Becoming A Writer In A Language That Is Not Yours By Birth, Though, Goes Against Nature; There Is Nothing

“Becoming a writer in a language that is not yours by birth, though, goes against nature; there is nothing organic in this process, only artifice. There are no linguistic “instincts” to guide you on the path and the language’s guardian angels rarely whisper into your ear; you are truly on your own. Says Cioran: “When I wrote in Romanian, words were not independent of me. As soon as I began to write in French I consciously chose each word. I had them before me, outside of me, each in its place. And I chose them: now I’ll take you, then you.” Many who shift to writing in a second language develop an unusually acute linguistic awareness. In an interview he gave in 1979, some seven years after he moved to the United States from his native Russia, Joseph Brodsky speaks of his ongoing “love affair with the English language.” Language is such an overwhelming presence for these people that it comes to structure their new biographies. “English is the only interesting thing that’s left in my life,” says Brodsky. The need to find le mot juste starts out as a concern, turns into an obsession, and ends up as a way of life. These writers excel at the art of making virtue of necessity: out of a need to understand how the new language works, they turn into linguistic maniacs; out of a concern for correctness, they become compulsive grammarians.”

— Born Again in a Second Language  h/t @playsuits (via cesaire)

“I Have Not Lingered in European Monasteries”, Leonard Cohen

from The Spice-Box of Earth (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1961)

Sistine Chapel, 2012 by Katharina Gaenssler

“Language is a perpetual Orphic song,”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley, Prometheus Unbound (IV)