In Other Words by Jhumpa Lahiri

Abstract

Rodrigo takes the box with Adriana’s few belongings to her building. Her new building. The super gives him an unwelcoming look. Who’s it from (he asks). She’ll know (Rodrigo replies). He walks away slowly. It’s as if he could suddenly breathe again. He just let go of a very important part of his past; he has also just quit his job. Tomorrow, he’ll move away; he’ll go backpacking through that same country he’s been putting off since he was seventeen. His boss didn’t seem surprised by his decision. She did ask him if he was okay. If everything was “in order”; those were her exact words. Truthfully, Rodrigo didn’t know. Nothing felt in order. Actually, everything seemed to be in the disorder he needed, a disorder that made him feel comfortable . Calm. He hasn’t been able to get a song out of his head for a while: “You Are a Tourist,” by Death Cab for Cutie. If someone was filming this episode of his life, that would be the chosen song for the soundtrack. A strangely encouraging song. And if you feel just like a tourist in the city you were born Then it’s time to go. (Rodrigo looks up the video on YouTube. He posts it on Twitter.) And define your destination There’s so many different places to call home. Rodrigo walks slowly, with his headphones on. Seems like everything is going to be all right. Julia is looking for a red pair of shoes. It’s the final touch of her transformation. It’s winter, and in Santiago all the stores are filled with boots and warm shoes. Nothing like what she’s looking for. She keeps walking. If she could choose, Julia would live forever in one single memory. The first birthday she spent with Andrés. The apartment was full of people, and Andrés had looked for her among everyone, and gave her the look. The knowing look. Closing his eyes. One, two, three times. (And the world was good again, complete. Nothing to fear.) Other birthdays followed with or without looks, more or less happy. Some rather miserable, too. But Julia seemed to have left a small anchor on that day, that night. And she wouldn’t budge. It was that memory which was playing nonstop in her head every morning, under the shower; the dream WORLDLIT.ORG 21 In Other Words Jhumpa Lahiri Trans. Ann Goldstein Knopf, 2016 Jhumpa Lahiri’s In Other Words is a vulnerable journey of selfexploration by means of linguistic exile. It’s notably her first book written in Italian and her first autobiographical work. Letting go of her foothold in English, she invites the reader on a steadfast pursuit to master the Italian language, and along the way she shares how language has played a role in her perceptions of the world and, likewise, how the world perceives her. This bilingual edition of her book allows novice learners of the language (like myself) to read her original Italian and experience her metaphors for learning a new language firsthand. Akin to swimming in a lake, she describes abandoning the shore to swim across as total immersion. I often found myself “hugging that shore” of Ann Goldstein ’s English translation, but reading in this way allows the reader to relate with the joys and frustrations of learning a new language with clarity. She explains that to live without your own language is to “feel weightless, and, at the same time, overloaded”—like breathing the air of “a different altitude.” Her Italian vernacular is (as she notes) not particularly ornate, but in this way her succinct vocabulary makes the text accessible. And she compares this exposed, juvenile writing to Henri Matisse’s foray into “painting with scissors,” when he started creating art with bits of cut, painted paper. Skeptics might question artists for abandoning the tools they know for the ones they don’t, but in both cases a new voice in the artist’s repertoire is born. “Writing in another language,” Lahiri says, “represents an act of demolition, a new beginning.” This fresh start also explains her pursuit...