design and construction of the magnificent building that bears his name and is home to the Bard College Conservatory of Music. The number of young Hungarian musicians who have been able to come to Bard to work toward the dual degree (bachelor of music and bachelor of arts in a field other than music) as a result of their generosity is now up to 14. Cariño has been instrumental in the success of the scholarship program, organizing auditions and assisting students in the application process. Since his retirement, Bitó has been able to return full-time to his first love, literature. He has devoted himself to writing novels, essays, and short stories, publishing 16 books over those years. One recent volume, Két világ között (Between Two Worlds), a collection of short stories published in Hungary in 2015, is based, says Bitó, “on the sometimes frustrating, sometimes funny episodes that arise from the inevitable misunderstandings that come from wanting to take part in campus life while having a vocabulary of only a few hundred words. And from translating idioms using a pocket dictionary.” Of course, by the time he wrote those stories, his English was no longer cause for misunderstanding. But, having overcome conventional wisdom to create a breakthrough drug, Bitó turned his attention to a different kind of blindness. “I devoted much of my
unnamed scribe. As its subtitle, Absolving All Men of the Most Hideous Crime of Deicide, indicates, he aims to defuse the most important aspect of anti-Semitism, which he calls the oldest and the bestdocumented prototype of hate-mongering known to humanity. “It can always be relied upon when one wants to divert attention from the real issues plaguing a society,” he says. Bitó is hoping that a film will be made from his apocryphal gospel so that more people can witness its revelation. “It’s important to do whatever we can to fight anti-Semitism,” he says. “Whenever a group feels it has to increase the level of hatred in society, they always go for anti-Semitism. Hate like that is much easier to foster and to use as a mechanism of propaganda. Love is more difficult to move people with. Jesus was apparently pretty good at it, and look what happened to him.” Even more universal is the message of one of his earlier novels, Ábrahám és Izsák (Abraham and Isaac), based on a short story he wrote and lost in the coal mine. Bitó concludes that it was not God or an angel who stopped Abraham from killing his son, Isaac. “Actually,” he says, “Abraham couldn’t do it, even after he convinced himself that God told him to sacrifice his son.” Bitó argues that “Thou shalt not kill” was not carved into stone but was implanted into our
sometimes you can understand the pattern better when you look at the other side of the cloth. i’m not interested in looking at things the same way others have looked before. life, especially after returning to Hungary in the ’90s, to a crusade against the much greater problem of spiritual tunnel vision,” he says. In pursuit of this goal, he published five volumes of essays that originally appeared in Hungarian magazines and newspapers, as well as a few in English (which can be found on his English website, laszlobito.com). The widely acclaimed Boldogabb élet—jó halál/Eutélia— Eutanázia (Blissful Life—Peaceful Death/Eutelia—Euthanasia), a physiological-philosophical treatise on the last stages of life and dying, introduces the concept of eutélia, meaning “good end.” Eutelia encompasses everything that can lead to a better last phase of life and passage out of it, as opposed to euthanasia, which can be achieved simply with an injection or deadly elixir. Not surprisingly, Bitó’s approach to this sensitive topic veers dramatically from the usual take. Perhaps the best illustration of Bitó’s unorthodox approach to deeply ingrained dogma is his series of books on biblical themes. “These stories are very deep in our subconscious,” he explains. “At the time they were written, the main thing was to present a ruthless God whom everyone was afraid of. The world is different now; it’s time to look at the Bible differently.” Bitó regards The Gospel of Anonymous as his most important book. It examines the last days of Jesus through the eyes of an
hearts during our social evolution. This is why it takes so much brainwashing propaganda to fire people up to go to war. Or to get the rookie soldier to dig his bayonet deeper into the straw dummies in boot camp. Bitó also believes that the providence attributed to God is built into us: into our immune system and into our ability to understand and help one another. “But,” he says, “it is more convenient to believe that for a few prayers or by paying for a Mass, God is going to take care of whatever we ask from him. Those of us who survived the Second World War, and all that happened in its shadow, know that God will never protect us from our own inhumanity.” Everything Bitó does reflects his unique point of view. He describes his approach with a metaphor that seems particularly appropriate from a man who is a weaver of words: “Sometimes you can understand the pattern better when you look at the other side of the cloth. I’m not interested in looking at things the same way others have looked before. You might take a little step forward that way, but I’m not interested in that. I’m interested in looking at how we can get a better understanding of something by examining the other side.”
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