In Other Words by Jhumpa Lahiri
“I don’t know if it’s the best of my books, but certainly it’s the only book that I wrote in a state of absolute freedom.”
I think that my new language, more limited, more immature, gives me a more extensive, more adult gaze. That’s the reason I continue, for now, to write in Italian. In this book, I’ve talked quite a bit about the paradoxical relationship between freedom and limits. I don’t want to repeat myself here. I would prefer to examine further the interconnection between reality and invention, and clarify the question of autobiography, a question that has been hanging over me for many years.
In the beginning I wrote in order to conceal myself. I wanted to stay far from my writing, withdraw into the background. I preferred to hide between the lines, a disguised, oblique presence.
I became a writer in America, but I set my first stories in Calcutta, a city where I have never lived, far from the country where I grew up, and which I knew much better. Why? Because I needed distance between me and the creative space.
When I began to write, I thought that it was more virtuous to talk about others. I was afraid that autobiographical material was of less creative value, even a form of laziness on my part. I was afraid that it was egocentric to relate one’s own experiences.
In this book I am the protagonist for the first time. There is not even a hint of another. I appear on the page in the first person, and speak frankly about myself. A little like Matisse’s “Blue Nudes,” groups of cutout, reassembled female figures, I feel naked in this book, pasted to a new language, disjointed.
I haven’t read what people write about me for years. I know, however, that certain readers consider me an autobiographical writer. If I explain that I’m not, they don’t believe it; they insist. They say the fact that I am a person of Indian origin, like the majority of my characters, makes my work openly autobiographical. Or they think that any story in the first person must be true.
For me an autobiographical text is one that is shaped by the writer’s own experiences, and in which there is little distance between the life of the writer and the events of the book. Every writer tends to describe the world, the people he knows. But an autobiographical work goes a step further. Alberto Moravia was from Rome, so he set many of his stories in Rome. He was Roman, like many of his characters. Does that mean, then, that every one of his stories, every one of his novels, is autobiographical? I don’t think so.
I spent more than a year promoting my last novel, The Lowland. I don’t share the experiences of the characters in that novel. What happens to them never happened to me. I know the main places in the book, and the plot is based on a real episode, but I have no memory or impression of it. Reality provided the seeds. I imagined the rest.
More than once I’ve been confronted by a journalist or critic who maintains that I’ve written an autobiographical novel. And every time it amazes me, and also irritates me, that a novel whose plot and characters I completely invented is considered autobiographical.
It’s not for me to evaluate my books. I would like simply to distinguish between a realistic novel, created out of the knowledge and curiosity of the author, and one that is autobiographical.
In Other Words is different. Almost everything in it happened to me. I’ve already explained that it began as a sort of diary, a personal text. It remains my most intimate book but also the most open.
Even my first attempt at fiction in Italian, “The Exchange,” is autobiographical, I can’t deny that. It’s a story told in the third person, but the protagonist, slightly changed, is me. I went that rainy afternoon to that apartment. I saw and observed everything that I describe. Like the protagonist, I lost a black sweater, I reacted badly. I was bewildered, uneasy, like her. A few months later I transformed the raw experience into a story. “Half-Light,” written almost two years later, is an invented story, but it also has an autobiographical basis: the dream of the protagonist that begins the story comes from me.
I used to think that making things up, rather than drawing directly on reality, would give me more creative autonomy. I preferred to manipulate the truth, but I also wanted to represent it faithfully, authentically. Verisimilitude was very important to me, as a writer. After writing this book I changed my mind.
Invention can also be a trap. A character fabricated out of nothing has to seem like a real person—there’s the challenge. It was a challenge, especially in The Lowland, to portray a real place where I have never lived, and to evoke a historical era that I didn’t know. I did a lot of research to make that world, that time, believable. Beginning with my first book I evoked Calcutta, my parents’ native city. Because it was, for them, a far-off place that had almost disappeared, I was looking for a way, through writing, to bridge the distance, and to make it present.
Today I no longer feel bound to restore a lost country to my parents. It took me a long time to accept that my writing did not have to assume that responsibility. In that sense In Other Words is the first book I’ve written as an adult, but also, from the linguistic point of view, as a child.
I continue, as a writer, to seek the truth, but I don’t give the same weight to factual truth. In Italian I’m moving toward abstraction. The places are undefined, the characters so far are nameless, without a particular cultural identity. The result, I think, is writing that is freed in certain ways from the concrete world. I now construct a less specific setting. That’s why I understand Matisse, when he compared his new technique to the experience of flight. Writing in Italian, I feel that my feet are no longer on the ground.
What drove me to take a new direction, toward writing that is both more autobiographical and more abstract? It’s a contradiction in terms, I realize. Where does the more personal perspective originate, along with a vaguer tonality? It must be the language. In this book language is not only the tool but the subject. Italian remains the mask, the filter, the outlet, the means. The detachment without which I can’t create anything. And it’s this new detachment that helps me show my face.
I have an ambivalent relationship with this book, and probably always will. On the one hand I’m proud of it. I traveled far to get here. I earned every word: nothing about it was handed down. Everything derives from my determination. It was a risky procedure. That I was able to conceive, draft, prepare the pages for publication seems a miracle. I consider it an authentic book, because it’s sincere, honest.
On the other hand I fear that it’s a false book. I’m insecure about it, a little embarrassed. Although it now has a cover, a binding, a physical presence, I’m afraid it’s frivolous, even presumptuous. I don’t know if continuing to write in Italian is the right path. My Italian remains a work in progress, and I remain a foreigner. I came to Italy partly to know my characters better, my parents. I didn’t expect to become a foreigner as a writer, too.
It’s interesting, now that the book is about to come out, to hear some of the reactions. When I say that my new book is written in Italian, I am often regarded, mainly by other writers, with suspicion, almost with disapproval. Maybe I’m wrong; I wonder if it will be considered a dead end, or, at best, “a pleasant distraction.” Some say to me that a writer should never abandon his or her dominant language for one that is known only superficially. They say that the disadvantages serve neither writer nor reader. When I hear these opinions I’m ashamed, and I have the impulse to erase every word.
It was only after writing this book that I discovered Ágota Kristóf, an author of Hungarian origin who wrote in French. Maybe it was best that I didn’t know her voice and her works before—to have taken this step unaware of her example. I read, first of all, a brief autobiographical text, The Illiterate, in which she talks about her literary education and the experience of arriving in Switzerland, at twenty-one, as a refugee. She begins to learn French, a hard, demanding process. She writes:
It’s here that my struggle to conquer this language begins, a long, relentless struggle, which will certainly last for my whole life. I’ve spoken French
Reading this passage, I was both stunned and comforted. They could have been my sentiments, my words.
Then I read, unable to put it down, her celebrated trilogy of novels, beginning with The Notebook, which the author considered an autobiographical work, and which I find an absolute masterpiece. I was even more captivated by the lapidary, purified, incisive quality of her writing. The effect is overwhelming, as powerful as a punch in the stomach. Although I read Kristóf in Italian, I can perceive, even in translation, the effort implicit in the writing. I intuit the linguistic mask in which she, like me, finds herself constrained and at the same time free. Knowing her work, I feel reassured, less alone. I think I’ve met a guide, maybe even a companion, on this path.
And yet there remains a fundamental difference between her and me. Ágota Kristóf was forced to abandon Hungarian. She wrote in French because she wanted to be read. “It became a necessity,” the author explains. She regretted not being able to write in her native language, and so she always considered French “the enemy language.” I, on the other hand, choose willingly to write in Italian. I don’t miss English, not even the superior control it gives me.
Kristóf’s work brings into focus the fact that an autobiographical novel is not always what it seems, and that the boundary between imagination and reality is blurred. The protagonist of The Third Lie, the third volume of the trilogy, says: “I try to write true stories, but, at a certain point, the story becomes unbearable, precisely because of its truth, and so I’m forced to change it.”
Even a novel drawn from reality, faithful to it, is not the truth, just as the image in the mirror is not a person in flesh and blood. It remains, that is, an abstraction, no matter how realistic, how close to the facts. In the words of Lalla Romano—another writer who in her novels has, like Kristóf, always played with things that really happened—“in a book everything is true, nothing is true.”
Everything has to be reconsidered, shaped anew. Autobiographical fiction, even if it is inspired by reality, by memory, requires a rigorous selection, a merciless cutting. One writes with the pen, but in the end, to create the right form, one has to use, like Matisse, a good pair of scissors.
My journey is coming to an end. I have to leave Rome this year and return to America. I have no desire to. I wish there were a way of staying in this country, in this language.
I’m already afraid of the separation between me and Italian. At the same time I’m aware of a significant, formal distance between me and English, an idiom in which I haven’t read for three years. The decision to read only in Italian led me to take this new creative path. Writing comes from reading. Now, in spite of my uneasiness, I prefer to write in Italian. Even if I remain half blind, I can see certain things more clearly. I feel more centered even if I’m adrift. I feel more at home, in spite of the discomfort.
This book leads me to a crossroads. It forces me to choose. It brings home to me that everything is upside down, overturned. It asks me: How to proceed?
Should I continue on this road? Will I abandon English definitively for Italian? Or, once I’m back in America, will I return to English?
How would I return to it? I know from my parents that, once you’ve left, you’re gone forever. If I stop writing in Italian, if I go back to working in English, I expect to feel another type of loss.
I can’t predict the future. I prefer to enjoy this moment, the work just finished. In spite of the doubts, I’m very happy to have written and published a book in Italian. Working on the Italian proofs as we closed the text, I felt moved. One could say that it’s an indigenous book, born and raised here in Italy, even if the author was not.
In Other Words will now have an identity independent of me. The first readers will be Italians; it will be found, first, in Italian bookstores. In time it will be translated, transformed. Next year it will be published in America, in a bilingual edition. Yet it will have specific, localized roots, although it remains hybrid, slightly outside the frame, like me.
Thanks to this writing project I hope that a piece of me can remain in Italy, and that consoles me, even though I hope that every book in the world belongs to everyone, or to no one, nowhere.
—ROME, DECEMBER 2014
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Every book seems to me an unattainable goal until it is finished, but this one more than any other. I couldn’t have done it without the support and careful attention of Sara Antonelli, Luigi Brioschi, Raffaella De Angelis, Angelo De Gennaro, Giovanni De Mauro, Michela Gallio, Francesca Marciano, Alberto Notarbartolo, and Pierfrancesco Romano.
Particular thanks to Gabriella Giandelli for her illustrations for the chapters that appeared in Internazionale; to Marco Delogu, whose photograph inspired the story “Half-Light”; and to the Centro Studi Americani in Rome, a place of the heart.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jhumpa Lahiri is the author of four works of fiction: Interpreter of Maladies, The Namesake, Unaccustomed Earth, and The Lowland. She has received numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize; the PEN/Hemingway Award; the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award; the Premio Gregor von Rezzori; the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature; a 2014 National Humanities Medal, awarded by President Barack Obama; and the Premio Internazionale Viareggio-Versilia, for In altre parole.
A NOTE ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Ann Goldstein is an editor at The New Yorker. She has translated works by, among others, Elena Ferrante, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Primo Levi, Giacomo Leopardi, and Alessandro Baricco, and is the editor of the Complete Works of Primo Levi in English. She has been the recipient of the PEN Renato Poggioli Translation Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and awards from the Italian Foreign Ministry and from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
IN ALTRE PAROLE
A Paola Basirico,
Angelo De Gennaro,
e Alice Peretti
…avevo bisogno di una lingua differente: una lingua che fosse un luogo di affetto e di riflessione.
—ANTONIO TABUCCHI
INDICE
DEDIZIONE
EPIGRAFE
LA TRAVERSATA
IL DIZIONARIO
IL COLPO DI FULMINE
L’ESILIO
LE CONVERSAZIONI
LA RINUNCIA
LEGGERE CON IL DIZIONARIO
IL RACCOLTO DELLE PAROLE
IL DIARIO
IL RACCONTO
LO SCAMBIO
IL RIPARO FRAGILE
L’IMPOSSIBILITÀ
VENEZIA
L’IMPERFETTO
L’ADOLESCENTE PELOSO
IL SECONDO ESILIO
IL MURO
IL TRIANGOLO
LA METAMORFOSI
SONDARE
L’IMPALCATURA
PENOMBRA
POSTFAZIONE
RINGRAZIAMENTI
Nota Sull'Autore
Nota Sul Traduttore
LA TRAVERSATA
Voglio attraversare un piccolo lago. È veramente piccolo, eppure l’altra sponda mi sembra troppo distante, oltre le mie capacità. So che il lago è molto profondo nel mezzo, e anche se so nuotare ho paura di trovarmi nell’acqua da sola, senza nessun sostegno.
Si trova, il lago di cui parlo, in un luogo appartato, isolato. Per raggiungerlo si deve camminare un po’, attraverso un bosco silenzioso. Dall’altra parte si vede una casetta, l’unica abitazione sulla sponda. Il lago si è formato subito dopo l’ultima glaciazione, millenni fa. L’acqua è pulita ma scura, priva di correnti, più pesante rispetto all’acqua salata. Dopo che ci si entra, ad alcuni metri dalla riva, non si vede più il fondo.
Di mattina osservo quelli che vengono al lago come me. Vedo come lo attraversano in maniera disinvolta e rilassata, come si fermano qualche minuto davanti alla casetta, poi tornano indietro. Con
Per un mese nuoto in tondo, senza spingermi al largo. È una distanza molto più significativa, la circonferenza rispetto al diametro. Impiego più di mezz’ora per fare questo giro. Però sono sempre vicina alla riva. Posso fermarmi, posso stare in piedi se mi stanco. Un buon esercizio, ma non certo emozionante.
Poi una mattina, verso la fine dell’estate, mi incontro lì con due amici. Ho deciso di attraversare il lago con loro, per raggiungere finalmente la casetta dall’altra parte. Sono stanca di costeggiare solamente.
Conto le bracciate. So che i miei compagni sono nell’acqua con me, ma so che siamo soli. Dopo circa centocinquanta bracciate sono già in mezzo, la parte più profonda. Continuo. Dopo altre cento rivedo il fondo.
Arrivo dall’altra parte, ce l’ho fatta senza problemi. Vedo la casetta, finora lontana, a due passi da me. Vedo le distanti, piccole sagome di mio marito, dei miei figli. Sembrano irraggiungibili, ma so che non lo sono. Dopo una traversata, la sponda conosciuta diventa la parte opposta: di qua diventa di là. Carica di energia, riattraverso il lago. Esulto.
Per vent’anni ho studiato la lingua italiana come se nuotassi lungo i bordi di quel lago. Sempre accanto alla mia lingua dominante, l’inglese. Sempre costeggiandola. È stato un buon esercizio. Benefico per i muscoli, per il cervello, ma non certo emozionante. Studiando una lingua straniera in questo modo, non si può affogare. L’altra lingua è sempre lì per sostenerti, per salvarti. Ma non basta galleggiare senza la possibilità di annegare, di colare a picco. Per conoscere una nuova lingua, per immergersi, si deve lasciare la sponda. Senza salvagente. Senza poter contare sulla terraferma.