KOCHI: For Raül Zurita, the story of language is both one of magic and one of misunderstandings. The iconic Chilean poet-revolutionary believes that words can both stave off mortality and extinguish life, but is inextricably linked to suffering and death.
“We are living in a period of agonising of language. The unequivocal language of capital is represented by marketing where not one word means what it intends. For me, language is what they are trying to remove from me in favour of the ‘language of profit’,” said Zurita in a conversation titled “What Language Means to Me” at the Biennale Pavilion in Cabral Yard, Fort Kochi, on Thursday. Held on the sidelines of Kochi-Muziris Biennale (KMB) 2016, the dialogue heard arguments on language’s unifying and divisive qualities. Littérateurs Ouyang Jianghe from China, Sergio Chejfec from Argentina, Sharmistha Mohanty from India, Valerie Mejer Caso from Mexico and Aleš Šteger from Slovenia also participated.
Countering Zurita’s thoughts on hopelessness of language, Chejfec said, “Language has a strange music. It is transcendental, making the immaterial, material. It is a bridge between opposing views and different worlds.” Agreeing, Mohanty noted “Language is an inclusive, penetrating art form that captures all and leaves no fossils.”
She read from a poem on memory and language.Caso recalled anecdotes from her first association with language as a child, and said, “Language can recreate a moment and shepherd readers or listeners to that period with just a word.”Explaining the benefits of having a living vocabulary, Jianghe said language was both existential and functional. “It is the difference between a fish just out of water and one frozen in time,” he said.