On Words and Immigrants and Joy and Harps
I've been reading Eva Hoffman's memoir, "Lost in Translation, a Life in a New Language," this week. It's not a new book, and I don't remember exactly how I came across it and why I put it on hold at the library, but I was happy to see it next to a book I actually remembered putting on hold.
Eva and her family moved from Poland to Canada in 1953 when she was thirteen, an age when issues of identity and belonging are already a big deal. Her words speak eloquently of the struggle we face when we lose a place and a language and forge our way into the unknown. It's a valuable read.
I've been writing lately about challenge of finding the words to name my past and present. I lived in a lot of places and moved to a country where I disappeared behind a language for a while. And, like everyone else, I'm seeing pictures of refugees and thinking about the lot of those who are displaced, for whatever reason.
Here are some quotes:
"I am suffering my first severe attack of nostalgia, or tęsknota--a word that adds to nostalgia the tonalities of sadness and longing. It is a feeling whose shades and degrees I'm destined to know intimately, but at this hovering moment, it comes upon me like a visitation from a whole new geography of emotions, an annunciation of how much an absence can hurt. Or a premonition of absence...
"...this radical disjoining between word and thing is a desiccating alchemy, draining the world not only of significance but of its colors, striations, nuances--its very existence. It is the loss of a living connection.
"This verbal blur covers these peoples' faces, their gestures with a sort of fog. I can't translate them with my mind's eye. The small event, instead of being added to the mosaic of consciousness and memory, falls through some black whole, and I fall with it. What has happened to me in this new world.? I don't know. I don't see what I've seen, don't comprehend what's in front of me. I'm not filled with language anymore, and I have only a memory of fullness to anguish me with the knowledge that, in this dark and empty state, I don't really exist.
"Because I'm not heard, I feel I'm not seen. My words often see to baffle others. They are inappropriate, or forced, or just plain incomprehensible. People look at me with puzzlement; they mumble something in response--something that doesn't hit home...But the mat look in their eyes as they listen to me cancels my face, flattens my features. What do I look like here? Imperceptible, I think, impalpable, neutral, faceless.
"The more words I have, the more distinct, precise my perceptions bemuse--and such lucidity is a form of joy.
There's some irony in her describing her state of wordlessness with such beautiful words. Most of us who work to learn another language never attain that level of lyrical intimacy. I am fluent enough in French, but certainly not lyrical.
Speaking of joy, Anna had a music lesson yesterday, and after playing the violin as she walked around the room, getting a beautiful tone while her teacher played along on the piano, she tried out the harp. She sat and strummed and plucked and closed her eyes. The sound was beautiful. She was beautiful. And she spoke of joy as we left.
Eva and her family moved from Poland to Canada in 1953 when she was thirteen, an age when issues of identity and belonging are already a big deal. Her words speak eloquently of the struggle we face when we lose a place and a language and forge our way into the unknown. It's a valuable read.
I've been writing lately about challenge of finding the words to name my past and present. I lived in a lot of places and moved to a country where I disappeared behind a language for a while. And, like everyone else, I'm seeing pictures of refugees and thinking about the lot of those who are displaced, for whatever reason.
Here are some quotes:
"I am suffering my first severe attack of nostalgia, or tęsknota--a word that adds to nostalgia the tonalities of sadness and longing. It is a feeling whose shades and degrees I'm destined to know intimately, but at this hovering moment, it comes upon me like a visitation from a whole new geography of emotions, an annunciation of how much an absence can hurt. Or a premonition of absence...
"...this radical disjoining between word and thing is a desiccating alchemy, draining the world not only of significance but of its colors, striations, nuances--its very existence. It is the loss of a living connection.
"This verbal blur covers these peoples' faces, their gestures with a sort of fog. I can't translate them with my mind's eye. The small event, instead of being added to the mosaic of consciousness and memory, falls through some black whole, and I fall with it. What has happened to me in this new world.? I don't know. I don't see what I've seen, don't comprehend what's in front of me. I'm not filled with language anymore, and I have only a memory of fullness to anguish me with the knowledge that, in this dark and empty state, I don't really exist.
"Because I'm not heard, I feel I'm not seen. My words often see to baffle others. They are inappropriate, or forced, or just plain incomprehensible. People look at me with puzzlement; they mumble something in response--something that doesn't hit home...But the mat look in their eyes as they listen to me cancels my face, flattens my features. What do I look like here? Imperceptible, I think, impalpable, neutral, faceless.
"The more words I have, the more distinct, precise my perceptions bemuse--and such lucidity is a form of joy.
There's some irony in her describing her state of wordlessness with such beautiful words. Most of us who work to learn another language never attain that level of lyrical intimacy. I am fluent enough in French, but certainly not lyrical.
Speaking of joy, Anna had a music lesson yesterday, and after playing the violin as she walked around the room, getting a beautiful tone while her teacher played along on the piano, she tried out the harp. She sat and strummed and plucked and closed her eyes. The sound was beautiful. She was beautiful. And she spoke of joy as we left.