Hosts and Guests
By Max Beerbohm
Beerbohm is regarded as the best essayist parodist and cartoonist of his age. He was educated at Merton College, Oxford and was a popular figure in London s’ artistic and fashionable circles.
‘Host and Guests’ is a humorous essay in which Beerbohm describes the qualities of the hosts and the guests. He thinks that mankind can be divided generally into two categories: hosts and guests. The difference the between the two is not only circumstantial and particular but also temperamental and general. Every human being has either the positive and active instinct of being a host or the negative and passive instinct of being a guest. Hosts are those who have the natural instinct to serve others and guests are those who want to be served.
The quality of hospitality is exclusively a human quality and it has developed slowly with the development of the civilization. The cavemen did not entertain others because they were afraid of being killed by the hosts in their caves. The quality of hospitality developed slowly as human beings were organized into groups. However the history of hospitality is full of painful incidents, the writer tells us that though the Israelites were considered to be the salt of the world, yet the treachery of the Jael was condemnable.
In the same way the Greeks cultured but Odysseus killed his guests under his own room. The Romans were at the peak of civilization in the fifteenth century, but Borgias concealed poison in their cellars for their guests. Yet the Scotch s’ hospitality is proverbial. It was Scotland that first formed hospitality with the basic principal that the guest must be honored and protected at all cost.
Discussing hospitality in the present world, the writer says that it is conventional for the rich to give and for the poor to take as a result of which the rich usually become hosts and the poor usually become the guests. But this cannot be regarded as a rule because neither all the poor are guests nor all the rich are always the hosts. Most of the time it is simply the matter of one’s’ temperament. However, a host as a guest is far worse than the guest as a host. The writer says that like other boys he himself was a guest by nature but he often entertained his friends at the restaurant and was always afraid of the shortage of the money in his pocket. The writer feels that the guests must be obliged to their hosts but many times it is not so. Many guests like Dante are often ungrateful to their hosts.
Difficult words with Urdu Meaning
| English | Urdu |
| Parodist | مزاحیہ انداز میں نقالی کرنے والا |
| Circumstantial | حالات پر منحصر ہونا |
| Instinct | فطری جبلت ,پیدائشی عادت |
| Hospitality | مہمان نوازی |
| Civilization | تہذیب |
| Entertained | مہمان کی خاطر مدارت کرنا |
| Israelites | اسرائیلی |
| Jael (Yeal) | ایک عورت جس نے سزرا کو دھوکے سے قتل کیا تھا |
| Condemnable | قابلِ مزمت |
| Borgia | سپین کے اندر ایک خاندان جو سیاسی اور مذہبی قوت بن کر ابھرے تھے لیکن وہ اپنے مہمانوں کو زہر دے کر قتل کر دیتے تھے |
| Concealed | چھپا دینا |
| Proverbial | ایسی چیز جو مثالی ہو |
| Ungrateful | نا شکر گزار ہونا |
| Temperament | مزاج |
| Dante | اٹلی کا ایک مشہور شاعر تھا |
مفہوم
اس مضمون کے اندر مصنف بڑے مزاحیہ انداز سے انسانوں کی فطری جبلت مہمان یا میزبان ہونے کی کو پیش کرتا ہے ۔ وہ انسانوں کو دو گرہوں میں تقسیم کرتا ہے ۔ ایک گروہ وہ ہے جو پیدائشی میزبان ہوتے ہیں اور دوسرا گروہ وہ ہے جو پیداِشی مہمان ہوتے ہیں۔ مہمان نوازی کی عادت انسان کی مثبت خصوصیت ہے جو آہستہ آہستہ تہذیب کی ترقی کے ساتھ ساتھ پیدا ہوئی۔ لیکن مہمان نوازی کی تاریخ کافی کرب ناک ہے۔ وقت کی ترقی کے ساتھ ساتھ مہمان نوازی کےطریقے بھی بدل گئے ہیں۔ آج کے دور میں امیروں کو مہمان نواز سمجھا جاتا ہے اور غریبوں کو اچھا مہمان سمجھا جاتا ہے حالنکہ ہر امیر مہمان دار نہیں ہوتا اور ہر غریب مہمان نہیں ہوتا ، حالات اس کے برعکس بھی ہو سکتے ہیں
