Sometimes I confuse myself with my shadow
and sometimes don't.

                      Samuel Beckett

A voice within a voice speaks in me, double-talks in me bilingually, in
French and in English, separately or, at times, simultaneously.  That voice
constantly plays hide-and-seek with its shadow.  Now there is nothing unusual
about that.  Many people nowadays, in many parts of the world, speak two or
three or even several languages.  Whether or not I speak French and English
well, that is another question which is not for me to answer.  But the fact
remains that I am a bilingual being, a double-headed mumbler, one could say,
and as such also a bicultural being.  I spent the first twenty years of my
life in France, therefore inside the French language and the French culture,
and spent (more or less) the last forty years in America, therefore inside
the American language and culture.  My social and cultural activities reflect
this.

But I am also a bilingual writer.  That is to say, I write both in French and
in English, and that is perhaps less common.  Furthermore, I also, at times,
translate my own work either from English into French or vice versa.  That
self-translating activity is certainly not very common in the field of
creative  writing.  In that sense then, I am somewhat of a phenomenon.  The
French would say:  Federman, c'est un drôle de phénomène!  Indeed, I have
often wondered, as a bilingual writer and a self-translator, whether I am
blessed because of this phenomenon or cursed because of it?

The fact that I am, that I became a bilingual writer may be an accident -- an
accident of history as well as an accident of my own personal experience.  In
any case, I am often asked if I think in French or in English, if I dream in
French or in English.  And I usually answer (at cocktail parties, on the golf
course, at various intellectual gatherings), since one must always answer
such questions if only for the sake of answering something and not be
bothered any further with an unanswerable question:  I think and I dream both
in French and in English, and very often simultaneously.

That, in fact, is what it means to have a voice within a voice.  It means
that you can never separate your linguistic self from its shadow.

There seems to be a lot of interest these days in this question of
bilingualism and multilingualism, related of course to the current concern
for multiculturalism.  Recently a friend of mine who is writing a book on the
 subject of "Bilingual Writers" -- such as Vladimir Nabokov, Joseph Conrad,
Elsa Triolet, Samuel Beckett, myself, and others -- asked me in a letter to
reflect on my own bilingual condition, and answer some questions.

Though I exist bilingually, in my life as well as in my work as a poet and a
fiction writer, I have never really tried to articulate a theory of my
bilingualism.  It was, therefore, interesting and provoking for me to answer
my friend's questions having to do with what she calls [my friend's name is
Elizabeth] the location of bilingualism, the space between the two languages,
the verticality versus the horizontality of bilingualism, the periodicities
of alternation, the horror of self-translation, etc.

This is what I wrote to Elizabeth in my reply:

I do not normally question or analyze my schizophrenic bilingualism.  I just
let it be, let it happen in me and outside of me.  I have no idea in which
side of my brain each language is located.  I have a vague feeling that the
two languages in me fornicate in the same cell.  But since you are probing
into my ambivalent (my ambidextrous) psyche, I can tell you that I believe I
am left-handed in French and right-handed in English.  I am not kidding.  You
see, I was born left-handed (in Paris, some years ago), but when I broke my
left wrist at the age of nine or ten (I forget exactly when now), I was
forced to become right-handed.  You might say that I am a converted lefty,
just as I am a converted Frenchman who became an American.  However, there
are certain things, certain gestures and motions which I cannot do with my
right hand (like brushing my teeth or throwing a ball), and others which I
can only do with my right hand (like writing or playing tennis).  Could this
have something to do with my bilingualism?  It is also true that there are
certain texts which I can only write in English, and others only in French,
even though eventually I feel a need to translate these texts from one
language into the other.

What amazes me, but perhaps it should not, is how true I am to the patterns
you describe in your essay [Elizabeth had enclosed with her letter a copy of
an essay she had just published entitled "Prolegomena to a Study of Bilingual
Writers" in which she delineates certain patterns of behavior for bilingual
writers, such as periods of rejection of one language in favor of the other,
or a need bilingual writers seem to have to return to their native tongue in
the later years of their life].  Considering myself just beyond the
mid-course of my literary career, I find that I am more comfortable these
days writing in English than in French.  This does not mean, however, that I
have rejected the French language -- my native tongue.  I have merely placed
it (temporarily) in parenthesis.  Though it seems that whenever I begin a new
book there is a quarrel inside of me between the two languages to decide
which I should use.

Knowing that I have written extensively on the work of Samuel Beckett,
Elizabeth asked: "How do you compare yourself to Beckett?  And should the
case of Beckett be examined?  He was such a classical and backward case."  In
terms of his bilingualism and the act of self-translating, Beckett was a
superman, an angel.  He came from above.  I am a mere mortal.  I come from
below, from the cave.  Yes, of course, Beckett's case should be examined,
carefully examined.  In my opinion, Beckett was a most unique, a most
extraordinary case of a bilingual writer, for he had, at least since 1945
until his death in 1989, sustained his work in French and English to the
point that for him language one and language two became totally
interchangeable.  Therefore, when reading Beckett it is absolutely irrelevant
to ask which text was written first.  His twin-texts -- whether
French/English or English/French -- are not to be read as translations or as
substitutes for one another.  They are always complementary to one another.
 In many ways, I consider my own work, my bilingual work to be somewhat the
same.  Whether written in English or in French first, the two texts
complement and complete one another.

"Is there anything familiar to you in what I am saying in my essay?"
 Elizabeth asked.  Yes, most of it, especially the problem of periodicities
of alternation (I seem to be constantly vacillating between the two
languages), and also what you call "the horror of self-translation" (it
scares the hell out of me whenever I begin to translate myself, though
lately, in spite of the horror, and even the boredom at times, of translating
my own work, I also find a constant temptation to do so, as if there were a
profound need in me to see everything I write exist immediately in the other
language).  There are, however, a few things in your essay with which I seem
to differ, but then this may have to do with my own idiosyncratic mind.

For instance, I do not seem to feel, as some of the bilingual writers you
discuss (Nabokov and Elsa Triolet in particular), that there is a space
between the two languages in me that keeps them apart.  On the contrary, for
me French and English always seem to overlap, to want to merge, to want to
come together, to want to embrace one another, to mesh one into the other.
 Or if you prefer, they want to spoil and corrupt one another.  Therefore, I
do not feel that one language is vertical in me, and the other horizontal, as
you suggest.  If anything, they seem to be standing or lying in the same
direction -- sometimes vertically and other times horizontally, depending on
their moods or their desires.  Though the French and the English in me
occasionally compete with one another in some vague region of my brain, more
often they play with one another, especially when I put them on paper.  Yes,
I think that the two languages in me love each other, and I have, on
occasion, caught them having wild intercourse behind my back.  However, I
cannot tell you which is feminine and which is masculine, perhaps they are
androgynous.

To tell you the truth, Elizabeth, there is perversity in my bilingualism.
Usually when I finish a novel (as you know I have written seven or eight now,
either in English or in French), I am immediately tempted to write (rewrite,
adapt, transform, transact, transcreate -- I am not sure what term I should
use here, but certainly not translate) the original into the other language.
 Even though finished, the book feels unfinished if it does not exist in the
other language.  Often I begin such an alternate version, but quickly abandon
it, out of boredom, I suppose, fatigue or disgust, or perhaps because of what
you call "the horror of self-translation", the fear of betraying myself and
my own work.

It is curious, however, that when I write something shorter than a novel, a
short-story and especially a poem, I immediately do a version in the other
language.  Most of my poems and short-stories exist bilingually.  My feeling
here is that the original text is not complete until there is an equivalent
version in French or in English.  Perhaps the same need for completeness, for
finishedness into the other language is there too for the novels, but
laziness, fear, apprehension, and of course time prevent me from doing the
work.  I am aware also that translating one's work into another language
often reveals the poverty, the semantic but also the metaphorical poverty of
certain words in the other language.  There is no doubt that the process of
self-translating often results in a loss, in a betrayal and weakening of the
original work.  But then, on the other hand, there is always the possibility,
the chance of a gain.  Yes, the possibility that certain words or expressions
in the other language may have the advantage of metaphorical richness not
present in the first language.  So that even though the self-translator
always confronts this possibility of loss, he also hopes for a chance of
gain.  It seems to me that the translation, or rather the self-translation
often augments, enriches, and even embellishes the original text -- enriches
it, not only in terms of meaning, but in its music, its rhythm, its
metaphoric thickness, and even in its syntactical complexity.  This is so
because the self-translator can take liberties with his own work since it
belongs to him.

However, this matter of loss or gain in the process of self-translation
raises a crucial question:  whether the translation is merely a substitute
for the original or if, in fact, it becomes a continuation, an amplification
of the work?  We always admire the faithfulness of a translation in relation
to the original, and quickly deplore and criticize the liberties a translator
takes with the original work of a writer.  A case in point:  the marvelous
though greatly unfaithful translations which Richard Howard recently did of
Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal, which were bitterly criticized.

Yes, we rarely forgive such liberties, and consequently expect the bilingual
writer who translates himself to remain faithful to his own texts.  On the
contrary, one should allow the writer-as-self-translator some freedom, some
room for play within his own work, if only for the sake of enriching that
work.  And of course, I allow myself such playfulness -- often simply for the
sake of playfulness, but also in an effort to make sense out of my own
writing.  But there is also a more important reason for wanting to translate
one's work:  since we know that language is what gets us where we want to go
but at the same time prevents us from getting there [I am paraphrasing Samuel
Beckett here], then by using another language, the other language in us, we
may have a better chance of getting where we want to go, a better chance of
saying what we wanted to say, or at least we have a second chance of
succeeding.  That is to say, we have the possibility of correcting the errors
of the original text.

The original creative act, as we all know, always proceeds in the DARK -- in
the dark, in ignorance, and in error.  Though the act of translating (and
especially self-translating) is also a creative act, nevertheless it is
performed in the LIGHT (in the light of the original text), it is performed
in KNOWLEDGE (in the knowledge of the existing text), and therefore it is
performed without error, at least at the start.  As such the act of self-
translation enlightens the original, but it also reassures, reasserts the
knowledge already present in the original text.  Sometimes it also corrects
the initial errors of that text.  As a result, the self-translation is no
longer an approximation of the original, nor a duplication, nor a substitute,
but truly a continuation of the work -- of the working of the text.

Basically that is how I understand my work as a self-translator and as a
bilingual writer.  Sometimes the translation I do of my own work amplifies
the original, sometimes it diminishes it, corrects it, explains it even (no,
not to the reader, the potential reader of the text, but to the author, to
myself, who knows very well that the language he uses, whether French or
English,  is always an obstacle that must be overcome again and again).

That is what I think it means to be a bilingual writer, to be a
writer/self-translator.  It means that one is constantly displaced from one
language (and one culture) into the other.  And yet, at the same time, it
means that one can never step outside of the languages inside of us, whatever
these languages may be.  The bilingual writer allows his readers (if he has
any) to listen to the dialogue which he entertains within himself in two
languages, even though in most cases the readers (who are usually not
bilingual) only hear half of this internal (one should almost says infernal)
dialogue.

I feel a sense of incompleteness with my work when the texts I have written
exist only in one language.  This need, this anxiety rather, I have to see my
work exist in both French and English ... (and I should insist, in my own
voice -- I have read translations of some of my work into French or into
English, translations of poems, stories, essays, and even one of my novels
done by someone other than myself, and these always feel totally alien to me)
... this need I have to speak and write in two languages, almost
simultaneously, also affects my reading process.  Often when I read a book,
either in French or in English, a book I am particularly enjoying, a book
which gives me, as Roland Barthes put it, Le Plaisir du Texte, I find myself
translating the text mentally into the other language while reading.

What often troubles me when I am working on a novel in English (and this
because in most of my novels so far, the protagonist remains a Frenchman in
exile) is the realization that perhaps it would be easier, and certainly more
logical, to write the book in French, or at least to let the protagonist
speak French whenever he feels like it.  But then, the question can be asked:
 to whom is the book speaking?  My fiction always has an implied reader, or
rather an implicit, active interlocutor/listener present in the text, and I
believe that this "potential reader" (as I call him) is of the English and
not the French language.  In other words, my books always seem to be speaking
to English reading people, and therefore, even though the central character
and even the material are of French origin, they demand to be written in
English.

I write more, and have always written more in English than in French, even
though English is not my first language.  Somehow the French language scares
me.  It seems to dictate to me how I should write and therefore prevents me
from challenging its rules of grammar, whereas English, irrational as it may
be in its grammar and syntax, gives me the freedom to experiment with grammar
and syntax.  Though I did not start learning English until I was twenty years
old, I feel that my French is somewhat ancient, perhaps even fossilized, that
it is no longer up-to-date, that it is a language of another time in my life.
 That does not mean that I write badly or poorly in French, I don't think so,
nor does it mean that I have rejected the French language, but that when I
write in French I become conscious, over-conscious of using a language which
is distant from me.  And this, not because there has been periods when I did
not use French (I use my French all the time), but simply because French is
somewhat foreign and restrictive to me now.  To put is differently, I feel
like a prisoner in the French language, perhaps because it made me, because
it captured
me originally, and I feel free in English because it liberated me, because it
took me out of the French language and the French culture.

"Is there a desire in me to lose, to abandon French?"  Elizabeth asked.  No,
I do not think so.  You must understand that I do not feel afflicted with
bilingualism, I feel enriched by it.  At the same time, however, I do not
feel that I want to preserve the purity of my native tongue, as so many of my
French friends and colleagues, who have been living and working in the U.S.
for many years, often do or claim to do.  On the contrary, I want to corrupt
the French language in me, I want the two languages in me to corrupt one
another.

I have often contemplated writing a book -- a book which would probably be
unreadable to most people -- in which the two languages would come together
in the same sentences.  There are a few such pages in some of my novels, but
I would like to do a entire book using both languages simultaneously.  Here
allow me to give you a short example of what I mean.  It's a passage from my
novel Take It or Leave It [1976].  The French protagonist marvels at what he
sees when he arrives in New York:

... because me too like a jerk j'attendis une bonne heure or more after the
phone call à la même place and then de cette pénombre in this gray rain de
cette foule en route discon-tinuous morne surgit around 10:00 p.m une brusque
avalanche quite unexpected de femmes absolument belles gorgeous stunning out
of nowhere quelle découverte quelle Amérique quel ravissement was I lucky to
be here je touchais au vif de mon pélerinage and if je n'avais pas souffert
en même temps des continuels rappels the loud gurgling in my stomach de mon
appétit wow was I hungry je me serais cru suddenly parvenu à l'un de ces
moments de surnaturelle and of surrealistic révélation esthétique les beautés
that I découvrais just like that incessantes m'eussent avec un peu de
confiance and de confort and a bit more self-confidence ravi à ma condition
trivialement humaine ...

Yes, I have often considered writing  a book in which the two languages would
merge into one another.  On the cover of this book (if such a book were ever
to be published), it would say, translated by the author, but without
specifying from which language.

There is, quite clearly, an element of playfulness at work in my
bilingualism. The two languages play with one another, and I am using the
term play in its fullest sense -- not only in the sense of game, but also in
the sense of looseness, as in the expression, there is looseness in the door
.  My French and my English play with one another as two children do in a
playground, or rather as two lovers (loose lovers) play with one another in
order to possess and even abolish one another.  Perhaps my French and English
play in me in order to abolish my own origin.  In the totally bilingual book
I would like to write, there would be no original language, no original
source, no original text -- only two languages that would exist, or rather
co-exist outside of their origin, in the space of their own playfulness.

At this point my reply to my friend Elizabeth stopped abruptly, either
because I had nothing more to say, nothing else to invent on the subject of
my bilingualism, or simply because I had run out of space.  Whatever the
case, in the process of reflecting about bilingualism, I think I had managed
to explain (especially to myself) how the struggle, the love affair, and the
playful intercourse of the two languages in me have determined and informed
my work over the years.

No, I do not feel afflicted by my bilingualism.  I feel enriched by it, as I
hope the following bilingual poem will demonstrate:

OLD SKIN     VIEILLE PEAU

   sixty already     soixante ans déjà
   and still not a word     et pas encore un mot
     mumbling like a fool     balbutiant comme un con
at best     au plus
two or three groans     deux out trois cris
that's about all     voilà c'est tout
     lots of qua qua     beaucoup de qua qua
   that's how it is     voilà comment c'est
in the bubble of the skull     dans la bulle du crâne
dragging yourself in verbal mud     te traînant dans la boue verbale
looking for a word     cherchant un mot
the first word     le premier mot
a noun perhaps     un nom peut-être
a verb     un verbe
yes     oui
an imperative     un impératif
******
****
***
*



Copyright © 1996 Raymond Federman