2023-10-31 23:47:25
I shared this note on networks
Mónica Zwaig, French Human Rights lawyer, writer and actress, spoke with Feminacida regarding her second novel written in Spanish. Set in Buenos Aires, before and during the 2022 World Cup, the novel is regarding a French woman who signs up for an Italian course at the CUI.
It is November 2022. A woman walks through a ghostly Buenos Aires where people are stressed and cannot do their obligations, such as attending an Italian course, because of a soccer World Cup. She hasn’t seen her boyfriend for weeks, she’s supposedly at a friend’s house to watch the games and he avoids her because she’s French, she’s a “mufa.” After wandering the length and breadth of a city that she wants to appropriate, the woman lines up at a supermarket and begins to cry with happiness when she hears a group of men singing “Muchachos,” the mythical modern hymn that she composed. The fly in honor of the selection of Lionel Scaloni.
This scene might correspond to a scene from a Martin Rejtman film, but no. It is one of the chapters of La interlenguathe latest novel by the French writer Mónica Zwaig published by Blatt & Rios. “Last year’s World Cup helped me because I was able to use that moment, which is very strong culturally, to find a present in the novel and work on themes such as identity,” Zwaig recalls and adds that she spent the World Cup much better than the protagonist of the novel.
In 166 pages, 10 chapters and 8 Italian classes at CUI, La interlengua explores the link between Amanda, a French woman who has lived in Buenos Aires for 10 years, and the language, or rather, the languages: Spanish, Italian and French. “Falling in love with another language is a toxic relationship from the beginning. The other language lets you caress it, touch it, even give it a kiss, but it is always on the other side of the window,” the protagonist confesses in one of the chapters.
But in La interlengua (a concept that refers to the first stage of human speech when it is difficult to name things and feelings) there are also other languages outside of romance languages: the mother tongue, which the protagonist identifies with scenes of her Argentine mother calling her “boluda” or the link , the one that has words like “chongo” to refer to a man with whom you only have sex, but also to mention a boyfriend who helps pay the rent.
“I thought of interlanguage right away as a title. I like it because behind the word and the concept you can also read between language, internal language, and I think the novel addresses all that too,” says the novelist.
In addition to French nationality, Amanda shares other traits of the writer’s biography: both are daughters of Argentinians who were exiled to France due to the last military dictatorship, they are academics and have lived indefinitely in Buenos Aires for some time. The novel, which was born in the workshop of the writer Santiago Llach, allowed Zwaig to work on her relationship with languages.
“I mightn’t approach the topics that interest me from a testimonial point of view because I get bored of myself,” the author confesses. “On the other hand, fiction amuses me, it frees me from myself, it allows me to go much further than I might do if I were trapped in telling stories.” a truth”.
You can also read: Dolores Reyes: “I like to accompany the journey of the characters I write”
On the other hand, humor, absurdity and punchlines occupy an important place in the construction of the characters and the situations that Amanda finds herself in. Thus there is a classmate called Calzone Verdes or an episode where the narrator goes to a telo with her boyfriend and asks him to take down the painting of an orca because she “has a phobia of whales.” For the author, the humor is a product of the protagonist’s own misplacement with the Spanish language. “Humor raises many questions for me. I don’t know why sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. You have to find the limits, it is a fine balance, it is cultural or it is not cultural,” she maintains.
Definitely, La interlengua It is a fun and ingenious novel because it reflects on the intrinsic relationship between identity and languages. What makes it so captivating, furthermore, is that it is an x-ray of “being Buenos Aires” made through the eyes of a foreigner. That curiosity also translates to the fact that it was written in Spanish and not French. “Writing is a risky activity for me, but in another language it is an exercise in total humility,” reflects the writer. “It is working with a great limitation from the beginning and writing from there. It is accepting the limitation. Is it called limitation?”
I shared this note on networks
1698796410
#Mónica #Zwaig #Writing #language #exercise #total #humility
