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Kerfuffle over Nobel laureate’s words |
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Written by Robert Hodgson
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Wednesday, 18 November 2009 |
The Hungarian Nobel prize-winning author Imre Kertész found himself under fire last week due to what he said was a deliberate “falsification” of an interview he gave with the German daily Die Welt over the weekend.
What wasn’t said
He had been quoted in the Hungarian media as saying that the extreme right and anti-Semites ruled in Hungarian politics. Kertész pointed out in a second interview with Die Welt that his comment had been that “the far right and anti-Semites dominate public discourse” (“Rechtsextreme und Antisemiten haben das Sagen”) in Hungary, but had been translated in a way that made him seem far more critical of Hungarian society than he had intended. The state news agency MTI translated the phrase to say that such extremists “reign” in Hungary.
Many Hungarian media outlets picked up the story, causing a storm of angry reaction against Kertész. The left wing newspaper Népszabadság apologised for running the disputed translation in its online and print editions. MTI has since rectified its error.
‘Balkanisation’
The celebrated author was not wholly uncritical of Hungary, however. He spoke of the “Balkanisation” of Budapest, saying: “I am a metropolitan person, I am and always have been. A metropolitan person does not belong in Budapest. The city is completely Balkanised. A metropolitan person belongs in Berlin.”
Kertész, who lives with his wife in the German capital, said that, “naturally,” he considered Hungary to be his homeland. “I was born there, I am a Hungarian citizen, and I write in Hungarian – but I am not a nationalist,” he said in a telephone interview with Hungarian Duna TV last Monday. The liberal Alliance of Free Democrats politician Péter Gusztos, speaking in parliament last Tuesday, criticised the right-wing newspaper Magyar Nemzet for running a headline speaking of Kertész’s “vilification” of the nation.
Prime Minister Gordon Bajnai sent a letter of congratulation to Kertész on his 80th birthday on 9 November. The survivor of Aushwitz concentration camp was given the Nobel Prize in 2002 for Fateless, a book based on his experience of the Holocaust. In October Kertész was elected to the Széchenyi Academy of Literature and Art.
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