Lidia

The problem sometimes seemed beyond him. How could one boy invent a language? 'Human language,' wrote Zamenhof, 'with its endless accumulation of grammatical forms, and its hundreds of thousands of words . . . seemed to me such a colossal and artificial machine that more than once I told myself: "enough of dreams! This enterprise is beyond human powers." And yet, I always came back to my dreams.'

Ludwik Zamenhof was not the first to think of creating a universal language. Proposals for constructing auxiliary languages had been circulated since the seventeenth century — Descartes mentioned the idea in a letter in 1629. In 1878, even before Zamenhof had completed his project, a proposal for a language called Volapŭk (Word Speech) was published by Johann Martin Schleyer, a German Catholic priest, who felt his work to be divinely revealed. But Volapŭk was arbitrary and difficult. Eventually it died out, its followers bitterly divided over Schleyer's authoritarian attitude and the issue of linguistic reforms.

At the age of fifteen Ludwik Zamenhof began to try to create his language. His first attempts were unsatisfactory, but as the years passed, he continued to work on his project.

By now the Zamenhof family had moved to Warsaw where Ludwik's father, Markus, taught languages. A strict disciplinarian, Markus Zamenhof had no formal education but was self-taught. However, he intended that his sons should go to university.

To earn the necessary money, the Zamenhof family took in boarders, and Markus took up the post of Jewish Censor. At home every night he scrutinized Jewish publications for any statement that might offend the Russian government or the tsar. With the money he earned, Markus was able to educate his sons. Four became doctors and one a pharmacist. As one would expect for that time, none of his daughters went to university.

In 1878 Ludwik was in the eighth class of the gymnazium, and his language was, as he wrote later, 'more or less ready'. There was still a great difference between his Lingwe Uniiversala (Universal Language) and what would eventually become Esperanto, but the idea, at least, had taken shape. He confided his creation to some ofhis friends and his brother Feliks. Attracted by Ludwik's idea and the simplicity of the language, they began to learn it.

On 5 December 1878 the small group of friends solemnly celebrated the birth of Lingwe Uniwersala, giving speeches in the new language

and singing enthusiastically the anthem Ludwik had written. It began: Malamikete de las rtacjes Kado, kaddjam temp' esta! La tot' homoze in familje Konutiigare so deba.

(Hatred of the nations,

Fall away, fall away, it is already time!

All mankind in one family

Must become united.)

In June, the young men finished school and went their separate ways. But when Ludwik's friends tried to tell others about the new language, they were scoffed at by 'mature' men and immediately repudiated the language. Ludwik found himself alone. He knew that he was still too young to display his creation publicly, and he decided to wait and continue improving the language. Ludwik received another blow when his father, who had tolerated Ludwik's project until now, abruptly became opposed to it. Someone had convinced him that his son's preoccupation with the language might be a sign of insanity. Markus made Ludwik promise to give it up until he had finished his university studies. He took away Ludwik's notebooks containing all his precious work - the entire grammar of the language and the translations he had made - and locked them up.

Soon Ludwik left for Moscow University, where he was to study medicine. In Moscow he was exposed to other intellectual currents, and his idealism took a new direction as he became involved in the early stirrings of what would eventually become the Zionist movement.

Like many young Jews of the time, Ludwik Zamenhof wanted to improve the intolerable situation of the Jewish people in Eastern Europe. His father and grandfather had been followers ofthe Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment, and the humanistic, rationalistic, and secularistic ideas which the Haskalah belatedly brought to Eastern European Jewry deeply influenced Ludwik.