Ladies and Gentlemen,

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the garden of Kadriorg Palace.


You have assembled under the Finno-Ugric sign. This is a field that has fascinated me over decades. That is why I have so many acquaintances among you.

You have assembled for a writers' congress. That, too, is the kind of work I used to do for decades.

So let me not address you as Ladies and Gentlemen, but tell you instead: welcome, dear kinsmen, dear colleagues!

Over the past decade I have been away from you, been into politics. My work stopped short at the time I was trying to find an answer to a question pertaining to cultural history: did the compass come from China to Europe via the Mediterranean or through Siberia and Komi-Zyrian hunters? One day someone will answer this question anyway. I must admit that as for myself, questions have given me more pleasure than answers. I know that new generations of scholars are taking over, new methods are being applied... In the August issue of our academic journal Keel ja Kirjandus /Language and Literature/ Professor Agu Künnap asserts that the traditional pattern of the Finno-Ugric language tree has already been superseded and the scrutiny of the gene chain gives us much preciser data about our origin.

But be it as it may.

Today I give priority to an assertion by Oskar Loorits half a century ago that the Finno-Ugrian attitude to life is characterized by the will to PERSIST and watch.

I want to repeat, syllable by syllable, even sound by sound, the word PERSIST to you.

The word Loorits used is not adequate to characterize the past decade. It ought to be replaced by the word CHANGE. The will to CHANGE and BE CHANGED in order to PERSIST.

I am happy we have managed to do so. We, here in Estonia, in Finland and Hungary. All of our peoples, to a greater or smaller extent.

The times have changed, and we have changed with them; our goals have changed in order for us to PERSIST. If there is no change, it means preserves, a mausoleum, a cosmetological Intourist Hades.

The end of the century is all full of paradoxes. Year in, year out it is getting easier and easier to embrace, to enfold the world; distances are vanishing; the information society is shaping an entirely new turn of mind.

This is a way to unity.

But along with that, parallel with that there still survives, develops and gathers momentum an intense and obsessional need to preserve differences, to preserve distinctiveness and singularity, to guard and protect small nations and cultures, since they are unique in this world and a world without them would be poorer.

The high and mighty often fail to realize it. Neither in the east nor in the west. It is our duty to explain, to clarify it, to stand for it with patience.

Let us also consider a political aspect: during the past two decades the United Nations has only grown by admission of small states. It is only small states that can contribute to the enlargement of the world organization. It remains to hope that in the next decade, which will extend into the next century, the great powers will also wake up to the consciousness of the balancing role of the small states.

The correlation of diversity and unity is also observed by the work of your congress. You maintain originality and transform it into a common property of the world, thus making the world's way of thinking opener, more tolerant, more serious. The fate of humankind depends on whether it sees a threat or a wealth in the difference between cultures, languages, ways of thinking.

I have noticed that one of your discussion topics was THE CHANGE OF MEANING IN THE COURSE OF TRANSLATION. Of ocurse it changes: a word has so many hues and shades, I remember it well since the days when I was a translator; but the meaning of one word or one sentence changes in order for the text as a whole to persist.

Persistence is of two kinds.

Pompeii has persisted unchanged under ashes and lava over a score of centuries.

Our genes, our language, the turn of mind conditioned by it have persisted much longer and considerably more vigourously than Pompeii, because they have been in constant dialogue with the changing world. They have changed themselves, in their turn changing the world, and this spells p for persistence, a persistence different from that of the dead Pompeii, because an open dialogue like this carries small cultures, too, forward, into the future.

For that, on this beautiful late summer day, I wish you a lot of energy and success, hope and happiness.

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