The English we read is not hers, but belongs to her translator, Ann Goldstein, who has garnered well-deserved praise for her translations of Elena Ferrante’s recent Neapolitan novels. And rightly so, because “In Other Words” presents the same author with a different voice. The exuberant tone may surprise readers used to the understatement and quiet grace of Lahiri’s acclaimed novels and short stories. Because every day there will be a new word to learn. I don’t want to die, because my death would mean the end of my discovery of the language. Reading in Italian arouses a similar feeling in me. You want the emotion, the excitement you feel to last. “When you’re in love, you want to live forever. “What does it mean,” she wonders, “to give up a palace to live practically on the street, in a shelter so fragile?” Why abandon the English language that made her famous and move with her family to Rome, as though quixotically hoping to swim across a linguistic ocean? Because she was in love: It is fitting that a nation with no unifying language for centuries should inspire a writer of Lahiri’s stature to organize her reflections around the concept of exile. The image is both metaphorical and literal, for Florentines have made their bread without salt since the Middle Ages - the heartbreaking separation from everyone and everything he loves, Dante’s line suggests, will be so visceral he can taste it.
No student of Italian literature can hear these words and fail to think of Dante’s famous passage on his exile in “Paradiso,” where he writes that he would come to learn “how salty is the bread of others” after his expulsion from Florence. She describes her written Italian as a piece of “unsalted bread,” correct but lacking the usual flavor. As Jhumpa Lahiri writes in her gorgeous new memoir, “In Other Words,” a language is as vast as an ocean the most a foreigner can ever hope to make of it is the size of a lake. Nothing reminds you how far you are from home more than trying to speak in someone else’s tongue. IN OTHER WORDS By Jhumpa Lahiri Translated by Ann Goldstein 233 pp.
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