At the university, I decide to write my doctoral thesis on how Italian architecture influenced English playwrights of the seventeenth century. I wonder why certain playwrights decided to set their tragedies, written in English, in Italian palaces. The thesis will discuss another schism between language and environment. The subject gives me a second reason to study Italian.
I attend elementary courses. My first teacher is a Milanese woman who lives in Boston. I do the homework, I pass the tests. But when, after two years of studying, I try to read Alberto Moravia’s novel La ciociara (Two Women), I barely understand it. I underline almost every word on every page. I am constantly looking in the dictionary.
In the spring of 2000, six years after my trip to Florence, I go to Venice. In addition to the dictionary, I take a notebook, and on the last page I write down phrases that might be useful: Saprebbe dirmi? Dove si trova? Come si fa per andare? Could you tell me? Where is? How does one get to? I recall the difference between buono and bello. I feel prepared. In reality, in Venice I’m barely able to ask for directions on the street, a wake-up call at the hotel. I manage to order in a restaurant and exchange a few words with a saleswoman. Nothing else. Even though I’ve returned to Italy, I still feel exiled from the language.
A few months later I receive an invitation to the Mantua literary festival. There I meet my first Italian publishers. One of them is also my translator. Their publishing house has a Spanish name, Marcos y Marcos. They are Italian. Their names are Marco and Claudia.
I have to do all my interviews and presentations in English. There is always an interpreter next to me. I can more or less follow the Italian, but I can’t express myself, explain myself, without English. I feel limited. What I learned in America, in the classroom, isn’t sufficient. My comprehension is so meager that, here in Italy, it doesn’t help me. The language still seems like a locked gate. I’m on the threshold, I can see inside, but the gate won’t open.
Marco and Claudia give me the key. When I mention that I’ve studied some Italian, and that I would like to improve it, they stop speaking to me in English. They switch to their language, although I’m able to respond only in a very simple way. In spite of all my mistakes, in spite of my not completely understanding what they say. In spite of the fact that they speak English much better than I speak Italian.
They tolerate my mistakes. They correct me, they encourage me, they provide the words I lack. They speak clearly, patiently. Just like parents with their children. The way one learns one’s native language. I realize that I didn’t learn English in this fashion.
Claudia and Marco, who translated and published my first book in Italian, and who were my hosts the first time I went to Italy as a writer, give me this turning point. In Mantua, thanks to them, I finally find myself inside the language. Because in the end to learn a language, to feel connected to it, you have to have a dialogue, however childlike, however imperfect.
THE CONVERSATIONS
Returning to America, I want to go on speaking Italian. But with whom? I know some people in New York who speak it perfectly. I’m embarrassed to talk to them. I need someone with whom I can struggle, and fail.
One day I go to the Casa Italiana at New York University to interview a famous Roman writer, a woman, who has won the Strega Prize. I am in an overcrowded room, where everyone but me speaks an impeccable Italian.
The director of the institute greets me. I tell him I would have liked to do the interview in Italian. That I studied the language years ago but I can’t speak well.
“Need practicing,” I say.
“You need practice,” he answers kindly.
In 2004 my husband gives me something. A piece of paper torn from a notice that he happened to see in our neighborhood, in Brooklyn. On it is written “Imparare l’italiano,” “Learn Italian.” I consider it a sign. I call the number, make an appointment. A likable, energetic woman, also from Milan, arrives at my house. She teaches in a private school, she lives in the suburbs. She asks me why I want to learn the language.
I explain that I’m going to Rome in the summer to take part in another literary festival. It seems like a reasonable motivation. I don’t reveal that Italian is a fancy of mine. That I nurture a hope—in fact a dream—of knowing it well. I don’t tell her that I’m looking for a way to keep alive a language that has nothing to do with my life. That I am tortured, that I feel incomplete. As if Italian were a book that, no matter how hard I work, I can’t write.
We meet once a week, for an hour. I’m pregnant with my daughter, who will be born in November. I try to have a conversation. At the end of every lesson, the teacher gives me a long list of words that I lacked during the conversation. I review it diligently. I put it in a folder. I can’t remember them.
At the festival in Rome I manage to exchange three, four, maybe five sentences with someone. After that I stop; it’s impossible to do more. I count the sentences, as if they were strokes in a tennis game, as if they were strokes when you’re learning to swim.
Let’s go back to the metaphor of the lake, the one I wanted to cross. Now I can walk into the water, up to my knees, up to my waist. But I still have to keep my feet on the bottom. That’s just it, I’m forced to act like someone who doesn’t know how to swim.
In spite of the conversations, the language remains elusive, evanescent. It appears only with the teacher. She brings it into my house for an hour, then takes it away. It seems concrete, palpable, only when I’m with her.
My daughter is born, and four more years go by. I finish another book. After its publication, in 2008, I receive another invitation to Italy, to promote it. In preparation I find a new teacher. An enthusiastic, attentive young woman from Bergamo. She, too, comes to my house once a week. We sit next to each other on the couch and talk. We become friends. My comprehension improves sporadically. The teacher is very encouraging, she says I speak the language well, she says I’ll do fine in Italy. But it’s not true. When I go to Milan, when I try to speak intelligently, fluently, I am always aware of the mistakes that hamper me, that confuse me, and I feel more discouraged than ever.
In 2009 I start studying with my third private teacher. A Venetian woman who moved to Brooklyn more than thirty years ago, who brought up her children in America. She’s a widow, and lives in a house surrounded by wisteria, near the Verrazano Bridge, with a gentle dog that’s always at her feet. It takes me nearly an hour to get there. I ride the subway to the edge of Brooklyn, almost to the end of the line.
I love this trip. I go out of the house, leaving behind the rest of my life. I don’t think about my writing. I forget, for several hours, the other languages I know. Each time, it seems like a small flight. Awaiting me is a place where only Italian matters. A shelter from which a new reality springs forth.
I am very fond of my teacher. Although for four years we use the formal lei, we have a close, informal relationship. We sit on a wooden bench at a small table in the kitchen. I see the books on her shelves, the photographs of her grandchildren. Magnificent brass pots hang on the walls. At her house, I start again, from the beginning: conditional clauses, indirect discourse, the use of the passive. With her my project seems more possible than impossible. With her my strange devotion to the language seems more a vocation than a folly.
We talk about our lives, about the state of the world. We do an avalanche of exercises, arid but necessary. The teacher corrects me constantly. As I listen to her, I take notes in a diary. After each lesson I feel both exhausted and ready for the next. After saying goodbye, after closing the gate behind me, I can’t wait to return.
At a certain point the lessons with the Venetian teacher become my favorite activity. As I study with her, the next, inevitable step in this strange linguistic journey becomes clear. At a certain point, I decide to move to Italy.
THE RENUNCIATION
I choose Rome. A city that has fascinated me since I was a child, that conquered me immediately. The first time I was there, in 2003, I felt a
sense of rapture, an affinity. I seemed to know it already. After only a few days, I was sure that I was fated to live there.
I have no friends yet in Rome. But I’m not going there to visit someone. I’m going in order to change course, and to reach the Italian language. In Rome, Italian can be with me every day, every minute. It will always be present, relevant. It will stop being a light switch to turn on occasionally, and then turn off.
In preparation, I decide, six months before our departure, not to read in English anymore. From now on, I pledge to read only in Italian. It seems right, to detach myself from my principal language. I consider it an official renunciation. I’m about to become a linguistic pilgrim to Rome. I believe I have to leave behind something familiar, essential.
Suddenly none of my books are useful anymore. They seem like ordinary objects. The anchor of my creative life disappears, the stars that guided me recede. I see before me a new room, empty.
Whenever I can, in my study, on the subway, in bed before going to sleep, I immerse myself in Italian. I enter another land, unexplored, murky. A kind of voluntary exile. Although I’m still in America, I already feel elsewhere. Reading, I feel like a guest, happy but disoriented. Reading, I no longer feel at home.
I read Moravia’s Gli indifferenti (The Time of Indifference) and La noia (The Empty Canvas). Pavese’s La luna e i falò (The Moon and the Bonfires). The poetry of Quasimodo, of Saba. I manage to understand and at the same time I don’t understand. I renounce expertise to challenge myself. I trade certainty for uncertainty.
I read slowly, painstakingly. With difficulty. Every page seems to have a light covering of mist. The obstacles stimulate me. Every new construction seems a marvel. Every unknown word a jewel.
I make a list of terms to look up, to learn. Imbambolato, sbilenco, incrinatura, capezzale. Sgangherato, scorbutico, barcollare, bisticciare (dazed, lopsided, crack, bedside or bolster. Unhinged, crabby, sway, bicker). After I finish a book, I’m thrilled. It seems like a feat. I find the process more demanding yet more satisfying, almost miraculous. I can’t take for granted my ability to accomplish it. I read as I did when I was a girl. Thus, as an adult, as a writer, I rediscover the pleasure of reading.
In this period I feel like a divided person. My writing is nothing but a reaction, a response to reading. In other words, a kind of dialogue. The two things are closely bound, interdependent.
Now, however, I write in one language and read exclusively in another. I am about to finish a novel, so I’m necessarily immersed in the text. It’s impossible to abandon English. Yet my stronger language already seems behind me.
I think of two-faced Janus. Two faces that look at the past and the future at once. The ancient god of the threshold, of beginnings and endings. He represents a moment of transition. He watches over gates, over doors, a god who is only Roman, who protects the city. A remarkable image that I am about to meet everywhere.
READING WITH A DICTIONARY
Usually when I read Italian I don’t use a dictionary. Only a pen to underline the words I don’t know, the sentences that strike me.
When I come upon a new word, I have to make a decision. I could stop for a moment to learn the word immediately; I could mark it and go on; or I could ignore it. Like certain faces among the people I see on the street every day, certain words, for some reason, stand out, and leave an impression on me. Others remain in the background, negligible.
After I finish a book I return to the text and diligently check the words. I sit on the sofa, with the book, the notebook, some dictionaries, a pen strewn around me. This task of mine, which is both obsessive and relaxing, takes time. I don’t write the definitions in the margin. I make a list in the notebook. At first, the definitions were in English. Now they’re in Italian. That way I create a kind of personal dictionary, a private vocabulary that traces the route of my reading. Occasionally I page through the notebook and review the words.
I find that reading in another language is more intimate, more intense than reading in English, because the language and I have been acquainted for only a short time. We don’t come from the same place, from the same family. We didn’t grow up with one another. This language is not in my blood, in my bones. I’m drawn to Italian and at the same time intimidated. It remains a mystery, beloved, impassive. Faced with my emotion it has no reaction.
The unknown words remind me that there’s a lot I don’t know in this world.
Sometimes a word can provoke an odd response. One day, for example, I discover the word claustrale (cloistered). I can guess at the meaning, but I would like to be certain. I’m on a train. I check the pocket dictionary. The word isn’t there. Suddenly I’m enthralled, bewitched by this word. I want to know it immediately. Until I understand it I’ll feel vaguely restless. However irrational the idea, I’m convinced that finding out what this word means could change my life.
I believe that what can change our life is always outside of us.
Should I dream of a day, in the future, when I’ll no longer need the dictionary, the notebook, the pen? A day when I can read in Italian without tools, the way I read in English? Shouldn’t that be the point of all this?
I don’t think so. When I read in Italian, I’m a more active reader, more involved, even if less skilled. I like the effort. I prefer the limitations. I know that in some way my ignorance is useful to me.
I realize that in spite of the limitations the horizon is boundless. Reading in another language implies a perpetual state of growth, of possibility. I know that, since I’m an apprentice, my work will never end.
When you’re in love, you want to live forever. You want the emotion, the excitement you feel to last. Reading in Italian arouses a similar longing in me. I don’t want to die, because my death would mean the end of my discovery of the language. Because every day there will be a new word to learn. Thus true love can represent eternity.
Every day, when I read, I find new words. Something to underline, then transfer to the notebook. It makes me think of a gardener pulling weeds. I know that my work, just like the gardener’s, is ultimately folly. Something desperate. Almost, I would say, a Sisyphean task. It’s impossible for the gardener to control nature perfectly. In the same way it’s impossible for me, no matter how intense my desire, to know every Italian word.
But between the gardener and me there is a fundamental difference. The gardener doesn’t want the weeds. They are to be pulled up, thrown away. I, on the other hand, gather up the words. I want to hold them in my hand, I want to possess them.
When I discover a different way to express something, I feel a kind of ecstasy. Unknown words present a dizzying yet fertile abyss. An abyss containing everything that escapes me, everything possible.
GATHERING WORDS
I’m constantly hunting for words.
I would describe the process like this: every day I go into the woods carrying a basket. I find words all around: on the trees, in the bushes, on the ground (in reality: on the street, during conversations, while I read). I gather as many as possible. But it’s never enough; I have an insatiable appetite.
I gather words that seem obscure (sciagura, spigliatezza: disaster, casualness) and ones that I can easily understand but would like to know better (inviperito, stralunato: incensed, out of one’s wits). I gather beautiful words that have no exact equivalents in English (formicolare, chiarore: to move in a confused fashion, like ants, and also to have pins and needles; shaft of light). I gather countless adjectives (malmesso, plumbeo, impiastricciate: shabby, leaden, smeared) to describe thousands of situations. I gather countless nouns and adverbs that I will never use.
At the end of the day the basket is heavy, overflowing. I feel loaded down, wealthy, in high spirits. My words seem more valuable than money. I am like a beggar who finds a pile of gold, a bag of jewels.
But when I come out of the woods, when I see the basket, scarcely a handful of words remain. The majority disappear. They vanish into thin air, they flow like
water between my fingers. Because the basket is memory, and memory betrays me, memory doesn’t hold up.
I feel a bond with every word I pick up. I feel affection, along with a sense of responsibility. When I can’t remember words, I fear I’ve abandoned them.
I feel emptied, depressed, the way you feel the morning after a fabulous dream. The woods seem like a paradise, a hallucination. Then I wake up.
Although defeated, I don’t feel too discouraged. If anything, I feel even more determined. The next day, I return to the woods. I don’t think my project is a waste of time. I know that its beauty lies in the act of gathering, not in the result.
Yet it’s not sufficient, or even satisfying, merely to collect words in the notebook. I want to use them. I want to draw on them when I need them. I want to be in contact with them. I want them to become a part of me.
I review the words in order to learn them, memorize them. I think about them while I’m talking to someone. I know they’re there, written by hand in the notebook. If I were a genius, I would remember everything, and would be able to speak much more precisely, fluently. But when I need them the words are elusive, ungraspable. They exist on the page but don’t enter my brain, so they don’t come out of my mouth. They remain stuck, useless, in the notebook. I am aware only of the fact that I’ve recorded them.
Rereading the notebook, I notice certain words that I have to write more than once, that resist my memory. Simple but stubborn (fruscio, schianto, arguto, broncio: rustle, crash, sharp, sulk), maybe they don’t want to have any relationship with me.
All the words in the notebook are the sign of a physical, methodical growth. I think of my children’s first weeks of life, when I went to the pediatrician every week to have their weight checked. Every ounce was recorded, evaluated. Each was concrete proof of their presence on the earth, of their existence. My understanding of Italian grows in a similar way. I acquire my vocabulary day by day, word by word.