasion of the New Year we hereby want to say thanks to all our friends for their love towards us. May God give all the best to them, and to us the possibility of meeting them several times on this or that navel of this world.


Odysseus Elytis: Ο Ήλιος ο Ηλιάτορας (The Sovereign Sun). Music by Dimitris Lagios, sung by Giorgos Dalaras (1982). First piece: The song of the Sun (omitting from the translation the two first lines of the introductory choir).

Εσείς στεριές και θάλασσες τ' αμπέλια κι οι χρυσές ελιές ακούτε τα χαμπέρια μου μέσα στα μεσημέρια μου «Σ' όλους τους τόπους κι αν γυρνώ μόνον ετούτον αγαπώ!» Από τη μέση του εγκρεμού στη μέση του αλλού πελάγου «Σ' όλους τους τόπους κι αν γυρνώ μόνον ετούτον αγαπώ!» Με τα μικρά χαμίνια του καβάλα στα δελφίνια του με τις κοπέλες τις γυμνές που καίγονται στις αμμουδιές «Σ' όλους τους τόπους κι αν γυρνώ μόνον ετούτον αγαπώ!»

You rocks and seas vines and golden olives hear my word as I follow my course: I turn above all places but I love this only one! At the middle of the universe among all the islands of the sea I turn above all places but I love this only one! With its little rascals riding on dolphins with its nude girls laying on the seashore: I turn above all places but I love this only one!