Baron Pal Podmaniczky and the Norwegian Bible | Page 2

were translated by him from Finnish into Hungarian, and which are,
even today, sung often in Hungarian Lutheran and Reformed Protestant
churches. In the Appendix, I also submit an autobiography and a short

sport story of mine. And hereby I should like to express my gratitude to
Mr. Zsigmond Németh for his kindly permission to quote the most
peculiar features characterizing different languages described in his
works published and forthcoming respectively The language collecting
game continues and I ask you, the reader, once again, to translate the
original short story into any language not present in this book, and send
it to me. I would like to publish a new edition in the year 2005 with 100
languages in it. Thank you, dear reader, for your help.
Martinovitsné Kutas Ilona language collector

RECEPTION OF THE SHORT STORY.
AN ESSAY ON THE MANY LIVES OF "THE NORWEGIAN
BIBLE"
I hadn’t thought on that Christmas day, when I addressed the envelopes
containing "The Norwegian Bible" to my friends, that it was only then
that the great play would begin.
The small bilingual book began its own life. It became a mirror for me
through which I could get to know my friends. They introduced
themselves in the letters, telephone calls and private talks connected
with my first "literary effort". Their reactions to my short story began
to give birth to a larger story about my friend’s characteristics, their
way of thinking and about the ties that connected them to me.
So here follows the many lives of "The Norwegian Bible":
In the previous semester at the Teachers Training College we had a task
of writing a short story in English. I wrote one about my experience
while visiting Norway. The short story follows below:

THE NORWEGIAN BIBLE
a short story by Ilona Kutas to my grandfather
The discovery of the marvellous world of languages is the great
experience of my life. The motivation for this sprang from family roots.
My maternal grandfather, a theological professor, had mastered
eighteen languages. Language and religion were very important for him.
He was not able to teach me German, Hebrew, Polish or English
because I was only five when he died. I only feel somewhere in my
genes that I should follow in his footsteps.

As a member of a librarian delegation I spent a week in Oslo. After the
rich and interesting daily programmes I always ran back to my hotel
room to spend the lonely evenings in the company of my new friend, an
English–Norwegian bilingual Bible. I had found it on the night table on
the first day when I entered the hotel room, my home for a week.
Perhaps it is common in the hotel rooms of Christian countries to have
a Bible at the guest’s disposal. I experienced this custom for the first
time in my life there in Oslo. Finding that Bible brought to mind
remembrances of my childhood as well. As a daughter of a protestant
minister, living at the parsonage until the age of sixteen, I used to go to
church and read the Bible. During the next thirty years of my life,
however, I had not even held a Bible in my hand.
A great game began. I read the English column of the page, compared it
with the Norwegian column and, with the help of my past knowledge
about the Bible, I began to understand the text and the Norwegian
words of mixed English and German origins at the same time.
Day by day the Bible and I became closer and closer friends. I began to
fear my impending separation from it.
On the sixth day I felt a great desire to continue the game at home as
well. I decided therefore to steal the Bible.
I packed it into my bag on the last evening after reading it. But after I
switched off the lamp I could not fall asleep. In the darkness I watched
the closed bag with my friend in it. A battle raged in my head.
This battle raised the following questions:
> How could I reconcile being the daughter of a minister and a thief at
the same time?
> Moreover it was written in this Bible in two beautiful languages:
"Thou shalt not steal!"?
> What would my grandfather say if he knew that his granddaughter
had stolen a Bible?
I think you can imagine the end of the story!
In the morning I took the Bible out of my bag, placed it back on the
night table and, with bag in hand and a great calmness in my heart, I
left the room.
.............
I completed my work with a Hungarian translation later on when I
decided to send my short story as a Christmas card to my friends.

Though