A few days back, I was looking through Esperanto sites online and found a young adult book called “Peter Jameson’s Secret Language” and decided to get a copy. The digital version is available for free on Archive.org (find it here).
At first, I found it to be kind of a cute but silly little book about a boy who wants to communicate with his friends at school in a language no one could understand – Esperanto. But as it went on, I found it to be a little more involved in that. What really caught my interest at first was finding references to Michigan and Ontario early into the book. So I decided to do a little bit of digging on the author, Sylvan Zaft. It turns out that he lived in the metro Detroit area! I was excited because I was going to ask him to come speak to our group… but sadly I also found that he had passed in 2015.
After finishing the book just a short while ago, I find that I am extremely sad that he is no longer with us. Peter Jameson’s Secret Language is far more than a children’s book about a secret language – it is an encapsulation of the Esperanto movement over decades. It is an allegory of the discovery, growth, betrayal, decline, resurgence, and the hope that the language brings. Certainly, I did not expect to have such a raw emotional response; I knew some of the history of the language but to have it put in such form really packed a punch.
I find myself more determined than ever to promote the culture and community – la espero (the hope) – that Esperanto stands for.
When I started the journey of learning Esperanto, first in the early 2000s and then more earnestly starting in 2017, it was just a niché language to me. Something fun and unique. Learning the history behind it has been an education I could have never, in my dreams of dreams, imagined. Esperantists during the second world war were killed by Russians, were put into concentration camps by the Nazis; the language was used by the US Army as the “enemy language” during training (see the government manual on Archive.org here). It angers me that such a beautiful concept, such a beautiful language, was distorted and used to abuse humanity.
I woke up today as a burgeoning Esperantist who knew some of its history, and tonight I will sleep as an Esperantist who – at least on an emotional level – has felt a tiny portion of that history.
Fajro brulas en mi; nesatigebla soifo.
Dankon, D-ro Zaft.