Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Schor blends memoir and history in chronicling Esperanto language
When you’re attending an international Esperanto conference, it’s very bad form to “crocodile.”
“Krokodili,” as author Esther Schor explains, “is the first slang word any Esperantist learns; it means ‘to speak one’s native language at an Esperanto gathering.’ ”
In “Bridge of Words: Esperanto and the Dream of a Universal Language,” Schor chronicles the history of the language that Ludovik Lazarus Zamenhof gave to the world in 1887, while also detailing her own encounters with Esperantists in California, Turkey, Poland, Vietnam, Cuba and Brazil. The book is a tad fragmented as it alternates between Esperanto’s convoluted story and Schor’s own account of the Esperantists who cross her path.
While the memoir/ travelogue vein of the book is relaxed and anecdotal, the hardcore facts surrounding Esperanto are dense and gnarly. Utopian dreams, genocidal regimes, liberation movements and cultural tumult all figure in it.
Zamenhof (1859-1917) invented Esperanto “not to replace national languages but to be a second language for the world.” Born in a corner of the Russian Empire that’s now part of Poland, he was a Jew who witnessed virulent antiSemitism in his ethnically mixed hometown.
“Multilingualism was not the preserve of the educated,” Schor notes. “It was the way one bought eggs, greeted policemen, prayed, and gossiped with coreligionists. At the same time, Zamenhof grew up convinced that linguistic difference lay at the root of interethnic animosity.”
After briefly embracing Zionism, he turned his energies to inventing a “new, international language” that combined Slavic, German and Romance language elements. His belief: “Not only social relations but human beings themselves could be transformed by language.”
Esperantists made many uses of Zamenhof ’s creation, but achieving universal harmony wasn’t one of them. Some saw it as a pragmatic communication tool. Others viewed it as a spiritual cause or political weapon. In Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, people literally died for it — including Zamenhof ’s daughter Lidia, who espoused Esperanto and the Baha’i faith as her cause.
The sheer amount of writing generated by the Esperanto movement is mind-boggling. Zamenhof ’s collected works alone run to 43 volumes, and the editor of them, Ito Kanzi, published his own “sevenvolume Japanese-language novel about Zamenhof.”
The Esperantists that Schor meets are dedicated globe-hoppers. They’re an eclectic bunch and include “a Serbian actor and Esperanto broadcaster, formerly in aeronautics,” “a slim, no-nonsense Briton (who’s) written two Esperanto-language historical novels set in Rome” and the odd Esperanto rock ’n’ roller.
Pre-internet and pre-Airbnb, Esperantists networked in ways that made travel affordable, as they opened up their homes to one another. That’s still true. But finding an “automatic friend” who’ll give you a place to crash isn’t the only draw or appeal of Esperanto.
“I love the language,” one Esperanto enthusiast tells Schor. “It’s compact, it’s ingenious. It’s rigorous but flexible. … One can invent new words, easily, and one does.” His example: gufejo. “Literally, an owlery,” he explains. “A hang-out for night-owls.”
Schor’s travels take her everywhere from Ho Chi Minh’s tomb to an Esperanto-speaking sanctuary for abandoned children in rural Brazil. Despite the obstacles the language has encountered, and the surprising amount of acrimony it has stirred, Esperanto is still with us.
“Esperanto culture,” Schor notes in a passage about centennial celebrations of Zamenhof ’s creation, “was more than a cradle for an infant language, and more than a platform for utopian ideals; ... it had flowered into a distinct tradition and a source of a shared supranatural identity.”
“Bridge of Words” takes you inside that identity — which turns out to be, in all its hopes and permutations and divisions, a reflection of the world at large.