The Green Star

I can not fully express to you the depths of my girlfriend Atenea's lack of interest in accompanying me to the Esperantomuseum, which is attached to National Library of Austria. When I first told her I wanted to go, she laughed. Later on, as I insisted that it would be a stop on our trip to Vienna, she rolled her eyes, and ultimately, when the time came, chose instead to spend quality time with the friend of hers with whom we're staying. I took the silent tram downtown myself, and feeling faintly ridiculous, found the museum without too much trouble.

The Esperantomuseum is a tiny hall filled with posters of various Esperanto world congresses, and a few advertisements made in the heyday of the language. It contains a few words on the nature of constructed languages in general, experiments by Descartes with a "Philosophical language" and then spends most of its time on the history of Zamenhoff's "Internacia Lingvo," with publication dates of various important works, growth and Utopian interest in the early 20th century, repression under fascism, Nazism and Communism, and its anemic but tenacious current existence. There are interactive displays where you can master the various endings, and that's about it.

I have a soft spot for Esperanto. I would wager most of us do, although for some, that softness becomes contempt. Who can help but love a kooky group of dreamers, hoping to bridge the gap between nations, between words, between silences? Who can fail to be charmed by the name Esperanto itself, taken from Zamenhoff's pseudonym, meaning, The One Who Hopes?

I have some objections, of course. The richness of human life owes so much to varied expression, different geniuses of different languages. Although Esperanto only hoped to supplement regional languages, not supplant them, it does represent a threat to that variety, that chaos. But all in all, who among us doesn't blaspheme and dream of reversing the Tragedy of Babel?

It was a shame that Atenea didn't come with me. She is an educator and a scholar of education, specializing in Education in War Zones, Refugee Education, the induction and education of immigrants into their new homes. In other words, she studies the fragile peaces and raging wars that take place in the heart of a child as they try to master two or more languages. I wonder what she would have thought of Esperanto and its adherents, an eccentric, hopeful crowd of dreamers, trying to tie warring nations together with a common tongue, striving towards greater understanding.

I went upstairs after the Esperantomuseum, my ticket allowing me into another small collection, the Globenmuseum. I walked through the halls, looking at the ancient, brown maps projected onto spheres, some with the Americas missing, some with constellations. All were set in darkened rooms, to avoid more yellowing, each carefully set apart from the others and lit with LED lights, against black velvet. Dozens, hundreds of small green planets, fragile and alone.