The joy of texts

When I was a boy, my first exposure to multilingualism was in the form of a cousin whose mother was born in Germany. He was raised from birth to converse in both languages; it was a little unnerving to be ordered out of his favorite spot on the couch in German- by a four-year-old.

In graduate school, a tutor in international relations between the world wars set me a topic and started rattling off his usual weekly list of three or four dozen books to consult. The diaries of a French cabinet minister? I can swing that, I said.

One of his conceits was sitting in a great wing chair, in which, as the sun set on those winter afternoons, he slowly went into eclipse, becoming a disembodied voice in the shadow, a chair with an extra pair of legs.

He strongly recommended a three-volume German work. Sorry, I replied. "Oh well, there's an adequate English translation."

He peered out briefly from the shadows. "Any Russian?"

I shook my head in the negative.

I have kept my French in good repair over the decades; oddly, as I worked on conversational Italian for a 1998 trip, I found the effort triggered a switch somewhere in my head. For three weeks around Italy, when people spoke to me in that language, I answered in French.

I like to think it was a breakthrough in that mental barrier we have, thinking we only know our own tongue.

Friends have suggested it may just have been a minor stroke.

Time there was when western culture depending much on scholars' willingness to master a new language just to see what was in an old book. Thomas Cahill's How The Irish Saved Civilization is one example.

Another is the tale of an inquisitive man in Cremona, Italy, who wondered what was in a huge library collection of Arabic manuscripts, well told by the exceptional blogger, The Cotton Boll Conspiracy.

Today, in America, the library would be shut down for indoctrinating students.