Péter Nádas on writing: At the mysterious crossroads of selflessness

To what extent and in what way is the person standing here in person identical to the person who wrote my book?

I can't avoid this question.

For example, what if someone swapped my birth documents?

Or if my mother happened to have been given another newborn?

Things like that happen and we have no reason to rule out such a possibility in this case either.

And then who I am would really have to live a different life under a different name.

Nor can I answer the depressing question as to whether, with the other name, with the other parentage, I would have become exactly the person who, following the system of my decisions and the play of chance, is standing here in my mortal shell.

One uses one's characteristics at most, but from where they lead where and how they get their unmistakable character in the eyes of others, one cannot say.

who is the human

Dear God, if only we knew.

About each other we can best answer the question of how we are.

The book, translated into another language, together with its claim to linguistic and stylistic fidelity, practically transcends the personal.

Which in my eyes is a blessing, a special happiness.

The translated book enters the selfless spaces between the people,

At best, lovers or monks know something about it, at least as long as they keep kissing or praying.

He didn't talk about superfluous things

I want to tell now what happened when I put the last period after the last word.

I sent the voluminous manuscript to my brother.

Before, I would never have asked him to read my work, not even a hint.

Now I couldn't spare him.

I was afraid that he would not only draw my attention to factual errors but also interfere in his impulsive way.

Unnecessarily, for he too was cut from the same liberal family cloth.

He didn't object to my statements even if he found them embarrassing for himself or for me.

I'm not going to interfere with what anyone else feels or thinks.

However, he was irritated by the fact that something was wrong with the proportions, and since he had already been working with his own themes in libraries and archives for months, he investigated the matter immediately.

If there were so many Mezei in the manuscript, so many Nussbaum, so many Neumayer and Nádas, where the heck was the Tauber.

In the family area, the ancestors of our maternal grandfather were missing.

I wouldn't have noticed that myself, and there was a good reason for that.

I had a very clear picture of our grandfather's silence.

In his presence, the wordlessness took on material weight, so to speak.

And when I asked, and I asked him several times about his ancestors, he avoided me.

At most he expressed himself in general terms about geography.

However, the fact is that he never described others and never judged them.

He just shook his head and thought.

He thought so much that it didn't pay to answer anymore.

That's why he was so taciturn, that was my impression of him in general, because he didn't talk about superfluous things, and surely there are more superfluous things in the world than important things.