The man who built the Tower of Babel

Sadly enough, it is less and less often that you can meet on the street a weirdo with an open mind, dreaming of ennobling all humanity at once. Oh, the times, the morals.

No, no, captains of fundraising have nothing to worry about so far: businessmen, benefactors, sacrificing from the generosity of their few profits - to reduce the taxable part of the surplus value - thank God, did not translate. But the real revolutionaries, these disinterested people with a burning gaze and a flaming engine in their chest instead of a heart, fell into oblivion. Alas.

Lazarus (Laser, Ludovik) Markovich Zamenhof (1859-1917) was born on December 15 (27), 1859, in Bialystok, Grodno Province, on the territory of then-Poland, which was part of the Russian Empire.

 Note: The man was born on 15(27) December 1859 in Bialystok, Grodno Province, on the territory of Poland, then part of the Russian Empire. Lazarus is a male name of biblical Jewish origin. In the original, it sounds like Elazar or Eliezer (God helps me - from Hebrew).

 His father, Mark Fabianovich, was a language teacher and a teacher of foreign languages. When he became a headmaster of a private school and reached the rank of state councilor ("Your Honour"), he held the post of official censor for some time, which, we should note, had far-reaching consequences for his son. At that time, Bialystok was inhabited mainly by Poles, Germans, Russians and Jews. They settled in streets, blocks, districts, and shtetls, trying not to notice and not to meet with "foreigners." Lazarus was a sensitive young man, suffering from the mere thought that the townspeople, living side by side, spoke different languages, often literally without understanding each other. How and how could a young man who was well-bred and read help mankind, not by building the new Tower of Babel?

 Information for reflection: We have all heard about the unfinished Tower in Babel (Babylon). But the very concept of "Babylonian" has appeared in ancient times. In ancient times, the physician and philosopher Claudius Galen from Pergamos spoke with the idea of a universal language for all peoples. In varying degrees and at different times tried their hand in this field, Francis Bacon and René Descartes, Ian Comenius and Isaac Newton, and Gottfried Leibniz. However, only one project was realized: becoming genuinely alive, used, generally accepted, and fundamental to a real layer of subculture, literature, and philology. This is the language of Esperanto, written by Lazar-Laser-Ludwig Zamenhof. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

 I have outstanding abilities and have mastered 20 languages and dialects by the end of my life - polyglot! Who would doubt, with such a father! - As a schoolboy, he studied Polish, German, French, English, Latin, Greek and Hebrew independently and diligently until he became convinced that none of them was suitable for the role of a comprehensive, unifying world.

Then he embarked on the most challenging lesson of his life: the creation of a new human language that would not belong to anyone or any one of the peoples but would become a common heritage, not yielding to national languages in various colours, expressiveness, flexibility and wealth. Father's genes and the then prevalent idea of Gaskala, Jewish enlightenment, have done their work: the project of the first international language of communication in the history of people was prepared by him in the walls of the gymnasium at the age of 19.

... Zamenhof did not become either a teacher or a humanitarian - as a boy from a decent Jewish family, he preferred medicine to study literature, social sciences, and philology. He began a period of study in Moscow and then at Warsaw universities.

A small retreat. Zamenhof, like many Jewish students of his age, was by no means alien to politics, actively participating in the formation of the Zionist movement in Poland. He became the organizer of the first "Palestinian-Palestinian" student group, "Sheerit Israel" in Warsaw, wrote several articles in the Russian-language newspaper "Dawn," asking himself and his readers a sacramental question: "What should we do at last? Gradually, Zamenhof concludes that Palestine as a state is not suitable for the unification and revival of the Jewish people. "For will we have fun living in the capital, where we will have to beware at every step, as if not to affect the religious feelings of Christians... And it is not in Jerusalem alone that Christian sanctuaries are located: where there is only a place, something memorable for us, there we will certainly stumble upon the Christian sanctuary..." Instead of Palestine, he recommends preferring America: "Choose somewhere on the edge of the United States as less populated as possible, and send emigrants there. Declare this place as a place of unification, and Jews from all over the world will flock there..." 

Zamenhof dreams that one day, his tribesmen will gather on the free banks of the Mississippi River.

It's not wrong to dream. But let's put aside the bright future of Zionism and return to the prose of life. The treatment of patients is combined with the work of a new doctor ophthalmologist to improve the textbook "international language." The work is moving slowly, there's not enough time. Also, there are no funds to publish and distribute the book...

But here came a happy day in the life of Lazarus Markowicz: July 26, 1887, on the shelves of Warsaw bookshops appeared 40-page brochure "Lingvo interracial," signed by Doktoro Esperanto.

As you may have guessed, dear reader, this date is still considered the birthday of Esperanto's "international language"... And Lazar Zamenhof is becoming the personification - or in other words, the brand - of an entirely new social phenomenon, Esperanto, although he has never sought fame and honour. His friends and colleagues called him the Teacher, but he was far from honourable. According to linguists, the language was so well developed that it conveyed the full range of human feelings and depth of thought.

Zamenhof did not give up his childhood dream of bringing the peoples of planet Earth closer together. Using the means of interpersonal communication he invented, he published the dictionary of Esperanto, wrote author's materials for press publications in Esperanto and made several translations of classical works, among them "The Inspector," "Hamlet," chapters from the Bible ... With the idea of the brotherhood of nations, he does not part until death. It happened on April 14, 1917. So passed away a supporter of "ethical religion," the theory of equality of languages and peoples, absolute justice, a revolutionary idealist who understood his destiny and dreamed of giving happiness to the whole of humanity and left behind a million followers.

Lazarus Zamenhofa Tago's birthday on December 15 is celebrated by Esperantists all over the world as Zamenhofa Tago, where book exhibitions and concerts are usually held. Streets in Warsaw and Krakow, Frankfurt am Main, and Tel Aviv is named after Zamenhof.

Today, more than 100 periodicals in Esperanto are published around the world, and programs on seven international radio stations are broadcast. Esperanto is now a broad global movement. A unique touch: Esperanto's triumphal march across the globe has blossomed since the death of its founder. In 1913, Zamenhof was even nominated for the Nobel Prize.

In Soviet Russia, Esperanto was called the "Latin of the proletariat," the language of the world revolution, where it immediately became trendy, as it was perceived as a symbol of a new era. Shortly after the victory of the October Revolution, Leo Trotsky suggested using Esperanto as a world revolutionary language. He had many supporters and followers. But soon, Esperanto found itself in disgrace. Unfortunately, among his followers were Trotsky and other prominent "opposition" personalities of that time, who were on the "blacklist.

- And what about this Dresen, a Jew?

- Latvians, Comrade Stalin. Their poor class.

- And what's wrong with him?

- He created the Union of Esperantists of the Soviet Republics. According to our data, he was engaged in a counterrevolutionary activity, an active Trotskyite. He worked for his British imperialist masters. He was an enemy of the working people. A cosmopolitan.

- And what will Comrade Yezhov tell us?

- We have accurate information, Comrade Stalin, that Dresen, under the guise of studying foreign languages, created in our country a spy agent network and tried to organize the Russian Communist Party of Bolsheviks. As if there was not enough of one, our own, really. The vigilance of the Chekists helped to expose the traitor of the homeland and to stop the provocation of foreign recruits. It is impossible to imagine a more monstrous betrayal. I recommend execution.

- Then that is the will of the party. I think the ideas and moral principles of the bourgeois and proletariat are the exact opposite. And in linguistics, as in politics, there is a struggle for power over the minds of people. These are not just questions of semantics. Language produces only words, right? But with words, we can raise workers and peasants to new achievements and new feats in the name of revolution. Speaking figuratively, the economy is the basis of society, and language is its superstructure. We, the internationalists, have no right to be defeated. Victory will be ours. Isn't that right?

- Absolutely right, Comrade Stalin.

- We can't build socialism without putting an end to opportunists and those who go against the party line. The shareholders oppose the state and the party. The party is our banner and weapon. The party knows more about the man than he knows about himself. The Jews are all the same. Comrade Stalin knows how to treat them. And I will return to the questions of linguistics. Later.

Today, the Esperanto Association has its representative office at UNESCO and is actively involved in several international projects. In addition to the Association, there are also more than sixty different specialized organizations, including professional, cultural, socio-political and religious associations - their geography covers 86 countries. Every year, more than one hundred new translations and original buildings in Esperanto appear in the world. Two hundred fifty newspapers and magazines are published. Vatican Radio and Polish Radio broadcast in Esperanto. In some countries, such as China, Bulgaria, and Hungary, Esperanto has become a language included in the curricula of higher education institutions. In Russia, according to the latest census, about a thousand people speak Esperanto.

It all began with a mug in Jerusalem, wherein 1907 gathered to "gore" in Esperanto the first enthusiasts who decided to devote themselves to the study of universal human language, later ranked by Adolf Hitler in "Mein Kampf" as "the instrument of world Jewry" for the enslavement of other peoples. However, the well-known Benito Mussolini did not prevent the spread of fashion in Esperanto; like the latter, in some ways, both vocabulary and melody resembled the Italian language.

As for the Tower of Babel, Migdal Bavel, yes, there is such a structure, as mentioned in the Book of Genesis. According to the Bible, before the World Flood, the entire civilization was a single nation speaking the same language. And then someone's hands were combed, and he threw a cry: but let's build a tower to heaven, brothers. But the Creator had his own species for the future of mankind, and he did not want to live next door to the cheerful crowd; according to the policy of "divide and conquer," he created a lot of new languages so that the builders of the Tower, flocking from different parts of the world to Babylon, and having had time to lay in it about 90 million bricks, suddenly stopped understanding each other ... Alexander the Great, while passing through those parts of the world, wishing to restore order (he generally liked to establish their order where his phalanxes had to pave their way with fire and sword), ordered the Tower on the bricks, starting from the roof (as we believe, from here and then dispersed in the white light expression "demolished the roof"). However, he did not have time to assemble the structure again because he picked up a lousy disease on the side and went to the other world. However, the idea of a collection of educational building toys for children called Lego has survived to this day.

Lazar Markovic (Ludovico Lazzaro Zamenhof, in Esperanto), this utopian dreamer and idealistic philosopher from Bialystok, after a certain number of centuries, despite the Almighty, managed the impossible: to create an artificial universal language designed to unite the peoples of the world again. Alas, he did not put an end to disagreements, nor did he bring the principles of peaceful coexistence to people's lives. Se la vie.