Babel

Author: Sonia Andras

  • My Face to the Light: Alice Walker’s Thoughts about Christmas

    Cover of "Anything We Love Can be Saved"
    Cover of Anything We Love Can be Saved

    As I was reading Alice Walker (best known for her book The Color Purple) collection of essays entitled Anything We Love Can Be Saved, I thought her ideas only represented me on an abstract – perhaps metaphorical level. I can relate to her situation only in certain aspects, others I can’t even begin to understand. In my opinion, she is rather centred around a purpose and she definitely has a leit-motif (the Goddess, for example), but, as I said, I don’t fully understand her situation, so I won’t be judging her for some linguistic clichés (I know I have mine, and I’m pretty sure each individual, social/enthic group or country has plenty as well!).

    In any case, from the whole book, I chose an essay that I think is still very much current, even after fourteen years. It’s about Christmas and its sometimes empty, sometimes ideologically charged stories. First, the subtitle is quite interesting and very much poetic: “seed catalogs like paper flowers”. (more…)

  • The Importance of Being … Unaware People Understand What I Talk (In a Foreign Language)

    Illustration depicting thought.
    Image via Wikipedia

    With such a long and complicated (but cutely suggestive, right) title, you may wonder what I am on about right now. Well, I came up with the idea a couple of days ago when I was standing in a Costa drinking a green at 6 p.m. (don’t judge me!) and I was absorbed in writing something very sad and serious and, out of nowhere, I hear people talking in Romanian. Now this is not uncommon in London, especially in the area I live in, but when I do it’s often from all the wrong people (the ones I wouldn’t be too happy to go and say “Oh, you’re Romanian, too? Let’s talk about our culture and share our experiences of being Romanians in a quite hostile land – against us, I mean:  I won’t get too much into it, but, what I can say, it’s no picnic being Romanian or Bulgarian in Europe at the moment).

    Well, for a moment I was completely distracted and I got agitated for a (short) while. I knew I shouldn’t eavesdrop on a conversation that was more likely private (even more so when thinking nobody around understood them), but for a second there I just rejoiced hearing my mother tongue being spoken by normal and educated people in a Costa, in London. Yesterday had another not-so-similar experience. This time when I arrived home I was struck by the lack of education two strange men (that is that looked like thugs in leather jackets) that went in the hall right before me, but didn’t bother to hold the door for me. (more…)

  • What's in a Word?

    The famous Greek word logos — “word, speech, a...
    Image via Wikipedia

    This is an excerpt of one my my articles (click on this phrase to read the whole text) from my Helium account, which I think is relevant to the world not only relating the “Arab Spring” or the “Occupy” movements, but to the way the society is built as a whole. 

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    Strong words relating to a vague, ethereal group that represents an unseen but really dangerous enemy – or so we are let to believe! – can identify a rhetoric or another for the connoisseur, but they are as liable to become a cigarette thrown into a tank at the gas station. Such words as “terrorists”, “nazis”, “activists”, “environmentalists”, nowadays “occupiers” (or as I keep hearing in a so-called democratic Romania words like “golani” – punks, “tineri” – youth or “studenti” – students used pejoratively as the ones who don’t work and are like leaches on the respectable workers and peasants who keep the country going, and so on). Using these words it’s quite easy to fall into the trap of generalized non-action and perhaps even opposition to change, unless change is imposed by the Man. Even terms of endearment can be dangerous when used in a work environment, for example in a place where all participants should be equal, but the majority is male and the women are addressed as “dear” or “darling”, or with terms otherwise reserved to the bedroom. Therefore, words are both positive and negative. They are positive if we know how to defend ourselves against them (even insults can be kept away with a shield!) and understand that a word can have countless meanings and we should use and interpret it according to a definite context and combination. They are negative if we don’t acknowledge these facts and only take words out of contexts and for what we think they mean. In any case… Is there a reason for why “word” and “world” are such close brothers (sisters, or siblings if we are to include all readers in the equation)?

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