Jane Rosenthal=20
EXIT INTO HISTORY: A JOURNEY THROUGH THE NEW EASTERN=20 EUROPE by Eva Hoffman (Minerva, R48,99)=20
IN Exit into History, Eva Hoffman invites us to=20 accompany her on a thoughtful meander through Eastern=20 Europe. As readers of her first book, Lost in=20 Translation, will know, she was born in Poland in 1946=20 and emigrated to Canada at the age of 12.=20
At the very outset she reveals her “otherness”. Speaking=20 of her Polish childhood, she says she had “an intense=20 early education in politics and the sentiments”. The=20 sentiments? Is this something the average English- speaker is ever educated in, or conscious of having been=20 educated in? What in fact does she mean?=20
With this question on hold, one begins the journey with=20 Hoffman as protagonist and guide from Poland through=20 Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria, a journey=20 she undertook twice in an attempt to see “her Europe”=20 before it disappeared in the changes.=20
The communist Poland she grew up in “stayed arrested in=20 my imagination as a land of childhood sensuality,=20 lyricism, vividness and human warmth”. So she returns to=20 “that elsewhere that was once my home”. =20
She comments that for a Pole to lose his pessimism is to=20 lose his honour; still, she retains her critical,=20 observant cool. But she is never cynical, even when she=20 comments on the greyness of Warsaw (more so than under=20 communism), the drinkability of the water, the phone=20
Hoffman is, in fact, the perfect observer. This is=20 armchair travel, with sentiments. She shows us the=20 examined lives of many Poles, Czechs, et al, and since=20 she speaks all the languages, or enough of them, she=20 pursues the really interesting questions. =20
She is both one of them and one of us (in whom the West=20 is dominant). She asks, inter alia, whether feminism has=20 become “tainted” by communism, and why is there anti- Semitism in Poland, a country with very few (surviving)=20
She arranges for herself a tour of the intelligentsia of=20 Eastern Europe; she meets writers, artists, filmmakers,=20 editors. But businessmen, politicians, desk clerks and=20 some extraordinary taxi-drivers provide the starting=20 point for many of her characteristic digressions. It is=20 a leisurely and discursive account. We accompany Hoffman=20 to dinner parties, coffee shops, the thermal baths in=20 Budapest and swimming with swans in Lake Balaton.=20
It is in Bulgaria that she is finally surprised by the=20 unexpected. And she observes that the capital, Sofia,=20 has more philosophers per capita than anywhere else. The=20 subject of emigration to the West comes up everywhere on=20 her journey, but only in Bulgaria is it deeply examined.=20 She meets some young men who believe that in emigrating=20 they will find not necessarily more prosperity, but more=20 dignity. =20
Hoffman doubts this, but does not dissuade them. A=20 contrasting and more prevalent view in Bulgaria is that=20 “a man needs his own house, and his friends. His water=20 and his apple tree. And his problems. And his enemies.”=20 For “what can a man do without his enemies?”=20
Throughout she reflects on the interrelated themes of=20 our search both for the other and the familiar, as well=20 as the nature of history. In Eastern Europe she says,=20 “History has often seemed thicker, more pressing and=20 oppressive … few lives have been disconnected from it,=20 or unaffected by it.” =20
Some parallels with South Africa are obvious. Yet=20 reading Exit into History has a curiously lightening=20 effect, both cheering and illuminating. Perhaps it is=20 because Eastern Europe has so much recorded history that=20 it is clear that countries and peoples survive even the=20 most traumatic and disorienting, even the most exciting=20 of “velvet revolutions”.=20
This is liberating and profound, and impossible to=20 absorb in one reading. Two journeys will be needed; as=20 Eva says, “seeing twice is believing”.=20