Keynote delivered at the ISPA Regional meeting in Budapest in September 2006 by Hungarian novelist and essayist George Konrad.

We have known where we belong and considered the matter settled since Hungary joined the European Union.

We need hefty optimism to declare with true inner joy that we are finally where we belong, can now relax after so much sliding back and forth, we have returned home and are now at home within the greater European family. It is time to lock up in the cupboard all the grievances, resentments, betrayals, grudges, the pathos of being slighted and self-pity.

For when left to our own devices, looking neither to the West nor the East, we sink our teeth into one another, go berserk being left on our own, and imagine that the greatest peril is right here under our noses, personified in the government or the opposition, because this is a nation split into two and fellow-citizens view each other as enemies.

This doomsday atmosphere that accompanies the election campaign every four years in Hungary is made all the more comic by a significant fact, namely that political antagonism has not claimed one life and not even many black eyes since 1989.

While World War II cost us one million lives and the 1956 revolution about ten thousand, our annus mirabilis, the miracle year of 1989 and that followed, a democratisation process, has not caused a single death.

However, that turning point, which we like to refer to as the change of system, did bring about an unpleasant atmosphere, paranoia and enmity, and much vain strutting among the new-fangled political class.

I believe that the awareness of being part of the greater whole and an ability to see in sound relative terms may have a civilising influence on political discourse and allow us to see our own political stage not as the whole world but, at least sometimes, as one of its many podiums.

I find this perspective healthy and revelatory for our citizens.

We will not be a uniform, faceless member of the European Union. On the contrary: we will nurse our idiosyncrasies and can foresee success for clever provincialism.

We will be more at ease to enjoy what is ours, what is truly us, but as so many try to differentiate themselves from all the others, it will be difficult to pinpoint what is typically ours and, on top of it all, what is magnificent.

Hungarian literature, we may rightly say, is good and idiosyncratic enough.

Under conditions that are oppressive in many ways, a resilient soul excels in human clear sightedness, which is why no great nation has a more interesting or rich literature today than do the Hungarians, a not altogether hugely great nation.

The insularity of the Hungarian language has cocooned Hungarian literature like the shell of a walnut, creating an intensive intimacy and affording protection.

Intermediaries have opened more and more tiny doors on that nutshell; there are a few Hungarian writers whose works many lovers of literature have now read in foreign languages.

These significant works come from significant personalities, whom you will see as loveable too if you watch and listen to them closely enough.

Hungarians are good at mathematics, music and literature: all the disciplines that require more talent than money.

Given the difficulties along the way, just to survive a thousand years has required talent.

The creation of major works of intellectual achievement in adverse circumstances – each is heroic story.

Admittedly, adversity may stimulate and blissful peace may make even talent slothful, but there is the matter of proportions: how should the fates weave fortune and misfortune for the best interest of the arts?

Hungarian artists have had ample hardship and much less pampering.

While the mastery of Bartók and Kodály, Ligeti and Kurtág is evident for the music lover in the sound itself or in the music notes, the merits of works in other forms of art open up only gradually and with a certain delay to European inquisitiveness that wishes to take stock of what is to be found on the occasion of the expansion of the Union towards the East.

Without the experience, intellectual output and attitude of Central Eastern Europe and as part of it, Hungary, Europe would not be what it is.

In any case, the old maxim that Hungarians lose their wars but win the peace is ready for proof now.

I do not wish to conceal that most of my bad experiences have been dealt to me by my own country, through its national socialist and communist extremisms.

Admittedly, this was expected of it first by German and the by the Soviet command, nevertheless, the home-grown administrators were highly inventive in making life more miserable.

There is a limited choice of excuses for oppression: the nation, the international working class or a religion.

Ideological trends moving across Europe may drive one country crazy but will never turn the heads of twenty five.

My anti-political point of departure advises ironic vigilance.

This is why I welcome the European constitutional constraints on the sovereignty of nation states.

And I am also happy to see greater independence for town and village in local matters within the nation state.

Powers must be checked from outside as well as inside.

For me the European Union represents greater security and freedom, a farther horizon and a wider range of experience.

My optimism does not carry so far as to expect from the European Union a considerable improvement in the situation of artists and intellectuals.

There will be subsidies for everything, yet, if I interpret the numbers correctly, less than one tenth of a percent of the EU budget will be allocated to cultural subsidies.

Yet if we wanted to identify what holds Europe together I would answer, without hesitation, that it is its symbolic culture, the arts, literacy and therein European religious and secular literature, generated centuries and millennia ago as an economic and political ally for modern Europe.

Current public discourse is probably increasingly focused on the relation of Europe as a whole or at least as a great confederation of states to the rest of the world, to other great powers.

It is becoming clearer what to consider important and to what degree.

In terms of historic age and population, that is to say human resources, China and its South East Asian neighbours are in the lead.

In terms of powerful armed forces, dominant economic and scientific strength, the United States is in first place.

As regards plurality, urbanity, standard of living, quality of life and artistic heritage, in all probability Europe is the first, as this is the continent most able to view itself with criticism and it also has an economy on par with America.

But Europe fell into sin twice in this past century, with its two world wars, and it has slept with the most repulsive tyrannies. Europe has no reason or right to boast.

Although I would love to say that European humanism could be our magic wand, a re-examination of my own experiences and those of my more and less immediate environment is enough to prevent me from giving in to a boastful collective self-portrait and to recall the reverse seamy side of self-praise, the vile monstrosities, the puny unkindliness, the omission of acts of charity, and the huffing and puffing instead of clear thinking, as the dominant features of politics.

Only a minority of mankind lives in democratic states and under the rule of law.

It would be worthwhile for this democratic minority of mankind to work together and consider its own duties, responsibilities and strategies as openly as possible.

Basic freedoms and a relative welfare are interdependent.

If democracies wish to help poor countries, then they should aid the democratic processes, movements and oppositions in those countries, so that aid does not vanish or get squandered by the dictatorship on corruption, the armed forces or bloated bureaucracies, on things that increase debt but fail to reduce poverty.

I see nothing honourable in democratic states colluding with demagogic  autocracies.

I have never felt sympathy for third-world post-colonial dictatorships, even less so as they are grotesque imitations of the two dictatorships I have seen from close proximity.

Emerging from the ruins of two dictatorships, I am not homesick for either and cannot interpret parody as a sparkling new invention.

Whenever you speak of a country, never shirk from the drudgery of checking whether it has censorship and runs subversion lawsuits.

Whether there is populist incitement against a community, nation, religion, group, minority or class.

And whether the media claims that this slated minority is an obstacle to the prosperity of the majority.

Democratic states and autocracies are not that difficult to tell apart.

Europe will take advantage of what it has, of its pluralistic intellectual capacities.

It will be obliged to embrace its diversity, which is its strength: this is multi-level man versus single-level man.

It is not advisable to stray from what we have learnt about freedom of thought, not for one moment, as only dishonour and ridicule will follow.

Modern societies have several heads, focal points and authoritative centres.

I see elites peaking in various places; they look like ranges of mountains from an aeroplane.

As a matter of fact, intellectual competition of who sees the world more accurately is no less important than the economic and military race.

States adopt behaviours that suit their sizes.

The citizens of great states show in their bearing that there is a great state behind them, just as citizens of small states show that their home country is small.

Both have their characteristic mentalities and behavioural styles, and I would not dare to predict that there will be a time when these cease to annoy one another.

To be a citizen of a small state means talking much about our smallness; to prevent others from considering us somewhat provincial, we console ourselves with our inner depth and mysterious intimacies; at least we claim that we have all these things.

I think what is beautiful about the great is that it is great and what is beautiful about the small is that it is small.

That is almost true, but admittedly, the great is less often driven nuts by its greatness than the small by its smallness.

Ancient Jerusalem and Athens left a gigantic intellectual heritage, even though their populations were not larger than that of a small town today.

The European Union is nice and big already and expects to grow more in the foreseeable future. How big we truly are is increasingly dependent on what we have in our heads, how eager we are to know the world, the great and the small, even the personal.

Europe’s coat of arms shows a learning man. The participle “learning” is the cornerstone of values and the secret of growth; identity itself, if you like.

Man learns from the mysteries of nature outside and within himself.

Creation and quest are both learning; the critical preservation, correction and enhancement of all there is.

A learning man is capable of repentance and can learn from his mistakes.

He learns to respect others and himself as a man of composure.

He learns his environment and his terrain, explores his possibilities, learns from his failures, tries to achieve more with less effort, refines and fine-tunes his means and methods.

The opposite of learning man is quarrelling man, who always agrees with himself and never with others (perchance with a certain group of others), is incapable of self-criticism, blames others for all problems, wails and swears, enjoys going red in the face, is beside himself, shakes his fist, hisses and yells, proves his strength this way.

To rob or to learn? Synonyms of robbery are forced labour and corruption; synonyms of learning are research, art and play.

A man who prefers quarrel to learning idolises conflict.

A holy war in the name of religion, nation or world revolution; a conflict dignified.

There are people with slow brains, rejecting intellectual rivalry, interpreting any and all criticism as spiteful and an offensive fuss, and there are cultures where such a person is the norm.

Where wearing military uniforms and brandishing machine guns is fashionable, learning is fashionable.

Where, instead of school, flag-waving is the custom. Bad pupils may still make spectacular, skilful and tremendously grim soldiers.

Oh Europe is small but pretty.

It is home to the highest number of human creations and historic monuments per square kilometre.

This is where the thinking subject became the main subject of thinking.

What is absolute elsewhere becomes relative here.

We define ourselves, write journals, vindicate and censure ourselves, we leave written traces of events.

There are rather more words, thoughts, quotations and analyses here than elsewhere, of love and food, politics and literature.

This is a verbal continent.

We ponder ourselves relying on the European heritage of texts and images.

We live in the mythology bequeathed to us by authors and artists.

We ask ourselves old questions in ever new forms.

Translators are quintessential Europeans.

Translators have helped a multilingual Europe become a wholesome cultural network in places, which is a good reason while literary translators could be the favourites of European cultural policy.

Through inquisitiveness and translation, European culture is a receptive culture.

Europe’s relative superpower status draws on its culture, on the fact that its inhabitants read a lot in comparison and that there still are some avid readers among them.

European culture has no boundaries, it is represented everywhere in the world, at universities, libraries, museums, theatres and concert halls.

It has a more universal influence than European politics.

We had Latinate European literature before national boundaries appeared with the introduction of mass printing in the early modern age.

The essence of Europe is curiosity, which is perhaps the most forgivable sin and the sweetest virtue.

Europe is singular in its great diversity of individual histories, attitudes and performances.

European cultural politics must reinforce this very feature: diversity and a respect for the culture of personality.

Some things work automatically, some are sorted out by the market and need no policies to interfere, but there are some that the market is unable to resolve and where policies are required.

Education and research is more or less able to provide for the majority of intellectuals but cannot support the artists themselves; while teachers of literature will certainly get by, writers may not.

Thinkers with the most pragmatic and driest souls also recognise that by embracing the Union we have embraced one another; just as by embracing our sweetheart we embrace her family.

Whether we want it or not, this unity shapes us as well.

As I see it, one of the characteristics of Europe is that no one can rule over it; many have tried but all have failed.

European individuals are too strong for that.

We have had the opportunity to learn that Europe can unite only in freedom and that calls for other kinds of unity are all false.

You can make the desire for freedom wait but to bury it you have to bury us with it.

One more floor of consciousness is being built for Europeans: a growing awareness of the shared European homeland.

We cannot avoid looking on far-away continents as Europeans ourselves, and see ourselves from there as Europeans.

To some extent, the union of our states has made us feel like we own one another’s cities, great minds and their works.

Our singularities are fundamental, not least due to our multiplicity of sophisticated languages.

It is an absurd illusion to aim for a single shared language.

Linguistic fights camouflage the egoism of monolingualism.

Europe cannot do otherwise but sublimate constraint into virtue and accept that it must be multilingual and polyglot.

We must of course accept English as the number one world language; but this is not enough in Europe.

Most people have the ability for multilingualism; we can surmount the chaos of Babel.

European studies are likely to become an independent discipline.

We will probably look back on our closeted nation-state periods and interpret them retrospectively as times of conscious self-limitation.

Europe is now facing the glorious task of making cultures meet and shuffling the cards.

The most palpable experience one can get of other nations is through their works of art.

Reading novels is widely known as a felicitous way to increase empathy.

Cultural policy can be successful only if it furthers the mutual understanding of individuals and communities across state and linguistic borders.

I see the task of European cultural policy as the planting, care and nourishing of a fine seedling: reciprocal interest and inquiry.

In the nineteenth century, writers and their fellow artists thought through their national cultures.

We are now facing the challenge of having an idea of what European culture is.

We have just started our Europe DIY.

European literature already existed when the idea of the European Coal and Steel Community was far from even being conceived.

The European Union is not a vital condition for European literature, which can do fine without it; but since there is such a Union, it wants to benefit from it.

If you want a Union, you will have to want to step into the trousers of other Europeans, perhaps by reading some books.

The alternative to a literary and artistic callisthenics of minds is general dementia.

We live on a talkative continent, where people talk a lot and freely, and like to formulate everything in different ways.

We could be apologetic about this verbosity but we could also choose to be proud of it.

Let us recognise our complexity and rejoice in it or, as the case may be, amuse ourselves with it.

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