GEORGE PAYERLE, A MAINSTREAM "OUTSIDER"

On putting the finishing touches to my monograph, Magyar irodalom Kanadában, I have asked George Payerle, a novelist, a poet and translator, whether his Hungarian childhood has had any influence on his outlook on life and on his literary style in the English language.

For the record, George was born Payerle György of Hungarian parents in Vancouver. He spoke only Hungarian until he entered the school system, and, therefore, describes himself a "native D.P." He has published poems, short stories and translations from Hungarian into English, as well as long fiction (the afterpeople, 1970, Wolfbane Fane, 1977, and Unknown Soldier, 1987, 2nd edition 2010). His two books of poetry are The Last Trip to Oregon (2002) and alterations (2004).

Although he seldom writes about his Hungarian experience, the main themes of his novels pertain to characters placed at the periphery of life. He writes about the “outsiders”, such as the ex-military person who finds it difficult to cope with life that had passed him a long time ago. George’s response is as follows:

My father was born in Budapest. My mother, in Zirc. They met in Winnipeg after their families had emigrated there from Hungary in the 1920s. As part of my Grandfather Payerle’s extended family, they dirt-farmed their way across the Prairies, saving enough to establish a successful dairy farm outside Armstrong, BC, where my brother, Cornell, spent his childhood. I was born in Vancouver in 1945, twelve days after Nagasaki. By then, my father was pulling green chain at a saw mill on the Fraser River; the family farm had disbanded because all three sons had married and the kitchen became too crowded.

My first language was Magyar, because that’s what my parents spoke at home. Thus, I grew up as a Displaced Person in my native land, with a cultural background that included farming, the lumber industry, and the literature and music of both Hungary and Canada. It took me until the fourth grade in school to master English, but I had all the makings of a writer and I think I unconsciously set out to beat my English-speaking confrères at their own game.

You asked me to explain what I mean when I say that I believe my writing style in English is influenced by the Magyar I learned as my native tongue. This is difficult to do, since I never did formally learn Hungarian or Hungarian grammar. But what happens when I write, especially prose fiction, is that language floats up from my subconscious, where the "imagining" takes place, like a conscious dream. I believe that to be my úr-language, primordially Magyar in sensibility and syntax before it becomes words, which are English. Very occasionally, English doesn’t provide a word and I have to "translate" the Magyar that I hear instead.

My translation from Magyar text written by someone else is very slow and painstaking. I prefer to have a literal translation at hand, and make heavy use of both my Országh dictionary and consultation with the author (if possible). But what happens when I’m actually imagining the English version of the Hungarian text is a very similar process. I have been paid the great compliment that my translations read like Magyar, except with English words.

I don’t know that this answers your question, John, but it should indicate why I think you are right when you say that, like John Marlyn and other displaced Hungarians in this country, I write about Canadian characters on the periphery of their own society. This is clearly true of the characters in my first novel – The afterpeople – and Sam Collister, the Unknown Soldier. They are persons displaced by perceptions and experience which make them culturally alien in their own land. In recent years, I have been working on the rest of Collister’s life. Sam lives a lot longer than I thought he would, and succeeds in gathering his divided family around him, essentially by force of his indomitable personality. The novel should be finished this year, and might even have a publisher in the little MW Books of Garden Bay, who published the first paperback edition of Soldier late in 2010. We outsiders do eventually get into print!

Olvasóink nevében is, jó szerencsét, Gyuri!

János Miska

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