The Language Archive
Presented by Forum Theatre
By Julia Cho
Directed by Jessica Burgess
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.
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