424
PARTISAN REVIEW
What Cannot Be Understood?
I would modestly maintain that nothing can be understood, neither the
object described nor the language used to describe it nor the person doing the
describing (0
Wittgenstein, why hast thou forsaken me?
as the poet once said.)
The language a Hungarian or perhaps any Central European uses is
alien and strange even after translation. Out ofjoint. Its reference system is
different: it doesn't use words in a "leftist" or "liberal" or "sixties" kind of
way; it's more lyrical, I'd say, masterly or masterless, but in any case highly
personal - verbal bouquets for facts, metaphors for theories. And to make
matters worse, we speak a language so personal that for the last forty years
we haven't known who the person is. In other words - woe is us! - the
wicked Bolsheviks are not the only fools; our own dear people are no better,
myself included (N. B. You too, distant Reader. Post-Yalta Europe has made
fools of us all. From Lisbon to Stockholm, from Bucharest to London - the
whole continent is one big idiot factory.)
All right, we use words differently, but there's still the issue of incom–
prehensibility.
After all, why are the worthy Hungarians, who gave the world a soc–
cer champion or two and Bartok and were the first to dismantle the jerrybuilt
construct known as real socialism and kindle the torch of hope throughout
Europe, why instead of basking confidently, optimistically in its flames, do
they shrug their shoulders like so many Knights of Resignation? Why is
Pozsgay, whom everyone there (here) considers the Hungarian Gorbachev,
more often than not merely tolerated here (there)? Why is Foreign Minister
Gyula Horn - the Hero of the Iron Curtain, the man who toppled East
Germany singlehandedly by letting their people go (rumor has it he was of–
fered Prussia but modestly declined), a man whose portrait dangles between
the breasts of every German mother - why should Gyula Horn be a cate–
gory unto himselfjust because on a radio program calJed "Politicians in Slip–
pers" he announced he enjoyed reading the author of these lines and is
therefore
a truly important person?
In other words, why the paralysis, the pusillanimity, the lack of style;
Why can't they see that they've started something they haven't finished?
That the sheep in wolfs clothing or vice versa, the one they've thrown out
of the door, will climb back in through the window? Why must that analogy
be followed by the statement that both door and window have ceased to
exist? What does exist?
