Oldal 108 [108]
Encountering the Hungarian Alterity: An Analysis of a Narrative by a Finnish Traveller
Jalava, it was the Jews who manifested the ultimate Alterity, sucking the life-force
of Hungarians. He had learned that they, now dehumanized by him as "greedy
leeches” (in Finnish: ahnas verimato), owned the largest businesses and controlled
the flow of capital—economic facts that had made many a Hungarian regret that
they had given them citizen’s rights in 1868. It was alarming that the Hungarians
allowed Jewish influence to grow; if the Hungarians would not themselves take on
hard work in industry, professions, banking, and trade, they would remain poor
and could not join the “progressive” forces in Europe in the future (Jalava 1883:10;
1876b: 335). In Finland, the “Jewish problem” had been solved by expelling street
mongers and small shopkeepers from the bourgeois capital, Helsinki, sending them
to St. Petersburg in 1875, so that the fennomen had no longer anything to be afraid
of from that quarter (Jalava 1876b: 327) (ill. 31).
In presenting his main figures of Hungary, the double effect of inclusion and
exclusion was utilized by Jalava’s politics of difference. Jalava got personally and inti¬
mately acquainted with many a Hungarian but, nevertheless, used stereotypes in or¬
der to show a variety of types of the Hungarian man. What happened was an act of
valorization of the Finnish self, which implied the remolding, even transformation,
of Identity in at least two ways: (1) the experiences of the Hungarian and Others
(Gypsy, not shown here) triggered sentiments that invited Jalava, the post-Romantic
traveler, to a game of give and take and (2) in the end, they led to the erection of
specific boundaries between the Alterity of Hungarians and a reaffirmation of his
new Identity—politically best exemplified in his rejection of Hungarian national¬
ity policy, which, opposite to fennomania, had a more tolerant attitude toward the
Swedish-speaking minority. Seeing the Hungarian, comparing his national char¬
acteristics to the Finnish ones, and observing his political culture through his own
eyes made Jalava critical of what Hungarians really could achieve in his civilizing
mission in the Carpathian Basin.
Nationality and Alterity
In Jalava’s conception, the question of nationality and evaluation of Others/Identi¬
ties were intimately coupled, in keeping with the contemporary ideas of comparative
politics. It was a much-tried tool of political analysis by European intellectuals in
the fin-de-siécle, and it was applied also in attempts at grasping Finland’s position
in the Russian Empire, as well as Hungary’s position in the Austro-Hungarian one
(Halmesvirta 1990: ch. 5). Younger fennomen, like Jalava, were keenly interested
in the status of small nationalities of Europe since the uprisings of 1848-1849 and
evaluated their freedom movements that demanded more autonomy. In this con¬
text, Hungary provided a point of comparison and of cultural affinity for Jalava.
Compared with the Finns, the Hungarians already enjoyed what the Finns
yearned for, that is, that their language was the only official one again since 1867.
Jalava approved of this Hungarian solution because a “Babylonic” amalgam of nu¬
merous languages in a state could not suit the needs of unity of a national state. For
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