In Translation

As part of my ongoing plan to become a better person and/or appear more erudite (they're the same thing, right?) I have been reading Harper's, the oldest general interest monthly in America. While the cover art may regularly resemble the tissue boxes in your crazy great-aunt's home and the content can be sometimes obtuse, the writing is always stylistically perfect. If you're a big nerd or aspiring pseudo-intellectual like i am, I suggest you get on that.

Wyatt Mason, who clearly has the best life ever, recently wrote a column discussing Samuel Beckett's forays into writing in French. According to Mason, the disenchanted Beckett began writing in his second language to escape "the mastery he had in English."

That statement about Beckett's mastery of English caused a slight crisis. I was at first indignant that Mason would imply that anyone could "master" English. English is beautiful, but elusive and obtuse-- surely even the greatest writers stumble occasionally.

Yet if there's anyone who has mastered English, it's Beckett. He's far from being my favorite author, yet I can't help but envy him. Read any of his writing-- especially his plays-- and it becomes apparent that Beckett has an unparalleled control of language, both on the micro and macro levels. It is precisely able because he is able to precisely control the structure of his phrases, sentences, paragraphs and his works as a whole that his works succeed as minimalist phenomena, open to interpretation-- really, a truly enviable feat. Having mastered English and severely messed with our minds in the process, Beckett is clearly free to go on to write in other languages in order to better challenge himself.

In contrast, my "mastery" of my native tongue is far from approaching Beckett's talent. Though I would consider myself to be above average in terms of language skills, I still struggle with some elements of English; I frequently find myself at a bizarre impasse when forced to choose between 'that' and 'which,' and when I'm feeling lazy or tired (which is, sadly, often), I am wont to turn nouns into gerunds instead of attaching an appropriate noun ("How was Anthropology-ing?").

Herein lies the source of a small crisis brewing in my gerund-loving mind. If I'm not even close to mastering English, why am I learning Spanish? How can I expect to attain control over my first language if I spend so much time and energy attempting to learn another?

The answer is two-fold. The first point is that learning Spanish has taught me much more about English than many of my English classes ever have. Despite my otherwise excellent luck with humanities teachers throughout my secondary education, the English teacher who was supposed to teach me grammar handed us out workbooks without ever lecturing on past participles.

The second is Beckett's own reason for choosing to temporarily abandon English. Once one has achieved basic proficiency in a language, writing it it can actually be a freeing creative experience. Because of my incomplete grasp of Spanish grammar and my limited vocabulary, I perceive the standards for my writing to be lower and thus write in a less complex but perhaps no less creative manner.

This latter reason became readily apparent to me last week due to an unfortunate confluence of my tendency to procrastinate and a heavy pre-spring break work load. I was suddenly stricken with the need to write 17 pages in Spanish in one week, a feat which I regularly complete in English, but seemed daunting in a foreign language, necessitating many late nights and a cumulative 36 hours in the library.

I should note here that I'm usually a very careful writer who spends an obscene amount of time editing her work. (This in itself might explain why I never post regularly on this blog.) This is usually true of my writing process in Spanish as well. Not so last week; there simply wasn't time. As I watched the clock tick past 3 and 4 every night, I fulfilled each required prompts, quickly proofread my writing, and forged on to the next one.

The result? Some of the most ridiculous, manic and yet creative writing I've ever done. I'm not going to win any awards with it, but I'm pretty proud of myself for managing to write some creative if insane little short stories in a language in which I am barely proficient. What's more, my writing managed to be literary in style, if not necessarily in content. My stupid fable about two foxes who didn't know how to communicate made good use of parallel structure, as did the incredibly depressing reflections of someone locked in a tower who felt neither pain nor happiness. And I thought my short story about a vegan woman who kills her unfaithful, bovine-philic husband with a large zucchini had its fair share of drama and suspense.

I can't remember the last time I wrote fiction in English; I avoid the genre simply because I always place pressure on myself to write something "complex" and "profound" and then end up chickening out and not producing anything at all. Yet when I'm ordered to write in a foreign language, I can write short fiction at the drop of the hat, simply because I believe the standards for profundity for my writing to be lower. I don't plan to make a career out of consistently writing about the disconnect between vegans and omnivores, and yet, there's something to be learned here. It's more important to write something than to write something profound, no matter the language in which one chooses to express oneself.

The picture that accompanies this insanely long and self-masturbatory blog post is of a keychain that emits a potpourri of Spanish swear words when squeezed. Obviously, a useful tool for any student of the language.