"Seven days in Babylon"

Ondertitel:Languages and exile in the life of Alexander Lenard

In this article, we analyze the attitude of the translator and writer Alexander Lenard (1910-1972) towards his environment during his years of exile in Brazil. Lenard would remain self-exiled in the countryside of the state of Santa Catarina from 1952 until his death. Born in Hungary, where he is considered a great national writer, Lenard's family moved to Austria in 1920. In Vienna, he would study medicine. Of Jewish origin, Lenard fled to Italy when, in 1938, Austria was annexed to the German Reich. In Rome, he lived in hiding until the end of the war. For fear of the conflict in Korea spreading, Lenard moved to Brazil in 1952. He would never return to Europe. For almost twenty years Lenard lived among the German-speaking "settlers" in Santa Emma (SC), where he was a pharmacist and occasionally a doctor. Lenard expressed himself mainly in German. In Brazil, he continued writing and translating to and from a large number of foreign languages. However, despite his long 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, which were published under the title Sieben Tage Babylonisch [Seven Days of Babylon] (1964). In this small volume, Lenard gives his views on seven languages: Hungarian, Catharinian, Brazilian Portuguese, Botocudo, Academic French, Roman and Neo-Latin. In the present article, we dwell on the three languages related to Brazil and thus to Lenard's exile situation. His view on these languages shows how he had interrupted his integration process, in contrast to what he had done before in Austria and Italy.

Trefwoorden:translation studies, Brazil

Toegankelijkheid:Open