Esperantists from Calais and Dover, respectively. The congress drew
nearly two hundred participants, and all sessions and activities were
conducted entirely in Esperanto. Flushed with the success at Calais,
Michaux, an influential lawyer (whom Korĵenkov identifies as
Jewish)67 offered his city, Boulogne-sur-Mer, as the host for a full-
scale “Universal” Congress, to be held the following summer.
Zamenhof’s hope was that the Universal Congress would become an
annual event, providing the movement with “a heart-warming
religious center.” 68 In fact, as he would later remark at the 1907
Universal Congress in Cambridge, England, he conceived of
congresses on the model of the thrice-yearly Jewish pilgrimage
festivals. 69
By 1905, four years after he had offered Hillelism to the Jews of
Russia, they had still not heeded his call; as he would later tell the
Jewish Chronicle, “Many persons confessed to me that in their hearts
they agreed with me, but they had not the courage to say so openly.
I could not find a single person willing to help me.” 70 His call to the
Jews of Russia was, after all, paradoxicaclass="underline" He had appealed to them
as a community, yet his tract denied that they were a functioning
community. Having failed to persuade the Jews of Russia to become
Hillelists, he saw the Boulogne Universal Congress as an opportunity
to introduce Hillelism to Esperantists as an interethnic movement
and, from this ingathering, build outward.
Hence, the now-famous letter to Michaux, in which he described
Hillelism as a “moral bridge by which all peoples and religions could
unite in brotherhood without the creation of any new dogmas and
without the need for people to throw away their own religion, up to
this point.…” 71 Warming to his theme, Zamenhof made his claim
that his Jewishness was his chief motive for creating a language of
interethnic understanding. As a Jew committed to universalism
rather than to Zionism, he wrote, he had lived a “tormented” and
“embattled life.” On the other hand, he insisted that he had never
concealed (and clearly did not intend to conceal) his Judaism. To
send home the point that he had sacrificed for his vision—as a Jew,
a doctor, a husband, and a father—the letter included a lengthy
narrative of his failures and wanderings of the 1880s and 1890s.
Michaux, receiving the letter, warned the other French members
of the Congress Committee that Zamenhof was liable to discourse
about “mysticism.” In response, the Congress Committee requested
that Zamenhof submit the text of his inaugural speech. It was a
remarkable document, tempering rapturous, millenarian optimism
with chastened, homespun humility.
The present day is sacred. Our meeting is humble; the
outside world knows little about it and the words spoken
here will not be telegraphed to all the towns and villages
of the world; heads of state and cabinet ministers are not
meeting here to change the political map of the world; this
hall is not resplendent with luxurious clothes and
impressive decorations; no cannon are firing salutes
outside the modest building in which we are assembled;
but through the air of our hall mysterious sounds are
travelling, very low sounds, not perceptible by the ear, but
audible to every sensitive souclass="underline" the sound of something
great that is now being born. Mysterious phantoms are
floating in the air … the image of a time to come, of a new
era. [They] will fly into the world, will be made flesh, will
assume power. 72
Just as the Jews were a “shadow people” who had yet to realize
themselves in modernity, the Esperantists were as yet “phantoms” of
the just and harmonious people they would help to bring into being.
The draft of Zamenhof’s speech ended by invoking “a high moral
force” with a hymn of his own composition, called “Prayer under the
Green Standard.”
To thee, O powerful incorporeal mystery
Great force, ruling the world,
To thee, great source of love and trust,
And everlasting source of life,
To thee, whom all men present differently,
Yet sense alike in their hearts
To thee, who createst, to thee, who rulest,
We pray today.
When the Congress Committee met in closed session to review the
speech, the result was explosive. In Michaux’s words (as quoted by
Gaston Waringhien):
One can hardly grasp the wonderment and scandal of
these French intellectuals, with their Cartesian and
rational[ist] spirit, representatives of lay universities and
supporters of secular government, accustomed to and
identified with freethinking and atheism, when they heard
this flaming prayer to “the high moral Power. ”73
Though Zamenhof’s address had not mentioned his Jewishness
explicitly, it didn’t seem to matter; he was framed by the French as a
Jewish outsider:
“But he’s a Jewish prophet,” cried Bourlet, and Cart for his
part: “That Slav! Michaux will never be able to control this
crazy man!”—and Sebert lamented: “We’ll be ruined and a
laughingstock. ”74
On the eve of the congress, Zamenhof came before the organizing
committee, who pressured him to amend his speech and jettison the
prayer. Tearful, isolated, apprehensive, he refused to change the
speech, but agreed to drop the final stanza of the prayer, which
declared that “Christians, Jews or Mahometans, /We are all children
of God.”
To most of the nearly seven hundred participants, who were
unaware of the tension between Zamenhof and the organizing
committee, the Boulogne congress was a phenomenal success.
Arriving in Paris en route to the congress, Zamenhof found himself
an instant celebrity. He was banqueted at the Hȏtel de Ville, feted at
the Eiffel Tower, named a Knight of the Legion of Honor, and given
a VIP tour of the Esperanto Printing Society. And in Boulogne, he
was greeted by cheers in the language he had invented. Esperanto
proved itself equal to any occasion: meetings, concerts, a
performance of Molière’s The Forced Marriage, a mass, readings,
banquets, balls, and excursions to Folkestone and Dover. On display
were the green-and-white Esperanto flag, newly created by the
Esperantists of Boulogne; books and magazines in Esperanto; and
various souvenirs: “pencils, pens, erasers, plates, liqueurs
[“Esperantine”], biscuits, soaps and even a completely fresh modern
invention: an electric board that lit up when endings were in
grammatical agreement.” 75
The First Universal Congress, Boulogne-sur-Mer, 1905
[Österreichische Nationalbibliothek]
Delivering his contested speech the next day, Zamenhof hewed to
his hard bargain. Exhausted by his ordeal before the Congress
Committee, he was stunned to receive a long and thundering
ovation. It was the first time, but not the last, that he would be
revered by a throng of Esperantists as the godlike Kreinto—
Esperanto’s beloved creator. It thrilled him; it also embarrassed him.
Whereas Schleyer had referred to himself as Volapük’s “supreme