There is always an interpreter next to me. I have to do all my interviews and presentations in English. Their publishing house has a Spanish name, Marcos y Marcos. There I meet my first Italian publishers. Even though I’ve returned to Italy, I still feel exiled from the language.Ī few months later, I receive an invitation to the Mantua literary festival. I manage to order in a restaurant and exchange a few words with a saleswoman. In reality, in Venice I’m barely able to ask for directions on the street, a wakeup call at the hotel.
In addition to the dictionary, I take a notebook, and on the last page I write down phrases that might be useful: Saprebbe dirmi? Dove si trova? Come si fa per andare? Could you tell me? Where is? How does one get to? I recall the difference between buono and bello. In the spring of 2000, six years after my first trip to Italy, I go to Venice. I am constantly looking in the dictionary. I underline almost every word on every page. But when, after two years of studying, I try to read Alberto Moravia’s novel “La Ciociara” (“Two Women”) I barely understand it. My first teacher is a Milanese woman who lives in Boston. The subject gives me a second reason to study Italian. The thesis will discuss another schism between language and environment. I wonder why certain playwrights decided to set their tragedies, written in English, in Italian palaces. In graduate school, I decide to write my doctoral thesis on how Italian architecture influenced English playwrights of the seventeenth century. As if I were studying a musical instrument without ever playing it. But I don’t like the silence, the isolation of the self-teaching process. I manage to memorize some conjugations, do some exercises.
Having studied Latin for many years, I find the first chapters of this textbook fairly easy. As if it were possible to learn on your own. It’s called “Teach Yourself Italian.” An exhortatory title, full of hope and possibility. How is it possible to feel exiled from a language that isn’t mine? That I don’t know? Maybe because I’m a writer who doesn’t belong completely to any language. Almost as soon as we met, Italian and I were separated. As for Italian, the exile has a different aspect.
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