Search for Self

Jhumpa Lahiri, a well-known voice of diasporic literature and very popular among the contemporary writers of world literature, has emerged as an author of a nonfiction book titled In Other Words that she originally wrote in Italian. Born in London to a family of Bengali origin from India, Lahiri grows up in an English environment and is educated in English medium schools. Before going to school, she listens to Bengali and uses the language. As she starts school, Lahiri faces challenges of dual linguistic environment, but English becomes her favorite, even more fascinating than Bengali. A kind of struggle with the awareness of the use of language starts in her life from this time.

In the end, English wins as the language that takes her far away. English becomes her language, and she begins to forget Bengali. She writes in English, the language that she loves and also thinks in. Her first book Interpreter of Maladies published in 1999 wins the prestigious Pulitzer Prize. And the second book The Namesake (2003) adapted into film in different languages becomes a world famous book on diaspora. Her novel The Lowland (2013) was shortlisted for various prizes including the Man Booker Prize. Lahiri's presence in world literature is acutely felt because of her deep concern about diasporic reality that migrant people from different parts of the world, especially from India and the Indian subcontinent, go through.

During her doctoral studies on Renaissance literature, Lahiri seriously feels to learn Italian, though her interest in the language rooted in her first visit to Florence during her college life. She begins to dream to use the language for communication and literary writing. She searches for opportunities to learn Italian and subsequently finds some tutors who sincerely help her learn the language. She grows profound love for Italian, the language that she begins to dream with. Later she along with her family moves to Rome to stay there – learning the language works as the prime drive behind the migration.

In Other Words is an autobiographical work, a memoir, originally written in Italian, later translated into English by Ann Goldstein. The translation is smooth, flowing and readable – Goldstein is a renowned translator from Italian. Written almost as a diary, as the author herself mentions, the book centers around Lahiri's love with Italian, the language that she is desperate to learn and write in. To seek a new voice, to discover a new self, to unknot a mystery, Lahiri ventures on learning a new language that she is truly fascinated with. It is relevant to quote, "In Other Words is at heart a love story – of a long and sometimes difficult courtship, and a passion that verges on obsession: that of a writer for another language." The author is deeply in love with the language, and so she intensely strives to make the language her own.

In Other Words is divided into a number of chapters, each having a title. The book starts with "The Crossing," a story which is metaphorical, and describes the speaker's impulse to cross a lake. Crossing the lake is actually learning Italian. She describes the hurdles of a person, who does not know how to swim, to cross the lake. The person should cross the lake as the impulse is strong, but she cannot swim – only after earning the capability of swimming, she can cross the lake.

When Lahiri first visits Florence with her sister in 1994, she falls in love with Italian – it was, for her, love at first sight. She reveals her feeling, "It's like a person met one day by chance, with whom I immediately feel a connection, of whom I feel fond". But there is also ambivalence in her mental state as she puts, "I feel a connection and at the same time a detachment. A closeness and at the same time a distance." She knows well that it is not easy to leave her language English and shift to a new one, but still she feels attracted to Italian. In the chapter titled "Exile," Lahiri reflects on her linguistic exile. She knows Bengali, her mother tongue, but cannot read or write it. She thinks that her "mother tongue, paradoxically, a foreign language, too."

Learning Italian, in some moments, appears impossible for the author. She quotes Carlos Fuentes, "It's extremely useful to know that there are certain heights one will never be able to reach". She feels that learning Italian is a kind of that 'certain height' that she can never reach, because she stresses, "The better I understand the language, the more confusing it is. The closer I get, the farther away. . . . Because in fact a language isn't a small lake but an ocean." Anxiety engulfs her because she wants to learn the language perfectly, but she gradually discovers, as she is a writer, it is really impossible to attain perfection.

While translating a text from Italian into English, Lahiri encounters a distinct experience, and she shares, "When I write in Italian, I think in Italian; to translate into English, I have to wake up another part of my brain." A few pages later, she expresses her view about translation, "I think that translating is the most profound, most intimate way of reading. A translation is a wonderful, dynamic encounter between two languages, two texts, two writers." These remarks are valuable as far as the area of translation and translation studies are concerned. She evaluates the position of a writer and comments on the role of a translator. She also refers to Becket who translated himself from French into English. But Lahiri consciously avoids translating In Other Words from Italian into English.

The chapter titled "The Triangle" is powerful. The author reflects on her triangular relationships with language. Until four she speaks and loves Bengali. After going to school at the age four in America, she encounters English that, in the beginning, was fearful. But she gradually improves her relationship with English, and then Bengali becomes inferior. Later her relationships with both English and Bengali fade away because she falls in love with Italian. She refers to Ovid's Metamorphoses, and it is beautifully contextualized in In Other Words, especially to compare her transformation to Daphne's metamorphosis into a tree.

In Other Words, no doubt, is an autobiographical text that investigates into a search for the writer's own voice, her own self. In the afterword, Lahiri writes, "In Other Words is different. Almost everything in it happened to me. I've already explained it began as a sort of diary, a personal text. It remains my most intimate book but also the most open." The author has an emotional relationship with the book, and she feels proud of it, but at the same time she feels insecure about it. Hence lies an ambivalence in the author's mind, especially when she reflects on the process of writing the book and then its reception. She also concludes the book with her ambivalent state of mind, "I hope that every book in the world belongs to everyone, or to no one, nowhere." In Other Words belongs to, we want to believe, everyone everywhere.

The reviewer is the translator of Humayun Ahmed: Selected Short Stories, teaches English literature at Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, Sylhet, Bangladesh. He can be reached at: msijewel@gmail.com