Not Speaking One’s Mother Tongue
About Koltès and Salvatore Quasimodo
March 09, 2016
I was going to apologize in advance for posting here notes taken on New Year’s Day without being able to mentally recall which blog, Twitter account, or Facebook page led me to discover them. One concerns a page from Bernard-Marie Koltès, taken from Combat de nègres et de chiens and quoted in Une Part de ma vie (Éditions de Minuit). The other are the famous lines of the Sicilian poet, Nobel Prize winner in literature, Salvatore Quasimodo. They conclude a letter from François Koltès, brother of the former, to the Italian actor, author, and director Pippo Delbono. The letter, shared by Nicolas Roméas on his blog, is available here.
In 1986, Patrice Chéreau directed Quai ouest, written a year earlier by Bernard-Marie Koltès. As highlighted in the interview included in Une Part de ma vie, one could find “the situation of characters not speaking their mother tongue” in it. This was also noted in "Combat de nègres et de chiens," as the interviewer mentioned before quoting the relevant page:
«Je trouve que le rapport que peut avoir un homme avec une langue étrangère tandis qu'il garde au fond de lui une langue "maternelle" que personne ne comprend est un des plus beaux rapports qu'on puisse établir avec le langage ; et c'est peut-être aussi celui qui ressemble le plus au rapport de l'écrivain avec les mots.»
(“I find that the relationship a person can have with a foreign language – while keeping a 'mother' tongue deep inside that no one understands – is one of the most beautiful relationships one can establish with language; and perhaps it is also the one that most resembles the relationship of the writer with words.”)
Why the notes taken that day bring together the two brothers and an author like Salvatore Quasimodo, I'm not sure. What I do know is that despite the deep personal interest I find in them, I cannot detach these notes from a memory of Genet's "Nègres," by Jean-Paul Sartre. The latter, surely due to the trial that opposed François Koltès to the Comédie-Française in 2007 (see here).
In "Une Part de ma vie," Bernard-Marie Koltès continued:
«Et puis cela permet de raconter certaines choses qu’on ne pourrait pas dire autrement. Dans La Fuite…, par exemple, Chabanne, lorsqu’il comprend qu’il est vraiment seul, oublie brusquement le français et se met à parler arabe, tandis que celle qui l’aime continue malgré cela à comprendre ce qu’il dit. Ou bien, dans Quai ouest, une vieille Indienne, […] lorsqu’elle meurt s’enfonce dans la mort d’abord en français, puis en espagnol, et, à la toute fin, dans sa langue indienne inconnue de tous.»
(“And then it allows you to tell certain things that you couldn't say otherwise. In La Fuite…, for example, Chabanne, when he realizes he is truly alone, suddenly forgets French and starts speaking Arabic, while the one who loves him continues to understand what he says despite that. Or, in Quai ouest, an old Indian woman [...] when she dies sinks into death first in French, then in Spanish, and finally, at the very end, in her Indian language unknown to all.”)
It's simply a question that has haunted me for several years, and which, as theater often does so well, pierces reality like the green flash of sunset, crossing from the back of the stage to the back of the room. That this question, among others, these questions, have been considered theatrical material and expressed so clearly by someone like Koltès, should suffice for a January 1st to approach 2016 with determination and appetite.
Ognuno sta solo sul cuor della terra
trafitto da un raggio di sole :
ed è subito sera.
(“Everyone is alone on the heart of the earth pierced by a ray of sunlight: and suddenly it's evening.”)
Acque e terre (1920-1929) (Ed. Cahiers de l’Hôtel de Galliffet, Poems, Salvatore Quasimodo, 2012)
