Poetry, Language, and the Effects of Exile
Poetry Inside Out students ask: What happens to a language spoken since birth, and what happens to national identity, when borders are involuntarily crossed?
As wars continue to rage, borders continue to close, and refugees are uprooted against their will, poets and authors in exile reveal how relationships to language grow ever more complex with migration.
Their work prompts us to ask: What happens to a language spoken since birth, and what happens to national identity, when borders are involuntarily crossed? What happens to poetry and to the process of communication itself?
The Poetry Inside Out program brings these questions to the classroom by inspiring students’ understanding of the role of multilingualism in building culture and knowledge. Working with elementary through university-level students and teachers, Poetry Inside Out treats great poets as teachers and their work as models. By practicing the art of translation, students become familiar with the building blocks of language and the full range of expression available to them as readers, writers, speakers, poets, thinkers, and world citizens.
In March, Poetry Inside Out program director Mark Hauber visited Montclair State University to lead a poetry translation workshop in Associate Professor of Italian Marisa Trubiano’s Living In Translation course. Joined by Dr. Kathleen Loysen and her French literature class, Hauber and Trubiano directed students as they worked together to translate an untitled poem by Gëzim Hadjari.
Born in 1957, Hadjari is an Albanian poet who has lived in exile in Italy since the years following the collapse of the USSR and writes both in Albanian and Italian. The poem was chosen because of its timely themes of loss of and nostalgia for one’s homeland, forced emigration and exile, and the negotiation of language identities.
The “translational” approach championed by both Poetry Inside Out and Trubiano is based on the idea that knowledge comes from the exchange of ideas, language, and culture. This work builds recognition of and respect for multilingualism and the inclusion of diverse languages and cultures in education—in short, global fluency via intercultural communication.
Hadjari’s poem is an example of poetry’s potential to express the personal and cultural effects of exile.
Abbiamo atteso a lungo per parlare,
ora non sappiamo dire nulla
sotto i nuovi alberi,
accanto ai vecchi sassi.
Ci spingono al confine di un altro esilio,
uomini e bestie stretti l’uno all’altro.
Che ne sarà delle nostre ceneri
lontano dalla prima patria?
Perderanno le voci
e i nostri nomi,
o forse ricorderemo ovunque il canto del merlo
nei sentieri pieni di spine secche di melograni
e il lutto del mare
dall’altra costa.
—Gëzim Hadjari
For years we have waited to speak
now we do not know how to say anything
under new trees,
near the old stones.
They push us to the brink of another exile,
humans and beasts packed side by side.
What will become of our remains,
far from our original homeland?
They will lose the voices,
and our names,
or maybe we will remember the blackbird’s song anywhere
along the paths bursting with dried pomegranates
and the sorrow of the sea,
from the other coast.
—Translated by students Elena Marcato, Maria DeLeon, Schnaïca
Nous avons attendu longtemps pour parler
maintenant ils ne peux rien dire
Sous avec les nouveaux arbres,
à côté des vieilles pierres.
Ils nous poussent à la frontière d’un autre exilé,
des hommes et des bêtes proches les uns des autres.
Qu’adviendra-t-il de nos cendres
loin du première patrie
Ils perdront tous les entrées
et nos noms,
ou peut-être nous souviendrons nous du chant
dans les chemins pleins si sèches les grenades
et le décès de la mer
sur l’autre côté.
—Translated by student Spencer Ostroff
The students’ group translations reflected profound responses to the ever-shifting place of language in shaping identity and restricting—or amplifying—communication. They said they could appreciate considerations of language choices both in French and Italian and discussed how the poem’s exploration of feelings of home and estrangement within language related to their personal experiences. Between close reading at the level of syntax and word choice and reflecting on the poem’s broader importance, the students’ dynamic conversation was intellectually engaging and enjoyable.
Hadjari’s poem is an example of poetry’s potential to express the personal and cultural effects of exile. That Italian could serve as a linguistic refuge for an Albanian poet less than a century after Italy’s military occupation of Albania during World War II is testament to how drastic the shifts in a language’s personal, communal, and political meaning can be.
By giving poems like Hadjari’s the time and space to be interpreted in multiple layers, Poetry Inside Out accomplishes a larger goal for the students we serve: it expands the meaning of language beyond sound, and amplifies the meaning of poetry beyond the appearance of lines on a page.
