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Crossing the Rubicon

© David Poulson

At the end of 1886 a young lady named Klara Silbernik who lived in Kaunas visited her married sister in Warsaw and, by chance, made the acquaintance of Ludovic Lazarus Zamenhof. She has been described as "witty, spirited and self-confident." The bond of affection between the young couple must have been immediate and it did not take very long before Klara persuaded Zamenhof to reveal two carefully concealed secrets.

The first secret, his hope to serve the cause of humanity by creating an easy-to-learn second language for all mankind, we already know. And the second secret I am sure you have guessed: he had fallen deeply in love with Klara. And Zamenhof was doubly fortunate in that, not only did Klara return his love but he found support and encouragement from Klara's father who owned a soap factory and was fairly well-to-do.

Ludovic and Klara were married on August 9th, much less than a year after they had met, and Alexander Silbernik had promised to underwrite the publication costs of a book describing his son-in-law's International Language. (All attempts to find a publisher willing to publish the book as a commercial venture had predictably failed.)

The next obstacle was to obtain permission from the censor. It is hard for us to imagine today the degree of repression practised in the 19th-century Russian Empire but all books were regarded with great suspicion. Again, Zamenhof was fortunate. He decided that the first edition of his work would be published in the Russian language, not Polish, because it was somewhat easier to get work published in the language of the oppressor. And it is pleasant to be able to tell that Zamenhof's father Marcus, whose earlier act of destruction was so shocking, now made amends by persuading the censor for Russian books in Warsaw (whom he knew quite well), that a book describing a projected International Language could be dismissed as a curiosity which posed no threat to the security of the Russian Empire!

Permission to print was granted in June after the proofs had been in the censor's office for two months. Then, having received permission to print, further permission to publish was required (unbelievable isn't it?). But that was granted fairly quickly, on July 26th, just in time to be a very welcome wedding present for Ludovic and Klara who were married on August 9th. How did Zamenhof feel at this time, when the years of silence, solitude and sadness had ended?

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