More than one language: languages and literature

The public, multi-voice course “Une langue, une littérature? Une relation qui ne va pas de soi”, organized by the Centre interdisciplinaire d’étude des littératures (CIEL) at the University of Lausanne, is dedicated to exploring the relationship between language – and language – and literature. In conjunction with this course, we are highlighting multilingual literary works and documents that explore this relationship in its many forms: the role of plurilingualism in the constitution of national literatures, literary influences and references across languages, plurilingual and translingual writing practices, writer-translators, the relationship of plurilingual or (post)colonial writers to the languages they write in, and migrant literature. Discover this thematic selection in the Renouvaud catalog, as well as the physical exhibition on the Unithèque website.

In praise of plurilingualism

For Rastier, “language is a philosophical concept, uniting a general faculty of humanity with a hypothesis about the universal properties of languages.”(Rastier 2015: vii) In this configuration, literature “reflects language within languages” and is “an art of language”(idem). To approach literature through the prism of plurilingualism and multilingual literary works is to challenge the paradigm forged by European nationalisms in the ^19th century: the idea of pure, homogeneous languages in which different literatures, both products and reflections of national identities, would be realized. It is also based on the premise that all languages of culture – as opposed to vehicular languages – are essentially transnational, and that there is no greater wealth than to practice “more than one language”, to paraphrase Barbara Cassin.

The philosopher’s praise of plurilingualism and François Ost ‘s defense of multilingualism are the starting points for the reflections that will be at the heart of a study day, organized in parallel with the CIEL collective course on October 27, 2020. By means of comparison, the research group will explore the literary bilingualism of poet Louis Aragon’s muse, Elsa Triolet, the imaginary languages of exiled writers, and the linguistic particularities of the countless translations of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince , inviting us, following Heinz Wismann, to “think between languages”.

A language, a literature?

Writers read across languages, translate or self-translate, opt for a writing language that is not their primary language of expression (or mother tongue), or produce multilingual texts or manuscripts. How does this determine the form and nature of so-called national literatures? How can these dynamics be taken into account to understand literature in a global context? Can a plurilingual approach to literary texts help us to study texts that are deeply rooted in one language-culture? These are some of the questions that the lectures, given by members of numerous sections of the Faculty of Letters, making up CIEL’s 2020 public course will seek to answer.

Translation – whose violence is sometimes underestimated – will be at the heart of several contributions, in particular the role played by translations and transfers in the dissemination of ideas during the Enlightenment, and in access to writing for women of letters during this period. Already in the ^18th century, Switzerland’s geographical position at the center of cosmopolitan Europe and its multilingual language policy provided fertile ground for the emergence of literary works reflecting on the relationship between language(s) and writing, such as those byIsabelle de Charrière. This breeding ground has not dried up since, fostering the emergence of texts by Catherine Colomb and countless multilingual creative ventures ready to cross linguistic barriers to explore the “autrement dit / anders gesagt”.

To make languages resonate

The development and coexistence of multiple languages is so intrinsically linked to the European continent and to the future of the cultures and languages it shelters that Barbara Cassin has always referred to translation as the language of the Old Continent. Nevertheless, it would be wrong to consider that the rest of the world’s literature is spared from questions of plurilingualism, as evidenced by the Eastern context, and India in particular. The works of postcolonial authors and/or those driven into exile crystallize these issues, particularly for those who write in a language other than their childhood language.

On the other side of the Atlantic, for example, texts by writers from the Jewish diaspora or those who fled Nazi persecution, such as Walter Abish or Louis Zukofsky, reflect the primary language in the language of writing, sometimes harmoniously, sometimes in conflict. For African authors Bessora, Calixthe Beyala and Véronique Tadjo, who will host the round-table discussion on October 7 at the Palais de Rumine, Pour faire résonner des voix des femmes, as for many writers from former colonies, literary language is shaped by all the different languages and cultures they have crossed, which intermingle in works that are often polyphonic.

One language, one literature. More than one language. The titles of the CIEL public course and of our promotion, as well as their contents, reveal a shared commitment: to approach world literature, and by extension world cultures, in all their complexity, by refuting the idea, promoted by some contemporary literary critics, that it is possible to do without the languages in which texts emerge. In a world that is tending more and more towards uniformity and conformism, it seems more than necessary to complicate the universal.