Poetry and climate change

Since the buzz phrase nowadays is “climate change,” here is part of Albert B. Casuga's poem “Umberto and Edo de Brazil” that uses more than one language to warn us that flooding threatens everyone, not just those that speak any one language:

Was it the surprise of a wayward downpour
stopped her from her frolic in the sea?
Or was it the intruding pall ruined her mark
of the sun, gone from the sky, gone from the sea?
Lluvia! Lluvia! She warned anyone who cared
to listen --- the beach frolic rolled unabated.

Notice that had the poet used the English "Rain! Rain!" instead of the Spanish "Lluvia! Lluvia!" the jolt intended by both the woman and the poet would have been lost.  Additionally, the rhythm would have suffered, because the monosyllabic "Rain" would have shortened the line.  Cleverly, the poet justifies the use of non-English words in an English poem by the characters in the narrative.  Such justification works better with readers used to monolingual poetry, but is not necessary for readers more attuned to multilingual writing.

The theme of the poem, of course, is enhanced by the use of more than one language.  The poem dramatically presents the peculiarity of today's weather conditions, brought about by climate change (something the whole world experiences and caused).

David Maillu

I wonder if the lack of serious critical appreciation of the fiction of David Maillu stems not so much from his being popular (there still being a kind of prejudice on the part of mainstream literary critics against commercially successful fiction) or from his philosophy and politics (not exactly the timid kinds), but from his mixing of languages in his writing.  In 1998, J. Roger Kurtz and Robert M. Kurtz set out to install Maillu in the canon of African literature (literature, not just popular literature) in an article entitled "Language and Ideology in Postcolonial Kenyan Literature:  The Case of David Maillu's Macaronic Fiction."  Their efforts appear to have gained some ground for Maillu fans (see the amusing take in Creative Ventures on Maillu's political crusade).  Maillu himself seems to thrive on alienating high-end critics.  Reports Evan Maina Mwangi in Africa Writes Back to Self:  Metafiction, Gender, Sexuality (2009):  "David Maillu playfully named one of his texts Unfit for Human Consumption (1973), and another of his works advertised in its title that it is about the Kommon Man (1975), complete with a misspelling, to align itself against the university-educated elites."  Just as everything personal is political, everything linguistic is also political - and vice-versa.

Kashmiri literature

Here's a challenge for young Indian literary critics looking for a niche for themselves.  Study the way languages interact with each other to create new literary frontiers in Kashmiri writing.  This was the situation in 1911 as painted by the Encyclopedia Brittanica:

"Kashmiri possesses a somewhat extensive literature, which has been very little studied. The missionary William Carey published in 1821 a version of the New Testament (in the Sarada character), which was the first book published in the language. In 1885 the Rev. J. Hinton Knowles published at Bombay a collection of Kashmiri proverbs and sayings, and K. F. Burkhard in 1895 published an edition of Mahmud Gami's poem on Yusuf and Zulaikha. This, with the exception of later translations of the Scriptures in the Persian character and a few minor works, is all the literature that has been printed or about which anything has been written. Mahmud Gami's poem is valuable as an example of the Kashmiri used by Mussulmans."

How has multilingual literary criticism progressed in India since 1911?  T. N. Kaul gives an update for the Kashmiri Overseas Association, but the situation does not look much better than it did in 1911.  The description remains on the level of mere description, not of analysis.  We still need serious literary analysis of Kashmiri works based on the mixing of languages.

Launch of a Festschrift

You are invited to the launch of Inter/Sections: Isagani R. Cruz and Friends, edited by David Jonathan Y. Bayot (published by Anvil Publishing for De La Salle University), at Powerbooks, Greenbelt, Makati, Philippines, on 15 April, Thursday, 5 to 6 p.m. Contributors to the book are: Gayatri Spivak, Catherine Belsey, Marjorie Perloff, Christopher Norris, E. San Juan Jr., Virgilio S. Almario, Alfred A. Yuson, Gemino H. Abad, Caroline Hau, Frank G. Rivera, Kathryn VanSpanckeren, Sharon Delmendo, Marilyn Atlas, Paulino Lim Jr., Cirilo F. Bautista, Soledad S. Reyes, Ma. Lourdes S. Bautista, Edna Z. Manlapaz, Tereso S. Tullao Jr., Rolando B. Tolentino, Rosario Cruz Lucero, Vicente Garcia Groyon, Shirley Lua, Clodualdo del Mundo Jr., Ma. Lourdes Jacob, Gerardo Z. Torres, Edwina Carreon, Dinah Roma Sianturi, Ronald Baytan, Genevieve L. Asenjo, and Jose Wendell Capili. The book will be relaunched in Los Angeles, California, USA, on 30 April, 6-8 p.m. (venue TBA), after a lecture by Dr. Cruz at UCLA.

Taiwan's "combination language"

A 2007 thesis gives us more insight into the Taigi literature debates:

"Another emphasis in Peng’s [Rui-Jin, 1991] article was the discussion of combination language. He believed that in the future, the language for Taiwan literature might be the combined language of Taiwan history and practical elements. The current languages such as Hakkanese, Minnanyu, indigenous languages, and Mandarin might be mixed to give rise to be a new language of Taiwan. He mentioned the 'Trilogy of A Chilly Night' by Li Ciao and 'Lang Tao Sha' by Dong Fang-Bai, both as works, which displayed such new language. This kind of combined language was a clever suggestion that needed further thought."

What is happening (or what happened) in Taiwan is very similar to what is happening in countries with several languages (such as the Philippines). Writers (who are the usually the most aware of postcolonial issues) tend to mix languages for many purposes, among which is the subversion of the colonial language, as well as the faithful representation of the reality of a postcolonial people (half dreaming of being part of the colonizing country and half remembering that they are being oppressed as the colonized).

Swedish and Tornedals Finnish

Here's the abstract of a paper presented during the Sociolinguistics Symposium held in Stockholm in April 2008:

"Literary Codeswitching: Shaping culture and identity" by Carla Jonsson:

"This paper focuses on the literary use of code-switching in novels and plays where code-switching occurs between different languages, dialects, styles and varieties. In this paper I argue that the authors and playwrights of such novels and plays can be seen as actors/agents in the sense that they can shape the readers' notions of culture and identity. For instance, by writing a Swedish novel where code-switching between Swedish and Tornedals Finnish (a historical minority language in Sweden) is used, the author creates and shapes the readers' view of what ‘the Finnish-Swedish culture’ is like. The author at the same time also shapes ‘the Finnish-Swedish culture’ in the sense that its language is legitimized, its voice is (or rather some of its voices are) heard, and its experiences are acknowledged. My presentation will focus on code-switching in relation to power and identity. These are 'global' functions of code-switching, according to Auer (1998, 1999), and as such relate to macro connections in society.

"In my presentation novels written in Sweden with code-switching between different languages, dialects, styles and varieties will be discussed together with Chicano plays written in the US, in which there is frequent code-switching between Spanish and English. Findings of my doctoral thesis on code-switching in Chicano theater will serve as basis of the discussion (Jonsson 2005).

"The sociolinguistic situation in California and other southwestern states with frequent contact between English and Spanish, has led to the emergence of Chicano discourse and to the creation of a particular Chicano literature. Similarly, recent development in Sweden has brought forth multiethnic varieties that are now beginning to be used in Swedish literature. In fact, multicultural and multilingual literature is a field of literature that is rapidly growing in Sweden. This literature (novels, poems and plays) uses multiethnic varieties and/or code-switching between different languages to express a multicultural and multilingual experience. My study concentrates on the use of code-switching in this type multilingual literature. One reason for choosing to emphasize on language use in literature is that most previous research in this field has focused on speech.

"Links will be drawn between the functions of code-switching in Chicano theater and the functions of code-switching in multilingual literature in Sweden. Issues of power, ideology and resistance play a central role in this discussion since code-switching can serve as a creative response to domination and since language in these forms of literature often fills empowering functions. The different novels and plays that constitute this multilingual literature, together create a literary platform that can be regarded as an alternative market (Bourdieu 1991) where it is possible for ethnic minority groups to make their voices heard. In addition, the possibility of constructing and reconstructing a separate identity through the use of code-switching in literature will be discussed. By employing code-switching in their work is possible for the authors and playwrights to reflect, construct and reconstruct a separate third space identity (Bhabha 1994) that draws upon the different cultural environments."

I still have to check if the proceedings of the symposium have been published.

Back to basics

It's good to look back at the simple (simplistic, really) explanation for schoolchildren that Michael Ryan gives in his Literary Theory: A Practical Introduction (2nd ed., 2007):

"Important concepts in post-colonial study are diaspora, hybridity, ambiguity, mimicry, mestizaje, and creolization. Most former imperial countries are now disaporic in the sense the people from former colonies have moved to imperial metropoles such as England and become English. Ideas regarding national or even ethnic cultural identity become more difficult to apply in situations where traditional and metropolitan cultural norms and identities meet and mix. ... Colonialists sought to impose their own culture on a quite different culture so that it would mime or imitate that of the imperial center. The desire for a homogeneous identity of ruler and ruled was confounded by the unequal relation of power which meant that such imposition was disturbed implicitly by tendencies toward non-compliance and willed dissonance. What resulted often was mimicry with irony rather than imitation. Some natives sought refuge in indigenous, often oral cultures or in ideals of a national culture based in their own experience and language. The assumption was that language bears worldviews within it, so that to adopt the imperial language was in effect to adopt the point of view of imperialism, with all of the arrogant assumptons that ran counter to one’s own interests as a subject of colonialism. But other writers and intellectuals embraced the opportunity for creative mixing that the colonial and post-colonial situation afforded. From this way of thinking resulted such terms as ‘mestizaje’ and ‘creolization,’ the idea that identities and languages from both sides of the imperial equation can combine to generate new subjective and linguistic possiblities. A mestizo is a mixed-race person, and a creole is a mixed language that combines elements of a language like English or French with local indigenous dialects." (196-97)

Ironically, Ryan reveals exactly the kind of imperialistic arrogance that he valiantly tries so hard to avoid - by calling local indigenous languages "dialects" rather than "languages" (which is what linguists call them), thus implying that English or French have a higher status than the "local" and "indigenous." Sometimes (as in movies such as Avatar and District 9), those oppressors that try to help the oppressed actually do not, in a deeper sense. I remember what the feminist Toril Moi said in answer to a question in a lecture at Oxford in 1988; asked if men should be feminists, she said, "They could, but they shouldn't, because they will occupy the only space that we have" (or words to that effect).

Nevertheless, Ryan's explanation for students more or less clarifies why we have to do what we do: none of the current literary theories can adequately account for the intricate relationship between mother (or "native") language and the colonial language in the writing of literature.

Chinese, not just English

It is not only English that is accused of killing national languages (called hegemony in critical language), but the language that is spoken and read by even more people - Chinese. Here is the lament of Chong-goan Lim, a writer in Taiwan:

"今仔日台灣文壇為何猶未寫出不朽的精采的作品, 除了一寡因素之外, 就是作家忽視母語, 輕視母語,… 一個無自信的人, 怎有才調寫出不朽的精采的作品, 結果也只好乖乖做文化的屬民, 文學的奴隸。所以今仔日的作家, 著愛重新整合創新台語, 按呢, 才有才調寫出現時現地醞釀佇心靈中的世界。

"Why does immortal work still not occur in the literature of Taiwan? There are some factors: one is that our writers ignored and looked down our own mother tongue because they were not confident of their vernacular. How could a writer without any confidence create an immortal work? Consequently, they had to subordinate themselves to Chinese culture and become the slaves of Chinese literature. So, today, we Taiwanese writers have to devote ourselves to literary works in Taigi. Then, we will be able to describe our world in our mind.

"台灣文學就是愛用台語來寫…台灣文學就是台灣人用台灣人的母語寫的文學…台語文學就是台灣文學。(Lim 1990)

"Taiwan Literature must be written in Taigi…Taiwan Literature is the literature written in the mother tongue of Taiwanese people…Taiwan Literature is Taigi literature."

Historically, linguistic superiority or prestige follows economic and/or political superiority. Only creative writers (by their nature as creative writers) can rise above the common beliefs of their age and see that languages need not be hostage to economics nor politics. We have to be careful, as literary critics, not to be carried away by the stupidity (yes, for that is what it is) of non-literary "intellectuals" who never seem to realize that economics and politics come and go, but art stays. Who remembers the GNP of the Greece of Sophocles or even the England of Shakespeare? Who remembers (without looking it up) the name of the American President during the time Nathaniel Hawthorne was writing The Scarlet Letter?

Ravi Kumar on translation

Article alert:

Ravi Kumar, part of our online community, has just published an article on translation in India:

The life of a translator in India.

Here's an excerpt:

"Bilinguals have always been respected in India as people with superior qualifications, and they have played a pivotal role in social and cultural change. Slowly, bilingualism has become so widespread that it is complementary in nature. For example, an individual may use a particular language at home, another in the neighbourhood and the bazaar, and still another in certain formal domains such as education, administration, and the like. In addition, the languages of national and international communication, Hindi and English, are also part of the linguistic repertoire of a sizeable number of Indians. In India, linguistic diversity is not an accident, rather it is inherited in the process of acquiring the composite culture of India."

Resisting mixed language in literature

The resistance to mixing languages in a single work of literature comes not from the great writers (who have all done it, unconsciously or consciously), but from lesser writers more interested in ideology or politics than in being true to reality. Here, for instance, is a historical instance of writers trying to keep Belarusian free from the pervasive influence of Russian:

"Popular is the mixed language which is called ‘trasianka’ (e.g. ‘stirred language), it is the mixture of Russian and Belarusian but many people who speak it are sure they speak pure Russian. In the beginning of the nineties there was even suggestion to recognize ‘trasianka’ as a state language. ...

"One of the first examples of Belarusian literature is Francišak Skaryna’s translation of Bible, printed in Prague in 1517-1519. It was the third printed Bible after the German and Czech ones in Europe. Important too are the Lithuanian Chronicles and the Lithuanian Statute (the first in the world prototype of modern Constitutions), numerous church writings all dating from the 16th century. After the establishment of the Uniat (Greek Catholic) Church and making union with Poland, Belarusian language began to be strongly polonized. This can be seen in the numerous ‘intermedia’ and ‘school dramas’ of that days which have been preserved to this day in manuscripts written in the Latin alphabet."

The sentiment of the writer against Russianizing or Polandizing Belarusian is clear. I strongly disagree with this kind of sentiment (which is, unfortunately, present in other postcolonial countries). Much more important than keeping languages distinct from each other or "pure" is the responsibility of writers to reflect and to constitute what is going on in real life.

Urdu as example of language development

"Mixed" literary languages eventually become regarded as "umixed" or "monolingual" literary languages. This has been documented extensively in the case of Urdu literature, but the same thing occurs, I suspect, in all literatures. English itself, after all, was never a "pure" language but has always been (and remains up to today) a language that incorporates words, concepts, and even grammar from other languages (think of syllabi and alumni, which should be syllabuses and alumnuses according to English, not Latin, grammar).

Here is an account of the way Urdu started as a mixed language and eventually became a literary language all its own:

"Before the advent of Modern Islam (late 6th Century), Arabs frequented the trade centres of the Indian subcontinent. It is conceivable that along with exchange of goods of trade, they also exchanged words of mutual interest from their languages. In the middle of the 7th Century, during the period of Khalifa Umar the Great, the Iranian Empire (of Yazdigar) fell to Arab Muslims resulting in the Muslim influence being extended up to Mulatto on the western shores of the river Sindh. However, Muslim forces were not able to establish their rule in the area. In 664 AD Muslims invaded India via Kabul and in 715 AD Mohammad Bin Qasim invaded Sindh but did not stay long. Nevertheless in the post-Christ period, those were the starting points in India for the establishment of a new homeland for the people of different culture and linguistic background. Their permanent presence as new communities among the established Indian communities would have necessitated the need of a mixed language. However, up to 1192, we do not have any written record of such a mixed language except in poetry Chand Barvai in his poem 'Parthi Raj Raso,' Dil-pat in his poem 'Khaman Raso' and Tur'pat Naal in his poem 'Bell Dev Raso' used a number of Arabic and Persian words like dunya, per'var'di'gar, salaam with correct pronunciation and some like kalak for khal'q and pai'gam for pai'ghaam, pher'maan for fermaan with modified pronunciation perhaps because of the absence of appropriate alphabets in Bridge Bha'sha to comprehend Arabic and Persian sounds. Again in that period similar examples can be found in the poetry of the Persian poets. They also used words from local Indian languages. In fact Hakim Sa'na'i, a 12th Century Persian poets, never visited India, but still used certain Hindi words.

"Although we find Arabic and Persian words filtering in the local Indian Bha'sha and Prak'rit, up to 1192, we see that, original inhabitants (mostly Hindus) and new settlers (mostly Muslims) formally used their own mother tongues with their scripts for their academic and religious literary pursuits.

"At an early stage the new mixed language was simple and without any formality in its daily use. However, with passage of time, this mixed language became structured and broadened its vocabulary by an increase borrowing of words and phrases from Persian, Turkish and Arabic languages. With little modification it accepted Persian alphabets and its script for itself. The use of these modified Persian alphabets along with the diacritical marks in the script gives to Urdu a unique ability to pronounce correctly the words from Hindi as well as from the foreign languages especially from Persian, Arabic and Persian. One cannot lose sight of several other reasons in the development and evolution of a language. It is important to recognise that there is a distinction between court (political or imperial need), mosque or church (religious need) and bazaar (commercial and days today's common purpose's need). To make a language acceptable elite and populist elements have to be present. The new mixed language developed in the environs of Delhi, the main seat of Muslim rulers (the new settlers) of India had their secular mother tongue Persian and their religious scripture Arabic."

Asma Sayed

From an old news report (2006):

"Since the 1960s, South Asian Canadian writers have been contributing to the richness of Canadian literature. The immigrant writers that arrived in the Sixties were writing in Punjabi, Urdu, and Gujarati, while later immigrants started writing in English as well. But while writers writing in English have been recognized for their work, those writing in their heritage languages have often been ignored. Asma Sayed, for her PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Alberta, under the supervision of Dr. Jonathan Hart, is interested in studying the politics of language in South Asian Canadian writing.

“'My study is two-fold: on one hand, I analyze the use of heritage languages in the writings in English; on the other, I study the literatures solely created in those heritage languages. I intend to study the interrelationship of language, culture, and diaspora.'” Asma’s interest in this area is backed by her knowledge of Gujarati, Hindi, Urdu, Sanskrit, and Punjabi languages and Kachchi dialect.

"The first part of Asma’s research focuses on how heritage languages are used in English writing. 'These writers are experimenting with English to create a hybrid language. This is a language which mixes Gujarati, Hindi, Urdu, Tamil, or others with English. By bringing their different cultural backgrounds from around the world to their writing, and thus creating a hybrid or neo-language, they are extending that culture within Canadian society.'

"While these neo-languages speak volumes about resistance and culture-retention, there has been no extensive study to demonstrate the use of heritage languages by these ethnic writers. 'In fact, at times, their use of heritage languages in the English-Canadian texts has been received negatively. I think it is important to address this issue as I believe that these writers use this mixed language for a purpose. Language has been one of the primary means of struggle in the post-colonial literary world. While this linguistic hybridity challenges hegemony of English, it also serves the objective of retention of cultural identity.'”

Does anyone know Ms. (perhaps now Dr.) Sayed? It would be good to know what she now thinks.

Three quotes from J. K. Gayle

Here are quotes that begin "Literary Mulattos: Three Novelists' Translingual Mix for African American Writing and Criticism," by J. K. Gayle (2009 Australia Tarver Award for Critical Essay on Race, Post-colonialism, or Multi-Ethnic Studies):

"Phillis Wheatley, the first African American poet, switched languages, from Fulani to English, under duress, after being abducted from West Africa and sold to a Boston merchant at about the age of seven . . . . Yet for others translingualism is a way to vaunt their freedom." --Steven G. Kellman, Switching Languages

“'[T]ranslingualism' [should be] employed to describe writers who cross-culturally appropriate, criticize, and reinvent language. . . . Translingual, transport, transplant, translate: these terms may have something to do with a crossing over, a movement into a new state, a transformation. Does the translingual author . . . writing in English cross over, transform, become a new linguistic subject, attain a new discursive identity? Certainly the answer is 'yes,' and yet some writers . . . then cross back to the 'old' language." -- Martha J. Cutter, Review of Switching Languages

"The globalization of cultures . . . presupposes translingualism, or . . . [more specifically] an interlation, a contrastive juxtaposition of two or more apparently identical texts running simultaneously in two different languages — for example, a poem of Joseph Brodsky in the Russian original and in English autotranslation. Interlation is a multilingual variation on the same theme, where the roles of 'source' and 'target' languages are not established or are interchangeable. One language allows the reader to perceive what another language misses or conceals. . . . Robert Frost said that poetry is what gets lost in translation. By contrast, interlation increases, indeed doubles the benefits of poetry." -- Mikhail Epshtein, "Interlation vs. Translation: Stereotextuality"

Italian Canadian literature

"Italianistica versus Italian-Canadian Writing" (2008) by Joseph Pivato studies the literature in mixed languages in Canada today. Writes Pivato:

"Italian immigrants and their children are not voiceless; but speak clearly to each other and to all of us. One way that these people speak is through their arts, especially their writing: novels, stories, poems, plays, essays and experimental writing in mixed genres and mixed languages. They explore who they are; they record the immigrant experience; the meaning of growing up in Canada as both an Italian and a Canadian. These people with very humble backgrounds speak for themselves unmediated by the academic, the researcher or the professional journalist. Again I emphasise that this is direct speech with all its real vitality, spontaneity and peculiar anomalies."

Holding the mirror up to nature is still one of the crucial intentions of a lot of literature, and since nature (or the real world) for Italian immigrants in Canada involves mixing languages, their literature also employs more than one language.

1984 debate

Here’s an early account of the beginnings of Utah-based Chicano mixed-language literature, from Jerry Johnston of Deseret News (4 May 1984):

“Writers such as former Utahn Ricardo Sanchez write in a mixed idiom, meshing English with a kind of spicey barrio vernacular, where a truck is a ‘troca,’ a buddy is a ‘cuate’ and a dime’s called a ‘dime’ (pronounced DEE-may).

“It is the mixed language that throws a kink in a lot of critics. Spanish critic and poet Angel Gonzalez feels mixing the languages not only cuts down on the people who can appreciate the literature (you need to be bilingual) but it furthers a type of speaking that may never be accepted.

“Chicano writers and scholars hotly disagree. [Gary] Soto is quick to defend writers who used a mixed style and Frausto Ibarra says, ‘The mixed idiom style of writing can be a very provocative stance. Our Chicano writers here in the United States use it to great effect. We’re not talking about an either-or situation with languages, but creative people who have a linguistic repertoire.'

“Many Chicano writers from Utah have used it. Abelardo Delgado, who taught at the University for a while, spiced his poetry with Spanish words, so do many of the young Hispanic writers in Salt Lake City today.

“Is it legitimate?

“Scholar Francisco Lomeli remembers the first time he heard Alurista, the poet, read poetry written in a mixture of Spanish and English. He said it was wonderful, it gave credence and beauty to the type of language he was raised speaking in his home.

“It upsets some, entices some. Love it or not, however, we readers better get used to it. According to Tomas Frausto Ibarra, Soto, [Genaro] Padilla and dozens of other members of the Chicano literati, we’re going to be seeing a lot more good literary works written in ‘Pocho’ in the years to come.”

These are writers who consciously use two languages. They represent one end of the literary spectrum that multilingual criticism discusses. The other end is represented by texts that, whether the writers were conscious or not that they were doing it, are actually in more than one language, though they look on the surface like they are monolingual. This second end is harder to unlock; that is the reason we need to sharpen our critical tools first on texts in the first end (or texts that quite obviously use more than one language) before we tackle the really hard task of showing how hidden languages add to the meaning of manifest languages.

American literature not in English

Werner Sollors, in Sacvan Bercovitch's The Cambridge History of American Literature: Prose Writing, 1910-1950 (2003), writes:

“Code-switching and mixed languages are prevalent in American ethnic literature, whether such literature was originally written or published in English or in one of the many other languages that have been used in the United States. For American literature was also written in Yiddish (as was the letter that became Antin’s From Plotzk to Boston), Polish, Swedish, Welsh, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Chinese, or German – the list goes on and on – and this little-known non-English literature of the United States offers fascinating insights into American ethnic diversity in some formally accomplished and many thematically provocative works. The propaganda against foreign languages in the course of World War I marked only an interruption in a long tradition of non-English-language literary production in what is now the United States that started with recorded works in Native American and all colonial languages and continued with literature in scores of immigrant tongues. The propaganda may have been at least effective in removing this literature from scholarly attention in the second half of the twentieth century.” (p. 429)

Absolutely right! In fact, just a couple of years ago, in 2007, Benjamin Pimentel of California published a prize-winning novel in Filipino (Mga Gerilya sa Powell Street). American literature written in Filipino is alive and well, but monolingual American critics have no idea what treasures are being produced right under their noses. Vestiges of the First World War remain in literary scholarship, a strange irony, since literary critics have always prided themselves as being ahead of their times. In reading multilingual literature, they are clearly way behind American (and non-American) readers.

Murayama

Milton Murayama, writing about his novel All I Asking for Is My Body (1975), says, “The aim of writing is to get as close as possible to the experience, and if the experience is dialect, you write dialect. But there is a danger in being unintelligible in dialect. .. I wanted my pidgin to be intelligible to readers of standard English only.” Here lies one problem facing writers working within multilingual situations. Should the writer be faithful to the experience or be kind to the reader? Sometimes, one can be both, but not all the time. African writers decided long ago that they would spell words the way they heard them, and non-African readers have accepted that, despite obvious difficulties. Murayama (as evidenced in the title itself of his novel) tries to be a bit kinder to readers, but he does not really have to be. The burden of reading literature lies with the reader. With other types of writing (notably journalism or speechwriting or even business writing), the reader reigns supreme, because we want the reader to do something (vote for someone or allow us to do something related to our jobs or whatever). Literature, however, as the aphorism ars longa, vita brevis puts it, transcends any group of readers. Witness writers known after their time (Emily Dickinson comes to mind immediately). For me, a writer should write regardless of reader reception. The work will create its own audience. A multilingual work will create a multilingual reader. Conversely, since so many readers today are multilingual by virtue of geography, multilingual works may have come into their own.

Writing Across Cultures

I just returned to Manila from the Writing Across Cultures symposium held on March 9 & 10 in the City University of Hong Kong. Many of the speakers addressed the issues we discuss in this blog. Except for two or three, all of them were bilingual or multilingual, with many writing mixed-language literary texts. Marilyn Chin, for example, who brings together not just the Chinese and the English languages into her work, but ancient Chinese culture and modern American culture, gave the keynote address on the second day. Among the speakers were Catherine Cook, Jon Cook, Andrew Cowan, Alex Kuo, Nury Vittachi, Robin Hemley, P. K. Leung, Sharmistha Mohanty, Kim Cheng Boey, Jose Dalisay, Dai Fan, Rukmini Bhaya Nair, Ouyang Yu, Dinah Sianturi, Bernice Chauly, Justin Hill, Agnes Lam. The organizers were Jane Camens and Xu Xi.

Bani Basu

Meenakshi Mukherjee writes about "Bani Basu's Novels":

"No two of Bani Basu's novels are alike, each one explores a different segment of experience where imagination is backed by research; she experiments with a variety of narrative modes, realism and irrealism sometimes co-exist in startling ways; she is capable of completely changing her language to suit the theme.

"As an example of the latter, one can take Moom (1998) which focuses on a Marwari family settled in Kolkata for generations. The language is Bangla laced with Hindi, the kind many Marwaris in Calcutta use. Such a hybrid language - if used at all in Bangla literature in the past - has only been done for comic effect, and always briefly. Bani Basu dares to write an entire novel in this mixed language quite seriously, without any trace of condescension or mockery."

More and more, critics are recognizing that texts using more than one language have grown way past the macaronic phase. The mixed language used in texts is not just a way of being authentic or mirroring how people speak in real life; it is also - as literary critics know - a way to break the barriers imposed by any one language. Necessarily, one language encompasses only one part of reality. To represent or constitute more of the real world, a writer more and more feels obliged to use more than one language in a single text.

Early Greek lyric

The study by Maria Elena de Luna of the Iliad and other Greek texts has something for multilingual critics. Here is the way reviewer Robert Wallace summarizes one of her points (on Hipponax):

"Ch. 2 ('The presence of γλῶσσαι βαρβαρικαί in the fragments of Hipponax') focuses on the question whether that poet's frequent use of non-Greek words reflects the popular mixed language of Ionia (Hipponax worked in Ephesos and Klazomenai), as some have thought, or was a sophisticated literary device. De Luna argues for the latter, profiting from excellent work on early Greek lyric especially by B. Gentili, A. Aloni, and G. Tedeschi."

To multilingual literary critics, such use is always (not just sometimes or often) "sophisticated" or, more precisely, deliberate. A writer can always translate dialectal words into the main language of a text, but choosing to retain the dialectal or other-language word has (or should have) a clear aesthetic intention - to incorporate not just another language but another culture or subculture into the text, thereby enriching the text.

Japanese writing

Is there such a thing as a language that developed in such isolation that it may be considered a "pure" language and, therefore, its literature may not be describable in terms of multilingual literary criticism? The most obvious example of an isolated language is Japanese, which has, in fact, been called a "language isolate," even if it doesn't appear in Ethnologue's list of such languages. As W. David Marx points out, however, "the most accepted theory of recent years points towards a connection to Korean and the inclusion of both languages in the Altaic family of languages: Turkic, Mongolian, and Tungusic (Manchu)." It will be extremely difficult in practice, but in theory, multilingual criticism can still uncover various cultural substrata even in the relatively "pure" context of Japanese writing.

Different Greeks

Margaret Alexiou writes in After Antiquity: Greek Language, Myth, and Metaphor (2002):

“The language of Greek prose fiction has attracted less attention than that of poetry and has followed a different path.... While the dominant poetic mode has been declamatory, or what Bakhtin terms ‘monologic,’ prose has been more ‘dialogic,’ affording a wider variety of registers and styles.... For prose fiction, the preferred registers during the nineteenth century range from ‘high’ puristic Greek to the ‘mixed’ language of the short stories of Georgios Vizyenos (1849-96) and Alexandros Papadiamandis (1851-1911), both of whom draw on registers from dialect to high puristic to convey distance, irony, and, above all, different narrative tones and voices. During the twentieth century, demotic has prevailed as the standard medium, but there is considerable variety in literary use of local dialect, from the Mytilenian colorings of Stratis Myrivilis to the Cretan tones of Nikos Kazantzakis, and a greater experimentation with register than was deemed appropriate in poetry.”

Even more difficult to analyze than the use of two or more languages in one text is the use of two or more registers (to non-linguists: types) of one language.

Polyglot literature

Hugo Baetens Beardsmore, in “Polyglot Literature and Linguistic Fiction” (2009), proposes a classification that is useful to us: "Polyglot literature has been produced in Western Europe since at least the Middle Ages. Its presence has been noted in Italy, Provence, Castille, The Netherlands, England, and it was produced both for the restricted literary circles of princely courts as well as the unlettered mass. Several varieties of linguistic usage come under the general heading of Polyglot literature. A first form consists in the use by one and the same author of two or more languages in separate literary texts. A second form consists in the use of more than one language by a single author within the same text. A third form owes its origin to a language contact situation and uses a non-standardised language where interference phenomena are manifest. Finally, a fourth form is one in which ‘freakish’ linguistic features, due to the imagination of their creators, are to be encountered. Unlike the first two categories, the last two are generally found in frontier areas of language contact."

The first form is not too interesting to us, except that it illuminates the mind of major writers such as Samuel Beckett. It is the second form that we usually talk about when we say "multilingual literature." The third form is, of course, also interesting, because an author apparently trying to mirror real language shares the attributes of that language (that language being by itself mixed). It is the fourth form that interests us most, because here is where literature takes over linguistics. The linguist may call parts of a literary text "freakish" (despite the quotation marks to indicate a non-literal meaning), but to literary critics, the freakishness is what writing is all about. When a writer uses two or more languages in a single text, s/he hopes to harness two or more cultures (not just languages), thereby increasing the scope and power of the text.

Adrienne Rich

Jane Hedley writes in "Nepantalist Poetics: Narrative and Cultural Identity in the Mixed-Language Writings of Irena Klepfisz and Gloria Anzaldúa" (1996):

"In What Is Found There, her recently published meditation on poetry and politics, Adrienne Rich suggests that in the late twentieth century North American poetry is beginning to be ‘a multicultural literature of discontinuity, migration, and difference.’ Often, she explains, it is a bilingual poetry, ‘incorporating patois and languages other than English’: bilingualism is a fact of life for many of these writers, and it is ‘expressive,’ Rich points out, ‘of the divisions as well as the resources of difference.’”

We are not the first to notice the emergence of multilingual literature (older than macaronic verse) nor the first to take it seriously (because macaronic verse was not quite taken seriously during its time), but we are the first to propose that multilingual literature is the general case and what is apparently monolingual writing is the special case, or to push our physics analogy more accurately, that apparently monolingual writing exhibits all the characteristics of multilingual writing, but since the effects of these on the writing seem negligible, critics do not realize that they are really multilingual.

Dalisay on practicality of multilingual writing

Just an alert about a column today about writing professionally. Jose "Butch" Dalisay, an internationally award-winning novelist, writes in his column Penman in Philippine Star:

"Learn to write bilingually. Many clients — NGOs, government and international agencies — need material in more than one language, especially when they’re reaching out to local communities. Also, you may need to conduct interviews in Filipino or other non-English languages."

It makes a lot of practical sense to be a multilingual writer.

Inner Circle of readers

Kachru's Inner Circle used to be called, before political correctness kicked in, Native Speakers. Perhaps Marc Prensky's term Digital Natives is more appropriate. In our Inner Circle of readers of a multilingual text are those that grew up with all the languages used in the text, not necessarily because these languages were all mother tongues (that would be impossible), but because, sometime before they read the text, they either studied the languages or lived in cultures that spoke those languages. Europeans are obviously privileged in this connection, because they constantly hear, if not speak, more than their own language. So are Filipinos, who are forced by the geography of their islands to learn at least three languages (their mother tongue, the national language, and English). But all peoples, if we look at their histories, are necessarily multilingual, since no language is exactly the same as it was at the time of the Tower of Babel. Clearly, in what Circle an individual reader is will be determined by the text itself. That means that, unlike Kachru and even Prensky, we do not peg a person to just one Circle. We all move into and out of one Circle, depending on the text.

Kachru-type classification

I'm thinking of applying Braj Kachru's classification of English speakers to multilingual literary criticism. We could classify readers of a literary text in this way:

INNER CIRCLE = readers who know all the languages and cultures from which all the words in a literary text come; these readers are able to understand and to appreciate everything that is going on in the text

OUTER CIRCLE = readers who know at least two but not all the languages and cultures from which the words in a literary text come; these readers are able to understand and to appreciate some or most of what is going on in the text

EXPANDING CIRCLE = readers who know only the main language of the text; these readers are barely able to understand and to appreciate what is going on in the text.

My Inner Circle comes very close to what the New Critics and the Reader-Response Theorists would call an Ideal Reader, which is something like the reader that James Joyce wanted (he famously said that, since he took a lifetime to write Finnegan's Wake, it should take a reader a lifetime to read it). Although the Ideal Reader is ideal (i.e., not real), we could all attempt to become one, at least as far as a literary text is concerned.

My Outer Circle is probably where most, if not all, multilingual critics belong. We at least know a couple of the languages being used by the writer. Since by definition, the critic always knows less than the writer (as evident in the history of literary criticism, literary theories always coming after literary movements), it is not bad at all, nor even humbling, to bow to the superior linguistic prowess of a writer.

My Expanding Circle describes probably 90% of critics writing today. Sadly monolingual, such critics miss the other languages and cultures embedded or harnessed in a text.

Happy Chinese New Year

恭喜发财 or 恭喜發財
No matter how the characters are read (the Chinese pronounce the same characters in different ways), the greeting is the same: Happy Chinese New Year (or more strictly translated, "Congratulations for having lived this long, and may you have more money this coming year than last year," or something like that). Since I have Chinese blood (my maternal great grandmother was 100% Chinese), I can say this with full sincerity (though I still cannot speak nor read Chinese, despite having attended classes in Mandarin): congratulations and be prosperous!

Happy Valentine's Day

Feliz día de San Valentín
ハッピー バレンタイン
Buon San Valentino
Alles Liebe zum Valentinstag
情人節快樂
情人节快乐
Bonne Saint Valentin

Writers change language

"‘Ordinary speakers’’ creativity in handling their own language has been in the focus of some scholars’ attention," writes Evgeniy Y. Golovko in "Language Contact and Group Identity: The Role of 'Folk' Linguistic Engineering" (2003). "For example, there are several works studying ‘language play’ in Russian. Most material in such works comes from fiction. It means that major ‘language players’ are people who have made ‘playing with language’ their profession. This professional play is not of much interest for the topic [purposive language change] under consideration. However, it should be kept in mind that the product of professional playing with language spreads to ‘ordinary speakers,’ and the ‘rules’ of language play are very well understood by them. On the other hand, examples of language play are not only found in professionals’ work, but also in folklore, of both adults and children. It is just these mere facts that point to ‘ordinary speakers’’ potential for purposive language change (in the end, language play is nothing but a conscious language change). However, the language change made in the process of language play remains a speech improvisation, it does not become part of the language system." (p. 179)

I like the clause "language play is nothing but a conscious language change," but I disagree that the work of "professional language players" (that's us) remains in the realm of fiction and does not cross over to the world of "ordinary speakers." When Sigmund Freud was trying to figure out the relationship of creative writing to daydreaming, he paid attention to the writers themselves, of course, but he also pointed out that the bigger question was why readers read the works of writers. His answer is our answer to the issue in the paragraph quoted above. The reason ordinary speakers or readers read multilingual literature is that they participate in the language change. Readers are looking for exactly the same things that writers are looking for (and have found).

German the mixed language

"In this age of globalisation," writes Uwe Pörksen as translated by Aingeal Flanagan (Goethe-Institut 2009), "no language in the world can maintain absolute, original purity. But did such linguistic purity ever exist? Or is it wishful thinking, a mere construct?"

Pörksen offers ten principles (about the German language) that we could adopt, mutatis mutandis, as our own in multilingual literary criticism. Here they are:

"1. Bilingualism has been the norm throughout the history of the world’s civilisations. For over one thousand years (from the eighth to the eighteenth centuries), the most formidable counterpart of the German language was written and spoken Latin.

"2. Of all other languages, the contact with Latin has thus far had the most profound effect on the German language.

"3. Luther’s German did not emerge out of an independent development of the oral language culture, for which he had a good ear; instead, it was a borrowed creation from the Latin written culture; it was an artificial language.

"4. We were trilingual in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and parts of the nineteenth centuries. We not only spoke German and Latin, but French too.

"5. The French language also had a lasting effect on German. Peter von Polenz's magnificent three-volume history of the German language sees this effect in the inclusion of Germany in the modern, Western European cultural context.

"6. An independent German ‘literary language’, a written civilisational language, has been developed in fits and starts since the High Middle Ages.

"7. The ‘continuous’, uniform use of language advocated by Leibniz emerged both out of the Latin and French languages and in contrast to them, and it did so independently of the modern state, without a central institute, and without an academy or language supervision.

"8. It was the conscious, active work of a variety of parties that led to this state of affairs.

"9. In the century and a half between the nineteenth century and the 1960s, our country was comparatively monolingual; the German language dominated in almost every sphere.

"10. A third incisive period of language contact began almost half a century ago, namely the contact with the English language. It is likely that this contact will have a profound effect in the long term."

Once we realize that the development of a language is a conscious effort by literary persons (in Pörksen's translated words), we start placing literature once again at the center of civilization, since language, as he correctly points out in his essay, precedes the creation of states. We also start to understand why it is crucial for literary critics to unlock the multilingual substructure of any literary text.

Horace

We have all been too grateful to Horace for introducing the phrase dulce et utile (actually, he never put it that way; his exact words in Ars Poetica 343-44 were "Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci, lectorem delectando pariterque monendo") that we forget that he was wrong in condemning mixed language writing. In his criticism of Lucilius, Horace argues that monolingualism is superior to multilingualism. As Anna Chahoud explains, "A poet who picks such language – Horace insists – is no less to blame than a lawyer who is prepared to jeopardise his professional credibility: a Roman poet, just like a Roman citizen acting in the forum, has nothing to gain from demoting himself to the rank of a bilingual Apulian (the natives of Canusium spoke Oscan and Greek)." Can we not see here a parallelism between the great defender of the purity of the Latin language and the defenders of the purity of the English (or any other) language? To insist on "purity" or monolingualism is to ensure the death of a language! That is what the history of Latin (the international language for centuries, as opposed to English which has been an international language for only one century) tells us.

George Puttenham

"Puttenham," writes Gavin Alexander in Sidney's "The Defense of Poesy" and Selected Renaissance Literary Criticism (2004), "is no Aristotle, and the affection in which he is held by students of the English Renaissance can appear like a very English love of the quaint and unintentionally comical." A wild thought: could the prejudice against multilingual writing be due in part to the overshadowing of George Puttenham by Philip Sidney? After all, it was Puttenham who loved using words in his prose from two languages: "Many of the words which face each other across Puttenham’s conjunctions are synonyms. The technique belonged in the mixed language which Puttenham had written a history of. For most things English had an Anglo-Saxon term and an Anglo-Norman one; and the Latinate element represented by the influence of French was being fortified by the many borrowings from Latin which expanded the English lexicon in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Puttenham is not frightened to employ neologisms when he wants to, but he sympathizes with those of the previous generation who had called for a purification of English and a return to its Anglo-Saxon origins; he employs many archaic, rustic or unusual Saxonisms.” (Alexander, lxvi) Of course, it does not help that Puttenham's authorship of The Arte of English Poesie (1589) is in question, but as in the work Περὶ ὕψους (Perì hýpsous) [On the Sublime], the name of the author should not really matter.

Defense of pidgin

There is a clear relationship between racism and the fear of pidgin. An article that examines this statement in the context of "broken English" among Chinese in the 19th century is Kingsley Bolton's "Language And Hybridization: Pidgin Tales from the China Coast" (2000). Here is the abstract:

"This essay looks at the history of pidgin and creole studies in the context of linguistic theory with particular reference to the study of 'Chinese pidgin English.' It argues that, although linguistics makes the claim to be an objective and systematic science, an examination of the past reveals that its own discourses have been shaped by a range of powerful forces from outside the disciplinary study of language. In the case of pidgin and creole linguistics (or 'creolistics'), one obvious influence is from European 'race theory' of the late nineteenth century, seen most clearly in the adoption of a vocabulary which includes terms such as monogenesis, polygenesis and hybridization. In the case of Chinese pidgin English, early accounts of the use of 'broken English' are found in the memoirs of sailors and merchants on the South China coast, and these were later supplemented by missionary and colonial accounts from Canton, Hong Kong and the treaty ports of China. The most influential account was that of Leland (1876), whose 'comic' account of Pidgin-English Sing-song contributed to the formation of a cultural imaginary of Chinese people at a time of growing anti-Chinese racism in the United States and Britain. Although many pidgin and creole scholars have denied a direct link between racial mixing and language mixing, it appears evident that the fear (and attraction) of racial miscegenation was at the heart of many western responses to pidgin English in China."

At the root of the marginalization of multilingual poetry is an analogous "ism" on the part of literary critics, who were usually brought up in the age of the old and discredited prescriptive linguistics. Unable to accept that the "colloquial" or "substandard" or "ungrammatical" or "idiosyncratic" (or whatever pejorative term) language being used by multilingual writers may be just as valid and respectable as the language they learned in school, these critics do literature a great disservice by limiting its traditional role - which is to deconstruct language itself, to make it defamiliar, to make it construct reality rather than be constructed by it.

Erotic Christmas carol?

I wish I knew Italian and more Spanish to fully appreciate "Fata la Parte," a 19th-century villancico. This is how it goes:

Fata la parte
tutt'ogni cal,
qu'es morta la muller
de micer Cortal

Porque l'hai trovato
con un españolo
en su casa solo,
luego l´hai maçato.
Lui se l'ha escapato
por forsa y por arte.

Restava diciendo,
porque l'hovo visto,
¡o válasme Cristo!,
el dedo mordiendo,
gridando y piangendo:
¡Españoleto, guarte!

¡Guarda si te pillo,
don españoleto!
Supra del mi leto
te faró un martillo,
tal que en escrevillo
piangeran le carte.

Micer mi compare,
gracia della e de ti.
Lasa fare a mi
y non te curare.
Assai mal me pare
lui encornudarte.

Based on the translation by Ruth Caldwell and Ruth Westfall, this is my rough idea of what the song says: "Cortal's wife is dead, because he found her alone in his house with a Spaniard, so he killed her. The Spaniard escaped, but he should watch out, because if Cortal catches him and gives him a blow on the head, the very paper will weep."

In translation, the double entendre is not obvious. Can someone please unlock the double meaning for me? It is even said that this is a Christmas carol with a sacred theme. Is this true?

Emotional linguistics

In literary criticism it is very hard not to be emotional, because one of the main attractions of literature is its appeal to the emotions. While doing criticism, a critic can pretend to be schizophrenic and not be affected by the strength of the emotional appeal of a literary text, but it is a shame if the whole person is not involved in the act of criticism. Being passionate about a particular literary text is a common motivation to want to reread and reread that text in order to get at what exactly is going on inside the text. A critic has to really love a text in order to spend so much time with it.

Linguists go overboard, however, when they become emotional when discussing language. Such emotionalism mars an otherwise intelligent account of the language of the Qur'an by Ibn Warraq. Here are excerpts from the account:

"The Koran is putatively (in fact it is very difficult to decide exactly what the language of the Koran is) written in what we call Classical Arabic (CA), but modern Arab populations, leaving aside the problem of illiteracy in Arab countries, do not speak, read, or write, let alone think in Classical Arabic. We are confronted with the phenomenon of diglossia, that is to say, a situation where two varieties of the same language live side by side. The two variations are high and low. High Arabic is sometimes called Modern Literary Arabic or Modern Standard Arabic, and is learned through formal education in school like Latin or Sanskrit, and would be used in sermons, university lectures, news broadcasts and for mass media purposes. Low Arabic or Colloquial Arabic is a dialect which native speakers acquire as a mother tongue, and is used at home conversing with family and friends, and is also used in radio or television soap opera."

"You are asked aggressively, 'Do you know Arabic?' Then you are told triumphantly, 'You have to read the Koran in the original Arabic to understand it fully.' Non-Muslims, Western freethinkers and atheists are usually reduced to sullen silence with these Muslim tactics; they indeed become rather coy and self-defensive when it comes to criticism of Islam; they feebly complain 'Who am I to criticise Islam? I do not know any Arabic.' And yet they are quite happy to criticise Christianity. How many Western freethinkers and atheists know Hebrew? How many even know what the language of Esra chapter 4 verses 6-8 is? Or in what language the New Testament was written? Of course, Muslims are also free in their criticism of the Bible and Christianity without knowing a word of Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek."

Once religion gets into the picture, even linguists lose their objectivity. By looking at what happens to linguists when their emotions get the better of them, we literary critics can avoid the pitfalls of letting our strong emotions get in the way of helping readers unlock the meanings of a literary text.

"Macaronic" not pejorative

In most encyclopedias or websites, the word macaronic is mentioned in a pejorative or at least patronizing way. Macaronic verse is often considered a minor category of comic literature, something not worth much scholarly attention.

But the word macaronic need not be used in a trivial context. Here is an account of "Chorale Melodies used in Bach's Vocal Works: Christ ist erstanden":

"Many cantiones were translated into German long before the Reformation and were frequently sung antiphonally, particularly in Germany and Bohemia, with alternating Latin and German verses. A number of these mixed-language song pairs such as Surrexit Christus hodie – Erstanden ist der heilig Christ (and the completely macaronic In dulci jubilo – Nun singet und seid froh, with alternate Latin and German lines) were appropriated unchanged into the Reformation hymnbooks and are included in the Evangelisches Kirchen-Gesangbuch in German versions alone."

Here is a serious discussion of a serious form of art (sacred music). It is time to rehabilitate the word macaronic and to use it to indicate a serious form of literature.

Choosing between words

In The Aesthetics of Architecture (1979), Roger Scruton writes:

"Even in the case of literature – for which a semiological account might seem to be particularly suitable – it is doubtful that ‘aesthetic’ values and significances can be described in semantic terms. Even here the creation of aesthetic significance depends, in the last analysis, on the discovery of ‘correct’ and ‘appropriate’ details, and we cannot assimilate this idea of correctness to a semantic rule. The ability of the poet is the ability to choose between words despite their identical semantic properties, to choose, for example, the word sans instead of the word without, as in a famous Shakespearian example. It is the ability to choose between words with, as Frege would put it, the same sense but different tone. And we cannot assimilate ‘tone’ to any semantic category. A word acquires its tone as a consequence of its use and of the rules which govern it. Tone cannot therefore be the subject of a rule. It is for this reason that we must distinguish, even in literature, between style and linguistic competence. A style might be imitated, but it is already an aesthetic achievement, not available to any language user irrespective of his creative powers.” (p. 176)

In literature, particularly poetry, it is not the semantic or denotative meaning of a word that takes priority, but first its sound, then its cultural or literary source. To a poet or a critic, sans is a world of difference from without. We cannot imagine Shakespeare using without in the famous line "Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything" from Act 2, Scene 7, of As You Like It. The meter would not be correct, the French allusion would be lost, and most of all, the sudden shift to another language signalling the introduction of a major idea would not be there. Literal meaning is not everything (nor even a lot) in literature, particularly poetry, particularly Shakespeare.

Multilingual verse may be divine

In “‘I am the Nightingale of the Merciful’: Rumi’s Use of the Qur’an and Hadith” (2003), Nargis Virani argues that:

"Rumi inserted innumerable references to the Qur’an throughout his poetry either by direct quotation or by allusion. This general trend is maintained in Rumi’s mulamma’at. However, in accordance with the strictly technical definition of mulamma’ offered by literary critics of the medieval Muslim world, poems incorporating Arabic for the sole purpose of quoting the Qur’an are not considered mulamma’at. In this section, I discuss Rumi’s use of the Qur’an and Prophetic sayings, Hadith, and analyze his manner of inserting these quotations, both metrically and thematically, in Arabic, Persian and the mulamma’at verses. I argue that the complete fusion, which occurs metrically and thematically in these poems, mirrors the fusion between the Divine word and the poet’s.”

We learn two things from this brief paragraph. First, not all multilingual verse should be considered multilingual in our sense. The words in another language may only be quoted, in which case they do not really bring into the poem another culture. Second, when there is truly a fusion (rather than mere borrowing or quoting) among the words in both languages, that fusion may be considered divine. (The word "divine" need not refer to God, although believers would prefer it to; the word may simply refer to the Muse. When we say a work is "divine," we rarely mean that it has something to do with the Divine.)

Correcting a critical prejudice

Charles Li's contention (summarized by Stephen Wadley in my previous post) that "pidgins rarely, if ever, produce a literature" is soundly refuted by historical evidence. Here is an account of the language and literature situation in Bangladesh in the 18th century:

"After the Turkish conquest of Bengal in the 13th century, Persian became the official language and both Hindu and Muslim communities started learning the language for personal advancement. In addition to Persian, Muslims also learnt Arabic. This led to the influx of a large stock of Arabic-Persian words into Bangla. Following the establishment of administrative, commercial and cultural links of Bengal with the Mughal capital, Delhi, during the 16th century, a large number of Muslims started visiting Bengal. Urdu-speaking Muslims engaged in state, religious and educational activities, and their families started settling in Murshidabad, Hughli, Howrah etc. Urdu-Hindi words now began to have a significant influence on Bangla.

"Persian was so important at the time that, apart from Muslims and Hindus, the employees of the European trading companies too started learning it. Before coming to India the employees of the East India Company used to learn Persian at seminaries in Britain. After observing the state of Bangla language in the 18th century, Nathaniel Brassey Halhed in A Grammar of the Bengal Language (1778) said that those who spoke Bangla using the largest number of Arabic and Persian adjectives with Bangla verbs were regarded as knowing Bangla well. The documents and legal papers of the 18th century largely used this kind of language. Sukumar Sen termed it as a 'working language' or the 'language of usage'. Bharatchandra called it yabani mishal (Muslim mixture). He himself learned this language and claimed that although it did not possess high literary qualities it was understood by all. Bharatchandra and Garibullah came from the same region of Bhurshut Pargana at about the same time. The spoken language of the common people, irrespective of whether they were Hindu or Muslim, was the language of puthi literature and thus cannot be termed as an artificial literary language. The ordinary educated Muslim liked it because of the mixture of Arabic and Persian vocabulary.

"With some exceptions, most puthi literature was derivative with poets using Persian, Urdu and Hindi works as their sources. While borrowing from these works, they not only adopted the subjects but also many words, parts of sentences and even their syntax."

I highlighted the sentence about the language of literature not being an artificial language (on the contrary, puthi literature used the language of real men and women on the streets and even in court). Scholars prejudiced against pidgin and mixed languages are simply on denial mode. If William Wordsworth were around, he would doubtless say that literature in "mixed languages" is the norm and monolingual writing is the exception, since he proclaimed famously that poetry is nothing else but "the real language of men [and women!] in a state of vivid sensation."

Prejudice against "pidgin"

Prejudice against pidgins or mixed languages is deeply rooted among scholars, even linguists that should know better. Here is the beginning of the article "Altaic Influences on Beijing Dialect: The Manchu Case" (1996), by Stephen A. Wadley:

"Going even further with respect to the situation in northern China, [Mantaro Hashimoto] theorized that during the Qing (Manchu) dynasty (1644-1911), the language of the capital was not Chinese but rather a pidgin made up of Manchu and Chinese elements, as well as a few elements from Mongolian and other minor languages. Furthermore, he suggested that modern Beijing dialect was a descendant of that pidgin. Though this theory is impressionistically persuasive, the major obstacle in accepting it is the lack of solid empirical evidence. It might be expected that little or nothing would be written in this hypothesized 'mixed' language. Pidgins rarely, if ever, produce a literature. Hashimoto pointed to several texts of zidi shu (a type of 'drum song' popular in northern China during the Qing dynasty that were written in a mixture of Manchu and Chinese as a proof that the mixed language he hypothesized actually existed. Charles Li has argued convincingly that these texts were purposeful manipulations of the two languages, much in the same way that macaronic verse in the West was often simply a manipulation of Latin and a vernacular language to produce a comic idiom for the enjoyment of those who had to study Latin. Indeed, it would be unusual for a pidgin to assume the form of the language in zidi shu, since most pidgins rely on essentially a single language for their lexicon, rather than being a mixture of lexical elements. The fact that there are so few texts in this form also argues against them being a representation of the spoken language of time - although more and more texts of this type are coming to light.

"The evidence given us by the existence of zidi shu should not be abandoned entirely, however. The fact that the texts were produced tells us something about the language situation in northern China. First, there must have been some, even much, bilingualism among the inhabitants of Beijing then, otherwise there would be no audience for the pieces. Ji Yonghai has in fact presented evidence that the Manchus went through a period of bilingualism before abandoning their language for Chinese. Second, although the mixed-language zidi shu appear to be deliberate manipulations of language for comic effect, one may assume that part of the comedy is that the language parodies an actual language situation. As Whinnom has pointed out, target-language speakers often parody the language of non-native speakers of the language, not in the way they actually speak, but rather how they are perceived to speak. Thus they may produce evidence of a mixed language even though they do not produce the actual mixed language. In the zidi shu text Chaguan ('Inspecting the Pass') the Manchu language is put in the mouth of the chou (clown)."

Perhaps the prejudice stems not just from sociological causes, but from literary theory itself. Aristotle wrote about tragedy but, although he promised to do it, not really about comedy. Most literary historians say that this was due to his prioritizing tragedy over comedy. I think that Aristotle, despite his genius, just was not intelligent enough to make sense of comedy (to me, the higher form of literature).

English and creoles

Searching for mixed-language poetry is always fun. I was alerted to the mixing of languages in Guinea-Bissau by an isolated sentence in Wikipedia: "Lyrics are almost always in Guinea-Bissau Creole, a Portuguese-based creole language, and are often humorous and topical, revolving around current events and controversies, especially AIDS." Wikipedia itself describes the language: "Guinea-Bissau Creole (native name kriol,kiriol or kriolu varying with dialects; crioulo da Guiné in Portuguese) is the lingua franca of the West African country of Guinea Bissau. It is a Portuguese-based creole language, closely related to Cape Verdean creole. Kriolu is spoken as a first language by approximately 15% (190,000) of Bissau-Guineans, and as a second language by approximately 46% (600,000); it is also spoken in parts of Senegal, primarily as a trade language. Portuguese itself is the official language of Guinea Bissau, although it is not spoken regularly by a majority of the population."

This bit of information is interesting to me because, in the Philippines, which touts itself as the "world's third-largest English speaking nation," English "is not spoken regularly by a majority of the population." English is an official language and is supposed to be the primary medium of instruction, but in reality, it is the national language called Filipino that is spoken in cities and schools, and it is various vernacular-based creoles spoken outside the major cities. In literature, most English writers write in what they consider "pure" English (labeled by linguists as "Philippine English" or the variety of English that is written only by Filipinos); when the actual language spoken on the streets is used is literature, the effect (like that in Guinea Bissau) is often deliberately comic.

By the way, the ranking of the Philippines in the list of English-speaking countries varies widely from Number 18 in Nationmaster to Number 5 in Wikipedia. Only Filipinos who have never been to India, the USA, Nigeria, UK, and China claim that the Philippines is up there with the biggies. Don't ask me why it should be a source of pride to speak English. Ethnologue says that English is only the third most-spoken language in the world, trailing Chinese and Spanish. (For Philippine languages: Filipino is Number 37, Tagalog 39, Cebuano 57, Ilocano 98, Hiligaynon 115, Bikol 130.)

Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman is central to any discussion of multilingual poetry. He consciously incorporated non-English words and cultural concepts to create what he thought was or should be American poetry. Betsy Erkkila says in Whitman the Political Poet (1996):

“Although he did not draw on the musical possibilities of black dialect in composing Leaves of Grass, Whitman did introduce several foreign terms – including Spanish, Italian, and French – as part of his effort to establish a native American idiom. These foreign borrowings are neither merely ignorant nor merely arrogant, as is commonly assumed; rather, they are part of Whitman’s effort to create a racially and ethnically mixed language to match America’s democratic pluralism. Whitman was particularly fond of borrowings from the French, which he used to reflect the French contribution to American nationality and to connect America’s experience to France’s enlightened, republican, and revolutionary heritage. The French language was a consistent feature of Whitman’s poems of international embrace and cosmopolitan philosophy, and through all editions of Leaves of Grass, his favorite French borrowings were words of unity, bonding, and affectionate address: rapport, ensemble, en masse, rondue, mélange, résumé, mon cher, mon enfant, ma femme, compagnon, and ami.

"Whitman also experimented with the sound and sense of native American terms. ‘What is the fitness – What the strange charm of aboriginal names? – Monongahela – it rolls with venison richness upon the palate.’ In his verse he introduced several native American words, including moccasin, squaw, quhaug, wigwam, powow, sachem, and titi; and in accordance with his desire to rename American places, Whitman commonly referred to New York and Long Island by their aboriginal names: Mannahatta and Paumanok.” (p. 86)

I applaud Erkkila's dismissal of the mainstream view of Whitman's use of many languages as "merely ignorant nor merely arrogant." Monolingual critics have done the literary world great harm by assuming that monolingualism is the norm and multilingualism is the aberration. On the contrary, as I have often tried to show in theory, any literary text is multilingual. The "languages" involved in any text, however, need not be the big-time languages, but idiolects or dialects. The text that is obviously multilingual because some of the words are either italicized or unfamiliar to "native speakers" assumes less intelligent readers than texts that use words from more than one language without any outward warning; these latter texts assume intelligent readers that know all (or at least most) of the languages being harnessed by the text.

Naturally mixed languages

We must make a distinction between different uses of more than one language in a literary text.

There are texts in one language where some words from another language (or other languages) are used. (Movies today like to do this, usually supplying subtitles but sometimes not. Writers have been doing this for the longest time, sometimes using italics but sometimes not.)

There are texts in more than one language. (Once termed macaronic or ladino, these are now sometimes called multilingual.)

There are texts in a language that is naturally mixed. (Literary critics dealing with mixed languages like to point this out. For example, Krishna Raina prefaces her study of "Mystic Trends in Kashmiri Poetry" with this: "The main language of Kashmir is Kashmiri. It is said that it is a mixed language and the greater part of its vocabulary is of Indian origin and it is allied to that of Sanskritic-Indo-Aryan languages of Northern India.")

In the first case, the author deliberately uses the other language or languages to enhance the text, either by simply adding a meaning that is not available in the main language or by alluding to the literary tradition in the other language or languages.

In the second case, the author deliberately harnesses the resources of various languages and cultures to do whatever is being done in the text.

In the third case, the author may or may not know that the language itself allows various literary traditions to help bring out the meaning. (The New Critics famously said that the "ideal reader" knows all the languages and cultures of the world and is able to point to the meanings inherent in every single word in a text. A word, for them, contained all the denotations and connotations and contexts earlier used by other authors. Of course, newer critics debunked the notion, but there was nothing theoretically wrong with the statement; it was just impossible in practice.)

I wish that literary critics of an English-language text today would zero in on the mixed nature of the language itself. After all, English today is not just Anglo-Saxon nor even just French or Latin-derived. For example, there are hundreds of words in Tagalog (a Philippine language) in English dictionaries.

Irena Klepfisz

Here's a stanza from Irena Klepfisz's poem entitled "Etlekhe verter oyf mame-loshn/ A few words in the mother tongue" (1984):

di lezbianke the one with
a roommate though we never used
the word

The use of a second language ironically called "mother tongue" (Yiddish, used by mothers) in a text primarily in a third language (English) to refer to the real "mother tongue" (Polish, used by peers) is necessary from an aesthetic point of view, because the poem focuses on the use of words to make sense of reality (by using the word lezbianke while saying that she and her friends never use the word, the persona reveals something not just about herself but also about the people around her).

In her article entitled "Pearls From Tears," Arlene Kramer Richards comments about this poem:

"She writes in two languages at once, alternating the Yiddish of her childhood and her feelings with the American English of her adulthood and of her readers. ... As she speaks to the childhood figures embedded in her soul in Yiddish, she teaches us her language. She will give us a few words in her ‘mother tongue.’ Mamaloshen is the time honored conventional way of referring to Yiddish, a language used by mothers talking to their babies and each other in a culture which used Hebrew for male religious tradition and used Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, Check, Lithuanian, Hungarian, Bulgarian and other languages in school, trade, professions and contact with the world."

We cannot get more multilingual than that.

Teaching a multilingual poem

In its teaching guide to John Agard's poem "Half-Caste," BBC offers the following helpful tips to the student:

"The poet has decided not to use standard English in this poem.

"He doesn't use the standard form of punctuation. This is partly because it's a poem that is written to be performed aloud. Agard said: 'Sometimes I think no punctuation can be effective because if the words are floating in space it gives the reader a chance to punctuate with their own breath...'

"He uses the lower case where standard English would use capital letters. Even proper names - like 'picasso', or 'tchaikovsky' - are written in this way. What effect does this create?

"He writes in a Caribbean dialect -'yu' instead of 'you', for example, or 'dem' for 'them'. Why do you think Agard chose to write 'Half-Caste' in 'non-standard' form?"

Getting multilingual poetry into the classrooms (even virtual ones) is a giant step towards moving it into the mainstream. One of the barriers towards understanding multilingual or even simple immigrant poetry is the traditional tendency of literature teachers to use grammar as a standard for good writing. If we were to require conformity with grammatical rules as a criterion for good creative writing, we would dismiss Emily Dickinson as a silly poet (she wrote, "I wish I were a hay," and used dashes instead of commas and periods), e. e. cummings as plain stupid (no capital letters?), and most free-verse poets nowadays as just off the mark. (In Tagalog, Filipino literature teachers conveniently forget that Lope K. Santos, who wrote the Tagalog grammar book still used in many schools, did not follow in his fiction his own grammatical rules.)

By the way, I do not think that the poem uses a "non-standard" form nor even a "dialect." I find that, if we were to think of the Caribbeans as equal in stature to the US, these lines from the poem would be "standard":

explain yuself
wha yu mean
when yu say half-caste
yu mean when light an shadow
mix in de sky
is a half-caste weather

"Pidgin"

I hate the word pidgin, a staple word in linguistics. To me, it is as bad as half-breed, mestizo, or bastard. The word implies that there is a "pure" form of English (or whatever language) and the "pidgin" is less respectable. One might as well say that, since it seems very likely that the human race began in Africa, that non-Africans (particularly Caucassians) are less "pure" than Africans and are inferior human beings. (Note that I deliberately invert the usual racial stereotypes.)

Except for the use of the word pidgin, the article "Bridges of Orality: Nigerian Pidgin Poetry" (1995) in World Literature Today by Ezenwa-Ohaeto seems promising. This is the abstract:

"The exploitation of oral traditions through a synthesized creative crucible enables the modern Nigerian writer to produce fresh, exciting, and artistic poetry. The Pidgin language provides an appropriate medium for this exploitation of oral traditions in poetry, for it acts as a bridge between the orality of verbal communication and the formality of the written word. Thus Nigerian Pidgin poetry is constructed as part of this utilization of oral resources, which has revitalized the literary scene and the poetic tradition."

If all human experiences have the same value and if languages (whether "pure" or "pidgin") that reflect or constitute these experiences also have the same value, then it makes no sense to use pejorative words to denigrate one language when compared to another ("purer", "older") language.

To cite a simple implication: a resident of Manila in the Philippines speaks at least three languages (which are mutually comprehensible, so linguists will quibble that these are just dialects and not really languages), namely, Tagalog (the language spoken by her/his parents), Filipino (the language s/he speaks in the market or street), and Taglish (the language s/he speaks when s/he is with friends in the same age group). To say that the Tagalog of the parents is a "purer" language than either Filipino or Taglish is merely to reveal one's age.

Tagalog in Malta

Forgive me for getting excited, but it's the first time I heard from a scholarly source that Tagalog actually influenced a language outside the Philippines (although Philippine folklore does tell of people in Madagascar and people in the mountains of Taiwan speaking languages similar to Tagalog or Cebuano). Here's an excerpt from Thomas Stolz's "Chamorro and Malti as Mixed Languages" in The Mixed-Language Debate: Theoretical and Empirical Advances (2003), edited by Yaron Matras and Peter Bakker:

“The first known text written in Malti is a recently discovered poem by Pietru Caxaro composed around 1450 (Cachia 2000: 11-13). The earliest document of Chamorro was produced almost 220 years later. It is considerably longer than the Malti poem. In 1668, the Spanish missionary Sanvitores wrote a grammar-cum-catechism in Latin and Chamorro re-edited by Burrus (1954: 941-960). Almost at the same time (about 1650), the second Maltese text known so far appeared, a sonnet by Gann Frangisk Bonamico celebrating the Grandmaster of the Knights (Cachia 2000: 16-9). It is important to bear in mind that the early Maltese texts were originals produced by native speakers, whereas the Chamorro equivalents were written by a Spaniard probably with the help of a Tagalog assistant from the Spanish possessions in the Philippines (Burrus 1954: 936).” (p. 294)

I've never been to Malta but am now eager to get there somehow, just to hear any Tagalog-sounding word in Malti. Since Spaniards occupied the Philippines only in the last years of the 16th century (although Ferdinand Magellan visited in 1521), the Tagalog assistant must not have been very fluent in Spanish and must have been speaking Tagalog at least part of the time, influencing the writers then. More research needed!

A reader on multilingual literature

How do ordinary readers react to a work with more than one language? Here's a comment submitted to Amazon.com on Paulette Poujol Oriol's Vale of Tears (2006): "The setting and way that that this story was told was perfect. Oriol's words are almost poetic and I loved the mix of French creole into the dialog. Although I was equally glad that for every foreign phrase there was an English translation. The mixed language sentences added realism to the story and helped it to flow along."

Realism or verisimilitude is indeed one thing going for using more than one language in a literary text. For many readers, that is probably enough. For readers that want to get at what the author is really trying to say, however, it is of course better if the second or third language is as comprehensible as the main language; translations are a way to help the monolingual reader. For readers that need guidance on everything going on in the text, however, the literary critic has to step in, for it is only the multilingual literary critic that can point to the deeper meanings brought about by the inclusion of other cultures through the other languages in the text. After all, it is not only the literal meanings of the "foreign" words that are important (all one needs in this case is a bilingual dictionary), but the allusions and traditions in the cultures associated with those words. Multilingual literary criticism is really multicultural literary criticism.

Manigong bagong taon!

Mabungahong Bag-ong Tuig kaninyong tanan, Magayagayang ba'gong taon, Narang-ay a Baro a Tawen kadakayo amin, Manigong bagong taon, Mainuswagon nga Bag-ong Tuig ha iyo nga tanan, Mahigugmaon nga Bag-ong Dag-on kinyo tanan, Masaplalang Bayung Banwa keko ngan, Mahimungayaon nga Bag-ong Tuig, Gelukkige nuwejaar, Gëzuar vitin e ri, Բարի կաղանդ և ամանոր, e glëckliches nëies, عام سعيد , shnorhavor nor tari, yeni iliniz mubarek, aw ni san'kura, urte berri on, З новым годам, መልካም አዲስ አመት, subho nababarsho, asgwas amegas, mbembe mbu, bonne année, sretna nova godina, bloavezh mat, честита нова година, hnit thit ku mingalar pa, 新年快樂, 新年快乐, bon any nou, pace e salute, sretna nova godina, šťastný nový rok, godt nytår, sale naw tabrik, gelukkig Nieuwjaar, felicxan novan jaron, feliæan novan jaron, head uut aastat, eƒé bé dzogbenyui nami, gott nýggjár, onnellista uutta vuotta, gelukkig Nieuwjaar, bonne année, lokkich neijier, bon an, feliz aninovo, გილოცავთ ახალ წელს, ein gutes neues Jahr, Ευτυχισμένο το Νέο Έτος, sal mubarak, rogüerohory año nuévo-re, bònn ané, hauoli makahiki hou, שנה טובה, nav varsh ki subhkamna, nyob zoo xyoo tshiab, नये साल की हार्दिक शुभकामनायें, boldog új évet, farsælt komandi ár, selamat tahun baru, ath bhliain faoi mhaise, felice anno nuovo, sugeng warsa enggal, 明けましておめでとうございます, asseggas ameggaz, hosa varshada shubhaashayagalu, zhana zhiliniz kutti bolsin, sur sdei chhnam thmei, umwaka mwiza, umwaka mwiza, 즐거운 성탄절 보내시고 새해 복 많이 받으세요, sala we ya nû pîroz be, sabai di pi mai, felix sit annus novus, laimīgu Jauno gadu, feliçe annu nœvu, mbula ya sika elamu na tonbeli yo, laimingų Naujųjų Metų, gelükkig nyjaar, e gudd neit Joër, Среќна Нова Година, arahaba tratry ny taona, selamat tahun baru, nava varsha ashamshagal, is-sena t-tajba, kia porotu te ano ou, kia hari te tau hou, नवीन वर्षच्या हार्दिक शुभेच्छा, Шинэ жилийн баярын мэнд хvргэе, wênd na kô-d yuum-songo, umyaka omucha omuhle, godt nyttår, bon annada, nawe kaalmo mobarak sha, سال نو مبارک, szczęśliwego nowego roku, feliz ano novo, ਨਵੇਂ ਸਾਲ ਦੀਆਂ ਵਧਾਈਆਂ, bun di bun onn, baxtalo nevo bersh, un an nou fericit, С Новым Годом, ia manuia le tausaga fou, nzoni fini ngou, bonu annu nou, bliadhna mhath ur, Срећна нова година, mwaha mwema, goredzva rakanaka, nain saal joon wadhayoon, suba aluth avuruddak vewa, šťastný nový rok, srečno novo leto, dobir leto, sanad wanagsan, feliz año nuevo, wan bun nyun yari, mwaka mzuri, gott nytt år, es guets Nöis, manigong bagong taon, ia orana i te matahiti api, assugas amegaz, iniya puthandu nalVazhthukkal, yaña yıl belän, నూతన సంవత్శర శుభాకాంక్షలు, สวัสดีปีใหม่, tashi delek, tshidimu tshilenga,ርሑስ አውደ ዓመት, posa varshada shubashaya, yeni yiliniz kutlu olsun, gluk in'n tuk, Vyľ Aren, Z novym rokom, نايا سال مبارک هو, yangi yilingiz qutlug' bo'lsin, ༄༅།།ལོ་གསར་ལ་བཀྲ་ཤིས་བདེ་ལེགས་ཞུ།, Chúc Mừng Nǎm Mới, bone annéye, blwyddyn newydd dda, bon lanné, dewenati, אַ פֿרײליכע ניטל און אַ גוטער נײַער יאָר, روجىستىۋا بايرىمىڭىزغا مۇبارەك بولسۇن !

Happy new year in which all languages are equal!