I find all of the readings and ideas on orality and literacy, orality vs literacy, etc very intriguing. I'm especially interested, however, in The People's Poetry Language Initiative. There seems to be a push from the Initiative toward avoiding the dominant culture/language, but it also seems as though the weaker languages depend on the dominant culture/language. Through translation, particularly of “original works” that aren't “translatable literally,” the culture and tradition of that language does not necessarily disappear but it evolves (Rothenberg, Total Translation). In fact, it seems undeniable that without the dominant cultures with the “means to document, preserve and disseminate cultural expression” of endangered languages, these languages would already be dead. How then, can the Initiative, and anyone who has an interest in preserving these endangered languages, translate and foster human creativity without changing the original or instituting some necessary form of adaptation? And even though multilinguaslism would certainly help, I don't think anyone could learn all 6500 languages that could potentially be lost.
Also from this essay, or declaration, I wonder about the true nature of endangerment poetry faces. It seems that poetry is less endangered than perhaps the language itself. At the risk of making a completely incorrect claim (as I have not studied/researched this enough to know), it seems as though poetry of a particular language can long outlive the language itself. Sounds contradictory, but I believe many cultures speak a different language in daily communication, but have been able to maintain some originality of the previous language through poem recitations and song. And while I am concerned and disheartened to think that a language could die or be lost, I am also inclined to believe that this is the natural order of things. It is “the Darwinian way of the world,” and though it is unfortunate, I don't think it is entirely bad. With the evolution of a language, we get something greater. I have never believed language to be static and unchanging, even in dominant cultures, language evolves—and I think this is good. I'm glad that we have “hip hop, poetry slam[s], and cowboy poetry [that] harken back to the ancient oral traditions, to the poetry competitions spanning cultures from Ancient Rome to medieval Japan, and to the devastated poetry of indigenous communities from the Americas to Oceania” (Initiative 4). Such performances are new and different, but not bad. I do not disagree that we need to protect endangered languages (i.e. cultures) as much as possible, but I do not think we should do so at the risk of missing something new.
Sabrina:
ReplyDeleteYou've started by making about about preserving languages as also being a way of transforming/evolving the languages. No doubt this is true; not in the least because the languages preserved are often not written as such, so the preservation changes them in a fundamental way. With this you make an interesting claim for poetry as a kind of survival mechanism; that it (poetry) potentially outlives the languages that it originates in. Certainly this is the case when we look at surviving instances of languages like ancient greek - where most examples we possess are poetry. Of course, a version of this would be the possibility that poetry is language in various forms and so it's naturally what survives. One question might be: are there particular things about poetry that makes it survive? (Particular use of language?) Or is it just what survives, i.e. whatever remains is poetry?