In other words 2

Berlin, 2012

“Writing in another language represents an act of demolition, a new beginning.”

Jhumpa Lahiri, In other words

I can see what Lahiri is trying to say here: how liberating choosing a language that has no connection to your family history can be. How completely pure and aerial it can turn your breath into ̶ no mother tongue standing in the way. A demolition of a sort like all kinds of personal choices may feel like, but a breaking away from constraints too: who we are mutating into what we create, the invisible slipping into the word which is the only shining that matters. Writing may express this constant shift, this existential statelessness that makes you want to embrace the ultimate flight into a language without barriers nor judgements, just sounds reaching for l’azur, Mallarmé’s dream of absolute revelation effacing all despair and madness.

I chose English to be free, as Lahiri chose Italian to be free. My situation strikes me as oddly connected to hers, though in reverse: I moved away precisely from the language she embraced as her means of expression to find unlimited love into writing, where words are both other and alike, in other words transformed by their very own protean self into fireworks endlessly exploding.

 Words and Picture Copyright © 2022 Sacha Rosel