Graham Greene & Esperanto (7): Confidential Agent (film) revisited

I already blogged about the film Confidential Agent (1945, 118 min.) and posted the trailer along with it. (For more information on the film see the IMDb site.)

For the novel Graham Greene created the character Dr. Bellows, naive creator of the artificial international language Entrenationo. You can find the video clip featuring Entrenatio and a few others here:

Confidential Agent -- (Movie Clip) Mr. Contreras

Here is the video clip in which Entrenationo appears:



Dr. Bellows, the naive inventor of this language, has no idea that his institute serves as a dangerous meeting ground for international intrigue and a life-and-death struggle.

In the novel, Greene creates an effective portrayal of an artificial language movement completely ineffective and oblivious to the real dangers of the world. Greene probably saw a parallel between Bellows/Entrenationo and Zamenhof/Esperanto. And while Esperantists have often parodied their own foolishness, and in some cases have criticized Zamenhof's political limitations, Zamenhof was no Bellows, and some Esperantists were politically astute, including those who fought fascism in the Spanish Civil War, which though not named serves as the backdrop for Greene's novel.

Graham Greene & Esperanto (6): aboard Stamboul Train again

I blogged about Graham Greene's novel Stamboul Train once before, in Esperanto. This time here is a direct quote:

‘Budapest.’ Dr. Czinner ceased writing for a little more than a minute. That small pause was the tribute he paid to the city in which his father had been born. His father had left Hungary when a young man and settled in Dalmatia; in Hungary he had been a peasant, toiling on another man’s land; in Split and eventually in Belgrade he had been a shoemaker working for himself; and yet the previous more servile existence, the inheritance of a Hungarian peasant’s blood, represented to Dr. Czinner the breath of a larger culture blowing down the dark stinking Balkan alleys. It was as if an Athenian slave, become a freed man in barbarian lands, regretted a little the statuary, the poetry, the philosophy of a culture in which he had had no share. The station began to float away from him; names slipped by in a language which his father had never taught him. ‘Restoracioj’, Pôsto’, ‘Informoj’. A poster flapped close to the carriage window: ‘Teatnoj Kaj Amuzejoj’, and mechanically he noted the unfamiliar names, the entertainments which would be just opening as the train arrived at Belgrade, the Opera, the Royal Orfeum, the Tabarin, and the Jardin de Paris.

     — Graham Greene, Stamboul Train (Penguin paperback, p. 136)

Greene substitutes Esperanto for Hungarian here, making two mistakes in the process. I do not know why he chose to utilize Esperanto here, and why Hungarian in particular. Could it be a coincidence that since Budapest was the world cultural capital of Esperanto between the world wars, Greene identified Esperanto with Hungarian?

On Greene's concerns about language, here again is a paper with an updated link:

Going Especially Careful in The Third Man: A Linguistic Exploration by David Crystal.
Paper given to the Graham Greene Festival, Berkhamsted, September 2009.

Crystal finds the danger-signals in Greene's fiction often connected with language. Artificial languages are markers of especially ominous developments. There is nothing particularly ominous in the quote above as far as I can tell, but see an earlier post on Greene for a list of references in other novels.  There are separate treatments of Greene's postulated artificial language 'Entrenationo' in his novel The Confidential Agent.

Graham Greene & Esperanto (5): The Confidential Agent

Here is the first installment of excerpts from The Confidential Agent pertaining to the artificial language Entrenationo:

Graham Greene’s Entrenationo (1)

Two more installments are to follow.

Here are a few specimens of literary criticism pertaining specifically to this novel:

The Modern World through the Luminous Path of Prose Fiction: Reading Graham Greene’s A Burnt-out Case and The Confidential Agent as Dystopian Novels by Ayobami Kehinde

Graham Greene's Heroes: Regeneration Through Experience by Francisco John Sabine
 

Graham Greene & Esperanto (4): Confidential Agent (film)

Segments of the film Confidential Agent (1945, 118 min.) could once be found on YouTube, and the entire film was once available via the Online Movie Database, but no more. One sequence no longer viewable on YouTube was with Peter Lorre speaking in Entrenationo.

The film cannot at this time be obtained through Netflix, but a DVD does exist; it was released earlier this year and is part of the Warner Archive Collection. Here is a DVD Savant review by Glenn Erickson, 4 May 2011. Here is one paragraph from this review:

Confidential Agent has a number of inspired touches, the most amusing being a pathetic language school where Peter Lorre works. Ian Wolfe has invented an Esperanto-like international language and is convinced that world peace can be achieved if everyone simply learns to talk in the new tongue. Lorre is hilarious, conducting absurd language lessons that will never amount to anything. The scene nails the desperation of an intelligent man working a job that belongs in Alice's Wonderland. Lorre's efforts will also be amusing to language teachers.

Several reviews can be found online. Here are two more, neither of which mention Entrenationo:

The Cineaste's Lament

Casablanca's Dark Angel: Confidential Agent (1945) (Critics at Large)

Graham Greene & Esperanto (3): Stamboul Train

Jen raporto pri utiligo de Esperanto en romano Stamboul Train:

Jul 11, 2002:
Pri Greene kaj Esperanto:

En lia romano Stambul Train la ĉefpersono, la hungar-origina Czinner trajne traveturas Budapeŝton. El sia kupeo li vidas kaj deĉifras iujn skribojn, sed li bedaŭras ne kompreni ilin, ĉar ili estas « en lingvo kiun li de longe forgesis » (mi citas elmemore). La kunteksto evidentigas ke devas temi pri la hungara. Aŭ devus – ĉar la vortoj estas fakte en Esperanto.

Laŭ mia privata supozo, dum la verkado Greene devis konstati ke li ne havas eĉ frazlibron hungaran ĉemane, kaj li trompetis sian publikon, pigre konsultinte surbretan Esperantaĵon.

Amike
Istvan Ertl

Jaŝovardan el Germanio faris prelegon je 20 aŭgusto 2010 ĉe la Londona E-Klubo pri la temo "Uzo de Esperanto en Fervoja Romano "Stamboul Train" de Graham Greene".

Graham Greene & Esperanto (2): The Confidential Agent

Graham Greene's novel The Confidential Agent (1939) contains an obvious parody of Zamenhof and Esperanto.

Kafejo.com : Auxlang Mentions : The Confidential Agent

Here we find a few quotes and samples of Entrenationo, the artificial language of Dr. Bellows, who greets his visitors in his language: "Me tray joyass."

There is an entry on Graham Greene in Vikipedio, the Esperanto version of Wikipedia, but no mention of Greene's references to Esperanto in several of his novels.

The Confidential Agent was watered down beyond recognition in a 1949 Escape radio adaptation, which you can listen to online. No Dr. Bellows here.

The novel was made into a film in 1945, in which the character Dr. Bellows appears. I have not seen this.

Greene's novel is mentioned in passing in this article:

Esperanto and the ideology of constructed languages
By Donald Broadribb, International Language Reporter, 2nd Quarter 1970, pp. 1-9.

The blog Running like hell in the land of overkill has an entry that begins:

June 5, 2003 Brookline
Up at seven A.M., Boston time. I weigh 184 pounds. Went downtown for an interview at the language school. Such an odd air to all of those places, captured perfectly by Graham Greene in one of his novels. Always remember the Esperanto teacher in his rubber shoes, poking his nose into classrooms.

Greene portrayed the informal (but high pressure) sales pitches that all these schools employ. It's quasi-religious. Remember how, returning from Rome to Paris, I saw an Esperanto school from the metro somewhere near Place d'Italie. What qualifications must one have to work there. Are there any native speakers of Esperanto, for example?

This article by a noted linguistics scholar gives us the most information on Greene's attitudes about language:

Going Especially Careful in The Third Man: A Linguistic Exploration by David Crystal.
Paper given to the Graham Greene Festival, Berkhamsted, September 2009.

Crystal finds the danger-signals in Greene's novel often connected with language. Artificial languages are markers of especially ominous developments. 

Graham Greene & Esperanto (1): quotes from novels

He went on, 'All the same, the other does represent a mood. It's we who are the materialists. The scrapping of all the old boundaries, the new economic ideas . . . the hugeness of the dream. It is attractive to men who are not tied—to a particular village or town they don't want to see scrapped. People with unhappy childhoods, progressive people who learn Esperanto, vegetarians who don't like shedding blood.'

SOURCE: Graham Greene, The Ministry of Fear (1943).

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It was a very obscure poem, full of words which were like Esperanto. He thought: So this is English poetry: how odd.

SOURCE: The Power and the Glory (1940).

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There were coloured photographs of naked girls outside and in night-club Esperanto one neon-lighted word, Strippteese.

SOURCE: Our Man in Havana (1958).

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. . . he was like a man without a passport, without a nationality; like a man who could only speak Esperanto.

SOURCE: England Made Me (1935).

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And besides he was happy here, sitting where the rat had sat, in his own world. He began to think of the Esperanto, and of the next day's work.

* * *

"One more glass," the captain of the Esperanto, said.

SOURCE: The Heart Of The Matter (1948).

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For the most part, Greene's references to Esperanto are negative. In my next post I will focus on Greene's novel The Confidential Agent (1939), which includes a satirized Zamenhof-like figure and his artificial language Entrenationo, along with some secondary sources that highlight Greene's negative disposition towards Esperanto and artificial languages.