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104 Anssi Halmesvirta ing and quarrelling (Jalava 1876b: 217-224). Against this “weakness” in character, Jalava’s romantic, unrealistic toleration advised: to love oneself did not mean that one should hate the Others. His main dilemma with the Hungarian brothers boiled down to this contradiction: the Hungarians, with whom he had initially identified himself so closely, turned out to be as “oppressive” toward the Other as the enemy of the fennomen—the Swedish speakers in Finland. How to love a brother who had been blinded by his selflove to the point that he could not see the value of Others in contributing to the civilization of mankind? And had not they just (in 1868) enacted a law that should have given them rights of representation? Perhaps they would learn that they could not afford to remain living in such a dream of superiority?! Jalava did not express this lament in his travel book but in his private correspondence (Jalava 1948: 164). He did not dare to criticize Hungarians openly and even hesitated to have his travel book translated, as he knew that Hungarian nationality policy was a point of noli me tangere for them (Tervonen 1995: 28). Nevertheless, Jalava had his own axe to grind: Hungarian patriotic fervor could arouse the slumbering fennoman spirit to action against the svecomen in Finland. The warning message was that it should not be carried to the extremes encountered in Hungary. When encountering the Hungarians on the spot, less charming features came to the fore. Jalava paid special attention to countryside and peasant representatives of Hungarianness, a theme surely interesting to Finnish readers. In spite of the fact that the status of the peasant had after the Revolution of 1848-1849 and the 1867 compromise improved, he still was not the hard-working and persevering, backwoods-ideal-type Finnish peasant Paavo from Saarijarvi, the hero of the Swedish-Finnish national poet, J. L. Runeberg (Jalava 1876b: 144). His Hungarian brother was “lazy and careless,” working only for subsistence because the soil was so fertile that it gave good yield almost by itself. No work was done on the fields during the winter; no manure was used. After a day’s work, country-folk gathered in the kocsma (pub), where they could chat about daily politics and drink spirits and wine. Jalava’s illustration of a country-type was rather a stereotyped representation of a local guardsman than a picture of a real peasant (see ill. 29). Both such a state of Hungarian country-folk and the former image of the nobility confirmed Jalava’s conclusion to the effect that the Hungarian countryside was in stagnation, the remnants of the feudal past obstructing the modern processes of development, that is, the agricultural reform and popular enlightenment so dear to fennomen, who were eager to civilize the Finnish peasant. In contrast to Hungarian inactivity, Jalava ascribed “patience and diligence’—mental forces of progress—not only to “hard-working” Germans but also to the “detested, selfish and cunning Jews,” who were effectively assimilating to the Hungarians (Jalava 1883:10). To > In Hungary, Jalava’s book was found to be “the best and irritatingly truthful” about Hungary, and in Finland it was regarded as very timely because information on Hungary, “the other civilized nation among Ugric peoples,” was so scarce (Hunfalvy 1877a; Godenhjelm 1877).
