Book of Memories

It has been an unusual career for a man writing in a difficult language spoken by barely more than 10 million people in a small country with a complicated and largely depressing history that remains largely unknown to American readers. As this volume also testifies, he has had an unusual career and, arguably, a charmed life, the turns of which have been just as unpredictable as the unraveling of Communist systems in Eastern Europe that greatly influenced his life and literary prospects.

In Communist Hungary he was a dissident intellectual, expelled from (and readmitted to) the university, fired from jobs, his writings banned, barred from foreign travel for years, and briefly jailed. But as the Kadar regime became more permissive he was allowed to publish his first book in Hungary and go abroad for extended periods. He was also allowed to publish abroad and receive royalties to live on. The authorities would not have minded if he had stayed abroad and made clear that he was free to emigrate. But he wanted to be a Hungarian writer in Hungary, notwithstanding the dim prospects of becoming one, or at any rate a published one. He declined opportunities for departing, notably after the 1956 Revolution, when many of his friends (including this writer) left. He explains:

He admitted: “I was not cut out for steady jobs in the East or West. . . . I was thrilled to be released from it all. . . . I was a pipe-smoking rocking-chair adventurer.” Although a dissident he was not an activist: “Too lazy and inept to handle the organization that went with oppositional activities, I did not get much involved, especially since political activism started early in the morning.”

Because of the difficulties of a literary career in Hungary, he was for long periods of time a social worker and, later, urban sociologist. Both of these occupations provided stimulation and raw material for two of his books, The Case Worker and The City Builder. The former, his first and arguably best book, was published in Hungary in 1969 and in the United States in 1974 and earned a well-deserved rave on the front page of the New York Times Book Review. It was a highly original, at once poetic and realistic rendering of his experiences of Hungarian social pathologies, as well as a moving meditation on human bonds, frailties, deprivations, and the relationship between the social and the personal realm. Other novels and numerous collections of shorter writings followed.

A Guest In My Own Country incorporates two autobiographical volumes published in Hungary in 2002 and 2003. His Kerti Mulatsag (Feast in the Garden, 1989), as well as numerous volumes of shorter writings, are also replete with autobiographical information and reflection. Konrád has had a consuming and enduring interest in his own past but managed to avoid the self-indulgent thrust of the self-aggrandizing memoirs published in alarming quantities in America. A substantial part of this volume consists of nostalgic evocations of an idyllic pre-Nazi childhood in a small provincial city (where his father owned a hardware store) and affectionate portraits of his parents, sister, and two very close cousins, as well as a large number of nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles, and grandparents.

The title captures Konrád’s relationship to Hungary and things Hungarian. He wanted to stay in Hungary to become a Hungarian writer and he succeeded, probably beyond his wildest expectations. But he is also Jewish and his Jewish consciousness, or sense of identity, has been a counterweight to the Hungarian one. It seems that over the years the pressures of this Jewish identity have increased, finding expression in this volume and others. The process of aging–its growing preoccupation with the past, including a search for roots and closure of unresolved problems of identity–is likely to be the major factor. A Jewish Hungarian of his age cannot contemplate his life without recalling the Jewish persecution and the narrow escape from being killed.

The second likely reason for this concern is the rise, or more open expression, of anti-Semitism in post-Communist Hungary. Konrád apparently felt compelled to confront it by publicly emphasizing his Jewish identity.

While many have written about experiences of Nazism, and a few about both the experience of Nazism and life under Communist repression, Konrád’s recollections and reflections have a distinctive quality. A unique blend of detachment and attachment, fatalism and purposefulness, as well as seriousness and playfulness permeate these pages. Konrád writes in a matter-of-fact style, yet eloquently, without apparent moral indignation about the politically induced childhood traumas and the less-than-life-threatening injustices and deprivations under communism.

He also radiates an unusual, authentic capacity for empathy and curiosity that must have served him well as a social worker. Thus, he notes that inhabitants of some poor neighborhoods in Budapest “developed a kind of raw, barroom variety of existentialism . . . subject to the same insoluble questions and same loneliness and consternation affecting those of us who are relatively well educated.”

Unlike many socially conscious, politically engaged intellectuals, he is immune to self-righteousness and his sense of identity does not seem to require the display of championing the underdog. Social critics in Communist police states, even in the less repressive ones, did not hold tenured professorships and could not count on being treated as campus celebrities and media stars. Virtue was truly its own reward.

Konrád also manages to be non-judgmental without becoming a moral relativist. This unusual accomplishment is likely to be rooted in his belief that “moral philosophy must be built on human frailty, and our acceptance of it.” Something of a bohemian- Buddhist, he writes:

He also cheerfully confesses to “remember[ing] things that had not happened to me”–an admission I can second, having been linked on these pages to some of the incidents and events described. I have known Konrád since age 15, when we sat next to each other in the Gymnasium (academic high school) in Budapest. I believe that I possess and have read every book he has written both in Hungarian and English.

I must note that much of this translation leaves a lot to be desired, especially when compared with the others I am familiar with–let alone to Konrád’s writing in his native language. These defects are all the more puzzling since the book was supposed to benefit from the attention of an editor listed alongside the translator.

I was moved to pick up the original in my possession and compare the two texts, and grew dismayed at the liberties and missteps taken by the translator. The text is liberally sprinkled with major and minor mistranslations, factual errors, poor grammar, fruitless efforts to find English equivalents of Hungarian words or expressions. “Took a powder” is offered as a substitute for a Hungarian expression conveying rapid departure; “a bell jar of silence”–used more than once–is another failed attempt to capture the Hungarian locution. “Look around” in Hungarian becomes “suss out”–whatever that means; “determined” (elszant) morphs into “obsessed.” Konrád, an excellent, original stylist, is poorly served by the translator; his gifts and understated wisdom come across nonetheless.

Paul Hollander is professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and the author, most recently, of The End of Commitment: Intellectuals, Revolutionaries and Political Morality.