PROFILE Father Of Esperanto Born 100 Years Ago

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28983, 26 August 1959, Page 16

PROFILE Father Of Esperanto Born 100 Years Ago

(By FRANCOISE NEIDERIIAVSEN)

“In the streets of the unhappy town of my birth, savage men with axes and iron bars fell like wild beasts upon peaceful citizens, whose only crime was that they spoke another language and held another creed than those savages.”

The man who wrote these lines was named Lazar Ludovik Zamenhof. You may not know his name, but you certainly know his life’s work, for Zamenhov was the creator of Esperanto, an international language of communication between peoples. He was born 100 years ago on December 15, 1859, in Bialystok, a frontier city near the borders of Lithuania, Poland and Byelorussia, where communities speaking different languages and practising different religions lived together, although not very happily. Young Zamenhof was deeply affected by the prejudices and the antagonisms stirring this minor tower of Babel. Local officials were of the Orthodox faith and spoke Russian; the nobility were generally Roman Catholics and spoke Polish; the peasants talked to each other in Lithuanian or Byelorussian, while the Jewish shopkeepers spoke Yiddish and lived in a section apart. Hostile prejudices. diverse languages, customs and religions all pitted the inhabitants of Bialystok against each other.

To a sensitive boy belonging to a group which could express itself only in a dead language or in an adopted one, these conflicts seemed very tragic. At a very early age, young Ludovik developed the idea that a common tongue would help to break down at least part of the barriers separating people from one another.

This idea haunted him throughout his childhood and adolescence: first in Warsaw where his parents moved in 1873 and where Ludovik attended high school, then in Moscow where he studied medicine, in Vienna where he took a course in opthalmology and in Warsaw again where he set up a practice as an oculist. Gift For Languages

From his schoolmaster father, he had inherited a gift for languages. He spoke three fluently: Russian, Polish and German, and could read three others freely: Latin, Hebrew and French (to say nothing of Yiddish). He had a more cursory and theoretical knowledge of English, Italian and several other tongues. His knowledge of English and French convinced him that a language could get along without the complicated declensions and conjugations of the Slavonic tongues. A careful study of Russian and German convinced him that a wise choice of suffixes and prefixes could reduce the size of the vocabulary considerably, while French and German proved th<* usefulness of the definite article which the Slavonic languages do not have. His work led to the publication in 1887 of a textbook on the “Lingvo Internacia’’—the international language—which he signed with the pen-name, Dr. Esperanto (“he who hopes”). The book, whose publication was financed by his future father-in-law as a wedding present, explained the main characteristics of thp “lingvo:” a vocabulary with its roots drawn mainly from the Romance and Germanic languages; detachable prefixes and suffixes added to these roots and serving for all grammatical distinctions; and a very simple grammar consisting of 16 short rules. The language. moreover, was fully independent and had its own individuality. In the following years, other textbooks were published as well as a dictionary and translations into Esperanto. At the same time, the first supporters came on the scene: first in Poland, then in Germany, Bulgaria, and Russia. Soon, groups were forming everywhere. In 1894. an important event occured—the support of Leon Tolstoy who wrote in “Posrednik:” “After only two hours of study, I was able, if not to write Esperanto, at any rate to read it freely.” He urged every-

one to learn this language “because the sacrifice is so small and the eventual benefits so great that no one should refuse to try it.” Growth of Movement The movement was growing steadily. In Scandinavia, England, France and elsewhere scholars were becoming interested in the experiment. In 1905, the first Esperanto Congress was held at Boulogne-sur-Mer in France. To attend it, Zamenhof and his wife travelled all the way from Warsaw in a third-class railway carriage. Zamenhof was awed and somewhat overwhelmed by his stay in Paris: he was given an official reception at the City Hall and decorated with the Legion of Honour, and he dined on the Eiffel Tower with a group of world famous scholars. But even greater satisfactions were awaiting him at Boulogne. Eight hundred men and women from 30 countries had assembled there and all of them, whether in their official statements or their private conversations, were speaking Esperanto. The “lingvo internacia’’ had become a reality—and no one was more surprised than Zamenhof himself. The Boulogne congress gave him the opportunity of emphasising the moral and social importance of his work: Esperanto was not an end in itself, but a means of contributing to a better understanding between peoples. It was a step towards the unity of mankind. Next year he developed this idea at the Esperanto congress in Geneva, stating his conviction that the international language was a means of bringing men together by breaking down the barriers between them. He exalted the brotherhood of man which seemed to him the only creed acceptable to all peoples and to all faiths. Year after year, at Esperanto congresses, he explained his ideas on tolerance and human rights. This role of guide seemed so important to him that, in 1912, he renounced all honours and turned the linguistic problems of Esperanto over to its Language Comittee whose job it was to survey the evolution of the language and to give official approval to new words introduced into it.

At the Congress of Races in London, in 1911, he presented a report emphasising that physical differences were less important than those of language and customs. “Discord among men,” he said, "will never cease until they grow accustomed to giving more importance to the word ‘man’ than to the words ‘people’ and ‘race’.” In his mind, the peoples of the world were separated mainly by language and religious customs. To bring them together, he suggested a neutral language and a neutral ethical basis which would provide a common ground for agreement between all men of goodwill. Equality and Freedom He meant to discuss this idea at 'the tenth Universal Esperanto Congress in Paris when war broke out in 1914. To Zamenhof, this was a terrible blow, but he continued to fight for his ideals. Back in Warsaw in 1915 he drafted a “Letter to Diplomats” in which he emphasised that the main duty of any future peace treaty would be to guarantee to all races and minorities equality and freedom in the countries in which they lived. This was his last public act: he died on April 14, 1917.

Zamenhof had foreseen that Esperanto would evolve and grow like any other living language. From a vocabulary of 904 roots which could be used to form about 10,000 words <1887), it has grown to more than 80.000 words based upon some 7800 root words. Zamenhof himself contributed greatly to enriching the language, not only by his poems, speeches and articles, but also through his translations into Esperanto of works by Gogol. Shakespeare. Dickens, Moliere, Hans Andersen. Goethe. Schiller. Heine and Sholem Aleichem. His version of the Old Testament which he translated in full was published after his death in 1926. Two world wars destroyed many Esperanto libraries and organisations in Europe, but they were unable to stamp out the language and the ideal which inspired Zamenhof. Today, there are several million Esperanto speakers in the world and its literature, both original or translated, amounts to more than 50,000 volumes. There are chairs or courses in Esperanto in some 30 universities. The language is taught in schools in 22 countries, to say nothing of countless evening classes. Twenty radio stations broadcast programmes regularly in the language.

"Esperanto,” Zaiienhof once said, “knows neither weak nor strong nations, privileged nor inferior peoples. . . .All of us equal on neutral ground, should consider ourselves members of the same human family.” (U.N.E.5.C.0.)