“Seven Days in Babylon” Languages and Exile in the Life of Alexander Lenard

Abstract

This article analyses the attitude of translator and writer Alexander Lenard (1910-1972) towards his environment during his exile in Brazil. He would live self-exiled in the interior of the state of Santa Catarina, from 1951 until his death. Born in Hungary, where he is considered a great national writer, Lenard moved with his family to Austria in 1920. In Vienna, he studied medicine. Because he was of Jewish origin, Lenard fled to Italy when, in 1938, the German Reich annexed Austria. In Rome, he lived in hiding until the end of the war. Due to the conflict in Korea, which Lenard feared would turn into a new world war, Lenard moved to Brazil in 1952. He would never return to Europe. For almost twenty years, Alexander Lenard lived among German-speaking “settlers” in Santa Emma (SC), where he worked as a pharmacist and occasionally as a doctor. Lenard expressed himself mainly in German. In Brazil, he continued writing and translating, making use of his ample knowledge of foreign languages. However, despite his extended stay in Brazil, he would never express himself in Portuguese. In the 1960s, Lenard gave a series of lectures broadcast by the German Norddeutsche Rundfunk. These were published under the title Sieben Tage Babylonisch [Seven Days in Babylon] (1964). In this small volume, Lenard presents his views on seven languages: Hungarian, ‘Catarinense’, Brazilian Portuguese, Botocudo, Academic French, Roman and New Latin. In the present article, we focus on the three languages that have a bearing on Brazil and thus on Lenard’s exile. His views on these languages show how Lenard seems to have stopped any integration process, in contrast to what happened previously in Austria and Italy.