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Ildikó Sz. Kristóf
particular, local readings affect the ways in which the schoolbook was interpreted,
“domesticated” in their respective cultures?
Variety in the uses
The last concept of research that I would like to propose is variety in the uses. It
seems that the local adaptation, the local interpretation or—to borrow again one of
the central terms of the French history of reading—the local appropriation of Raff's
schoolbook have changed from translation to translation, that is, from culture to
culture. In my previous study I wrote more on this aspect, analyzing the character¬
istics of the Hungarian, the English, and the French adaptations and mentioning
some features of the original German version as well as the Slaveno-Serbian and
the Russian translations (Sz. Kristöf 2011: 323-333). Due to space limitations here,
let me direct the reader to that study of mine and point only to the most important
features of the Hungarian adaptation.
Beyond the fact that Göttingen was appreciated as a center of contemporary
sciences by the Hungarian (mostly noble and Protestant) students who regularly
attended its university during the second half of the eighteenth century and the
nineteenth, each of the three Hungarian editions of the schoolbook (Veszprem
1799, Kassa [Kosice, in today’s Slovakia] 1835, and Pest 1846) was deeply embed¬
ded in the movement of political resistance and national awakening that emerged in
the Kingdom of Hungary against the Austrian Habsburg (and primarily, Catholic)
domination during the late eighteenth century and the early nineteenth century.
Each of the three Hungarian translators (Jözsef Fäbiän, a learned pastor of the Re¬
formed Church who identified with many ideas of the French and German Enlight¬
enment; Peter Vajda, a journalist/novelist-turned-peasant of Lutheran religion who
proposed reforms of the Lutheran education system; and Mihäly Täncsics, a radical
political writer who sympathized with the ideas of early utopian socialism) belonged
to certain periods as well as branches of this movement (Sz. Kristöf 2011: 323-325).
The order and the representations that Raff provided of nature and human his¬
tory are to be interpreted in this particular context in Hungary. The most impor¬
tant message of the schoolbook, according to which, as I mentioned above, there
was a chance for progress for each of the societies in the world, could conform very
well with the actual desires and expectations of the Hungarian reformists, whose
group the translators and the editors of Raff belonged to. The schoolbook could
provide a philosophical confirmation of their belief that there was a hope—or rather,
a “historical necessity”—for the political-cultural improvement in Hungary, too.
As is evident from the prefaces, footnotes, and other textual and paratextual fea¬
tures of the Hungarian editions, the actual sociocultural context of the publication
has vested the translations with a peculiar political meaning. For some groups of its
readers at least, this Göttingen schoolbook was conceived, and used, as a cultural