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Esperanto-blogo, kelkfoje blago, de Ralph Dumain
Julia Cho: "The Language Archive" (3)
Everyone I know who saw this play loved it. Now for some more links.
First, the Forum Theatee's own web page for the play:
There is also a blog for your comments (see mine):
OpenForum Blog: Announcing a Season, part 2 of 4
The Forum Theater also has a Facebook page. The Theatre references my review on this blog and says (21 Feb.):
A nice blog response to THE LANGUAGE ARCHIVE from an Esperanto perspective! Dankon!
To which actor Mitchell Hébert, who plays the Language Archivist George and Dr. Zamenhof, adds: "Dankon!!"
Now for reviews in the press and the blogosphere. The first one I found was:
The Language Archive, By Tim Treanor (DC Theatre Scene, February 20, 2012)
This is an eminently fair and positive review. I don't agree with the few negative criticisms, but they are not major.
Here is a very attentive and favorable review:
The Language Archive at Forum Theatre, By Amanda Gunther, Maryland Theatre Guide, February 20, 2012
The Washington City Paper review plays up the comic aspects of the play:
The Language Archive at Forum Theatre, Reviewed: Or: The case of the tongue-tied linguist By Rebecca J. Ritzel • Washington City Paper • February 24, 2012
Ritzel indeed lauds the comedy. As for her less favorable remarks, the show did not drag for me at any point. She also criticizes Mary's encounter with the ostensibly suicidal baker. Of course there is exaggeration and not every encounter depicted would be realistic outside of the theater. The reviewer does not adequately attend to the serious side of the play. While a bare account of the theme might strike the unwary reader as trite, the execution of the play's premise is a work of superior craftsmanship, and is in the end emotionally powerful. Already one reader's comment has appeared. I may add mine as well.
Verkis Ralph Dumain je 11:18 PM 0 komentoj
Rubrikoj: beletro, interlingvistiko, interna ideo, Julia Cho, lingvistiko, teatro, Zamenhof
Fojfoje mi aldonas esperantistan aŭtobiografieton al ia retejo. Jen la plej freŝa, verkita en aŭtuno 2011 por loka klubo:
Renkontu Lokajn Esperantistojn « La Esperanto-Societo de Vaŝingtono ЄЭ
Jam estas novaj eroj aldonendaj. Atentu venontajn blogerojn por novaĵoj.
Verkis Ralph Dumain je 10:41 AM 0 komentoj
Julia Cho: "The Language Archive" (2)
February 16 - March 10, 2012
Round House Theatre, Silver Spring, Maryland
In my previous blog post of last June on this play, I embedded videos of scenes from the play as well as of playwright Julia Cho. There is, of course, a vast difference between watching a YouTube video and experiencing a play live in a theater. Still, I will claim that the Round House production is second to none. The intensity of the acting beats what I see in these videos. Both the hilarity and pathos of this production are most compelling, hence I recommend it to all.
“Language is an act of faith.” – L. L. Zamenhof (as an apparition)
The Language Archive, opening with a marital conflict and broadening with other characters and relationships, gets more and more hilarious, but in the end it is incredibly moving. The bickering between the language archivist and his wife rings all too familiar. The nature of communication is shown to be a much broader phenomenon than the language in which it is imperfectly embodied and is shown to be itself imperfect in its paralinguistic dimension. Esperanto plays a major role in the play—both comical and serious—and Zamenhof himself is a character. The notion of the language archive—an institution dedicated to the recording and preservation of dying languages—is not a mere playwright's gimmick: there is poignancy in the vanishing worlds of the last speakers of these languages, and in the loss of personal relationships in worlds still living, but also something profound is conveyed about the chronic failure of the quest for mutual understanding. The play does have a resolution but neither a happy nor an unhappy ending. We constantly fall short in our attempt to communicate ourselves, and yet we persist. Language is an act of faith.
Towards the end of the play, when Zamenhof makes the statement I quoted, I started to choke up, as I did at play's end, which involved both the final "resolutions" of the characters as well as the various dead languages being spoken over the loudspeaker. While attempting to minimize the spoilers, I guess I have to explain my reaction to the Zamenhof character. The treatment of Zamenhof as a wise old man reminds me of the appearances of Einstein in popular culture, in movies or TV shows. But what's relevant in this particular scene is that the lab assistant asked Zamenhof if he would have acted differently had he known that all his children would be targeted and murdered by the Nazis because of Esperanto. Zamenhof replied, no. And then he says: "Language is an act of faith." For me this encapsulated the theme of the whole play. But the broad theme was love and communication. Both often fail, yet even with the imperfection of the process and the outcome, there is nonetheless a vehicle, even if an imperfect one, which provides a means at least to make something happen—a bold foray into the unknown and uncontrollable course of events.
When I relayed this scene yesterday to my companion over coffee, once again I was verklempt. My companion thought this utterance by the phantom Zamenhof a profound one. Why does it affect me so? It reminds me of the program note of another philosophical favorite, Duke Ellington:
Communication itself is what baffles the multitude. It is both so difficult and so simple. Of all men's fears, I think that men are most afraid of being what they are — in direct communication with the world at large. They fear reprisals, the most personal of which is that they "won't be understood."
. . . Yet, every time God's children have thrown away fear in pursuit of honesty — trying to communicate themselves, understood or not — miracles have happened.
I have, by the way, translated this into Esperanto:
Duke Ellington Komunikas ‘Preter Kategorio’
Returning from public to private communication, I find it rather remarkable that the notion of compiling a recording of "I love you" in all the dying and extinct languages of the world works so well as a theatrical device. You might think it the corniest gimmick ever. Not so. No, sir. Nothing could be more effective than the voices of all those ghosts of lost worlds, expressing the fundamental human motivation behind everything we care about. The peculiar, divergent metaphorical expressions in all those languages that we unify under the rubric of this one meaning reflect both the imperfection of the linguistic vehicle and the concept it aims to express beyond its own linguistic means; that is, we feel the striving to communicate those lost and invisible worlds (of two people or of an entire culture) even while not comprehending the languages through which they are spoken. Hence our own perception is raised beyond our own unreflective habits. Hence theater itself pushes out beyond the limits of culture into a new perception of our reality.
And now to reconnect the private and the public, and in this note, Ellington with Zamenhof. Esperanto never was the all-encompassing vehicle for Zamenhof's aims, nor could the development of the Esperanto movement be contained within or adequately expressive of those aims. Yet, groping half-blind into the uncertain future, with all the imperfections of human relations and communication, Zamenhof cast his lot with his linguistic creation, a language unique in its genesis, character and physiognomy, but still only a language, like all others, yet a language made with love. One feels it in Zamenhof's own passion. Whatever other illusions one wishes to dispel with respect to the language and its creator, this vital force continues to inspire. Lives have been lived and lost with this language. And the fact of striving is as important as the outcome. Expression is happiness.
Verkis Ralph Dumain je 3:19 PM 0 komentoj
Rubrikoj: amo, beletro, interlingvistiko, interna ideo, Julia Cho, lingvistiko, teatro, Zamenhof
Feathers / Plumoj & Esperanto (5)
Beʾer, Haim. Feathers [Notsot]; translated from the Hebrew by Hillel Halkin. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press; Hanover: University Press of New England, 2004. xiii, 235 pp.
Final excerpts / Jen la du finaj cerpaĵoj pri Esperanto, el la anglalingva traduko (p. 139, 167):
From Enthusiasm to Disillusionment
(De Entuziasmo al Seniluziiĝo)
On the face of things, his relations with Lev-Tamim were good. Both men agreed that in preparing a new edition of The Necessity for General Nutrition, Popper-Lynkeus’ views should be brought into line with contemporary social and economic conditions, and both busied themselves with its double translation into Hebrew and Esperanto, which would be published simultaneously by Greenberg’s vegetarian press.
Once more he buzzed with activity and surrounded himself with books, the millenarian glow back in his eyes. “Neither vegetarianism, nor Esperanto, nor celebrities,” crowed Leder, rejoicing in his newly found freedom. “Enough of such childishness!” At last he realized, he said, that his program until now had been so much empty prattle, and that his fatal weakness for ceremony had no place in today’s cruel, dog-eat-dog world.
Verkis Ralph Dumain je 11:59 PM 0 komentoj
Rubrikoj: fikcio, Haim Be’er, hebrea literaturo, utopio, vegetarismo
Jen iloj uzeblaj interrete:
Tajpi : Klavarilo por esperantistoj por Windows 2000 / XP / Vista / 7
Ĝis nun, mi kutimas uzi programeton por produkti la ĉapelitajn literojn:
EK : Esperanta Klavaro por Vindozo 9x/ME/NT/2000/XP/Vista
Verkis Ralph Dumain je 11:27 PM 2 komentoj
Sveda lingvisto Mikael Parkvall defendas Esperanton
"Esperanto ne estas plene funkcianta lingvo" en Libera Folio, 2009-12-16
"En sia populara libro pri lingvaj mitoj, la sveda lingvisto Mikael Parkvall atakas ankaŭ la aserton, ke Esperanto ne estus plenvalora lingvo. Li mem ne estas esperantisto, sed defendas la lingvon kaj la ideon kun entuziasmo . . ."
Sekvas traduko el la sveda.
Verkis Ralph Dumain je 10:53 PM 0 komentoj
Feathers / Plumoj & Esperanto (4)
Beʾer, Haim. Feathers [Notsot]; translated from the Hebrew by Hillel Halkin. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press; Hanover: University Press of New England, 2004. xiii, 235 pp.
Another excerpt / Jen plua cerpaĵo el la anglalingva traduko (p. 135-6):
Esperanto in a Lynkean State?
(Ĉu Esperanto Kiel Oficiala Lingvo de Lynkea Ŝtato?)
Leder heard the old man out with uncharacteristic patience, then casually inquired whether he had ever heard of Popper-Lynkeus’ inventions in the field of aeronautics. With a smile Havkin answered that not only was he familiar with the biography of that unhappy and disappointment-fraught Jewish-Viennese genius, he was also well versed in his social and economic views. Indeed, there had been a time when The Necessity for General Nutrition had never left his side.
“Don’t you think it should be translated into Esperanto?” queried Leder, who had never dreamed of such luck.
“It’s a book of the highest importance,” Havkin agreed, “a must for any Esperanto library.” Unfortunately, however, the Esperantists had been unable to find the right man for the job.
“Ecce homo!” Leder cried, pointing to himself with childish glee. Waving the green primer, he declared that he was now engaged in studying Esperanto from morning till night and was sure that he could finish a sample chapter from Popper-Lynkeus’ great work in several weeks’ time.
Havkin threw his arms around his guest in a comradely embrace. Did Leder’s decision, he wondered, have anything to do with his own appearance at Greenberg’s bookbindery earlier that week?
Afterward, while we sat on the concrete patio in front of Havkin’s house looking at the mountain ridges falling away in waves to the coastal plain and cracking almonds from the old man’s trees, Leder explained his proposal for a united front of Esperantists, vegetarians, and Lynkeans. The forces of good, he declared, should band together in the struggle for their goals, which were complementary rather than opposed.
“In the Lynkean state,” Leder announced, Esperanto will be the official language of the government, as well as of all schools and universities. The eating of meat and fish will be illegal. All slaughterhouses and butcher shops will be expropriated for the public good, and the slaughterers, butchers, and fishermen will be sent to special schools to be re-educated. Eggs and milk products will be sold only by special permit and will have to be eaten in private.”
The old man listened intently, making a sour face when Leder enthusiastically proclaimed that the portraits of Josef Popper-Lynkeus and Esperanto’s inventor Dr. Ludwig Zamenhoff, the two official state philosophers, would be hung in all public places.
“That reminds me too much of the pictures of Marx and Engels in the streets of Moscow,” Havkin said. In any case, he remarked, he was too old by now for such things. Leder, he added after a moment’s thought, could do worse than listen to someone like himself who had seen so many lofty ideals besmirched through their contact with politics. “Don't forget the story of Icarus, my young man. If they come too close to the glowing sun of political passion, both Lynkeanism and Esperantism will smash themselves to bits on the hard ground of reality.”
“Politics have nothing to do with it,” objected Leder, trying to point out Havkin’s error. But our elderly host only replied that he did not wish to spoil his Sabbath rest by losing his temper unnecessarily. If we were not in any hurry, he went on, he would be happy to welcome us inside his house and show us the one pastime of his otherwise Spartan existence.
Verkis Ralph Dumain je 9:55 PM 0 komentoj
Rubrikoj: fikcio, Haim Be’er, hebrea literaturo, utopio, vegetarismo
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