WHAT MAX MÜLLER SAID.
I wonder whether the columns of The Esperantist are disposed freely to admit that ever-present personal pronoun, "I." I am perhaps bold in introducing it, but I cannot help thinking that a new language must have to put up with some of the inconveniences, at least, that all old languages have had to tolerate.
What I have to relate is but a little personal souvenir, but it is connected with the name of a great linguist, and an authority well worth quoting.
I was in Venice, not standing between a palace and a prison, but gliding along the canals of the fairy city in a gondola, as every mortal should if he desires to realise that life is worth living. I was reading an article, "Reminiscences," by Max Müller, which delighted me so that the first thing I did on returning home was to write to him, somewhat on these lines—
"I am a stranger to you, and if I don’t write on the spur of the moment, I should not venture to do so at all. Yet surely we ought to know one another. You, a godson of Max Maria von Weber, and I a godson of Felix Mendelssohn! You learnt your Latin and Greek in Leipzig, and so did I; only you went to the Nicolai-Schule and I to the Thomas-Schule, which accounts for the difference in the result. But we must have eaten our schoolboy apples from the same old woman’s basket in the Grimmaische Strasse, etc., etc."
Well, Max Müller answered in the kindest spirit. He had heard my father play with Mendelssohn, and he had seen a picture of mine, so we were not strangers. Would I come to Oxford on my return to England and be his guest.
Some months later I went, and spent several days at his house. There was a unique opportunity of fully ascertaining his views on the adoption of a universal language.
"Is such a thing possible?" I asked him. "Never mind which language is to be selected. I want your authority to silence those who look upon anything of the kind as chimerical."
"Well," he said, "you must go to younger people for an answer to that. You know that I have given it as my opinion that Esperanto is the best attempt at a universal language yet made, and that is as much as I can say." I pressed him, perhaps rather unduly, but without success.
But as I was leaving his hospitable house he handed me back a little album (a godfather’s gift from Mendelssohn), in which I had asked him to inscribe his name, and I read—"Is a universal language possible? Yes.—M.M."
Felix Moscheles.
Oxford, July 2, 10 p.m
Is a universal language possible? Yes. M. M.
Felix Mendelssohn:
Wenn Menschen aus einander gehn
So sagen sie, Auf Wiedersehn,—auf Wiedersehn.
Felix Moscheles:
Die Sprachen sind auch aus einander gegangen.
D’rum theilen sie alle dasselbe Verlangen.
Auf Wiedersehn, auf Wiedersehn!
F. Max Müller.
Felix Mendelssohn diris.—Se homoj disiĝas ili diras "Ĝis la Revido, Ĝis la Revido."
Felix Moscheles diris.—La lingvoj ankaŭ estas disiĝitaj, do ĉiuj partoprenas la saman deziron. "Ĝis la Revido, Ĝis la Revido!"