Writing in One Language, Living in Another
Do we all feel some degree of anxiety and effort in speaking the languages required of us in everyday life? Does it often feel that the words are speaking us, rather than we speaking them?
This post is inspired by a question asked on the Fortunate Daughter website. (Fortunate Daughter is an imprint of Tebot Bach, publisher of my new chapbook, and they have a Q and A spot where the poets can be interrogated/have information gently teased out of them!)
The question was “how does living in another language affect your writing?”
This of course is a practical question, as I live in Poland and write in English, but it provoked a train of thought that went much deeper, and in several directions.
Is it the case that when we write poetry, as we sometimes do, if only when drunk and heartbroken, if only as teenagers, if only once (I am talking about the majority of people, I think, not some small group who identify as poets), we are always reaching for a language which is different from the one we live in?
Are we looking for something more essentially ours? More intimate, clearer, cleaner than life will allow us to be? Something that feels real, or true? Without forgetting that while we may feel we can’t control anything in our lives, we do have control over the words on the page.
For emigrants — first, second and even third generation — as long as the “home” language is spoken at home, the mother tongue means something special, is a way into a sense of belonging, which edges into a sense of secrecy (the others around us don’t understand) and mystery as the generations grow up with another culture to call home, too.
Writing and speaking my “mother tongue” (the phrase makes more sense to me than trying to lay claim to an entire language as my own!) is something comforting, normal and easy, a refuge from the difficulties, anxiety, embarrassment and sheer effort involved in “living in another language”, a sanctuary and refreshment. There need be no conscious effort at all. I open my mouth and out it comes. Maybe these qualities are tangible in the writing, maybe not.
But maybe this is the case for everybody. Do we all feel some degree of anxiety and effort in speaking the languages required of us in everyday life? Does it often feel that they are speaking us, rather than we speaking them? That we might get the words wrong and fall out of the game?
Maybe we all have our own secret “mother tongue” — our own private language of attachment, where we feel safe — and maybe some others speak it too. And perhaps when we feel lonely we like to speak it to ourselves and see it on paper, where it becomes writing, something outside ourselves, conjuring up another speaker. Or maybe we don’t feel lonely, we just want to extend this language, play with it, see what we can say in it and what we can’t, make it sing.
Other articles by Sarah Luczaj
This article was last reviewed by Dr Greg Mulhauser, Managing Editor on Monday, 8th June 2009. You can leave a reply below.
The URL of this page is:
http://counsellingresource.com/features/2009/06/08/writing-in-one-language-living-in-another/
14 Responses (Including 3 Discussion Threads) to “Writing in One Language, Living in Another”
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May McLeod11
John, I am glad of your response, and it helps clarify my awareness of what happened in my own family. Although I did my best to ‘play the game’ much of the time, there were actually many ways and many times I did ’speak up’ – verbally and in deed. I didn’t see it coming, but my own need to stand with ‘the things that happened’ – something to do with that rather old-fashioned ‘commodity’ called ‘the truth’ – actually cost me my family. I was not choosing to ‘lose’ them – it has been unbearably painful – but something in me just couldn’t keep swallowing and participating in the ‘cover stories’… This is not about being unable to consider different points of view – it’s about the way that the denial of violence is, in many ways, the most damaging aspect of traumatic events i.e. the denial that something really bad really happened – it leaves the victim profoundly isolated, and this is the thing which can be hardest to heal. (Vietnam vets, amongst others, have educated me about this – but the same stuff happens in ‘ordinary life’ too of course – inside of the place so many assume we are safe – “family”…)
For many years I couldn’t find the words to talk about some of the things that had happened. I had come to think that I would be forever locked in this prison of the ‘unspeakable’. Then I read what Paul Fussell had to say about WWI soldiers suffering “shell shock” post-war. He said that actually we have plenty of good words with which to tell the story, that the problem really is that nobody wants to listen. We tend to get the message that ‘nobody wants to know’ without words even being said – we’re very sensitive to such cues, it’s self-protection after all – we’re already hurting and don’t need the added pain of rejection and humiliation. Paul Fussell said that it’s really not a matter of there being no words for the ‘unspeakably’ terrible things some people suffer and witness, he said that ‘”unspeakable” really means “nasty”‘ – and suddenly I felt a fountain of hope welling up – I began to think that it wasn’t necessarily all my problem, and my ‘failure’ to ‘find the words’…
The power of language! But it is not just ‘being able to say’ it seems – it seems to matter that someone can hear. (See Jonathan Shay’s wonderful book ‘Achilles in Vietnam – Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character’ re a ‘trustworthy community of listeners’ and the willingness to be changed by what we hear…) The power of relationship…
Me raving! Part of my fear/excitement at taking up the challenge to speak in this strangely personal/impersonal arena. It just does matter so much – this thing of connecting with other human beings. Scary, and exciting… Talking to myself – talking to ‘you’ – a stranger…
I am glad you said what you did about the rebellion/submission stuff – in some mysterious way what you said has allowed me to accept myself much more – just through this little conversation. Maybe cos you accept yourself – and it’s contagious!
Anyway, thanks!
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