VIII

The other day, this time in Maggie’s diner in West Street, I met the writer D. again, who had explained to me previously why he had to write in a foreign language. ‘But tell me now,’ I put it to him, ‘writing in another than your own language surely must have serious drawbacks for your penmanship...’ He thought for a while, but I sensed his thinking was not to form an answer but whether or not he would tell me. Then he said, ‘Yes, perhaps it has, but it comes with great advantages. For me, the language I write in is not the same material with which I order bread at the bakery: it is a completely artificial material – and that is what art should be, the name is self-explanatory. In the second place, my 'word poverty' forces me quite naturally to sculpt, to hack out my sentences from granite, giving my language the suppleness and swing in the hip of a petrified mammoth, thus eradicating all unintentional ornaments and fluff.’