Two Lines 4: Possession

Fall 1997

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There is another and he takes you while I sleep.

I am wakened by his rasping moans,

verses written to you ringing in his ear,

the cascade rushing down your throat

to seek the wasp’s nest of the heart. —from “Scardanelli Speaks” by Francisco Hernández, translated from the Spanish by Elizabeth Bell

Yet who are our countrymen? Languages do not locate us. In this issue, we were interested in issues of colonization and domination. We expected tales of occupied nations, and the resulting narratives of personal dispossession and social unrest, but we didn’t expect what now seems inevitable: a preponderance of colonization at the very level of language. Clearly, the colonized write in the colonial tongues, even centuries after the marauders have been chased out or have moved on (or moved in.) […] While the many languages of the world are learned out of the desire to express desires, all people speak in tongues, incomprehensibly, when possessed. —THE EDITORS

Table of Contents

Fiction

Grapevine

By Liana Badr

Translated from Arabic by S. V. Atalla

A St. Petersburg Childhood

By Tanya von Lichonine Kirchberger

Translated from French by Carol Cosman

Mad Love

By Tahar Ben Jelloun

Translated from French by Monique Fleury Nagem

The New California