I like Hungary, and for no particularly clever reason. I was reminded of this last week when one of my students told me about a undergraduate loans system there, which, in brief, appears to be run along the lines of allowing students to borrow, and then giving them rebates dependent on how good their grades are. The better you do, the less you pay. Brilliant, I think. Of course, here, someone would bleat "But that's elitist..." and the very idea would be shelved with glares and tuts of Unfairness. But I think it would work very well and surely it's no different from the idea of, er, putting in more effort for a better salary? However, I mustn't get started on plentiful examples of English dumbness at the moment - this morning, as I mop my rotten floor, I am thinking about Hungary.
I think I have always been intrigued by Hungary and its Hungarians since I read Sir Nicolas' warning to his wife regarding her idea for dramatic party capers in super, super Saki's A Touch Of Realism:
'Sir Nicholas was not so enthusiastic. "Are you quite sure, my dear, that you're wise in doing this thing?" he said to his wife when they were alone together. "It might do very well at the Mathesons, where they had rather a staid, elderly house-party, but here it will be a different matter. .. there is Cyril Skatterly; he has madness on one side of his family and a Hungarian grandmother on the other...you don't know what Skatterly's Hungarian imagination mightn't read into the part; it would be small satisfaction to say to him afterwards: 'You've behaved as no Bull of Bashan would have behaved."
"Oh, you're an alarmist," said Lady Blonze; I particularly want to have this idea carried out. It will be sure to be talked about a lot."
"That is quite possible," said Sir Nicholas.'
I never supposed Saki meant it as an insult, but rather an implication that to be a mixture of Madness and Magyar was to be Very Sharp Indeed. Add to this the a rather venerable English adage, which tells of how Hungarians are the only people who go into a revolving door behind you, and come out of it in front and the fact that this is often quoted in low-voiced tones of grudging respect, and you can't help a small sense of awe. Throw in the indisputable truth that Hungarian salami is the best in the world, and the fact that they can claim the sheer brilliance of Franz Liszt, and there you have it.
I have a new geographical crush. Hungary is smashing.
Sajnos nem beszélek magyarul
I also like the fact that Hungary sits surrounded by Indo-European language-speaking neighbours and yet manages to keep for itself itself a beautifully original tongue which (they tell me, my Hungarian friends, with some satisfaction) is far too hard for any non-Hungarian to learn.
It certainly does seem to be a dastardly language. It belongs to the Ugric group (though some say Turkic and I am not schooled enough to argue) and the reason why we generally say "oooh, it's just like Finnish" is because if you go back up the tree, you find Finnish under the Baltic-Finnic language grouping, and both Ugric and Baltic-Finnic come under the further heading of the Uralic languages... Fascinating but one could go on for hours, which I don't have.
Apparently though, and I hope kind-hearted Magyars will forgive me if I'm wrong, (since I am - not very academically - only repeating what I think I have understood), Hungarian departs in several ways from what us simple English speakers would consider the linguistic norm. For example, you cannot express grammatical gender through articles or determiners. There are no male or female possessive adjectives. You do not have a verb to have. There are no prepositions as we know them and only one past tense. One word can grow according to grammatical placing, as preposition, possibility, negativity and so on are all attached to the requisite word. And so on and so on. Surely this is convolutedly confusing?
It certainly all suggests if a Hungarian can deal with all of this on a daily communicative basis, then beating us out of revolving doors must be a doddle.
Pah! Pah! Pah!
It's quite rubbish of me, but I've only been there once, in 1991, when going into Eastern Europe still felt quite le Carre-ish and daring. It was fabulous and Christmas and people kept giving us painted eggs. A tall man dressed up as a rabbit tried to sell us tickets to some kind of strip bar and we were introduced to Unicum. But what stays with me most clearly is the elderly lady we were lodging with me. She was keen to chat, but with no language in common it was all done through the medium of intense, wild-eyed charade. The first thing she told us was Never, Ever to touch a Hungarian on the back because we might accidentally communicate a plan to murder him. At least, I think this is what she said and I have never tested it.
But then our landlady also treated us to a very vivid performance of the 1956 uprising and her interpretation of Hungary's national mood at the end of it. She placed two cushions on different chairs: one was, we came to understand, through gesture and quickly sketched flags, an WWII occupying Nazi soldier. The other was an invading Soviet. The Nazi soldier she scowled at and shouted at and and shook her fist at, but eventually, this cushion was offered a cup of tea. The
Soviet cushion however, fared nowhere near as well. Our landlady eyed us gravely, approached the cushion and launched into a screaming "Pah! Pah! Pah!" attack with a book, her feet and the butter knife. Her intention was perfectly clear and soon the cushion, defenceless in a way that the Soviets in Hungary had never been, lay in pummelled defeat, flat on the floor. The Iron Curtain was down by this point, and I doubt any loitering Russian would have felt unduly threatened, but the depth of passion of a seemingly quiet Little-Old-Lady was striking.There is no doubt a lot more that can be said about Hungary and I wish someone would tell me. I imagine it full of thrilling, enthralling stories, set against the beautiful backdrop of the Carpathian Basin to a soundtrack of Liszt and clever people sailing to effortless success and victory through revolving doors. I'm sure it has its fair share of things nasty and corrupt, things that don't work and things that appall, like everywhere. But today I don't want to know about them.
Today is my I Love Hungary day.
Happy 40th Birthday, KG! I thought you'd enjoy this:
