Lives in Translation: Bilingual Writers on Identity and Creativity

by Isabelle De Courtivron (Editor)

Book by

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays

192 pages, Hardcover

First published July 18, 2003

Reviews

[vicky · Rating 4 out of 5]

I probably wouldn’t have discovered this book if it wasn’t for a seminar at uni. I’m glad I read it and I’m beyond inspired by this collection of essays, some of which are deeply personal, on the experience of and sentiments towards bilingualism: “What does it mean? Living in two languages, between two languages, or in the overlap of two languages? What is it like to write in a language that is not the language in which you were raised? To create in words other than those of your earliest memories, so far from the sounds of home and childhood and origin? To speak and write in a language other than the one that you once believed held the seamless connection between words and things?”

”Si dans le passé, des experts établirent un alphabet pour fixer les langues, j’aspire à trancrire une écriture libérée, non seulement de l’alphabet, mais ecore de mes deux langues : celle de l’endroit où j’ai débarqué.”

(If, in the past, experts established an alphabet in order to differentiate languages from one anpther, I aspire to transcribe a writing that is free, not only from the alphabet but from each of my established languages: the one belonging to the place where I was born and the other to the place where I disembarked.)

— Sylvie Baron Supervielle, “Le Pays de L’Êcriture"

I especially enjoyed the following contributions:

“Memories of a Bilingual Daughter” (I see what you did there) by the editor Isabelle De Courtivron

“Paris is the only place in the world that makes me fulfilled and desolate at the same time. Fulfilled because every street corner, ever shop window, every restaurant table is the site of a unique spectacle where colours, textures, scents and gestures bring absolute pleasures to the senses and to the imagination; desolate, because this beauty makes it impossible to not to ache as one measures all of the absences and losses that one’s life inevitably contains. As for its unbearable magnificence, in which I revel each time I return, I am still awed by the inexplicable fate that has brought me back to its fold. Tonight I fill my eyes twice with every delicious detail, once for myself, and once for the woman who had to abandon what I have repossessed for us both.“

“Writing in the Web of Words” by Yōko Tawada

“When I came to Europe, I carried some burning questions in my travel bag: Will I become another person if I speak another language? Does a little sea horse look different if it no longer is called ‘tatsu-no-otoshigo’ (the lost child of the dragon) but ‘the little horse from the sea’? Will I no longer cook rice but eat it uncooked if there is only one word ‘rice’ for cooked rice (gohan) as well as uncooked rice (kome)? Do I always have to cook chunky soup if I’m no longer supposed to say ‘to drink soup’ but ‘to eat soup’? Do I have twice as much time after work if there are two words for the same space of time– ‘evening’ and ‘night’? In the ‘evening’ one can go to the theatre and in the ‘night’ one can sleep. In Japanese there is only one word, ‘yoru’, for evening as well as for night; therefore one does not sleep enough.“

“More than a few authors despise such a pathological relationship to their mother tongue and avoid living in a foreign country. But I see an opportunity in this broken relationship to the mother tongue and to language in general. You become a word fetishist. Every part or even every letter becomes touchable, you no longer see the semantic unity, and you don’t go with the flow of the speech. You stop everywhere and take close-ups of the details. The Blow-up of the details is confusing, because it shows completely new pictures of a familiar object.“

“P.S.” by Eva Hoffman

“And since then, as I have contemplated the findings of such studies and have talked with a large range of people who have travelled between languages and cultures, it has become more evident to me that that, while the process of linguistic transmogrification is never easy or painless, its emotional and sometimes unconscious meanings can vary greatly. There are people for whom leaving one’s mother tongue is a liberation; they feel they can invent new personae in new words, or finally express their true personality– a self that had been inhibited in their first language because of cultural constraints or early inhibitions. There are the others who refuse the graft of an acquired speech altogether, perhaps because of some initial psychic rigidity, or just because the prospect of such profound change is too frightening. There are those who feel it is easier to say forbidden things in a language that does not brim with childhood associations and taboos and those for whom the adopted speech is a formal instrument, a psychic mask within which no transgression or breakage of decorum is possible.”

By the way, if you know any good books on bilingualism and personal linguistic identification, let me know!
(damn, this review looks neatly structured on my laptop and is a mess on mobile, sorry about that)

[Francesca Marciano · Rating 4 out of 5]

Today, because of globalization, migration routes, exiles, personal choices, more and more people speak a second language e. This collection of essays by bilingual writers explores what it means to have two languages and how this has affected their work. Being bilingual myself I've found in this book many answers to the many questions I've encountered since I decided to write fiction in English, a language I acquired only later in life. Writing/speaking in the "new" language is a form of betrayal, a form of displacemet, or is it an adventure in a new territory, a transformation? How does having another language affect our identity? For some of us to abandon our mother tongue is a liberation, as we can re-invent ourselves, and be free of the inhibitions and constraints tied to our childhood. for others learning a new language may be difficult, as they resist that very idea of profound change. In this arresting collection Anita Desai, Ariel Dorfman, Nancy Houston, Silvia Malloy, Assia Djembar and many more share their insights and inspiring ideas on identity and creativity.