Thoughts of a third generation son on
Visiting Hungary
"It was nice of you not to forget."
The young woman in the ticket office at the Budapest Opera was making a joke.
She knew I was an American of Hungarian ancestry. And she knew that my Hungarian was rudimentary at best. But still she said it was nice of me not to forget the language, as though by some strange genetic osmosis I was able to speak without having been properly instructed. Or that, like an apostle, I had a miraculous, in this case, the Hungarian tongue.
Clearly, it was not true. Especially when you consider that even her joke had to be translated for my understanding. But even if her clever irony was not precisely true, perhaps I had 'not forgotten' other features of Hungary, even though I had never been there before.
Typical American
My wife and I visited Hungary some years ago; it was fall, past tourist season, a perfect time.
As a child, like most third-generation children, I was nonplused by my ethnic heritage. It did not seem particularly special in any way, not a the typical American kid, whose chief ambition was to take over right field for Cleveland Indian Rocky Colavito, when he was through with it, that is.
But I got older. I went to Ohio State University. Faced with a freshman humanities requirement, I chose music history. Something happened. I became deeply interested, especially in the music of Béla Bartók. I studied the Mikrokosmos at the keyboard. And I realized, through this music, and by reading, a little bit about what it means to be Hungarian.
That served to whet my appetite. I became curious about my grandparents, and their parents, and what sort of people these were. Of my four Hungarian grandparents, I had known three, but I knew them mainly as elders who spoke a supremely unintelligible language, and had somewhat strange ways. But with the benefit of a little age, I realized they were people, individuals, interesting individuals. One grandfather taught himself to play the violin and played in an orchestra. My other grandfather was salesman and public speaker. Both grandmothers similarly talented. Now I was able to see them as the pioneers they really were, coming to America as teens, without capital, without language skill, and making their way.
I started clipping articles about Hungary from newspapers and magazines. My aunt, noticing my interest, rewarded me with a history book of Hungary, in English, which had been presented to my grandfather at a national convention of American-Hungarian insurance salesmen. Upon finishing this volume, I moved on to the next challenge: learning the language. I located a text. I labored through 12 of the 30 lessons in four months. Then we went to Hungary.
When you are there
I had seen many photographs of Hungary, and they had conveyed, within the limitations of the form, the beauty of the land, its monuments and its people. But what they were unable to convey was the sense of drama so evident there, the sense of history made and the history yet to be made. Very difficult to set down on a piece of photographic paper, but very difficult to miss -- when you are actually there. When you are actually in Budapest. At the Zeneakadémia, where Bartók taught and composed. he National Museum, where the royal regalia sits. At the Heroes Square, where the millennium monument provides a history of Hungary in metal and stone. When you are actually in Eztergom, Balaton, Móhacs, Kalocsa, Eger, Tokaj and the hundreds of tiny villages in between. When you are on the great puszta, the Hortobágy Plain.
I had hoped the people would be friendly. But I did not expect a just-made Hungarian acquaintance to hand us a just-purchased book on the Castle Museum after hosting us on a tour of its contents. Nor did I expect to be presented with a magnificent volume of Csontváry works at the end of a visit with a friend of a friend. Nor did I expect our host in the tiny town of Siklós to present us with grapes from his garden and a single rose for my wife. Nor did I expect our hosts in Koszeg to pile in the car ad the way -- all 25 or so miles -- to Szombathely when all we were asking was directions to the road to Szombathely. Nor did I expect our cab driver in Budapest, upon learning we were on our way to Váci Utca to buy a city map, to stop the cab, run in to a bookstore we happened to pass, and buy one for us. And like every Hungarian, he became affectedly indignant when we tried to pay for it. But perhaps there are other ways to repay this hospitality, genuine hospitality, that we met at every turn.
And then finally, I had hoped to meet some relatives in Iszófalva, the village in Borsod Megye from which my grandfather had come. And this we did, after exploring the cemetery where my relatives were buried. My Hungarian relations then showed me the house where he was born, the Református Templom he attended as a small boy.
It would be a mistake to call this trip a vacation, though it was 'vacation' time I used to go. I think it was more a spiritual investment, this time spent walking in the land of Mátyas, Kossuth, Széchenyi, and Bartók, this time spent minds of the Magyar people, and consequently learning about myself, both virtues and shortcomings.
So even if it wasn't a homecoming for me in the literal sense, perhaps it was for my genes. How else can I explain the firm sense of 'place' I felt from the capital to the countryside? I really then must conclude that those tiny pieces of biochemical information in every cell of the body, the genes, like the young woman in the ticket office suggested, really do not forget.
A marketing consultant and an active Internet participant, John A. Sarkett publishes Hungarian Pronunciation Tutor for PC and Mac.
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