Narratives of Place, Belonging and Language: An Intercultural Perspective

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Out of Place?

Although migration is sometimes considered as a by-product

of globalization and an aspect of life that is particular to

the late twentieth- and early twenty-first centuries, the

reality is quite different. Migration has been a regular

feature of human and animal life since the beginning of

time. (Castles and Miller 2008, Harzig and Hoerder 2009,

King 2007) Globalization is hardly a recent phenomenon.

(Hall 1992, 299) At various periods in history, migration

has served as a means of escape, exploration and/or

expansion. Ease of access and transport in contemporary

society has speeded up the process of travel, but it has not

served as the catalyst for migration. Mankind’s imagination

and his or her quest for the unknown has spurred him or her

to travel, even when undertaking a journey was a difficult

and cumbersome process.

The United Nations Population division has recently

reported that 191 million people (representing three per

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cent of the world population) are residing in a country

other than the one in which they had been born. Almost one

in every ten individuals living in the more developed

regions of the world is a migrant. The largest number of

migrants lives in Europe where the proportion rose to 34 per

cent in 2005. In Northern America, the share was 23 per cent

at this time. This means that one in every three

international migrants lives in Europe while one in four

lives in Northern America. (United Nations 2006, 1) In other

regions of the world, Africa, Asia, Latin American, the

Caribbean and Oceania, the proportion has dropped as

migrants appear to gravitate towards the more developed

regions of the world.

Migration and Dislocation

Although migration is a centuries-old process, Eva Hoffman,

a Polish-American author, suggests that its nature has

changed over the centuries. In an essay entitled ‘The New

Nomads’, she proposes that exile in medieval Europe was

literarily to lose one’s place in society – or to lose a

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large portion of one’s self. It was often forced rather than

voluntary. In contemporary Europe, ‘cross-cultural movement

has become the norm rather than the exception’ and is often

a matter of choice and adventure rather than a harsh

punishment. (Hoffman, 1999, 42) Hoffman argues that the

process can be enormously beneficial to artists and writers

as the process of dislocation facilitates a perspective that

is both retrospective and progressive. For this reason,

migration ‘can be a great impetus to thought and to

creativity’. (Hoffman 1999, 51-2)

It seems to me that there has always been a double

standard in relation to the process of migration. When the

people involved are economically viable, their act of

migration is considered a positive act and one that benefits

the host society. When poorer people move, their migration

is viewed negatively. Binary standards and paradigmatic

thinking are usually applied to poorer immigrants who are

viewed as the ‘other’ – the opposite of us. We are

sophisticated, they are uncivilized; we are diligent, they

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are lethargic; we are moral, they are criminal. (Hitchcock

2008, 189)

In this process, we are looking at the differences

between ourselves and migrant others from a self-centric

perspective. We are ‘the best’ and in comparison to us, they

are ‘lacking’ something. In noticing their ‘shortfalls’, we

are employing a ‘deficit theory’ approach. This kind of

approach can easily become a prison. ‘It locks you into a

closed room in an old building with no windows’. Moreover,

‘it inoculates you against culture.’ It impacts on our

facility to communicate with one another. While we ‘might

tinker with the grammar and dictionary of another language’,

we don’t really communicate – except in terms of how the

world shaped our attitudes, the language that was designed

to fit our assumptions ‘about how the world is and how it

works.’ (Agar 2002 [1996], 23)

The deficit theory is frequently applied to nomadic

peoples who are popularly assumed to live at a more backward

level of existence than the settled community. There is a

sense in which their constant movement is regarded as a

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threat to the values of the settled population. ‘Pseudo-

anthropology feeds the basic European nightmare: a terror of

peoples who move’. This ‘nightmare’ has been exaggerated by

‘nineteenth century evolutionist intellectuals’ who

postulated that ‘moving peoples were no longer a merely

physical menace emerging from the trackless East. They now

also seemed to incarnate a cosmic disorder in which the past

rose out of its tomb and swarmed forward on horseback to

annihilate the present’. (Ascherson 1996, 76, see also Nic

Craith 2006, 126)

This false sense of superiority is powerfully captured

in Natasha Wodin’s memoir of her childhood in a refugee camp

in Nuremburg, where the Russian refugees regarded themselves

as superior to the gypsies who lived on the far side of the

two rivers:

Dort hausten solche, die Zigeuner genannt wurden, ich sah sie auf dem

Weg hinter unserem Haus vorbeigehen, Frauen in langen Röcken, Gold

und Klimper, Gesichter wie schmutziges Leder, sie zogen mich an, diese

rätselhaften schillernden Gestalten, zogen mich an mit dem Geheimnis

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ihrer Anstößigkeit und Ausgestoßenheit, die die unsere noch übertraf,

zogen mich an als eine Steigerung meiner selbst, und gleichzeitig das

Schaudern, wenn ich am Fenster stand und ihnen nachsah, das Schaudern

vor dieser Steigerung, die stehlen und betrügen, sagte man in der

Siedlung, die sind gefährlich und schmutzig, die werfen ihren Müll vor die

Tür. Wir hatten jetzt silberblanke Mülleimer, die im Keller standen, wir

wohnten vor den Baggerseen und Sandhügeln. (Wodin 1983, 195)

[The people who lived there were known as gypsies. I

often saw them on the track behind our apartment house,

long-skirted women with jingly ornaments and faces like

dirty leather. I was fascinated by whatever secret

thing it was that made them even bigger social outcasts

than my parents and I. They attracted me like a

magnified mirror image of myself, yet I also shivered

when I stood at the window and watched them go by. They

stole and cheated, said our neighbors, and they were

dirty and dangerous – they chucked their garbage out of

the window. We ourselves had shiny silver garbage cans

that stood in the basement. (Wodin 1986, 198)]

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Such binary thinking towards the other has clearly also

applied in an East/West context. This was a primary concern

in Said’s Orientalism. Like the migrant other, individuals in

the East are perceived as inferior and primitive and in dire

need of civilizing, Western influences. (Said 1979)

But in a sense, we are all migrants and exiles. This

applies whether or not we travel – i.e. physically move from

one location to another. Our childhood homes no longer exist

as they once did. The location may have stayed the same, but

the people have changed, the circumstances have changed and

the world has moved on. (de Courtivron 2003a) We are

immigrants in time, if not in space. ‘We are all learning to

live in a world different from the one we were born in,

strangers and pilgrims gazing at new worlds.’ (Bateson 2000,

134) Our lives have changed and we are continually dealing

with new circumstances; ‘having constantly to negotiate

between home and abroad, native culture and adopted culture,

or more creatively speaking, between a here, a there, and an

elsewhere.’ (Minh-ha 1994, 9) Our childhood homes and mental

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landscapes can never be recovered. ‘We feel there is an

ideal sense of belonging, of community, of attunement with

others and at-homeness with ourselves, that keeps eluding

us.’ (Hoffman 1999, 39)

All of this has implications for the languages we

speak, the languages we think and imagine in, the languages

in which we make love, the tongues in which we dream.

Millions of people today ‘live in a language that is not

their own.’ (Seyan 2001, 23) Many are nomads, immigrants and

gypsies in relation to ‘their own language’ and live their

lives in languages which are not their first vernaculars.

People move in multilingual worlds and are constantly

shifting or translating between cultures. ‘The condition of

the migrant is the condition of the translated being’ and

that translation occurs at both physical and symbolic

levels. (Cronin 2006, 45) On the one hand there is the

physical movement from one language environment to another.

There is also the movement to a different worldview – a

different way of interpreting everyday circumstances. The

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latter can apply even where there is no change in the

language spoken.

This movement between languages may involve some

elements of choice and migrants may seek to assimilate

themselves to the new environment as completely as possible

and engage fully with the new language (translational

assimilation). Alternatively, they may continue with the

regular use of the language of their birth while acquiring

and speaking the language of the host community only where

necessary or appropriate (translational accommodation).

These strategies are not mutually exclusive and can be used

at different times depending on circumstances. (Cronin 2006,

45)

All migrants bring the language of their birth to the

new location. They transfer with themselves ‘the syllables

and significances enclosed in the language they learned as

they grew.’ (Dorfman 2003, 30) But languages themselves are

also migrants by nature – ‘maddeningly migrant’. They borrow

‘from here and there and everywhere’. They plunder and bring

back ‘the most beautiful, the strangest, the most exciting

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objects’. They take out words on loan and return them ‘in a

different wonderfully twisted and often funny guise, pawning

those words, punning them, stealing them, renting them out,

eating them, making love to them and spawning splendidly

unrecognizable children.’ (Dorfman 2003, 34)

In this book, I intend to explore the experience of

migrants who have grappled with language issues as they move

from one cultural setting to another. The work will examine

the sense of exile and dislocation that has been experienced

by writers living ‘in-between’ two or more languages. The

subjects explored are primarily migrant writers but the

concept of migrant is interpreted loosely to include persons

who may experience a new language because of changing

borders or political contexts. Traditionally cultures were

perceived as rooted in a particular place – i.e. ‘at home’.

From the Romanticist perspective, to belong was to be with a

people who spoke your own tongue. Indigenous languages

evolved alongside local landscapes; and identities were

shaped within ‘native’ communities sharing similar values

and speech-forms. (Frisch 2004) However the phenomenon of

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increased migration has generated new and under-researched

language displacements and anxieties in society. The role of

language in defining a sense of self and place has altered

and the process of recognition has been disrupted.

Migrant Writers

Many authors have successfully bridged the gap between

different languages and cultures. Some of the more renowned

examples include Ireland’s Samuel Beckett who was raised in

English-speaking Dublin but subsequently sought refuge in

France where he penned some of his major works in French,

many of which he subsequently translated into English

himself. For Beckett, writing in the French language was a

release from nightmares, from a writer’s block and ‘verbal

constipation.’ (Antinucci 2004, 66-7) Samuel Beckett’s self-

imposed exile gave him the opportunity to explore personal

suffering and the human condition in a language other than

his mother tongue and he has had a ‘huge appeal across time

and cultures’ suggesting ‘an uncanny ability to write at a

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depth that resounds in all cultures without relying on the

particulars of a given culture.’ (Clark 2004, 72)

There are many other such prominent writers in an

international context whose intercultural books have mass

appeal and continue to attract public interest and

attention. Out of Place (1999) by the recently deceased Edward

Said is a moving record of an Arab, Christian, Palestinian

who held a US passport and was never quite sure of whether

Arabic or English was his first language. (Said 1999)

Cisneros’ series of vignettes, The House on Mango Street, a

story of a girl living in the Hispanic quarter of Chicago,

has sold millions of copies worldwide. (Cisneros (2004)

[1991]) Khatibi’s Love in Two Languages employs a love story

between a French female and a North African Arab male to

conduct an extensive mediation on languages and

bilingualism. (Khatibi 1990[1983] )

Many of these authors have displayed tremendous writing

skills in their second, third or even fourth languages.

European examples include George Steiner who has three

‘mother tongues’, German, English and French. Elie Wiesel

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regularly writes in French which is his fifth, rather than

his first language. (The others are Yiddish, Hebrew,

Hungarian, and German). Rafael Sabatini was born in Italy

and educated in Portugal and Switzerland. Yet he chose to

pen all his novels in English, which was his sixth language.

(Kellman 2000, 12) Although Elias Canetti’s first language

was Ladino, he wrote in German. Other eminent examples of

multilingual writers from Europe are Vassalis Alexakis

(Greek and French), Rosalia de Castro (Galician and

Castilian), Ernest Claes (Finnish and German), Milan Kundera

(Czech and French) and Flann O’Brien (Irish and English).

One of the most famous philosophers of the twentieth

century, Ludwig Wittgenstein is said to have ‘inhabited the

space between German and English.’ (Kellman 2000, 9) Agar

(2002 [1996] 150) concludes that maybe this ‘in-between’

experience moved Wittgenstein ‘towards language games.’ Even

at the end of his days, ‘after years of residence in

England, he talked about how difficult it was to live and

work in English, his second language.’

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The classification of this writers is no easy task.

Jorge Semprún prefers to think of himself simply as a

bilingual individual (Spanish and French) who happens to

write in French. Jorge was born in Madrid in 1923 but

resided in France during the Franco regime. Throughout his

career, Jorge has maintained his relationship with Spain

where he was born. Yet he has also been loyal to France, a

country which offered him refuge when he had to flee from

persecution. French is his literary language, but the

Spanish language also belongs to him. (Miletic 2008, 33)

The categories ascribed to these ‘in-between’ writers

have been discussed by many of them. Julia Kristeva (2000)

describes such writers (including herself) as ‘hybrid

monsters’ who risk the familiar ‘so as to generate new

beings of language and blood, rooted in no language or

blood’. These ‘diplomats of the dictionary’ are like

wandering Jews who are no longer prepared to sit in silence.

Instead they challenge the norm ‘in favor of a nomadic

humanity’. Kristeva describes the abandonment of the

language of one’s birth as ‘matricide’ and regards her

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endeavours to embrace new languages as aspirations to fly

higher, more swiftly and more strongly than one’s parents.

‘It is not for nothing that we are the heirs of the Greeks;

our children will have Russian, English, French and world

for their own.’ (Kristeva 2000, 168) (Kristeva’s ‘hybrid

monsters’ reminds me of Bakhtin’s more gentle description of

such authors as ‘novelist hybrids’). Such individuals are

‘not only double-voiced and double accented (as in rhetoric)

but… also double languaged’. (Bakhtin 1981, 360)

It would be tempting to describe these authors as

‘migrant writers’ or ‘literary immigrants’ but many of them

would reject such categories. Natasha Wodin suggests that

such a category could not apply to her as she was born in

Germany and writes in German.

Hier spricht man von Migrantenliteratur. Für mich trifft das aber gar nicht

zu, weil ich in Deutschland geboren wurde und also gar keine Migrantin

bin. Ich fühle mich immer etwas unwohl in meiner Haut, wenn ich als

solche bezeichnet werde. Und wenn ich mir die in Deutsch geschriebenen

Bücher von Autoren nichtdeutscher Sprachherkunft anschaue, bemerke

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ich in der Regel gar keinen Unterschied zur Sprache deutscher

Schriftsteller.

[People here talk of migrant literature. But it doesn’t

apply to me because I was born in Germany and I am not

a migrant. I always feel uncomfortable in my skin when

I am classified in this way. And when I look at books

in German written by authors for whom German is a

second language, I don’t as a rule see any big

difference from writers who are native German speakers.

(Approximate Translation henceforth AT)]

Wodin also expresses the concern that the category ‘migrant

writer’ could imply marginality and peripherality to

mainstream literature:

Aber Migrantenliteratur suggeriert immer etwas Fremdes, eine

Randerscheinung. Es gibt inzwischen aber so viele Migranten in

Deutschland, dass sie in meinen Augen zur deutschen Kultur gehören, es

gibt zahllose ausländische Schriftsteller, die Deutsch schreiben und längst

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ein fester Bestandteil der deutschen Literatur sind. Insofern finde ich den

Begriff nicht mehr ganz angemessen, für mich selbst sowieso nicht. Und

transkulturell ist ja heute fast schon die ganze Welt, die Grenzen

verwischen sich immer mehr. (Wodin interview)

[But migrant literature always suggests something

foreign, and peripheral. There are so many migrants in

Germany that from my perspective they belong to German

culture, there are so many foreign writers that write

in German and that have expanded the wealth of German

literature. In this respect, I don’t find the concept

very appropriate, definitely not for me. Almost the

whole world is nowadays transcultural, the borders are

more and more blurred. (AT)]

The Bosnian-born, German-language writer, Saša Stanišić,

also rejects the term migrant writer. He is unhappy with

various categories such as intercultural or migrant

literature, which are often used to describe authors who

‘write from a perspective refracted by at least two

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cultures, national identities, or languages’. Stanišić

suggests that the world today suffers from a condition of

attention deficit hyperactivity disorder which has been

prompted by ‘a persistent pattern of hyperactivity, as well

as from impulsiveness and anger’ and creating a ‘chronic

condition of permanent diaspora and migration’.

Although Stanišić is currently located in Germany, he

bears many indicators of an immigrant nature. As well as

obvious ‘foreign’ markers such as his Bosnian name and

passport, there is also his liking for food with lots of

garlic and, more seriously, his experience of escape from a

civil war. Although German is not his first language,

Stanišić has penned a highly acclaimed novel in that

language which is often classified as immigrant literature –

a category he deems to be non-sensical! (Stanišić 2006) He

doesn’t necessarily feel that he has much, if anything, in

common with other authors who are deemed to be fellow

immigrants and suggests that there are many myths associated

with such a category.

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Although many or all of the authors in an ‘immigrant’

category have experienced some form of dis- or re-location,

this does not necessarily generate any feeling of

commonality. The writers all have ‘unique biographical

backgrounds and differing cultural, religious, or social

habits.’ Their experiences, influences and subjects can be

extremely diverse. Essentially Stanišić is arguing against

any biographical categorisation of authors and argues that

more attention should be paid to the themes of their

writings and their points of view.

Stanišić also argues against the premise the immigrant

authors will necessarily write about immigration. At the

same time, he acknowledges that many of them do and cites

the Polish-German author, Artur Becker, as an example of a

writer who has penned a number of novels and stories that

consistently explore themes of memory, interculturality and

migration – e.g. Kino Muza (2003), Das Herz von Chopin (2006)

and Wodka und Messer: Lied vom Ertrinken (2008). While not denying

that immigrant writers can and often do write about their

experience of movement, Stanišić argues that as competent

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writers, they should be in a position to write well about

all experiences – even if they themselves have not been part

to it. ‘Writing fiction also means inventing worlds which

are not part of the writer's own world.’ To use the category

migrant writer is to un-necessarily confine them to the

migrant experience.

Stanišić also rejects the idea that migrant writers of

necessity enrich their adopted language. He argues that

‘there is nothing special about writing in a foreign

language so long as you think you can use it in a sufficient

and productive way.’ For Stanišić, ‘writing itself is a

foreign language’. Each time he writes a new story or

undertakes a new literary venture, he has to find the

narrator’s voice and decide on his or her ‘verbal

characteristics’. Many writers have chosen to write in one

language or another, but Stanišić has simply opted for his

‘better language’ which happens to be German. He also feels

it is important to acknowledge that local, regional or

national authors, writing in their ‘mother tongue’ are also

capable of experimentation with linguistic structures. ‘A

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language is the only country without borders’ and the

concept of an ‘immigrant writer’ is meaningless. (Stanišić

2008)

The Russian-French writer, Andreï Makine would concur

with this demolition of categories such as ‘migrant

writers’. When asked how he would describe himself, he gave

the following answer:

Écrivain tout court ! L’écrivain, c’est quelqu’un qui vient d’ailleurs.

Ontologiquement et psychologiquement. Autrefois, on définissait les

Chrétiens par « ceux qui n’ont pas peur de la mort », c’est-à-dire, des êtres se

mettant dans une position existentielle radicalement autre. Un écrivain, est

une personne ayant une autre vision du temps, incapable de s’insérer dans le

temps astronomique ou social…. Oui, je pense que « les extra-terrestres »

serait assez juste, car ils viennent d’une autre plane`te mentale, d’une autre

dimension mentale. (Clement 2009, 131)

[Writer, full stop. A writer is someone who has come in

from other parts. Ontologically and psychologically. In

olden days, Christians were defined as ‘those who are

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not afraid of death’, that’s to say, persons putting

themselves existentially in a radically different

perspective. A writer is a person who has an

alternative vision of time and who is incapable of

inserting himself into the framework of sidereal or

solar or social time…. Yes, I think ‘extraterrestrials’

would be fairly accurate, because they come from

another mental planet, another mental dimension. (AT)]

The ‘In-Between’ Experience

The terminology one should use to describe authors such as

these and their works raises many questions that are not

easily resolved. Some writers depict themselves as writers

‘in-between’ two or more places, cultures or languages.

Andrew Riemer, a Hungarian-born writer in Australia, locates

himself ‘between two worlds; one familiar, substantial,

often humdrum and commonplace; the other a country of the

mind, fashioned from powerful longings and fantasies.’

(Riemer 1992, 2) Similarly Isabelle do Courtivron describes

herself as navigating ‘between the two cultures [French and

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American] in pursuit of idealizations or repudiations which

would help me take the next step.’ (de Courtivron 2000, 168)

Many of these authors describe themselves as being in a

‘neither-nor’ context – of not belonging to any one context

or another. The Slovenian-born, Brina Ĺvigelj Merat (better

known as Brina Svit) thinks of herself as a permanent

outsider:

Je ne suis plus une Yougoslave, je ne suis plus une vraie Slovène, je ne suis

pas une vraie Française non plus . . . Je suis une extracommunautaire, une

extracommunautaire … Extracommunautaire. Voilà le mot qui me

convient. En dehors. En dehors des communautés nationales,

communautés tout court, familles, groupes, cercles et fondations de

toutes sortes. (Svit 2009, 238)

[I’m no longer a Yugoslav, no longer a true Slovene,

but I’m not a true Frenchwoman either . . . I am an

extracomunitarian, an extracomunitarian…

Extracomunitarian. That’s the word that suits me. I’m

an outsider. Outside national communities, or just

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communities, families, groups, circles, and

organizations of every kind. (Svit 2009, 243-4)]

Natasha Wodin also thinks of herself on occasions as being

neither – or both, but ultimately, this is a false dichotomy

for her:

Ich halte die Nationalitäten nicht für so wichtig. Auf dem Erdball sind

keine Linien, die sind alle nur in unseren Köpfen. (Wodin, interview)

[I don’t think nationality is very important. And there

are no lines on planet earth, they are only in our

heads. (AT)]

Throughout her life, Natasha seems to have lived in both

worlds although always having a clear sense of each.

Although she was born in Nuremberg, her parents were Russian

refugees and her childhood home was a Russian enclosure in a

German context. She says of her childhood home in the camp:

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Damals existierte noch gar kein Deutsch, auch wenn der Fabrikhof vor

unserer Baracke deutsch war, die Lastwagen, der Bahndamm, das

Gepolter der Züge, das Stampfen der Maschinen aus der Fabrik, alles war

deutsch, soweit ich schauen und hören konnte, aber das war Draußen.

Drin was Russisch. (Wodin 1983, 40)

[German didn’t exist at that time, even though the

factory year hut facing our barrack was German, as were

the trucks, the railroad embankment, the rattle of

passing trains, the pounding of machines in the

factory. Everything was German as far as you could see

and hear, but only Outside. Inside, everything was

Russian. (Wodin 1986, 35)]

Although everything outside the camp was German, Natasha and

the other refugees She and the other immigrants had

successfully constructed an imagined, mental Russia that was

entirely real to them:

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Ich hatte mir «mein» Rußland geschaffen, nicht als geographischen und

tatsächlichen Ort, ein Land mit gesellschaftlichen und politischen

Realitäten, sondern als Bezeichnung einer zweiten Schicht von mir, meiner

verborgenen, tiefsten, für niemanden zugänglichen Schicht. Einer Schicht,

die mir eine zweite Bedeutung verlieh, meine eigentliche und einzigartige

Bedeutung, für niemanden sichtbar, außer für mich selbst. (Wodin

1983, 91)

[I’d created a Russia of my own, not an actual

geographical area, a country with social and political

realities, but as a name for a second layer in myself,

the ultimate and most inaccessible stratum, which

invested me with a second meaning, a real and unique

significance visible to no one but me. (Wodin 1986,

89)]

In her adult life, Natasha is still able to navigate within

both Russian and German spheres in her home town of Berlin:

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Ich lebe inzwischen in Berlin, und hier sind sehr viele Russen. Wenn ich auf

die Straße gehe, höre ich immer Russisch. Ich habe russische Freundinnen,

mit denen ich fast jeden Tag Russisch spreche. Ich habe vier Jahre lang mit

einer Russin zusammen gelebt in dieser Wohnung, die ist wieder

zurückgegangen in ihre Heimat. Das Russischsprechen ist für mich wieder

zu einer Normalität geworden. Früher war Russland sehr weit weg, im

Unerreichbaren, jetzt ist es sehr nah, in Berlin vermischt sich das

Russische und das Deutsche auf eine fast natürliche Weise. Ich stelle mir

keine Identitätsfragen mehr. (Wodin, interview)

[I live in Berlin now and there are a lot of Russians

here. When I go out onto the street, I always hear

Russian. I have Russian friends with whom I speak

Russian nearly every day. I have shared this apartment

with a Russian for four years, she has just gone back

home. So speaking Russian is pretty normal for me.

Russia used to be very far away. It was unreachable but

now it is pretty close; in Berlin the Russians and the

Germans are all mixed up together in a really natural

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way. So, I don’t have any issues of identity anymore. (

AT)]

Natasha’s narrative is not unlike that of Dublin-born Hugo

Hamilton who says that he grew up in Germany but when he

looked out of the window, he saw Ireland. (Hamilton,

interview) Like Natasha, he seems to have been located

within a German sphere that was somehow enclosed in a larger

Hiberno-English space rather than being in-between two

spaces. Although Hugo was raised in Dublin, his mother was a

German immigrant who had married an Irishman deeply

committed to Gaelic culture. Everything inside the house was

German or Irish Gaelic.

Some of these writers are clearly unhappy with their

split status. The eminent historian, Gerda Lerner, who was

born in Vienna but spent most of her life in an English-

speaking world, describes herself as ‘a broken prism – a

refugee without language, between cultures, belonging to

neither the old nor the new.’ (Lerner 1998 [1997], 41) This

is like the Moscow-born writer, Irina Reyn, who suggests

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that living in America tears her in two. ‘This split divides

me until everything in my life is defined by its relation to

its opposite.’ (Reyn 2000, 152) Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, the

Irish language writer uses a traditional phrase ‘ar snámh

idir dhá uisce’ to describe this experience of dislocation.

The phrase which literarily means ‘swimming between two

waters’ is used to describe emigrants who are ‘neither fish

nor fowl, lost between two worlds, like the bodies of

drowned fishermen’ – i.e. ‘nearly drowned and nearly saved’.

(Ní Dhomhnaill 2005a, 114-5)

There is a hint in all of these narratives of a ‘shadow

side’ to hybridity or exile. The split between different

languages and culture has generated a sense of loss and

‘expresses a more universal quest: the search for home; the

hunger for return.’ (de Coutrivron 2007, 31) This is a loss

that is never fully recovered regardless of the efforts

made. De Coutrivron suggests that after her first major

dislocation, ‘the reassuring “there-ness” of the familiar

and of the concrete was closed’ to her forever. (de

Coutrivron 2007, 32) If one attempts to return, one

29

recognises that one has never really left and at the same

time, one can never really go back to the same place.

Whatever form of assimilation has occurred in a new context,

a part of the self has been lost and is missing. This is the

part that has been submerged in the effort to build in a new

life in a new context.

Perhaps one could suggest that these writers are in a

‘third space’, a phrase most commonly associated with Homi

Bhabha. In The Location of Culture, Bhabha suggests that the

‘inter’ is ‘the cutting edge of translation and negotiation,

the inbetween space that carries the burden of the meaning of

culture.’ (Italics original in Bhabha 1994, 56) But Natasha

Lvovich, who was born in the Soviet Union describes this

‘third space’ as a hateful place. ‘As the past and present

Me-s live on different planets and speak different

languages, both are utterly confused to be and not to be

recognizable.’ (Lvovich 2007, 292) The culture which

develops in this third space is both ‘bafflingly alike, and

different from the parent culture’. It is a formation that

is complicated in its relations with natives and immigrants

30

alike and displays traits of ‘culture-sympathy’ as well as

‘culture-clash.’ (Eliot 1949, 63-4) It is both a ‘“part”

culture’ and a “partial” culture’. It ‘is the contaminated yet

connective tissue between cultures – at once the

impossibility of culture’s containedness and the boundary

between. It is indeed something like culture’s “in-between”,

bafflingly both alike and different.’ (Bhabha 1996, 54)

However, not all writers react similarly to this

feeling of rootlessness and some are quite keen to note its

advantage. Brina Svit writes in a very light-hearted fashion

about her journeying between Paris and Ljubljana. She says:

Je ne suis pas une exilée (ou bien une exilée de famille, est-ce que ça existe

?). En tout cas, j’ai toujours circulé librement entre les deux pays, notre

voiture connaît la route par coeur. Néanmoins la position de l’exilé est

bien plus propice et confortable pour la littérature que la mienne dans la

voiture qui connaît la route entre Paris et Ljubljana toute seule, c’est-à-

dire la position des fesses entre deux chaises. Mais quand je me lance

dans les calculs sur les années passées dans la langue maternelle et celle

31

d’adoption, je ne peux pas ne pas me sentir concernée. (Svit 2009,

239)

[I’m not an exile (though perhaps a family exile, if

there is such a thing). Be that as it may, I have

always moved freely between the two countries; our car

knows the road by heart. Nevertheless, the position of

the exile is a lot more favorable and comfortable for

literature, than my position in the car, which knows

the road from Paris to Ljubljana on its own, in other

words a position where I’m sitting on the fence. But

when I immerse myself in the calculations of the years

I have passed in my mother tongue and in my adopted

tongue, I can’t but feel concerned. (Svit 2009, 243-4)]

Luc Santé describes himself as having a series of rented

rooms rather than a house:

I suppose I am never present in any given moment, since

different aspects of myself are contained in different

32

rooms of language, and a complicated apparatus of air

locks prevents the doors from being flung open all at

once… I could make my home in any of them. I don’t have

a house, only this succession of rented rooms. That

sometimes makes me feel as though I have no language at

all, but it also gives me the advantage of mobility. I

can leave anytime, and not be found. (Sante 1998, 284-

5)

Anne Weber, who was born in Germany in 1964 but now lives in

France, describes this place as the catalyst for her

writing:

La place à laquelle je me tiens est mouvante, elle est clans 1’entre-deux,

et elle me convient. Entre deux langues, entre deux chaises, entre deux

littératures, entre deux histoires, j’ai conscience de n’appartenir tout à

fait ni à un monde ni à 1’autre, de n’être parfaitement à 1’aise nulle part,

de ne pas avoir de « chez moi >>. C’est la place à partir de laquelle écrire

m’est possible. – Et vous, vous en êtes où dans l’apprentissage du

chinois? (Weber 2009, 190)

33

[The place I occupy shifts, it is the in-between, and

that suits me. Finding myself between two languages,

two chairs, two bodies of literature, two histories, I

am aware that I totally belong to neither one world nor

the other, of not being completely at ease anywhere, of

having no real ‘home’. It’s the place I start from that

makes it possible for me to write.’ (AT)]

It is quite clear that all these authors have experienced

different cultural contexts and I gave some consideration to

the concept of ‘transcultural’ as an expression of their in-

between-ness. The notion of ‘transculturation’ was

originally used by Oritz as a corrective measure for

Malinowski’s use of acculturation (Mignold 2000, 14). While

Malinowski had used the term acculturation ‘to describe the

process of transition from one culture to another’, Oritz

preferred the term transculturation ‘to express the highly

varied phenomena’ that occurred in Cuba ‘as a result of the

extremely complex transmutation of culture’ that had

34

occurred there (Oritz 1995 [1940], 98). Oritz regarded the

history of Cuba as an example of the ‘long process of

transculturation’. Of course, this occurred in a colonial

context and as many of the writers that I deal with has not

been directly involved in a colonial context, and I rejected

the category accordingly.

Although it is both difficult and maybe even

essentialist to categorize these writers in some way.

Nevertheless, for the purpose of this book I think it

important to find some category, however inappropriate. I

opted for the term ‘intercultural’ as that category appears

more appropriate for relations between cultural settings

that are largely equal. Gino Chiellino, an Italian-German

writer and academic, seems happy with this category and

explains the concept of interculturality as follows:

Als interkulturell verstehe ich folgendes: Wenn zwei Kulturen zusammen

kommen, entsteht etwas Neues. Es entsteht nicht als Verschmelzung wie

das in der Amerikanischen Vision des „Schmelztiegels’ anvisiert wurde,

sondern es entsteht etwas Neues, von dem ich im Moment noch nicht

35

weiß, was ich das nennen soll. Es ist keine Verschmelzung, sondern eine

andere Form der Verbindung. (Chiellino, interview)

[By intercultural I mean the following: If two cultures

come together, something new emerges. It does not

emerge as a fusion as envisaged with the American

‘melting pot’ but something new arises, I don’t even

know what it is at the moment or what I should call it.

But it is not a melting pot, it’s a different way of

coming together. (AT)]

Chiellino believes that the modern human condition is

intercultural and this affects our relationships with

others. If we ourselves have empathy with the condition of

interculturality, then our relationships with intercultural

others will be healthy and wholesome. If it becomes

necessary for us to deal with someone who has no empathy

with any form of hybridity or duality, we tend to have a

less than full relationship with them.

36

Wenn wir mit Menschen kommunizieren sollen, die monokulturell sind,

dann leben wir in dieser Beziehung nur einen Teil von uns aus. Wir leben

in Italien nur das Italienische aus, in Deutschland nur das Deutsche. Und

das schafft Ungleichgewicht im Menschen selbst. Wenn man in der

Interkulturalität lebt, ob es eine polnisch-deutsche Interkulturalität ist

oder italienische, türkische oder was auch immer, dann lebt man das

dementsprechend aus. Darin ist auch etwas Beruhigendes. (Chiellino,

interview)

[If we need to communicate with someone who is

monocultural, we express only a part of ourselves in

that relationship. In Italy, we live only the Italian

side and in Germany only the German side. And that

leads to an imbalance within the person him- or

herself. When one lives in an intercultural context, be

it a Polish-German. Italian or Turkish one, or

whatever, then one expresses that accordingly. That is

also comforting. (AT)]

37

However, Chiellino is keen to ensure that not all

intercultural authors are seen as the same and he makes an

important distinction between intercultural writers who are

emigrants and those who are in exile. He explains:

Es gibt einen großen Unterschied zwischen Einwanderer- und Exilautoren.

Sagen wir es so: selbst wenn die Werke technisch, in den Erzählstrukturen,

der Erzählart und -weise identisch sind, stellt sich die Frage der Loyalität

und der Zugehörigkeit. Für Einwanderer ist es leichter, die Sprache zu

wechseln. Für Exilanten gilt oft das Gebot, der Sprache treu zu belieben,

etwa weil zu Hause eine Diktatur die Sprache undemokratisch verwendet,

sie zerstört. Dieses Problem haben Emigranten meist nicht. Aus diesem

Grunddilemma ergeben sich große Unterschiede, weil die Protagonisten

der Werke von Exilautoren sich am Ende nicht dafür entscheiden können,

dort zu leben, wo sie im Exil sind. Sie müssen immer zurückkehren, um ihr

Land von der Diktatur befreien. (Chiellino, interview)

[There is a big difference between ‘migrant’ and

‘exiled’ authors. Let’s say it like this: even if the

works are identical in technical terms, in narrative

38

structure, in the ways stories are told, the questions

of loyalty and affiliation remain. It is easier for

immigrants to change their language. Exiles have the

duty to be loyal to the language, because in their

country of origin, it may be abused or oppressed by a

dictator. Migrant writers usually do not have that

problem. From this basic dilemma differences arise

because, at the end of the day, the protagonists of the

books of authors in exile cannot decide to stay where

they are in exile. They must always be ready to return

to free their country from the dictator. (AT)]

Ultimately, I have opted for the concept of ‘intercultural

writers’ for the purposes of this book. It seems an

appropriate category as it emphasises the interaction

between cultures and the creativity that can be sparked as a

result.

The European Dimension

39

Ultimately this book represents a personal and rewarding

journey through many inter-cultural authors and I quickly

became aware of the wealth of research already available on

intercultural authors – especially in a Latin-American

context. (Doloughan 2002, Kellman 2000, 2003, King, Connell

and White 1995, McClennen 2005, Ros i Sole 2004, Watkins-

Goffman 2001) As I did not wish my volume to essentially re-

present authors and repeat material that has already been

widely explored, I focused on developing angles not widely

dealt with up to now. This involved developing a focus on

European-born authors. While I was keen to write a volume

with a strong European focus, it was necessary for me to

develop criteria for the inclusion and exclusion of specific

authors from the research process. Ultimately five criteria

guided the selection of primary texts.

Firstly I decided to primarily deal with books that

have been published in the last five decades or so and with

authors that are for the large part still alive and writing.

This was of the utmost importance to me as I intended, in as

far as possible, to correspond and/or liaise with a number

40

of these authors. Although there are some superb examples of

language memoirs published earlier in the last century, such

as Mary Antin’s Promised Land, these will not feature

prominently in this work (Antin, 1997).

The second criterion that guided my choice of authors

was personal. As this is a volume about language

experiences, I deemed it fitting (where available) to quote

all relevant texts in the language in which they were

originally written. (Foreign language quotes are usually

followed by an English approximate translation). Since it

was important for me to understand the texts with which I

engage, I confined myself to texts that have been published

in a language with which I have some familiarity.

As the book focuses on exploring language experiences

in a European contexts, I was keen that English language

texts would not entirely predominate and therefore I deal

with a number of French texts (e.g. Makine, 2007 [1996]) as

well as some German memoirs. These include Canetti (1977)

and Wodin, (1983). I also feature some Irish language pieces

of significance. (Ó Treasaigh, 2002) In all these instances,

41

an approximate translation in English is provided along with

the original quotations. As I have explicitly sought to deal

with some material that was not previously available in

English, this may be the first occasion on which monolingual

English-speakers have access to some of these texts.

Although English inevitably predominates, it was

infinitely rewarding to deal with writers who have not felt

the need to acquire that language and several non English-

speaking authors feature in this research. One of these is

the already-mentioned Jorge Semprun who, along with the four

other children in the family, had a multilingual childhood

in Madrid. Although living in a Spanish-speaking

environment, Semprun learn German as a child from his Swiss-

German governess who subsequently became his step-mother. He

later learnt English, French, and Latin. As an adult,

Semprun committed to writing original works in both French

and Spanish but never actually translated his writings from

one language to the other. His engagement with French never

conflicted with his Spanish identity for him. During his

lifetime, he formally maintained his Spanish citizenship

42

even to point of refusing a very prestigious seat in the

Académie Française which would have required him to adopt

French citizenship and give up his Spanish citizenship.

Semprun’s ‘determination to remain a Spaniard while actively

pursuing a literary career as a Frenchman captures his

delight in playing with and shifting between his two

languages, whether in his role as an author, philosophical

thinker, or political activist.’ (Kippur in Semprun 2009,

181)

Anne Weber has engaged with both German and French in

her literary careers. She was raised in Offenbach, Germany

from her birth in 1964 until she completed high school. She

then arrived in Paris and studied French and comparative

literature. Anne worked as a reader for a number of French

publishing companies and translated a number of texts from

French into German. A highly accomplished translator, she

has been awarded several prizes, including the first prize

for best European translation in Offenburg in 2008. Unlike

Semprun, Anne has been actively involved in translating her

own work. Interestingly, however, she regards both as

43

original and authentic (a principle that that also applies

to the European treaty which has been published in all 27

languages!).

In Weber’s case, translation from one language to

another was a voluntary activity, but for Andreï Makine, it

proved the only route to publication in his adopted

language. After emigrating to Paris in 1976, Makine began to

write fiction in his ‘grandmother tongue’. However his

attempts to get his work published in that language were not

successful as publishers were convinced that a writer from

Russia could hardly excel in French. When his efforts to

publish original material in French failed, Makine submitted

a manuscript to a French publisher intimating that the

original document had been penned in Russian but had

subsequently been translated by himself into French, The

quality of the French ‘translation’ was regarded as

exceptional and when the publisher requested a copy of the

Russian ‘original’, Makine was obliged to hastily translate

from his adopted French into his native Russian!

Subsequently he became the first non-French person to win

44

the Prix Goncourt, and his Le Testament Français was awarded

several prizes including the Prix Médicis (Das, 2003). While

some of his work has subsequently been translated into

English, Makine continues to write solely in French.

These kinds of ironic scenarios are not as unusual as

one might anticipate and while conducting research for this

book I discovered that Gerda Lerner’s novel No Farewell was

first published in a German translation in 1954. This was

originally written in English and the Austrian-American

author had invested all her ‘best effort in mastering the

English language’ in writing this book. The original English

version was published a year later. (Lerner 1955) Hugo

Hamilton’s Die Redselige Insel (2007) was actually written in

English but published in German. Vassalis Alexakis

originally wrote La Langue maternalle in Greek but then

translated it into French. He subsequently revised the

original Greek version based on his French translation!!

(Miletic 2008, 36)

Georges-Arthur Goldschmidt was born in Reinbek, Germany

in 1928 but spent a considerable period of his childhood in

45

Savoie ‘where he was considered a foreigner’. (de Courtivron

in Goldschmidt 2009, 175) Immersed in French, he believed

that he could no longer retrieve his German which had been

tainted by Nazi horrors. Subsequent exploration of literary

masterpieces in both French and German prompted a

reconciliation with his mother tongue – and although he

became a French citizen, he worked as Professor of German in

his adopted country for many years. Goldschmidt has won

major literary prizes in both languages. (Goldschmidt 2009,

175)

The fact that a number of these authors have not

engaged with the English language sharpened my enthusiasm

for their work and enhanced their appeal for me. (It also

became necessary for me to sharpen my language skills in

German in order to communicate with them). Although some

like Natascha Wodin (the daughter of Russian refugees to

Germany) and Gino Chiellino (an Italian migrant to Germany)

have been partially translated into English, their works

have not received due attention in the English-speaking

world. Hopefully this book will serve to kindle some

46

interest in their work and bring their reflections to a

wider audience – especially to those who engage with the

concept of ‘language memoirs’ and the explorations of

language experiences.

My third criterion was that the author was born in a

place regarded as being on the European continent. I have

included, for example, a number of Irish-born writers such

as Hugo Hamilton, Lorcán Ó Treasaigh and Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill

as well as some authors born in Central Europe such as Eva

Hoffman (born in Cracow, Poland), Verena Stefan

(Switzerland) and Natasha Wodin (Nuremberg). Some Russian-

born authors also feature in this work. These include

Natasha Lvovich, Andreï Makine and Vladimir Nabokov. In

dealing with this criterion, I encountered a number of

anomalies which have not necessarily been resolved

satisfactorily. While it is easy to assert, for example,

that Hugo Hamilton or Eva Hoffman are ‘European-born’

authors, the situation is far less clear when one is dealing

with the Russian context, and the question of whether Russia

(or part of it) is in Europe (or not) is a source of much

47

academic speculation. (Nic Craith 2006) Moreover, the

birthplace of some of the Russian authors is not always

clear. For example, some suggest that Andreï Makine was born

in Penza in European Russia whereas others indicate that he

was actually born in Krasnoyarsk in Siberia (Lemelin 2004,

340). That location might more properly be regarded as Asia.

Moreover, some of the authors whom I designate as

European-born do not necessarily think of themselves in such

terms. Elias Canetti, for example, paints a colourful

picture of his childhood in Ruschuk, Bulgaria – which was

apparently outside of Europe:

Die übrige Welt heiß dort Europa, und wenn jemand die Donau hinauf

nach Wien fuhr, sagte man, er fährt nach Europa. Europa begann dort,

wo das türkiscge Riech geendet hatte. (Canetti 1977, 11)

[There the rest of the world was known as ‘Europe,’ and

if someone sailed up the Danube to Vienna, people said

he was going to Europe. Europe began where the Turkish

Empire had once ended. (Canetti 1979, 5)]

48

As well as focusing on contemporary, European writers,

my fourth criterion for inclusion in this research was that

the author was fluent in more than one language. This was a

relatively easy criterion to fulfil in a European context as

multilingualism is common on the continental core. Canetti

(1979: 27) writes of his native Bulgaria:

Es war oft von Sprachen die Rede, sieben oder acht verschiedene wurden

allein in unserer Stadt gesprochen, etwas davon verstand jeder, nur die

kleinen Mädchen, die von den Dörfern kamen, konnten Bulgarisch allein

und galten deshalb als dumm. Jeder zählte die Sprachen auf, die er

kannte, es war wichtig, viele von ihnen zu beherrschen, man konnte durch

ihre Kenntnis sich selbst oder anderen Menschen das Leben retten.

(Canetti 1977, 38)

[People often talked about languages; seven or eight

different tongues were spoken in one city alone,

everyone understood something of each language. Only

little girls, who came from the village, spoke just

49

Bulgarian and were therefore considered stupid. Each

person counted up the languages he knew; it was

important to master several, knowing them could save

one’s own life or the lives of other people. (Canetti,

1979, 27)]

Canetti’s own first languages were Ladino (the language of

Jews from the Iberian Peninsula) and Bulgarian, but seven or

eight languages were commonly spoken in Ruse.

The Czech-German author, Ota Filip describes

multilingualism as a normal state of affairs in Ostrau, the

city of his birth in the current Czech Republic. His father

had a café in the town there. He tells of the languages

spoken there by staff and customers:

Mein Vater hatte ein Caféhaus, und wenn dort deutsche Gäste waren,

dann sprach er Deutsch mit ihnen; waren es tschechische Gäste, dann

wurden sie auf Tschechisch bedient. (Filip, interview)

50

[My father had a café, and if the guests there were

German, my father would speak German with them; if the

guests were Czechs, they would be served in Czech.

(AT)]

Ota and his childhood friends spoke several languages as a

matter of course:

Wenn ich als kleiner Bub mit meinen Freunden auf der Straße Fußball

gespielt habe, dann mußte ich dafür vier Sprachen sprechen können.

(Filip, interview)

[As a little boy, when I went out to play football with

my friends in the street, I had to be able to speak

four languages. (AT)]

The children did not regard their multilingualism as

anything other than normal:

51

Und das war normal. Wir sprachen zwar nicht besonders elegant, aber ich

mußte mich auf Deutsch, Tschechisch, Polnisch und Jiddisch verständigen

können. So war das eben damals. Wir haben das auch gar nicht als

Belastung empfunden; es kam uns gar nicht in den Sinn, nach

Nationalitäten zu unterscheiden. Die Tatsache, daß mein Freund Erich

Jiddisch sprach und mein anderer Freund Deutsch spielte keine Rolle;

meine erste Freundin war ein deutsches Mädchen. Wir haben Ostrau als

eine multikulturelle Stadt empfunden. (Filip, interview)

[Yes, that was normal. We did not speak particularly

elegantly, but I had to be able to communicate in

German, Czech, Polish and Yiddish. That’s just how it

was. We did not experience this as a burden; it never

occurred to us to draw distinctions on grounds of

nationality. The fact that my friend Erich spoke

Yiddish and another friend German was of no

significance; my first love was a German girl. We

enjoyed Ostrau as a multicultural city. (AT)]

52

George Steiner stresses that multilingualism was a

natural state of affairs in Europe for many centuries.

‘Until late into the eighteenth-century, the educated

throughout western Europe, but also in Warsaw or in Prague,

be they scholars, philosophers, diviners, scientists, men of

law, diplomats, politicians, men of letters, shared Latin,

when in discourse with each other while being simultaneously

practitioners of their own vulgate. (Steiner 1998 [1997],

79) He muses that ‘[i]t would be interesting to know whether

it was in Latin or in English that Newton analysed inwardly

and initially verbalised (conceptualised) his axioms’. He

suggests that [m]any of the perplexities which arise out of

the epistemology of Descartes stem from the fact that Latin

was the first language of his meditations, that translation

into his native French proved recalcitrant also to himself.’

Steiner argues that there is ‘scarcely a passage in the

pedal-point English of Paradise Lost or in Milton’s prose

which does not bear witness to the Latin substratum and to

the enriching intervention of other tongues (Italian among

them). (Steiner 1998 [1997], 79-80) Steiner himself is an

53

exemplar of this European multilingualism. His father and

mother, Frederick and Else Steiner, were Austrian Jews who

had acquired French citizenship, and the children were

raised in German, English, French and German. Steiner

Subsequently learned Italian.

Although one does not necessarily immediately associate

the western islands of Europe with bi- or multilingualism,

multilingualism was a natural state of affairs in many parts

of Ireland until the early nineteenth century. As well as

fluency in Irish Gaelic, many Irish rural peasants were

fluent in Greek, Latin and other tongues. (Nic Craith 1993)

My own research has yielded many contemporary examples of

intercultural memoirs in Ireland – cases such as Hugo

Hamilton who describes himself as a ‘brack’ child. ‘Brack,

homemade Irish bread with German raisins’. (Hamilton 2003,

282-3) In Hugo’s case, German-Irish bilingualism

predominated his childhood. He noted that they slept in

German and dreamt in Irish. They laughed in Irish and cried

in German. They were silent in German and spoke in English.

(Hamilton 2003, 282-3)

54

While every primary author featured in this book was

clearly bi-or multi-lingual it was not always possible to

determine the circumstances in which they acquired

additional languages. Andreï Makine, for example, grew up

speaking Russian but loving French which is sometimes called

‘grandmother tongue’. This is with reference to his book Le

Testament Française in which he suggests that he learned French

from his grandmother with whom he spent many of his

childhood vacations. (Makine, 2007 [1996]) His summers were

lived in French while his winters were spent in Russian.

Doubts have been expressed regarding the authenticity of the

story but there is no alternative narrative to explain the

almost native-like French of this Russian author

A strong engagement with language experiences was the

fifth and final criterion for authors who are included in

this volume. Many of the authors that I deal with here have

either penned full-length autobiographies or substantial

pieces reflecting on language experiences. Autobiographies

with a focus on language are fast emerging as a sub-genre

within the biographical range and have been designated as

55

‘language memoirs’ by Alice Kaplan in 1994. (Kaplan 1994) In

her own language memoir, French Lessons, she reflects on the

impact of the French language and culture on her identity

and personality. (Kaplan 1993) It became important for her

to think about ‘what is going on inside the head of the

person who suddenly finds themselves passionately engaged in

new sounds and a new voice.’ (Kaplan 1994, 59) Her

excitement about this type of writing led her to discover

many companion texts for her own work such as Richard

Rodriguez’ Hunger of Memory (1982) and Alfred Kazin’s A Walk in

the City (1979 [1951]).

I myself became very interested in the notion of

language memoir upon reading Speckled People a number of years

ago. (Hamilton 2003) This autobiography was penned by Hugo

Hamilton who grew up in a largely English-speaking Dublin in

the 1950s and 60s. Hugo’s father was a patriotic, obsessive

Irish nationalist who was utterly devoted to Irish (Gaelic)

and would speak no other language with his children. His

mother was a softly-spoken German emigrant who communicated

with her children in her native tongue. In consequence,

56

there was no English spoken in the house – although Hugo and

his brother would have dearly loved to operate in the

language of the majority population. On reading Hugo’s book,

I was impressed with his explorations of the emotions the

child felt in regard to all three languages, Irish, German

and English. I could empathise with attitudes to Irish in

particular and I recognised that books such as these could

offer immensely rich insights into the experience of

different cultural and linguistic settings.

This interest in language memoirs opened up an exciting

adventure in reading which has been ongoing for a number of

years now. Key texts include Eva Hoffman’s Lost in Translation

which recounts a childhood spent initially in Cracow, Poland

and a subsequent emigration to Canada at the age of 13

(Hoffman, 1998). Lost in Translation has been described as an

‘intellectual woman’s autobiography’ and explores a tri-

national girl ‘with no single language or sole culture.’

(Hokenson 1995, 101)

Lorcán Ó Treasaigh’s Céard é English? (2002) is one of the

few Irish language memoirs that will feature in this volume.

57

(Ó Treasaigh 2002) Although the author was reared in Dublin,

his parents had decided to communicate with their children

solely in Irish. Unlike Hamilton, Ó Treasaigh appears to

have thoroughly enjoyed the experience of being raised

through Irish and had little desire to switch to English in

order to communicate with his peers. This semi-fictional

autobiography is particularly strong on connections between

language, place and religion. In the case of Irish, all

three have become intertwined.

Some of the key texts that I draw on in this book could

more properly be described as fictional or ‘creative non-

fiction’ rather than factual. One such example is Vassilis

Alexakis’ Les mots étrangers which could be described as

strongly imaginative while drawing strongly on elements of

author’s own life. Following the death of his father in

1995, this Greek-born author began learning Sango which is

the primary language spoken in the Central African Republic.

In Les mots étrangers, the central character embarks on a

similar linguistic journey and there follows a meditative

journey on language and loss. When the book was published in

58

2002, it was short-listed for two significant French

literary awards, the Interallié Prize and the Renaudaut

Prize. Alexakis subsequently translated the volume in Greek

and the translated volume was awarded the prize for the best

Greek novel of the year. (Merry 2004)

Although this volume focuses strongly on authors with

European roots, some notable European writers are also

missing ‘missing’ here. Czeslay Milosz is a case in point.

His omission was primarily for two reasons. Firstly he

continued to write in Polish – a language with which I have

no familiarity and secondly, his work was outside of my

timeframe. Ultimately no single volume can include all

authors – even significance authors – of relevance.

The focus on European-born authors in this book does

mean ‘losing’ significant authors from other geographical

locations with significant insights into the process of

migration and language displacement, and who had formed part

of my initial research. One of the more exciting finds was

the Chicano author, Ilan Stavans and his memoir On Borrowed

Words, published in 2001 (Stavans 2001). The title refers to

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the author’s experiences of delving into the languages of

other peoples and making them his own and the author ‘is

mostly concerned with the opportunities that belonging to

more than one culture affords and introduces us to the

concept of hybridity’ (Ros i Sole 2004, 234). Stavan’s

memoir explores his experiences with Yiddish, Spanish,

Hebrew and English and the journey from Eastern Europe to

Mexico to Israel and to the US is explored from the

perspective of the languages spoken in these locations.

Another already-mentioned memoir, Chicano memoir,

Hunger of Memory, has proved controversial since its

publication in 1982. ‘Richard Rodriguez is considered to be

one of the most conservative Chicano authors and much of his

book focuses on the English-language education of the

Spanish-speaking author and his gradual withdrawal from his

Spanish-speaking parents and relatives. Although many would

regard such a process as a greater loss than gain, Rodriguez

himself has consistently defended the process and his memoir

has great insights on the impact of second-language

acquisition on family unity.

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When drawing up the five criteria, I was initially

concerned that I might leave myself short of authors to

engage with or memoirs that could serve as primary source

material. This was very naïve of me and the opposite in fact

proved to be true. There is a wealth of material from

European-born authors that could have been included in this

book but who will not feature on this occasion. Hopefully I

will have an opportunity to engage with them elsewhere. What

I hope to achieve in the remainder of this volume is to draw

attention to issues of great personal interest to me which

have been dealt with by contemporary European authors in a

manner that is lively, engaging and relevant.

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