Writing is Just So Damn Hard!

My Portuguese teacher despairs of me. "So, have you written anything this week...?" I look at my fingernails and shake my head. Nope. BUT, as I'm trying to point out to  her, I have done some 'homework' - I've been reading a novel, I've completed various exercises in my grammar & vocab book, I've listened to a couple of podcasts, I've been watching cartoons in Portuguese while having my lunch. I do realise that one lesson a week is not enough to advance my language skills and that I need to work at it a little bit every day. But... I just don't like writing.

"How can you NOT like writing? You write for a living!" She glares at me in stupefaction. I shift uncomfortably in my chair.

Yes, it's a paradox, I realise. In fact, I love writing. As long as I know what I'm doing. I don't like patching together a Frankenessay of words that just don't collocate, sloshing about in a sea of mutilated grammar. I don't like making mistakes, and what I like even less is having a written record of them. It's like being fat in your wedding photo.

I didn't really start writing in English until I was almost in my mid-twenties, when I had to compose my first ever academic essay. At that point, I'd already spent several years in an English-speaking country, in total immersion, reading, listening and speaking, and so I virtually no trouble producing a coherent piece of writing, more or less indistinguishable from something concocted by a native speaker. I'd had so much language input that, when it finally came to producing output, it all came completely naturally. I'd built up sufficient muscle over the years without even noticing or making a conscious effort.

A little while ago, I read In Other Words, by Jhumpa Lahiri, an American writer of Indian heritage (the fact that she's bilingual and bicultural adds an intriguing twist, but I won't go into that right now). Lahiri is already an acclaimed writer (in English) when she moves from the US to Italy and starts writing in Italian, a language she's deeply passionate about. She's been studying Italian on and off for many years, but without ever becoming fluent. She's determined to finally conquer this language and she's doing a lot more than "just" living in Italy and keeping her diary in Italian - she's actually writing In Other Words entirely in Italian - a book destined for publication. So, she's fiddling about with dictionaries, she's having to write in the simplest of sentences, she's totally out of her depth. It's an excruciating process for her, like writing a letter blindfolded, with a pencil wedged between frost bitten toes. And of course, she needs to have everything proofread over and over again by native Italian writers.

She succeeds, evidently, overcoming her fears, limitations, frustrations and incompetence. And she does become fluent in Italian. Kudos to her.

Lahiri is not the only successful author to write in a non-native language, but I'm guessing that not many have attempted such a feat while their command of the language was still rather on the patchy side.

Do I feel at all inspired to follow her example? If only...

Too Old To Learn A Language?

Instead of launching into long-winded cogitations on the topic of mature language learners, I'm going to share an article about British writer and translator Mary Hobson, whose story I find really inspirational.

The piece below was originally published in Russia Beyond The Headlines (RBTH):

‘Learning Russian has given me a whole new life’

April 22, 2016 YELENA BOZHKOVA

English writer and translator Mary Hobson decided to learn Russian at the age of 56, graduating in her sixties and completing a PhD aged 74. Now fluent in Russian, Hobson has  won the Griboyedov Prize and the Pushkin Medal for her translation work. RBTH visited Hobson at her London home to ask about her inspiring experience.

RBTH: Learning Russian is difficult at any age, and you were 56. How did the idea first come to your mind? 

Mary Hobson: I was having a foot operation, and I had to stay in bed for two weeks in hospital. My daughter Emma brought me a big fat translation of War and Peace. “Mum, you’ll never get a better chance to read it”, she said.

I’d never read Russian literature before. I got absolutely hooked on it, I just got so absorbed! I read like a starving man eats. The paperback didn’t have maps of the battle of Borodino, I was making maps trying to understand what was happening. This was the best novel ever written. Tolstoy creates the whole world, and while you read it, you believe in it.

I woke up in the hospital three days after I finished reading and suddenly realized: “I haven’t read it at all. I’ve read a translation. I would have to learn Russian.”

RBTH: Did you read War and Peace in the original language eventually?

M.H.: Yes, it was the first thing I read in Russian. I bought a fat Russian dictionary and off I went. It took me about two years. I read it like a poem, a sentence at a time. I learned such a lot, I still remember where I first found some words. “Between,” for instance. About a third of the way down the page.

RBTH: Do you remember your first steps in learning Russian? 

M.H.: I had a plan to study the Russian language in evening classes, but my Russian friend said: “Don’t do that, I’ll teach you.” We sat in the garden and she helped me to remember the Cyrillic script. I was 56 at this time, and I found it very tiring reading in Cyrillic. I couldn’t do it in the evening because I simply wouldn’t be able to sleep. And Russian grammar is fascinating.

RBTH: You became an undergraduate for the first time in your sixties. How did you feel about studying with young students?

M.H.: I need to explain first why I didn’t have any career before my fifties. My husband had a very serious illness, a cerebral abscess, and he became disabled. I was just looking after him. And we had four children. After 28 years I could not do it any longer, I had break downs, depressions. I finally realized I would have to leave. Otherwise I would just go down with him. There was a life out there I hadn’t lived. It was time to go out and to live it.

I left him. I’d been on my own for three years in a limbo of quilt and depression. Then I picked up a phone and rang the number my friend had long since given me, that of the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, London University. “Do you accept mature students?” I asked. “Of sixty-two?” They did.

When the first day of term arrived, I was absolutely terrified. I went twice around Russel square before daring to go in. The only thing that persuaded me to do it was that I got offered the place and if I didn’t do it, the children would be so ashamed of me. My group mates looked a little bit surprised at first but then we were very quickly writing the same essays, reading the same stuff, having to do the same translations.

RBTH: You spent 10 months in Moscow as part of your course. How did you feel in Russia?

M.H.: I hardly dared open my mouth, because I thought I got it wrong. It lasted about a week like this, hardly daring to speak. Then I thought – I’m here only for 10 months. I shall die if I don’t communicate. I just have to risk it. Then I started bumbling stuff. I said things I didn’t at all mean. I just said anything. The most dangerous thing was to make jokes. People looked at me as if I was mad.

I hate to say it, but in 1991 the Russian ruble absolutely collapsed and for the first and last time in my life I was a wealthy woman. I bought over 200 books in Russian, 10 “Complete Collected Works” of my favorite 19th-century authors. Then it was a problem how to get them home. Seventy-five of them were brought to London by a visiting group of schoolchildren. They took three books each.

RBTH: You’re celebrating your 90th birthday in July. What’s the secret of your longevity? 

M.H.: If I had not gone to university, if I had given up and stopped learning Russian, I don’t think I’d have lived this long. It keeps your mind active, it keeps you physically active. It affects everything. Learning Russian has given me a whole new life. A whole circle of friends, a whole new way of living. For me it was the most enormous opening out to a new life.

Source: http://rbth.com/arts/literature/2016/04/22/learning-russian-has-given-me-a-whole-new-life_587093

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Before I embarked on my multilingual project, my goal was to speak five languages "really well". I'm not all that far off with my Spanish, but my Portuguese  –  and most definitely my French!  –  still need A LOT of work. By the time I get those to a decent enough level and have reached my goal of five, I'll be pushing the Big Five-O, age-wise.

Thing is, I can't really see myself stopping there. I know I'll want to go on learning languages, and I'll most likely be wanting a change from the Romance ones. Although I had dismissed it as an option for the longest time, Russian may well be on the cards. Or rather, a return to Russian, since I studied the language at school for a couple of years (thirty years ago, oh my!). I can still read and write Cyrillic, but everything else has evaporated. Besides a smattering of previous experience, another factor in its favour is relatively easy access to both people and country. Russia is just a short plane ride away, and there are plenty of native Russian speakers dotted about Europe. 

Bavarian Authors And Surprise Discoveries

I try not to buy paper books anymore. Too heavy, too inconvenient, too demanding of shelf space. Considering my relapse rate, I'm just glad I'm not a crack addict. This week I picked up this little gem from the gift shop at Nymphenburg Palace (Munich):

It’s an anthology featuring 19^th and 20t century Bavarian Women Writers. I’m not quite sure which component of this book I love more – the short stories/extracts or the condensed biographies of the authors that accompany them. I’d never even heard of most of these writers who, evidently, formed a pivotal part of the cultural and literary landscape of their time, and often at great personal cost.

One of the most disturbing biographical snippets I’ve come across so far (and I’m only on page 71) is from the life of actress and best-selling author Wilhelmine von Hillern, born in 1836.

Aged just 17, Wilhelmine, neé Birch, becomes involved with theatre critic Hermann von Hillern. Shortly after discovering that their dalliance has not remained without consequences, the couple marries. However, this isn an era when any perceived infringements of society's strict moral code could lead to irreparable repercussions, and Wilhelmine’s mother fears that the swiftly drawn veil of holy matrimony won't suffice to safeguard her family's reputation. Not only does she impel the family to keep the birth of the child a secret, she also forbids her daughter to breastfeed her son, while squirting laxatives down his hungry little throat. Her plan is to pass off the emaciated child as a pre-term baby conceived in wedlock a few months down the line, but it all ends in terrible tragedy. 

Wilhelmine's intense feelings of guilt over the death of her infant son permeate deep into her body of work, and there is no doubt that the need to process this harrowing experience is part of what makes her one of the most compelling writers of her generation.

Change of topic. Kind of. A few days ago, I was bemoaning the fact that I’d let my study of French go to pot this summer. On second thought, however, I’m very much enjoying this current burst of exploration of the culture I was born into. And where better to engage with it than in situ, immersed as I am in the rural Bavarian summer with its long muggy days, surprise thunderstorms and the constant howl of combine harvesters droning on in the background? 

I’ll get back to my daily French practice soon enough. Sometimes I need to remind myself that it's perfectly OK to suspend one set of language activities for a while to make room for another. As long as the pursuit yields new insights and personal satisfaction, why go and ruin it for myself with a guilty conscience?