Abstract
Emigres, exiles, expatriates, refugees, nomads, cosmopolitans-the meanings of those words vary, as do their connotations. Expatriates can go any time they like, while exiles cannot. Cosmopolitan can be a term of selfaffirmation, straight or postmodernly ironic, or else an anti-Semitic slur. Over and above their fine distinctions, however, these words all designate a state of being not at home (or of being everywhere at home, the flip side of the same coin), which means, in most cases, at a distance from one's native tongue. Is this distance a falling away from some original wholeness and source of creativity, or is it on the contrary a spur to creativity? Is exile a cause for optimism (celebration, even) or its opposite? Clearly, there are no simple answers to these questions. The irony in Hannah Arendt's description of the optimistic refugees among whom she counted herself in 1943 is more bitter than Joseph Brodsky's wry self-
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