Identity and Multilingualism. An Anthropological Reading of the Representation of Alterity in Literary Katabasis

Abstract

In a global and multilingual society, indubitable is the importance of a reflection on the Self and the Other as defined by language. This interdisciplinary study aims at investigating, the narrative reinvention of the theoretical principles involved in the definition of the anthropological identity as expounded by Francesco Remotti. Specifically, we analyse a centenary trend in European literature identifying a peculiar form of multilingualism with the non-human and the lack of identity. From Dante’s Inferno to Joyce’s The cat and the Devil, the netherworld, its inhabitants and captives are characterized by the use of several (usually not intelligible) languages. According to this literary cliché, while the clarity and precision of a single language contributes to define a human identity, the plurality of languages is often a sign of a lost identity and of not being human anymore. It is not by chance that the verses of Dante ‘There sighs and wails and piercing cries of woe/ […] Strange languages, and frightful forms of speech,/ words caused by pain, accents of anger, voices/ both loud and faint’ are echoed in Primo Levi’s If This Is a Man. Multilingualism is the central point in Levi’s memories from the time spent in a concentration camp where ‘languages absolutely not understandable [...], the orders shouted in languages [we] were not able to recognize’ and the ‘endless Babel where everyone is shouting’ symbolize the lost human condition. Both the damned souls and the prisoners of the camp are not human anymore because they have lost their language and, with it, their identity. In our study, the comparative and hermeneutic analysis of the narrative and lexical choices adopted to represent multilingualism in European literature reveals a strong connection between human identity and the purity of language intended as a manifestation of human rationality. On the contrary, a number of recurrent diegetic choices and figures of speech seem to define the non-human as a multilingual world characterized by sighs, wails and strange languages, like the Bellsybable of Joyce’s devil.

Keywords

• multilingualism
• alterity
• identity
• katabasis
• netherworld