|
One Life- How Many Languages?
October 7, 2007
How are we to understand the role of language for the Holocaust victim? How can the inexplicable horrors be reduced to words? How is language negotiated?
Loosely speaking, language describes the collective mediums of communication and expression, some of which include words, images, gestures, sounds and signals. Therefore, language is the principal means by which experiences, events and emotions can be represented. As long as humans must resort to language in order to communicate, the hope of returning to the very nature of something post facto will remain infeasible. It is in this sense that we can accuse language as being an inadequate vehicle for representation, but it is, after all, the only one we have.
In a previous article I had quoted Alphonse Daudet who had written: … « quand un peuple tombe esclave, tant qu'il tient sa langue, c'est comme s'il tenait la clef de sa prison... »
“When a people fall into slavery, as long as they hold on to their mother language, they hold the key to their prison.” Perhaps this is not always true. After having read both, The Story of a Life by Aharon Appelfeld and an interview Mr. Appelfeld had in The Boston Review, I have developed a new view on language.
You see, the German language repulsed Mr. Appelfeld. He felt that it would not only be a paradox, but it would be tragic to write in the language of the murderers. As a child, to be wrested from one’s home, separated from one’s parents, hear the scream of one’s mother being murdered- by the Gestapo- one simply suspends belief. It is no wonder that a 13 year old might question “who am I?” after wandering the countryside for three years. These wandering orphans which included Mr. Appelfeld, were surrounded by darkness. Life battered them from all sides. They learned to keep their heads down, and if they found shelter, they would crawl toward it. They were like animals but without their daring and aggressiveness. After each beating, they would flee. These children even lost the ability to cry out.
A cacophony of languages whirling in one’s head has to be very unsettling and create a feeling of deep disorientation. There was only one year in school that abruptly ended. The home language was German, where the grandparents spoke Yiddish, the maids spoke Ukrainian, and the regime that was in power was Rumanian, so that was also picked up. Roaming Europe for three years and arriving in Russia, Russian was added, ultimately his European trek reached Italy, so some Italian was incorporated into Appelfeld’s word bank. A bunch of words in different languages that all represented killing, being pushed into wagons and being treated like animals. This is what represented Mr. Appelfeld’s childhood. It was all beyond words. Not being rooted in the culture, not being rooted in the language, created a kind of mental stammering. Mr. Appelfeld later wrote that he admits suspicion of “any fluent stream of words.” He has stated “I prefer stuttering, for in stuttering I hear the friction and the disquiet, the effort to purge impurities from the words, the desire to offer something from inside you. Smooth, fluent sentences leave me with a feeling of uncleanness, of order that hides emptiness…” His memories, he explains are not stored in language, but in his body. Mr. Appelfeld who suffered as a Jew, emigrated to Israel and adopted Hebrew as his language. It seems most appropriate for him to have come full circle and to make his return to the language of the Bible.
Greta Brewer
Vice President of Education,
NEXT GENERATIONS
NEXT GENERATIONS is under the auspices of LEAH, League for Educational Awareness of the Holocaust.
|
