ÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½

The started over the weekend, and Hungarian author Peter Esterhazy gave the . (Warning—link is to a pdf document.)

Like Esterhazy’s books, the speech is playful and intelligent, and engaged with ideas of History. Here’s a sample of an interesting bit from the end:

Europe is the land of variety ÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½“ of various people, various languages, various traditions. TodayÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½™s individual sees a lot of the world, and when he does, he sees that his domestic customs, habits, ideals and myths are not necessarily superior to the others. As Henry James said, a person turns into a citizen of the world when all manner of customs appear equally shallow in his eyes. On the other hand, a tourist ÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½“ and most of us are tourists ÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½“ is not suited for getting to know things; a tourist is a man wedded to superficiality; a tourist sees only clichés: the Italians are loud and eat cats, the French are arrogant and eat snails, the Germans are fat and eat cabbage, and the HungariansÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½¦ but letÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½™s not go into that, plus they eat gulyás. As for the Swiss, they donÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½™t even exist.

The one thing that definitely exists is fiction. Only the implausible is real. A novel, words. A world made up of words says more about ourselves and others than all the accurate information gathered by a conscientious tourist. The real accuracy is the novelÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½™s accuracy; it is knowledge that can be put to good use, the knowledge of the Dutch horsts and the knowledge of the Swiss plains. Writing a Hungarian novel about these things this could be the so-called Lucerne Plan, to look at the world with this lack of constraint, this freedom, and with this constraint and boundary. ÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½“ with this beautiful European complexity.