Politics, English, and the Hungarian-English Dictionary: The Work of László Országh

Politics, English, and the Hungarian-English Dictionary: The Work of László Országh JohnJablonski From late 1984 to 1987, I was fortunate enough to work as the Cultural Affairs Officer at the United States Embassy in Budapest, Hungary, during a fascinating time in its history. Life in Eastern Europe, especially in Hungary, was improving: exchanges of people and ideas were developing rapidly, western books and media were well represented. It was almost as if communism had died earlier than 1989, though there were still restrictions on intellectual freedom. For example, party members seemed to receive scholarships to study abroad more easily than non-party members, and, even though it was perfectly legal to subscribe to National Geographic, the September 1980 issue that discussed Afghanistan and its Soviet occupation in the early 1980s mysteriously was not delivered. As part of my training before going to post, I learned Hungarian and bought two volumes of the four-volume Hungarian-English dictionary . The name on the cover was Országh, and I paid no particular attention to it. After all, I did not seek to learn anything about Cassell or Langenscheidt when I was studying German. Besides Országh without the h means 'country'. When I arrived in Budapest, in late 1984, 1 had no idea that die dictionary's author had died in January of die same year, that I had entered Hungary as though landing in London in 1785, after the deatii of Dr. Johnson. Fortunately, my work brought me into contact with László Országh's former students: the country was, and still is, teeming with Boswells. I first learned about Országh as a lexicographer from Myron Simon, who in 1984-85 was a Fulbright LecDictionaries :Journal oftheDictionary Society ofNorth America 24 (2003) 228John Jablonski turer at Országh's university in Debrecen and who first referred (at least to me) to Országh "the Dr. Johnson of Hungary." Until this time, I had no idea that there was a link between the dictionary and the man. When I met Országh's former students, I was impressed by die reverence that they showed toward their teacher, everybody referring to him as Professor Országh, despite the fact, as I learned much later, that he helped students financially and even sent hand-written letters of good wishes to former students on die occasion tiieir marriages or die birtiis of children. As my time in Hungary drew on, I picked up anecdotes of Országh and have tried to piece together an American's reminiscence of a great lexicographer whom I never met. My work took me to what was then the Kossuth Lajos University in Debrecen, a city on the eastern border close to Romania, on the verge of Transylvania. My "contacts" all worked in die Department of English, of which Országh had been head until his retirement in 1969. A large picture of him hung in what used to be his office: even after his death, he was a presence. His students are among the finest teachers and scholars of English and American studies in Hungary, and all speak glowingly of their teacher. I wondered what it was like to be a scholar during the "bad old days," when students of western topics were, at the very least, discouraged, when travel to English-speaking countries was all but impossible for students, and when books in English were difficult to get, eitiier because tiiey were too expensive or were confiscated. Országh stands out as a singular figure in Hungary: he was a scholar and teacher in an officially unpopular discipline, a world-renowned lexicographer , and he represented the politics under which Hungarians had to work in order to claim the right to participate in the intellectual currents that had occupied them for over 1,000 years. László Országh was born in Szombathely, a city on the western border, in October 1907, and studied both English and German at the Pázmány Péter University in Budapest. Students of English at the time were encouraged to study in England, since it was relatively close, and ties between the two countries were strong. Orsz...