“In what language am I, suis-je, bin ich?”: The Natural State of the Multilingual I in French-Jewish Literature

1. Introduction

In the past decades, the French literary realm has become a forum for discussing the possibilities and flaws, as well as the history, present, and past of a colonizing state, thereby, ultimately, the future of individual freedom conditioned by language. Concerning the interaction between different languages, the French example is all the more interesting as language policies have declared French as a sacrosanct part of French culture, to preserve its hegemonic existence and protect it from non-French influences.^[1] In 2021, the French writer Cécile Wajsbrot disrupted this sacrosanct monolingual condition of the French language with her novel Nevermore (Wajsbrot 2021). Published by the French publisher Le bruit du temps, the text recounts the experience of a female translator working on a French version of Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse. The novel navigates between the present workplace of the translator, the German city of Dresden, and her home in France; adding, thereby, another linguistic layer to the French translation and English source: that of the German language.

Moreover, the novel raises questions regarding the insufficiency and inadequacy of the French language in grasping the English of Virginia Woolf. Though, in general, the book suggests no insufficiencies, but rather manifold possibilities of translating from English into French. To do so, the narrator incorporates – and opens the novel accordingly – paragraphs beginning with a sentence from To the Lighthouse in its original English, followed by the quote’s potential French versions. Consequently, French is also characterized as a language that offers a variety of different syntactic, lexical, and idiomatic variations. These choices also testify to the difficulties translators are confronted with, challenges that can be identified in translation regardless of particular languages, as in this case, English and French, as the narrator summarizes:

Translation is an inexact science, always an attempt, not doomed to failure but to imperfection. From one language to another, the ferryman’s boat encounters obstacles, which it either confronts or bypasses, waves or a simple swell, opposing or carrying streams. It is a crossing with a point of departure and a point of arrival, but from one to the other, only one person knows the journey and its pitfalls, the one who has gone through every stage.

[La traduction est une science inexacte, une tentative, toujours, non vouée à l’échec mais à l’imperfection. D’une langue à l’autre, la barque du passeur se heurte à des obstacles, qu’elle affronte ou contourne, des vagues ou une simple houle, des courants contraires ou porteurs. C’est une traverse avec un point de depart et un point d’arrivée mais de l’un à l’autre, une seule personne connait le voyage et ses écueils, celle qui en a parcouru toutes les étapes.] (Wajsbrot 2021, 11)^[2]

The novel is, therefore, also a reflection on the work of translating in general and the history of translations of Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse in particular: In addition to versions in various languages, including the general publication history of Woolf’s text, the narrator takes into account the American edition, which differs from the British one.^[3] In other words, along with translation processes into non-English languages, the novel also translates between different varieties of the English language, its adjunct cultures, and markets. Also, Woolf’s novel connects to specific historical events, which are, in some cases, not obviously related to it, such as the nuclear disaster of 1986 in the Ukrainian city of Chernobyl. To other events, a connection is, however, made through processes of translation as the narrator decides to work on the French version of To the Lighthouse in the German city of Dresden:

My proposal had been accepted, and the coherence I had sought to give to the idea – translating Virginia Woolf in the city of Dresden, a text about the devastation of time in a city once devastated by the war – was convincing.

[Ce que je proposais avait été retenu, la coherence que j’avais cherché à donner à cette idée – traduire Virginia Woolf dans la ville de Dresden, un texte sur la devastation du temps dans une ville autrefois dévastée par la guerre – avait convaincu].” (18)

Beyond the connection made by the narrator between the novel to be translated and the city of translation, these circumstances add an additional language to the English-French realm of translation: “Translating English in a German environment? An experience, I said. The salient foreignness of a language. [Traduire de l’anglais dans un environment allemand? Une experience, disais-je. L’étrangerté saillante d’une langue.]” (18)

Aspects of foreignness, nativeness, or familiarity are present in various contexts in the work of Cécile Wajsbrot. A descendant of Polish Jews, she was raised in and still lives in Paris, but alternatingly in Berlin. Her fiction often mirrors autobiographical aspects dealing with the Holocaust, questions of memory, as well as home and exile (LCB 2024). Thus, it is not surprising to find these issues also in Nevermore. Also, aspects of multilingualism and translation are autobiographical, especially when considering the author’s life in both Paris and Berlin, as well as her work as a translator who includes translations of Virginia Woolf from English into French. The multilingual I, as portrayed in Nevermore, is self-reflexive as it discusses the word choices made when translating. It also considers the trilingual language setting it chooses to work in by translating an English novel into a French book in a German-speaking city. Through the act of translation, the multilingual I is channeled into a specific task: it focuses on multilingualism in written texts and literature rather than oral conversations in daily life. Through translation and engaging with various choices, the multilingual I not only develops a new perspective on its mother tongue by rendering a text into French through the eyes of another language; it also merges itself into Woolf’s To the Lighthouse and, therefore, into English in general and Woolf’s language in particular. To what extent English turns from a foreign into a familiar language becomes apparent in the narrator’s meta-reflections: she not only discusses the different options of translating a specific word or sentence from English into French but also engages with Woolf’s specific syntactic choices while demonstrating to her readers which other variants could have been possible in English (Wajsbrot 26).

2. The Self, its Language, and the Other’s Perception

“I only have one language, it is not mine. [Je n’ai qu’une langue, ce n’est pas la mienne.]“ (Derrida 1996, 13) At first sight, this statement seems contradictory. However, as Derrida elaborates throughout his text on his relation as a Maghrebian Jew towards the French language, the complexity of this statement increases. So does, perplexingly, the understanding of how the relationship between self, its language, and the other comes into being. Published in 1996, Le Monolinguisme de l’autre displays a dialogue between a non-monolingual self and a monolingual other. Derrida’s self discusses its belonging to the French language. It perceives itself as being neither included nor excluded:

For it is on the edge of French, excluded, neither in it nor out of it, on the untraceable line of its coast, since forever, at home, I ask myself if one can love, enjoy, pray, die of pain or die at all in another language or without saying anything in it to anyone, without even speaking.

[Car c’est au bord du français, uniquement, ni en lui ni hors de lui, sur ligne introuvable de sa côte que, depuis toujours, à demeure, je me demande si on peut aimer, jouir, prier, crever de douleur ou crever tout court dans une autre langue ou sans rien en dire à personne, sans parler même.] (Derrida 1996, 18)

Even though it is questionable whether it would be possible to do anything in another language, the self exists on the border to French. This precarious state defines its identity; there is a constant danger of being on the outside, but living outside of language would be impossible. This relates to the opening statement that language is not entirely one’s own. Nevertheless, familiarity exists only in and thanks to this language, as Derrida can express complex thoughts only in his French mother tongue. There is most likely no better sign of this robust entanglement than the various attempts of translators to transfer Derrida’s texts into other languages – be it English or German, translators often retain original French expressions in brackets within the English or German text in lieu of perfectly fitting equivalents to the French terms chosen by Derrida in a language he considered not his property to own.

The dialogue in Le Monolinguisme de l'autre illustrates the extent to which the Other excludes the multilingual self by establishing a boundary through nationalist claims predicated on monolithic perceptions of language. In the limen between monolingual borders, being in-between means for the other to remain foreign. This, however, is a contradiction in terms, as the following quote demonstrates: “When I [Derrida] said that the only language I speak is not my own, I did not mean that it is made foreign to me. Nuance. [En disant que la seule langue que je parle n’est pas la mienne, je n’ai pas dit qu’elle me fût étrangère. Nuance.]” (18) By demonstrating to what extent the language is indeed not foreign to him as the Self understands all the nuances, the dialogue offers an ironic twist to a reality often experienced by multilingual subjects: the constant urge to master the language of a majority to blend in, to be accepted, and considered “normal.” The quote also detects the inability of the other to completely own its monolingualism as it lacks a specific sensibility to understand its language fully.

The advantage of the monolingual other is that it has a clear identity. Thereby, its language ability falls into clear categories of belonging. At the same time, the self in the text is neither solely French nor a Maghrebian devoid of French citizenship (30, 32). The text draws the consequence that it is not a richness to fall into multiple categories but rather trouble (32). However, considering notions of normalcy and naturalness, I contend that this “trouble” is caused not necessarily by the identity of the self nor the language it speaks but rather by the seeming necessity to fit into mutually exclusive identity categories. This pressure, caused by the interrelation of identity categories and language as an aspect of belonging, influences the “je”, the “I”, to the extent that the danger arises of dissociating and splitting under the tensions of mutually exclusive identity categories (33). In other words, in-betweenness causes the switch between one “je” and another. The fact that this status is ”at once typical and singular” [à la fois typique et singulière] (33) adds to the binary character of such categories. The paradox of being at once typical and singular demonstrates that it is not necessarily the fact that one speaks one’s language(s) in a particular non-monolingual context that is troublesome, but the pressure to fit solely and exclusively into either category (French and not Maghrebian, or vice versa).

Consequently, the connotations identified by Derrida as “psycho-pathological [psycho-pathologiques]” or “socio-pathological [socio-pathologiques]” (32–33) are not necessarily rooted in the self. Still, they determine its conditioning through the monolingual approach of the other, even beyond language. Hence, Derrida not only questions the alleged normalcy and naturalness of the monolingual condition. He also hints at the monolingual other’s attempt to dispute the natural state of the multilingual self.

3. The Multifaceted I: Constituted in a Variety of Languages

“My natural condition was polyglot.” (Steiner 1975, 116) With this statement, George Steiner offers a glimpse into his individual multilingual condition, contextualized by his discussion of potential scientific approaches and criticism of pseudo-scientific stereotyping against multilinguals. It stems from his 1975 monograph After Babel, which is dedicated to Aspects of Language and Translation. In numerous chapters, Steiner offers his thoughts on various aspects of language interrelation, mainly on conditions of multilingualism and translation. For my argument, I will focus on the third chapter, entitled “Word against Object.” The title in and of itself is intriguing, as it establishes a contradiction between word and object, suggesting that a word has subjective characteristics in being the counterpart to the impersonal, lifeless object. Consequently, a word appears to signify everything an object is not. Through this juxtaposition, a word is charged with dynamism, personality, individuality, and potential for development. All these aspects become part of language as long as it is spoken by different subjects. Multilingualism, thus, can be seen as a specific individual form of language formation.

While Steiner circles back to this notion of individual subjectivity of language throughout the chapter, his discussion departs from the object by questioning the objectivity of science as a useful approach to language. Scientific linguistics tends, he states, to often “borrow the idiom and posture of sensibility of an exact science” (110). Interestingly, clinical psychology is included among the sciences he mentions, which we will return to in my reading of Steiner’s reflection on his multilingual self and navigation between different languages. Indeed, though Steiner emphasizes the shortcomings of science, he is optimistic about breakthroughs through neurochemical or neurophysiological approaches (113). Concerning scientific approaches to language, however, Steiner contends that language often remains “outside the natural limits of scientific hypotheses and verification” (110). Put differently, the word is not objectifiable. This dilemma stands, according to Steiner, “at the root of epistemology” (110).

After criticizing the objectifying approaches of science by suggesting potential ways of understanding the complex layers of language, Steiner continues following the entanglement of the counterparts set through the title of the chapter and tells his personal, individual, and subjective language story of his own life. His autobiographical analysis starts with the above-quoted statement that depicts multilingualism as his natural state. Indeed, he grew up with a family background in Austria-Hungary after his parents had moved from Vienna to Paris shortly before he was born. He went to school in Paris before leaving France for the United States in 1940. Thus, it is easy to see how he picked up various languages naturally during his formative years. In Steiner’s words, this multilingual experience “organized” and “imprinted on my grasp of personal identity, the formidably complex, resourceful cast of the feeling of Central European and Judaic humanism” (Steiner 116).^[10] Primarily, the term Judaic invokes the book’s title, as well as Steiner’s personal experience and family history: What caused his humanist sentiment were not only his multilingual childhood experiences but rather his encounter with Jewish (textual) history and its multilingual aspects in relation to the experiences and discriminations recorded therein. Put differently, the diasporic state caused by migration and the resulting minority status, as well as the accompanying multilingual state, form the precondition for his humanist sentiment. In consequence, he felt a certain “apartness from other French schoolchildren” (116) as well as an “extraterritoriality” (116). With these keywords, Steiner’s elaborations reach a point that is the farthest back from the scientific approach of linguists: the felt physical and spatial distance result from subjective emotions of being different, as well as, implicitly, from an awareness of potential discrimination and exclusion due to this apartness augmented by suspicious feelings against multilingualism.

Here, Steiner criticizes “the pseudo-scientific rumour that multilingual individuals or children reared simultaneously in ’too many’ languages (is there a critical number?) are prone to schizophrenia and disorders of personality.” (Steiner 119)^[11] Thus, though Steiner does refer to a “polyglot mentality” and “multilingual sensibility” (119), and, therefore, adopts an approach that includes cognitive influences, he speaks out clearly against pathologizing the multilingual mind. However, the questions remain “in what language am I, suis-je, bin ich, when I am inmost? What is the tone of the self?” (120) And while pathologizing approaches to multilingual writers and thinkers hardly contribute to an understanding, we might follow Steiner’s invitation to perceive science – especially within our context of literature studies – as an analogy or an expectation (114–115). That is to say, concepts such as that of different linguistic worlds in which the self moves in and between, and which have been researched in psychology or neuroscience can provide us with a specific framework or image in our attempt to understand multilingual concepts of being and writing. However, it is not to be understood as a method to diagnose a writer or a text and stigmatise the oeuvre.

4. The Multilingual I and its Different Selves

The Algerian-born French writer Hélène Cixous discusses the multilingual I with regard to the language that defines its existence. In her texts, Cixous fuses literary multilingualism with her autobiographic reflections on her experiences of living in multiple languages. In “L’enregistrement de maman” (2001), she first intersperses German words into the French text and later reconnects these to her mother and grandmother. The effect of this reconnection to her linguistic heritage is a certain familiarity with these terms while reading Cixous’ text. Through these interspersed words, the multilingual I is integrated into the author’s literary corpus in form and content.

Within “L’enregistrement de maman” the engagement with the German language constantly increases, reaching a climax with those protagonists that brought German into the picture: At first, an “uncanniness particularly uncanny [Unheimlichkeit particulièrement Unheimlich]” resonates with Freud’s famous concept (11). The wrongly capitalized adjective disturbs the careful reader and demonstrates how great the mentioned uncanniness might be. By contrast, the “potato pancakes [Kartoffelpfannkuchen]” (12) provoke a feeling of homeness – “heimelig,” as Freud’s chosen opposite to the uncanny. The term also illustrates the multilingual self’s deeper emotional connection to German than a writer familiar with principal concepts of modern theory. Beyond these two terms, a wider network of connectivity to German unfolds, for example, when the narrator is reading the Süddeutsche Zeitung (13), and declares that she has a Mémé, the French nickname for grandmother, but also an Omi, the German equivalent diminutive (13). This Omi introduced the narrator to the German language and her favorite writer, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (21), whose work Wahlverwandschaften (17) appears as another non-French signifier in the text. Omi is also the mother of the woman called “maman” in the title and has thus shaped the narrator’s personal network beyond being part of it, through introducing and familiarizing her own daughter with the German language and culture. As Omi, the mother was both German and Jewish and according to the narrator one goes with the other. In France, however, this constellation is not supplementary: here she is not both but neither (21). At this moment, the text hints at the exclusive concept of French citizenship as tied to a monolingual posture of the French language, similar to the one described in Derrida’s Le monolinguisme de l’autre. However, in Cixous’ discussion, there are no traces of pathological elements precisely because it presents a coexistence of German and Jewish identities as natural.

Moreover, this multilingual identity is passed on as a heritage from Omi to maman, and finally to the narrator herself. With every generation, the language changes, and even though the usage comes naturally to the speakers, cracks appear in what would be termed grammatically correct. For example, the mother claims, “One says that the apple does not fall far from the apple tree.” [Man sagt der Apfel fällt nicht weit von der Apfelbaum.] (16) While she laments that this might not be true as her daughter seems to fall farther and farther away from her, the fact that there are three “mistakes” to be found in the quote gives the idiom a double meaning as it demonstrates that inherited languages might get lost over generations. However, the text also argues for a broader understanding of multilingualism and a natural approach to language ability, one attained through emotional attachment rather than perfecting grammar.

Conclusion

In this preliminary study on the possibilities and challenges of a vocabulary borrowed from psychology to describe multilingualism. I presented readings in autobiographic texts by Jacques Derrida, George Steiner, and Hélène Cixous that fuse personal reflections on multilingualism with intellectual inquiry. Derrida and Steiner both describe particular challenges when confronted with a monolingual society. For Derrida, equating language with citizenship excludes everyone who does not fit into all three mentioned categories from its monolingualism. For Steiner, the question is more about the different languages he speaks and the contexts one uses them in, whether by oneself – in what language am I? – or in dialogue with others. Steiner mainly refers to different personalities one develops in various languages, but simultaneously disputes this impression as pathological. Similarly, Derrida uses the term psycho- or socio-pathological not necessarily to describe the self, but rather to pick up on the accusation raised against the multilingual self by the monolingual other. From Cixous’ text dealt with here, no traces of changes in personality when using different languages can be observed. However, this might not be the case when looking at her entire oeuvre.

In a written conversation, published in 2012 in German translation in the journal Sinn und Form, Cécile Wajsbrot and Hélène Cixous trace the significance of Germany in Cixous’s life. Cixous emphasizes that Germany, for her, is often synonymous with Omi, her grandmother (Wajsbrot 2014, 215). Consequently, when growing up in Algeria, Cixous was surrounded by Germany (2015), while the French “at our place [chez nous]” – that of her Omi – did not indicate association to France, but rather to how things were done properly back in Germany (216). Although her mother and grandmother seem to incorporate everything that Germany means to Cixous, they have an ambivalent relationship to their mother tongue (218). Consequently, while the girl enjoyed the interwovenness of being foreign and familiar simultaneously (216), the text also raises the question of preconceived identity templates to fit the emotional reality of belonging to the multilingual I. After all, Cixous states that her German autobiography would be only one of her autobiographies (215), suggesting an incongruousness and parallel existence of identities within the multilingual I. Nevertheless, as she grew naturally into a multilingual I, living with these parallel identities is not necessarily a disadvantage. It is instead a challenge for the monolingual surroundings to grasp it, not to pathologize, but to accept the diverse identity of the multilingual I as an organic entity.

In her novel Nevermore, Wajsbrot escapes pathologizing as she turns the multilingualism of her protagonist into a profession. Both, the protagonist and the author differ from Derrida and Steiner through a generation gap and, therefore, through their experience: Wajsbrot’s mother tongue is French, not the French from an Algerian, but that of the “motherland.” As she chooses to live between France and Germany, therefore, she also chooses to live between the languages. The loss experienced by Derrida, Steiner, and Cixous’s grandmother causes different approaches to their multilingualism. As part of their migration, they turn into foreigners. Being made to feel this foreignness also evokes an approach to language that uses self-pathologizing terms. However, what becomes clear is societal structures’ power: after all, it is only through the process of othering that multilingual people question the status of their languages, languages that otherwise coexist naturally within their selves.