Channels

Photo: Reuters
Imre Kertész
Photo: Reuters

'Anti-Semites have the say in Budapest'

Interview with Nobel Prize-winning author Imre Kertész unleashes controversy over xenophobia in Hungary

It all started with a little joke. On the occasion of Imre Kertész's 80th birthday last Monday, the German newspaper Die Welt published an interview with the Nobel Prize-winning author ("Fateless", "Kaddish for an Unborn Child"). When the journalist mentioned how lucky the city of Berlin was that the writer of Hungarian origin had decided to pick Germany's capital as his adopted home, Kertész replied that he considered himself a Berliner.

 

"I think I remember having read somewhere that you are originally from Budapest", the journalist interjected.

 

"You are reading too much, my dear", Kertész answered. "Let me tell you: I am a metropolitan person, I am and always have been. A metropolitan person does not belong to Budapest. The city is completely balkanized. A metropolitan person belongs to Berlin!"

 

He went on complaining that the situation in the Hungarian capital had "continuously worsened" over the past decade. "Far-right extremists and anti-Semites have the say. The old vices of the Hungarians, their dishonesty and their penchant for repression still thrive, now as before. Hungary in war, Hungary and fascism, Hungary and socialism: nothing is processed; everything is made up with pretty colors."

 

Kertész said he was "a product of European culture". "Racist, national affiliations do not apply to me," he said.

 

It didn't take long before Kertész's words made their way into the blogosphere and from there into Hungarian mainstream media. The daily "Magyar Hirlap", which is closely associated with the right-wing conservative Federation of Young Democrats (Fidesz), wrote in a commentary that Kertész was "rootless" - a well known code used to devalue Jewish intellectuals. The Secretary of the Hungarian Writers' Association, Laszlo L. Simon, accused Kertész in the same paper of "constantly disparaging Hungary."

 

Kertész himself declared his remarks were being wrongly translated. In a follow-up interview in Die Welt conducted the next day, he said his statements were shortened, making people believe he considered all Hungarians to be liars. Most of his countrymen, he added though, were lacking the ability of self criticism.

 

"Hungarians don't know irony - except the scholars", he said. "The Hungarian bourgeoisie has eroded. Those who have remained are humorless preservers of the national heritage who want to ban any criticism as whistle-blowing." Asked whether he was going to contain himself in the future, Kertész said:

  

"I am now 80 years old. I have my style, I will retain it. And I hope that people of good will continue to understand me. But I must also live with the fact that there are still influential Hungarians who want to misunderstand and distort."

 

As a teenager, Kertész survived the extermination camp at Auschwitz. In his main work "Fateless" he processed this experience. In 2002, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature. Even then, the right wing in Hungary dismissed his success.

 


פרסום ראשון: 11.17.09, 16:06
 new comment
Warning:
This will delete your current comment