I’ve been away on a peaceful, though undeniably soggy trip to rain- and windswept Vermont this week, hence the dearth of articles in HFP over the past few days. In the meantime, my other publication – the Hungarian language Kanadai Magyar Hírlap – rolled on quite happily even in my absence, and I wanted to share an essay written by prominent Hungarian Canadian author Ákos Kertész, which appeared in KMH early this morning. Entitled “The Nation Lives in its Language: Nightfall Over the Hungarian Canadian Diaspora,” the award-winning 82 year old author who now lives in Montreal raised some key points about ethnicity, nationality and identity that are likely of interest to readers of the Hungarian Free Press.
The overarching context of Mr. Kertész’s essay focuses on the staggering energy displayed by Hungary’s top diplomats in Canada, in preserving and augmenting the “hypnotic state” that much of the organized Hungarian Canadian diaspora seems to be in, when it comes to loyalty to the illiberal, authoritarian Orbán government in Budapest. Mr. Kertész argues that all efforts to spend “billions of forints on the pro-Orbán diaspora, which has fallen into a hypnotic trance and which reveres the illiberal dictatorship and is drunken by the distant scents of Felcsút [Viktor Orbán’s home town]” are in vain.
“They are pouring water into an empty bucket,” adds Mr. Kertész, noting that while the government in Budapest is trying to construct and strengthen party political loyalty within the diaspora, and while it tries to rally elderly Hungarian Canadians into a nationalist frenzy, it fails to realize that the diaspora is dying out, because of the lack of emphasis placed on, and the dearth of resources dedicated to language maintenance among young Hungarian Canadians.
Mr. Kertész points out that all of this forms part of a skewed thinking pattern, which sees Hungarian identity first and foremost as an ethnicity, rather than as a language. Yet Attila József, perhaps Hungary’s most celebrated twentieth century author, had this to say about his own ethnic background:
“My mother was of Cuman origin, my father was half Szekler and half Romanian….or perhaps fully that. Turkish, Tatar, Slovak and Romanian all swirl around my heart.”
Language of the forest / Nicholas Roerich (1922).
According to Mr. Kertész, “the Hungarian nation is the community of all those who still speak Hungarian…and their numbers are dwindling.” But while the self-proclaimed leadership of the organized Hungarian Canadian diaspora focuses mostly on ridding the community of those who they perceive as being unpatriotic (ie: anyone who expresses criticism of the Orbán government in Budapest), this community has effectively “condemned itself to death.”
“Those who are only able to use Hungarian to exclude others, those who are only on the look out for traitors and non-Hungarians–so that they can hate them–are not themselves Hungarian,” writes Mr. Kertész, adding that for them, hatred of the other stands above all else.
As I was reading the piece, I remembered a discussion that I overheard in Budapest a couple of years ago. I had just landed in the city and headed out from my hotel to have dinner at one of the few restaurants nearby. The restaurant happened to build its image on Transylvanian/Szekler patriotism and the owner was himself a Transylvanian Hungarian who had immigrated to Hungary in the nineties. Maps of greater Hungary adorned the walls, along with pottery and embroideries boasting folk patterns, alongside carved, wooden Szekler gates. All of this seemed distinctly out if place in a working class neighbourhood of Pest near the airport, dotted by grey, Soviet era high-rise apartment blocks.
It was a slow weekday night, and the restaurant’s owner was chatting at a table with two elderly Hungarian Canadians. They spoke with some satisfaction about the fact that while their grandchildren didn’t speak Hungarian, their local Hungarian Saturday school had successfully taught them how to build a traditional Hungarian yurt and that they can spell their name in Hungarian/Szekler Runic (rovásírás). Those priorities tend to be common among right wing and far-right wing Hungarians, where the fascination with early Hungarian cultures is often the most acute. Children in the Hungarian Canadian community sometimes get quite a skewed image of what Hungary is like today from older generations of Hungarians who emigrated decades ago, have only infrequently visited ‘back home,’ and preserve an idealistic or at least nostalgic vision of their homeland. That nostalgic image doesn’t include much from the modern, twenty-first century and urban world.
That having been said, it’s clear that the organized diaspora community is ageing and dwindling. Some of this forms part of a natural progression of assimilation, but in other cases, community leaders have jettisoned the idea of the Hungarian nation as being a “big tent,” with space for people of all political persuasions, views and backgrounds.
