My hearing the Confiteor as a description of a horse-race was a new advance for me. Before then, I could expect to see genuine, unbidden horse-racing images only as a result of hearing certain passages of music or of reading the last page of one or another piece of fiction. I did not become wholly unaware of the meanings of the words: the phrase Beatae Mariae semper Virgini, for example, always brought to my mind a set of racing silks in the Virgin’s colours of blue and white. However, I tried to hear the Latin as I heard it formerly in St Kilian’s, Bendigo: as sounds full of a meaning that I myself was free to discover.
The Confiteor, being a comparatively brief prayer, gave rise mostly to racing imagery appropriate for the finishes of sprint races. The longest of the prayers recited aloud during the old Latin mass was the Nicene Creed. This was recited by the priest alone; as an altar boy I was not required to learn a word of it. Impelled, however, by my love of long-distance races for staying horses, I determined to learn the Latin of the Creed and, in time, I did so.
These paragraphs hereabouts report events and processes that occupied years of my childhood and adolescence. While the Confiteor was still the only sequence of foreign sounds that gave rise to racing imagery, it became closely associated with a particular race, the winner of that race, and the trainer of that winner.
The racing game, as it was often called in the 1950s, was vastly different from the racing industry, as it is called today. Fifty years ago, the successful and admired trainers were those who said least to journalists and even avoided being photographed. They defied the public to learn about the prospects of their horses and claimed to know nothing of the plunges that were launched on them by well-informed stable commissioners. My father pointed out to me at race meetings the trainers he most admired and told me what he knew of their ways. The man I came to admire most died long ago, never suspecting that his name would one day appear in a literary magazine or, more likely, never suspecting that such magazines existed. Of the many achievements of A.R. (Alf) Sands, the one that became most firmly lodged in my mythology was his trying for nearly two years to bring to peak fitness a horse with such frail legs that a moderately fast track-gallop could send it lame. Alf Sands finally prepared the horse for a sprint race at Moonee Valley. Since the horse had not raced for so long, stable followers secured lucrative odds. The horse led clearly all through the race, carrying the stable colours of gold with red stars. The name of the horse was Lone Saint.
The Nicene Creed is not only longer but also much richer in content than the repetitious Confiteor. While chanting the creed, I was sometimes pleased to have the meaning of one or another bold Latin declaration as the mental background for my images of horse-racing. In time, two Latin passages became, as it were, part of this background.
Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum… This is the second-last utterance of the creed, and the English equivalent in my missal was ‘And I look for the resurrection of the dead’. After I had begun to study Latin at secondary school, I came to feel that the English in my missal ignored the import of what seemed to me the most striking detail of the Latin: the prefix ex- in the word exspecto. Whenever I chanted the sentence, I got from the single syllable of that prefix a sense of the speaker as not merely looking for but looking out for and even straining to see and finally, leaving behind the literal meaning, hoping to see. Then, on whatever forgotten day in the 1950s this last sense lodged in my mind, there must have appeared soon afterwards the sequence of visual imagery that has been ever since bound up with it. A man stands at the rear of a crowded grandstand overlooking a racecourse. The man’s head is turned towards a field of racehorses just then entering the straight of the racecourse. The head of every other person in the crowd is likewise turned, but the head of the man is the central detail in my vision – although I am able almost simultaneously to see in my mind the field of racehorses that he sees with his eyes and even the one horse that he looks out for and strains and hopes to see. The face of the man is often the face of Alf Sands, although the character and the life-story of the man belong not to Alf Sands, whom I know only by sight, but to an elemental figure from my mythology, a figure whose fate is inseparable from the successes and failures of racehorses.
In order to give to this piece of writing a coherent shape, I have simplified some matters. On the many occasions when I have chanted the Nicene Creed, I have been able to experience much more than is reported in the previous paragraph. Mental events, as any self-aware person knows, are hardly affected by what are called time and space in this, the visible world. While I chanted the second-last utterance of the Nicene Creed, dwelling on the sound of the word exspecto and seeing in my mind the face of the man who was hoping to see his horse prominently placed and even being aware of the axial lines of the man’s character, the field of horses in the race in my mind was still approaching the turn into the straight. After the word mortuorum in the printed version of the creed in my missal was a full point. After the word mortuorum in my chant, I paused for less than a second. During that interval of time, I was able to comprehend an event that might have taken twenty and more seconds if it had happened in the world from which my mental images were derived. In short, by the time when I began to chant the first syllable of the last utterance of the creed, the field of horses in my mind had passed along the straight of the racecourse in my mind and had arrived at the winning-post.
My chanting of each section of the creed was meant to have the sound appropriate to the equivalent section of the imagined race. But the sense that I got from the words of the last two utterances was such that I was never required to imitate the agitated, almost-falsetto voice of the race-commentator describing the progress of the field along the straight and towards the winning-post. I heard that sound in my mind during the pause of less than a second mentioned above, just as I saw in my mind during that pause images arising from the progress of the field towards the post, but when I chanted the first syllable of the last utterance, my voice had become noticeably more quiet. Out of a turbulence of possibilities had come something not to be doubted; the race had been decided.
Et vitam venturi saeculi. Amen. This is the last utterance of the Nicene Creed. (I consider the Amen as inseparable from the phrase preceding it.) The English version in my missal was ‘And the life of the world to come. Amen’. As I write this today, I am annoyed by the shoddy punctuation in my missal. What I have called the last utterance has been punctuated as though it was a sentence. It is, of course, a noun phrase and the object of the verb exspecto. The chanter of the creed, according to my translation, hopes to see not only the resurrection of the dead but the life of the world to come.
The chief detail from the racing imagery produced in my mind by the last words of the creed was a certain movement performed by the rider of the winning horse. (I remind the reader that even when I chanted the creed as a child, my aim was far larger and more complex than merely to share in the success of the winner. If anyone knew the odds against the so-called dream-ending, I, the son of a reckless gambler on horses, knew them and suffered often as a result of their relentless operation. Even in my dreams I was realistic; the actual outcome was only seldom the desired.) Whether or not the winner was the hoped-for horse, its rider performed often a movement that was for me eloquent and yet provoking. A racing commentator might have described the movement simply thus: ‘And So-and-so (rider of the winner) puts away the whip on So-and-so (winning horse).’ In fact, I never heard any racing commentator use such words to describe the movement that I had in mind. The finish in my mind was usually what was called a hectic finish or a blanket finish or a desperate finish, and the commentator was so much occupied with merely naming the many horses vying for first place and, at the decisive moment, the seeming winner in his estimation that he could never have found the time to report such a detail as a movement performed by a jockey, even the jockey on the winning horse. In any case, the movement was not at all striking or worthy of reporting to persons listening to radio br
oadcasts. Only I, chanting the Nicene Creed in Latin and trying to call to mind a finish contested by numerous deserving contenders (and one especially hoped for) – only I was free to dwell on that movement; to see it re-enacted over and over, if I so chose, in the silence after the creed had ended and the field of horses had passed the winning-post. The putting-away of the whip always took place, in racing parlance, a stride before the post. Until the moment when he put the whip away, the rider had been using it repeatedly and with much force and had seemed to me, the spectator, to be aware of little else apart from the rhythmical straining of his body and that of the horse beneath him. Never having questioned any jockey about such matters, I supposed that the rider in my mind was only partly aware of his position in the field; that he knew he was gaining on the leaders but that he was no more sure than I of the final outcome. And yet, in the sort of race that had most meaning for me, all the straining and flailing of the rider of the eventual winner came to a graceful end in the shadows of the post, as a racing commentator might have described the place. The last arc of the rider’s arm was shorter by far than the previous ten or twenty. Instead of flattening itself against the rump of the horse, the whip leaped nimbly back to its usual resting-place near the horse’s shoulder while the hand holding it went back to the reins.
Et vitam venturi saeculi. Amen. In the most satisfying of all races, the rider put his whip to rest a moment before his horse reached the post a narrow winner in a blanket finish. Even before I had dropped my voice, the rider of the eventual winner had known that he had done enough: that the momentum of his horse would carry it through. Afterwards I was both teased and gratified for as long as I considered certain questions that I was never able to answer. How could the rider have known that the moment had arrived when he might safely put away the whip? How could he have seen from among the press of the onrushing horses, and while he crouched with his face against the mane of his horse and plied the whip with all the strength of his upper body, that although he had still not reached the finish-line, the race had been decided? What sign had the rider glimpsed from the side of his eye? What signal had he felt through the straining of the horse beneath him? What sound, even, might he have heard from the watching crowd?
During the twenty years when I was writing most of my published fiction, English was my only language. Nor did I ever feel that my native language was less than adequate for my purposes. Nor will I ever so feel. And yet, for much of my life I have felt that I lacked something by not being fluent in a second language. In 1951, when the first so-called New Australians arrived at my primary school, I persuaded a Maltese boy to teach me to speak his native language. Before he grew tired of it, he had taught me a good deal. I studied Latin and French successfully throughout secondary school. When I began at university in my late twenties, I was obliged to enrol in at least one unit of a foreign language. I chose Arabic and eventually completed a major in it. I was sorry to find that the examinations were only in writing. I never learned to converse in Arabic, although I was able to read and write it rather well. I recall little of the language today, however. Finally, when I was preparing to leave full-time employment in my mid-fifties, I bought two dictionaries and a teach-yourself book with an accompanying cassette and prepared to learn the Hungarian language.
I had seen photographs of Hungarian peasants in a National Geographic magazine when I was barely able to read. The photographs were illustrations for an article about Romania, and many years were to pass before I understood the details of the tragic separation of the millions of Hungarians in Transylvania from their compatriots after the First World War. I stared at pictures of peoples from many parts of the world in the second-hand National Geographic magazines that my father brought home from somewhere in the 1940s, but for reasons that I have never been able to explain, I was drawn to the Hungarians.
I cannot claim that I was a steadfast admirer during my childhood of Hungarian culture, but I remember instances when I thought of Hungary as having a claim on me. When I first saw pictures of the Great Plain of Hungary; when I first learned that the Hungarians had come from somewhere in Asia; when I learned of the affinity of Hungarians and the horse; and, above all, when I learned that the Hungarian language is more or less alone in the world, bearing little resemblance to any other language – at such times I heard in my mind something like the far-away or Sunday-afternoon sounds of my childhood; I heard myself speaking solemnly in Hungarian or even singing Hungarian songs, even though I knew not one word of the Magyar language.
I have never been one of those who speak condescendingly of the emotional turmoil of their adolescence. I am still sometimes amazed at how I went on leading a normal-seeming life and passing examinations when my prevailing mood was for long periods one of utter confusion. The year 1956 was by far the most turbulent of my youth, and yet I turned away during the last months of that year from my private crises and pored over newspaper reports and photographic images of the Hungarian Revolution. No doubt, many other Australians shared my sympathy for the Hungarians at that time, but it seemed relevant to my own concerns that numbers of persons of my own age had lost their lives in the fighting. And whether I saw a photograph of her or whether I imagined her, a certain dark-haired young woman has appeared often in my mind ever since that time. I often asked myself what this sad-faced girl-ghost might have required of me. It would have been a hopeless task for me to try to learn even her name, let alone any of her history. There was only one thing that I might try to do for her, and that was to learn her language.
In 1977, I read for the first time a book titled People of the Puszta. It was an English translation of Puszták Népe, by Gyula Illyés, which was first published in Hungary in 1936. The book had such an effect on me that I later wrote a book of my own in order to relieve my feelings. Any reader interested in this matter is referred to Inland, 1988.
I have read several times during my life that this or that person was so impressed by this or that translation of this or that work of literature that the person afterwards learned the original language in order to read the original text. I have always been suspicious of this sort of claim, but the reader of this piece of writing need not doubt the truth of the following sentence. I was so impressed by the English version of Puszták Népe that I afterwards learned the language of the original and, as of now, have read a goodly part of it.
Even though I learned Hungarian for the first three years on my own, I was trying to learn it as a spoken language and not just a language of texts. I listened to my cassette and I learned by heart and recited often aloud all the passages of Hungarian dialogue in my textbook. I even listened to Hungarian radio programmes, although the speakers were too fast for my comprehension. For three years I kept the Hungarian language confined within the four walls of my study, but then the language could bear its solitude no longer and broke free of me. On a memorable day in May, 1998, I found myself approaching the only Hungarian person I knew. He was a retired truck-driver from my own suburb. I had never so much as nodded to him previously, but on the memorable day I addressed him in my halting Hungarian. He embraced me as though I was a long-lost compatriot.
Joseph Kulcsar had had a humble occupation, but he was an outstanding figure in the Australian Hungarian community. Here, I mention only his extensive knowledge of Hungarian literature and history and his talents as an actor and a reciter of verse, although he was famous and respected for much else. But the day when I approached Joe in the street was a fateful day in more ways than one. Earlier that day, Joe had been diagnosed as having cancer. He lived for two years more. He was too ill and too tired during those years to teach me as much of his language as he would have liked, but I learned from him how the best of Hungarians love their country and its culture. I hope I may have learned from him also how to die bravely.
This is not meant to be a piece of scholarly writing; nor is it meant to be about the Hungarian language itself. I understand that scholars have for long debated the preci
se origins of the language – and of the Hungarian people themselves. It can be safely said that the language is a very old language. The main body of the Hungarian people brought the language through the Carpathians and into Central Europe in the ninth century of the modern era, but language and people had travelled before then an immense distance during many centuries from their place of origin somewhere in Asia. I like sometimes to look at my atlas and to read aloud the name of the city of Alma Ata in Kazakhstan. What I hear are two Hungarian words meaning ‘Father of Apples’. Likewise the ‘Bator’ in the name of the capital city of Mongolia is the Hungarian word for ‘brave’. Many Hungarian words and expressions set me wondering about the mysterious centuries before the people and their language arrived in Europe. I mention here only a Hungarian name for the Milky Way: hadak útja, the soldiers’ road.
News of the Australian writer who taught himself Hungarian has by now reached members of the Hungarian community in Melbourne. I am touched by the joy of my new Hungarian friends that someone should brave the reputed difficulties of their language, which is so rarely studied outside their homeland. (In my experience, Hungarian is no more difficult than any other language known to me.) My friends at first suppose that I learned Hungarian so that I could enjoy the riches of Hungarian literature, and especially its poetry. Yes, one of my motives was to read People of the Puszta in the original, and yes, I have dipped into some most impressive works of literature. I have learned a number of Hungarian poems by heart, plus as many folk songs. And I have translated two poems for publication in HEAT, as some readers will be aware. But I try to explain to my friends what I am trying to explain to readers of this writing: that I learned Hungarian for purely personal reasons. My years-long enterprise might even be called an act of self-indulgence.
Invisible Yet Enduring Lilacs Page 16