January 14th.
Our destiny has been decided for us in secret, in whispers within the walls of Pest. And the houses where this whispering has been going on have paid the penalty: their grimy fronts are branded with the mark of the beast. The very customs and manners of the times are designed for the masses, and obtrude themselves like prostitutes in the street. Modesty and discretion no longer exist. It is probably for the same reason that the world of art and letters now produces only works meant for the masses. Epochs are known by their arts. Our age has posters—and viler, baser posters than those of to-day, whether on paper or in the shape of men, have never existed.
As I stepped out into the street this morning it did me good, after all the pasted-up horrors, to see the posters of the League for the Defence of Territorial Integrity, showing on a red background the split-up map of Hungary. This map showed the ancient kingdom cut up into five pieces, and in the midst of the provinces despoiled by Czecho-Slovakia, Yugo-Slavia, Roumania and Austria, there appeared the tiny little land that remains to us, a land incapable of existence, the plain deprived of its forests and its mines. And underneath, as though the crippled land, robbed of three million Hungarian sons, were crying out, three words were printed: “No, no, never!”
The streets, the houses, the walls proclaimed it, and after endless weeks I felt for the first time at home again in this town, which had denied everything that goes to make up my faith. Is Budapest recovering its sanity? My hope was suddenly torn to shreds. Near a bare tree of the boulevard a well-dressed young man bent down and scooped up some mud with his hands; then ... he walked up to the wall and flung it all over the poster.
The blood rushed to my head. “How dare you!” I cried. The young man turned round. I shall never forget his face; it was drawn in Palestine two thousand years ago.
“What are you talking about? There’s no such thing as ‘my country,’” he said vindictively.
Instinctively I looked round—was there nobody to take this scoundrel by the throat? But the passers-by went on unheeding. I don’t remember what I said, but I don’t think I have ever felt so angry before. It was all so humiliating. I had never realised so clearly, so frightfully, what it was they wanted. No country! They have none, so they intend that we shall have none either.
Are the Jews going to outlive us too, because they will not die for the land? All my national instincts rebelled. They shall not outlive us! Their time will come. They are only mortal, for they want a country—they want our country. The life of peoples is like the life of individuals. They have their childhood, their youth, their manhood and their old age. Humanity has deprived the Jewish people of the flowering time of youth and manhood. Their race has aged unsatisfied while it has buried its contemporaries—Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians. It has seen Athens, Rome, and Byzantium die, though it was old when it stood at their cradles. Without contemporaries, alone, a stranger, it has remained among us, and it cannot yet die, for it must await its destiny. And now, even when the nations had begun to deal kindly with it, it celebrates its wasted flowering-time in a horrible dance of death.
The Wandering Jew paints his face young, and indulges in orgies on the edge of the grave.