Amerika und die Norm: Literatursprache als Modell? 9783110978759, 9783484507265

Citation preview

Amerika und die Norm

Herausgegeben von Christopher F. Laferl und Bernhard Poll

Amerika und die Norm Literatursprache als Modell?

Herausgegeben von Christopher F. Laferl und Bernhard Poll

Max Niemeyer Verlag Tübingen 2007

Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.ddb.de abrufbar. ISBN 978-3-484-50726-5 © Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 2007 Ein Imprint der Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG http://www. niemeyer. de Das Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulässig und strafbar. Das gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Übersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und die Einspeicherung und Verarbeitung in elektronischen Systemen. Printed in Germany. Gedruckt auf alterungsbeständigem Papier. Satz: Gabriele Holzinger Druck und Einband: A Z Druck und Datentechnik GmbH, Kempten

Inhalts verzeichni s VORWORT

VII

I. ANGLOPHONES AMERIKA

Christian Mair English in North America and the Caribbean

3

Holger Kersten "I Know Grammar by Ear Only": Mark Twain and the Norms of American Literature

25

John Thieme Derek Walcott

37

Elizabeth Ann Beaulieu "How lovely it is, this thing we have done - together": Tradition and Innovation in Toni Morrison's Fiction

49

II. BRASILIEN

Christopher F. Laferl Brasilien und die Norm

65

Joachim Born Machado de Assis und die brasilianische Norm

89

Eduardo Passos "Da lingua viva": Mario de Andrade e a questäo lingüistica no modernismo brasileiro

105

Stefan Kutzenberger / Marcel Vejmelka "...gostaria de ser considerado um reacionärio da lingua": Joäo Guimaräes Rosa und die Revolutionierung der Sprache

123

VI

Inhaltsverzeichnis

III. FRANKOPHONES AMERIKA

Bernhard Poll Norme(s) linguistique(s) et langue d'ecriture au Quebec et dans les Caraibes francophones

143

Ursula Reutner/ Hanspeter Plocher Thematik und Sprache des Landromans in Quebec am Beispiel von Antoine Gerin-Lajoie und Felix-Antoine Savard

167

Roman Reisinger Jacques Renaud: poete, romancier, essayiste

189

Falk Seiler Literarisches Schreiben auf den Antillen im Spannungsfeld zwischen Französisch und Kreolisch: Patrick Chamoiseau

207

I V . HISPANOAMERIKA

Franz Lebsanft Norma pluricentrica del espanol y Academias de la Lengua

227

Peter Cichon Domingo Faustino Sarmiento

247

Martha Guzmän Andres Bello y la norma del espanol (americano)

263

Markus Ebenhoch Alejo Carpentier

283

V . KREOLOPHONIE

Eva-Martha Eckkrammer Kreolophone Sprachgemeinschaften in Amerika und der beschwerliche Weg zur Norm

301

SYNTHESE

337

Vorwort

1. Zur Entstehungsgeschichte dieses Buches Wenn die Erfahrungen, die die beiden Herausgeber wie auch manche Beiträgerinnen des Buches an verschiedenen universitären Institutionen gemacht haben, nicht nur zufälligen und für den Zustand der Neuphilologien nicht oder kaum repräsentativen Charakter haben, dann ist die Beziehung zwischen den Sprachund Literaturwissenschaften derzeit von gegenseitigem Desinteresse und in institutionellen Zusammenhängen nicht selten von Spannungen geprägt. Dieser Zustand ist nicht nur einem guten Arbeitsklima abträglich, sondern dient auch kaum dem wissenschaftlichen Fortschritt beider Disziplinen, der doch auf dem Fundament einer gemeinsamen philologischen Ausbildung gegründet sein sollte. Jenseits von Fragen der unterschiedlichen wissenschaftlichen Standards in den Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaften, ihrer gesellschaftlichen Relevanz und ihrer Attraktivität bei den Studierenden, muss es doch möglich sein, Überlappungsbereiche zwischen den beiden Disziplinen zu benennen und Forschungsanliegen zu formulieren, die für beide von Interesse sind. Denn trotz des Auseinanderdriftens der Sprach- und der Literaturwissenschaft ist klar, dass eine seriöse Literaturwissenschaft vielfach nicht ohne das Instrumentarium der Sprachwissenschaft auskommen kann und dass die Sprachwissenschaft einen großen Teil ihres Objektbereichs ausblenden würde, wenn sie literarischen Texten und ihrer besonderen Stellung im Ganzen der Textproduktion keine Aufmerksamkeit schenkte. Einen dieser Überlappungsbereiche zwischen der Sprach- und der Literaturwissenschaft stellt die Frage nach der Rolle literarischer Texte für die Herausbildung sprachlicher Normen dar. Hier konvergieren die legitimen Interessen beider Disziplinen und machen ein gemeinsames Arbeiten nicht nur sinnvoll, sondern geradezu nötig. Mit diesem Buch wollten seine Herausgeber - und hoffentlich auch seine Beiträgerinnen - zeigen, dass Zusammenarbeit nicht nur möglich ist, sondern auch beide Wissenschaften in ihrem Erkenntnisprozess befördert. Die beiden Disziplinen treffen sich im Interesse am Thema der Bedeutung

VIII

Vorwort

literarischer Texte für die Etablierung der Norm allerdings nicht auf dieselbe Art und Weise, denn natürlich ist die Fragestellung eine eher linguistische, kann man sie doch als eine Anwendung der Soziolinguistik auf die Sprache der Literatur sehen. Wenn aber die Fragestellung eine linguistische sein mag, so ist der Objektbereich eindeutig jener der Literaturwissenschaft. Unser Unternehmen gab sich aber nicht mit dem Versuch eines Brückenschlags zwischen Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft zufrieden, wir wollten auch verschiedene Neuphilologien zusammenbringen, und zwar ebenfalls nicht nur aus dem Willen heraus, innerwissenschaftliche Kommunikation zu pflegen oder zu ermöglichen, sondern um Ergebnisse zu Tage zu fördern, die Schlüsse auf einer abstrakteren Ebene zulassen. Allerdings wollten wir auch nicht so weit gehen, eine allgemein gültige Antwort, also ohne jede zeitliche und räumliche Einengung, auf die Frage nach der Bedeutung literarischer Texte für die Ausbildung einer sprachlichen Norm zu suchen. Ausgangspunkt unserer Überlegungen zur Rolle der Literatur im sprachlichen Normierungsprozess war nicht der europäische Raum, d. h. die Etablierung der "ursprünglichen" Norm in den vier "Nationalsprachen" Englisch, Französisch, Portugiesisch und Spanisch, sondern der Umgang mit den aus Europa stammenden Normen im kolonialen, mehr noch aber im postkolonialen Kontext. Anders als viele Untersuchungen zum Postkolonialismus der letzten beiden Jahrzehnte haben wir uns nicht dem afrikanischen oder asiatischen Raum zugewandt, sondern dem amerikanischen Doppelkontinent, der sich politisch im Wesentlichen bereits im ausgehenden 18. und im frühen 19. Jahrhundert von Europa losgelöst hat. Uns interessierte, wie es sich mit der Etablierung einer eigenen Norm mit und durch Literatur in jenen Räumen der beiden Amerikas verhielt, die schon auf eine rund zweihundert Jahre dauernde Trennung bzw. Unabhängigkeit vom ehemaligen Mutterland zurückblicken können. Wir wollten aber auch jene Länder, Regionen und Inseln einbeziehen, denen es im Gegensatz zu den Vereinigten Staaten, den meisten hispanoamerikanischen Ländern und Brasilien, erst viel später oder - wie im Fall der französischen Karibik - gar nicht beschieden war, sich politisch von Europa loszulösen. Einen weiteren Kontrapunkt zur Rolle der Literatur in der Etablierung amerikanischer "Nationalsprachen" europäischer Provenienz stellt die Bedeutung literarischer Texte für die und in den Kreolsprachen dar, die von der Erlangung des Status einer voll funktionsfähigen Standardsprache in der Regel noch weit entfernt sind. Indigene Sprachen haben wir aus der Betrachtung aus zwei Gründen ausgespart. Einerseits scheint uns hier die Frage nach der sprachlichen und literarischen Norm gänzlich anders zu liegen als in den von Europa "abhängigen" oder zumindest stark von Europa beeinflussten Sprachen, und andererseits fehlen uns die notwendigen Kenntnisse der indigenen Sprachen wie auch jene über die in diesen Sprachen verfasste Literatur.

Vorwort

IX

2. Theoretische Vorüberlegungen Das Verhältnis von Literatur und Sprachnormen zu analysieren, erfordert zumindest zwei Vorüberlegungen: Zunächst gilt es, sich darüber Klarheit verschaffen, was unter dem Begriff Norm zu verstehen ist, zum anderen muss die Rolle untersucht werden, die literarische Texte, also die Texte, denen eine ästhetische Funktion inhärent ist, bei der Etablierung oder Adaptierung von Sprachnormen spielen oder gespielt haben. In diesem Zusammenhang muss in Erinnerung gerufen werden, dass die Vorstellung von einer sprachlichen Norm nicht auf ein Gesamt von formellen, in Grammatiken, Wörterbüchern, Aussprachelehren usw. festgehaltenen Vorschriften (präskriptive Norm) reduziert werden darf. Der Normbegriff kann vielmehr auch auf ein wiederkehrendes sprachliches Verhalten innerhalb einer Sprachgemeinschaft verweisen (deskriptive /statistische Norm, Gebrauchsnorm). Schließlich verbindet man mit dem Begriff der Norm auch die - häufig idealisierenden Vorstellungen, die sich Sprecherinnen von der sprachlichen Wirklichkeit machen (subjektive Normen). Im Zusammenhang mit den im vorliegenden Band behandelten plurikontinentalen Sprachen, die sich in sprachnormativer Hinsicht allesamt durch zentrifugale Kräfte (bezüglich der deskriptiven Norm) auszeichnen, spricht man in der Regel von der Opposition zwischen endogenen und exogenen Normen: erstere entsprechen dem als normal angesehenen Sprachgebrauch eines Teils der Sprachgemeinschaft (ζ. B. Quebec, Argentinien), letztere haben ihren Ursprung in jenem Land / Gebiet, das traditionell den Maßstab für sprachliche Richtigkeit liefert bzw. in der Vergangenheit bereitgestellt hat (ζ. B. Frankreich oder Spanien) und sind traditionell präskriptiv. Normkonflikte treten insbesondere dann zu Tage, wenn die exogene Norm von Teilen der "peripheren" Teilsprachgemeinschaft in Frage gestellt wird. Eigene Gebrauchsnormen werden dabei als exemplarisch postuliert und die subjektiven Normen sind nicht mehr ausschließlich von den "fremden" präskriptiven Normen gestützt. In unterschiedlichem Ausmaß war bzw. ist dies bei allen hier zur Diskussion stehenden Sprachgemeinschaften der Fall. Was nun die Rolle der Literatur für die Fixierung oder Veränderung sprachlicher Normen betrifft, so kann bereits hier festgehalten werden, dass sie vielschichtig ist. Zumindest die drei folgenden Beobachtungen sind für unser Thema von Bedeutung und werden in den folgenden Beiträgen näher beleuchtet werden: -

In vielen Sprachgemeinschaften wird der "gute Sprachgebrauch" (im Sinne der präskriptiven aber auch der subjektiven Normen) durch ein Korpus von literarischen Texten illustriert, also von Texten, deren ästhetische Funktion von ihren Produzenten intendiert und von den Rezipienten erkannt wird.

χ

Vorwort

-

In der Geschichte vieler Sprachen betreffen Sprachnormen bzw. die sog. Standardsprache - sowie die Debatten, die ihre Kodifizierung begleiten - zunächst vorrangig den literarischen Sprachgebrauch, bevor sie für andere Texte bzw. formelle Sprechanlässe verbindlich werden.

-

Häufig trägt Literatur dazu bei oder wird zumindest dafür benützt, etablierte exogene Normen zu destabilisieren (Destandardisierung) und neue endogene Normen zu bekräftigen (Restandardisierung).

3. Aufbau des Buches Im Sinne dieser Vorüberlegungen und des eingangs grob skizzierten Programms gliedert sich der vorliegende Band in fünf Überblicksbeiträge und zwölf Autorinnenporträts. Die Überblicksbeiträge bringen im Wesentlichen eine Skizzierung der Entwicklung der amerikanischen Varietäten des Englischen, Französischen, Spanischen und Portugiesischen vom Beginn der Kolonialisierung bis in die Gegenwart. Dieser Darstellung geht in manchen Fällen ein kurzer historischer Aufriss zur Etablierung einer sprachlichen Norm in den europäischen "Mutterländern" voraus. Im Zentrum der Überblicksbeiträge steht dem Thema des Buches entsprechend natürlich die Rolle der Literatur im Prozess der Herausbildung eigener amerikanischer Sprachnormen. Den zeitlichen Schwerpunkt der Betrachtung bilden in diesem Zusammenhang ungefähr die letzten 150 Jahre. Die etwas längeren Überblicksbeiträge werden von kürzeren Artikeln zu einzelnen bekannten Autorinnen ergänzt. Ausschlaggebend für die Auswahl war der außer Zweifel stehende Bekanntheitsgrad der Autorinnen auf nationaler wie internationaler Ebene und ihr kanonischer Status. Da wir uns auf einige wenige Autorinnen beschränken mussten, diese aber räumlich das gesamte Verbreitungsgebiet einer Sprache auf dem amerikanischen Doppelkontinent und zeitlich eineinhalb Jahrhunderte abdecken sollten, fiel die Entscheidung, welche Autorinnen aufzunehmen wären, äußerst schwer. Trotz sorgsamer Abwägung verschiedenster Für und Wider, die naturgemäß vor der Vergabe an geeignete und zur Verfügung stehende Bearbeiterinnen erfolgen musste, ist die getroffene Auswahl natürlich kritisierbar. Wer sie - wie auch wir selbst - als unbefriedigend betrachtet, möge in ihr eine Anregung sehen, der Frage nach den sprachlichen Autoritäten aus dem Bereich der Literatur in Zukunft weiter nachzugehen. Von Anfang an war uns bewusst, dass den ausgewählten Schriftstellerinnen des 19. und des frühen 20. Jahrhunderts eine größere Bedeutung zukommt als jenen, deren Werk im Wesentlichen erst nach den historischen Avantgarden verfasst wurde. Gerade hier wollten wir aber auch Autorinnen behandelt wissen, die für das Aufbrechen der Norm von innen stehen, weil sie ζ. B. der Sprache von

Vorwort

XI

Minderheiten Gehör verschaffen wollten. Aber auch in diesem Zusammenhang mussten viele Namen außen vor bleiben. Für das Englische fiel die Wahl auf Mark Twain, dessen Bedeutung für die Herausbildung einer eigenen US-amerikanischen Norm zentral ist, auf Toni Morrison, der derzeit wohl bekanntesten afroamerikanischen Autorin, und auf Derek Walcott, der hier für die international anerkannte Literatursprache der Karibik stehen soll. Für das Französische galt es das französischsprachige Kanada und die Karibik abzudecken. Mit Antoine Gerin-Lajoie und Felix-Antoine Savard sind zunächst zwei herausragende Vertreter der regionalistischen Literatur (2. Hälfte 19. Jahrhundert / 1 . Hälfte 20. Jahrhundert), in der erstmals Eigenheiten des kanadischen Französisch in der Literatur auftauchen, als Doppelportrait vertreten. Aus jener Periode, die für die Eigendefinition der Kultur und Mentalität Quebecs zentral war - die 1960er und 1970er Jahre - haben wir Jacques Renaud ausgewählt. Für die frankophone Literatur der Karibik schließlich steht exemplarisch der prominenteste Vertreter der creolite, Patrick Chamoiseau. Etwas leichter schien es uns, repräsentative brasilianische Autoren zu finden, da wir es hier nur mit einem einzigen Staat zu tun hatten. Ausgewählt haben wir Machado de Assis, den brasilianischen Kanonautor schlechthin, Mario de Andrade, den wichtigsten Proponenten einer eigenen brasilianischen Sprache in der Zeit der Avantgarde, sowie Joäo Guimaräes Rosa, der in seinem Roman Grande Sertäo: Veredas das Aufbegehren gegen die Norm der Schriftsprache auf die Spitze trieb. Im Vergleich mit dem lusophonen Amerika war es für den hispanoamerikanischen Bereich ungleich schwerer, repräsentative Autoren zu finden. Zu groß sind der Raum in dem Spanisch gesprochen wird - von den Großstädten im Norden der USA bis nach Feuerland - und auch die Vielfalt an literarischen Werken, als dass hier eine wirklich befriedigende Lösung hätte gefunden werden können. Die Sprachenfrage des 19. Jahrhunderts ist repräsentiert durch zwei Intellektuelle, die sich beide auch programmatisch geäußert haben, nämlich durch den Argentinier Domingo Faustino Sarmiento und den Venezolaner Andres Bello. Für die Literatur des 20. Jahrhundert erschien uns der große kubanische Romancier Alejo Carpentier sprachnormativ relevant. Für den kreolsprachlichen Bereich wurden keine Autorinnenporträts aufgenommen, da hier der Prozess der Kanonbildung erst vor kurzem begonnen hat und derzeit noch voll im Gange ist. Als Ausgleich ist der Überblicksbeitrag dafür umfangreicher ausgefallen. Das Buch schließt mit einer Synthese, in der zunächst die Ergebnisse der einzelnen Beiträge nochmals kurz nach Sprachen geordnet zusammengefasst werden. An dieses Resümee schließt eine kurze Gegenüberstellung an, die die wichtigsten Parallelen, und damit verallgemeinerbare Aussagen, deutlich machen soll. Den groben Linien werden hier aber auch die wichtigsten Divergenzen

XII

Vorwort

gegenübergestellt. Es soll damit auch deutlich werden, welche Sprachräume ähnliche Entwicklungen aufweisen und in welchen ins Auge stechende Abweichungen festgestellt werden können. Zum Abschluss seien noch ein paar Bemerkungen zu den in diesem Sammelband verwendeten Sprachen erlaubt. Wir haben es allen Autorinnen frei gestellt, in folgenden Sprachen zu schreiben: Deutsch als die Sprache der akademischen Welt, in der sich die Mehrheit der Beiträgerinnen, täglich bewegt, Englisch als die lingua franca der internationalen Wissenschaft und schließlich die Sprachen des Objektbereichs, Französisch, Portugiesisch und Spanisch, die ja von allen jenen, die an den entsprechenden Sprachräumen interessiert sind, verstanden werden. Kreolsprachen kamen schon allein wegen ihrer Vielzahl, die eine begründbare Entscheidung a priori unmöglich machte, nicht in Frage. Für jene Benutzerinnen, deren Lesefähigkeit in der einen oder anderen Sprache nicht ausreichen sollte und die sich schnell über den Inhalt eines Beitrags informieren wollen, haben wir Abstracts auf Deutsch, Englisch bzw. Französisch beigefügt.

I. ANGLOPHONES AMERIKA

Christian Mair University of Freiburg (Germany)

English in North America and the Caribbean

Auf dem nordamerikanischen Kontinent und in der anglophonen Karibik haben sich im Laufe der letzten beiden Jahrhunderte mehrere neue Standardvarietäten des Englischen entwickelt. Der US-amerikanische Standard repräsentiert beispielhaft den vollen möglichen Entwicklungszyklus ursprünglich kolonialer Varietäten - von einer marginalen und überregional bedeutungslosen Mundart zu einem der beiden Referenzstandards mit weltweiter Ausstrahlung. Die Normierung des kanadischen Englisch sowie des karibischen Englisch ist historisch jüngeren Datums, und diese beiden emergenten Standardvarietäten unterscheiden sich vom britischen oder amerikanischen Englisch auch dadurch, dass sie sich zum Teil auch heute noch an externen (d. h. britischen oder amerikanischen) Normen orientieren und nur über eine begrenzte internationale Ausstrahlung verfügen. Der vorliegende Beitrag zeichnet die sprachhistorischen Standardisierungsprozesse in den USA, Kanada und der anglophonen Karibik in ihren wesentlichen Zügen nach und beleuchtet exemplarisch die Wechselwirkungen zwischen diesen Entwicklungen und der Herausbildung lokalisierter Traditionen literarischen Schreibens.

1. Introduction: two avenues for the colonial spread of English B y the e n d of the first quarter of the 17 th century several British colonial b e a c h h e a d s h a d b e e n established on the N o r t h A m e r i c a n mainland: J a m e s t o w n , Virginia, in 1607; C u p e r ' s B a y in N e w f o u n d l a n d , intermittently prospering f r o m 1610 to at least the 1620s; and, f r o m 1620, an increasingly successful string of mostly Puritan settlements in w h a t w a s to b e c o m e Massachusetts. A l m o s t simultaneously, the British established a f i r m foothold in the Caribbean archipelago: first in St. Kitts ( f r o m 1624) and shortly a f t e r w a r d s in B a r b a d o s ( f r o m 1627). T h e fact that in hindsight E u r o p e a n colonial settlement of the North A m e r i c a n m a i n l a n d had a m o r e p r o f o u n d l y t r a n s f o r m a t i v e e f f e c t on world history than the colonisation of the Caribbean should not prevent us f r o m recognising that in the short term C a r i b b e a n colonies were to p r o v e economically m o r e

4

Christian

Mair

important to the mother country, mainly because of the rapid transition to the semi-industrial system of plantation agriculture based on African slave labour. What is important in the present connection is, of course, not the economic history of the two colonial spheres of influence but the fundamentally different models they represent for the transplanting of a European language into a new communicative ecology. 1 Thereby, the mainland represents the simple case. Increasing numbers of European settlers emigrated to North America, marginalising indigenous populations and subsequently shifting to the use of English except in Quebec, where the Francophone community has survived and prospered, and in the South and West of the United States, where there has been a strong if informal tradition of Spanish-English bilingualism ever since vast but at the time thinly populated expanses of formerly Mexican territory extending from Texas to California were annexed by the United States in the mid 19th century. The situation is very different in the "English-speaking" Caribbean, where the European settler presence soon ceased to be numerically significant. This resulted in the creolisation of the English language - the emergence of new languages which are best described as hybrid formations with a strong English influence on the vocabulary, an equally strong influence of the West African linguistic substrate on the phonology, and a grammar which integrates elements of English and West African languages with innovations that arose locally and are impressive testimony to the power of the human instinct for language even under the cruel and inhuman conditions of the slave plantation. Where the English withdrew as a colonial power, as they did, for example in Suriname, which was taken over by the Dutch in 1667, the English-based Creoles2 they left behind developed into fully viable and independent natural languages, such as Sranan, Surinam's lingua franca to the present day, and Saramaccan or Ndjuka, smaller languages which owe their survival to their use among closely knit communities of runaway slaves. Where the British continued to rule, the status of English-based Creole languages is more controversial. Professional linguists tend to point out that the obvious lexical similarities between English and the various English-lexicon 1

2

The following brief summary cannot do full justice to a complex history. Readers interested in a more detailed account of the language-historical facts are encouraged to consult a number of recent authoritative and comprehensive works of reference such as, for example, the Cambridge History of the English Language, in particular vol. VI (Algeo 2001) for North America, and H o l m ' s (1994) contribution on the Caribbean to volume V of the same work. The term Creole is here used in its technical linguistic sense, to refer to hybrid languages arising f r o m a pidgin base in specific socio-demographic conditions (such as, for example, those typically obtaining in the Caribbean sugar economy). With regard to society and culture, the term has been used to characterise manifestations of the Afro-Caribbean folk culture of the Anglophone Caribbean (cf. e. g. Brathwaite 1971). This is, obviously, very different f r o m its meaning in the context of the United States, where it may refer to indigenous populations of any racial background. With its meaning thus vacillating even in one language, it is little wonder, that it proves even more difficult to pin down in cross-linguistic analysis (cf. e. g. Berg / Mair 1999).

English in North America and the

Caribbean

5

Creoles of the region should not be over-rated and that speech forms such as, say, Guyanese or Jamaican Creole, must be regarded as independent languages on the basis of their distinct phonology and grammar. Not only are there striking similarities among the various English-lexicon Creoles in this regard, but also between them as a group and the French-, Dutch- and Portuguese-derived Creoles also spoken in the region (and historically related areas of West Africa). Whether these similarities are manifestations of a universal "creole" language type or due to a shared West African linguistic substrate is an interesting question which cannot be pursued here (but cf. Muysken / Smith 1986). However, the view that English-lexicon Creoles are separate languages from English, has never been espoused by ordinary speakers in the formerly British West Indies, who will insist - in grammar which is unlike anything possibly inherited from European varieties of English - that "is English we a taak." 3 Local speech is hence referred to as patois, dialect or even "bad English" rather than Jamaican, Guyanese etc., and even terms such as (Jamaican /Guyanese, etc.) Creole, which are being promoted through linguistic scholarship have remained marginal in popular usage. Popular perceptions about the status of the local creole languages as "some kind of English" are, of course, aided by the fact that the Creoles are hardly ever heard in their pure forms nowadays but linked to a local variety of English in an intricate continuum of gradual but ordered transitions. "Standard English" and "creole" have thus become abstract reference points, and what is actually heard as the language of the mass of the people in the Anglophone Caribbean today is a wide range of "Creolised English" representing various types of accommodation with the European model brought about by modernisation and urbanisation. It should be emphasised for clarification that local Caribbean whites (as opposed to a transient population of colonial administrators, absentee landowners or foreign businessmen) have been absorbed into the Creole-speaking communities. Whichever way the controversy about the status of English-lexicon Creoles is settled, one thing is obvious. Standard English is a partly foreign language for the majority of the population - associated with formal education, literacy, the colonial administration (formerly) or external economic interests (now). Creolised English is associated with the demographic majority (African or, in selected countries such as Guyana or Trinidad and Tobago, African and East Indian) and the rich Afro-Caribbean folk culture of the region. In such a situation, it was Standard English which - apart from a few experiments - was the default language of literary expression until well into the 20 th century.

3

Is English we speaking - i. e. the "mesolectal" (or more standard-like) variant of this "basilectal" (or more creole-like) stock expression has, quite tellingly, been adopted as the title of a collection of essays devoted to matters of Caribbean culture by its author (Morris 1999).

6

Christian

Mair

2. The emergence of endonormative standards of educated English usage W h e n the colonial spread of English in North America and the Caribbean started in the 17 th century, the standardisation of the written language, in particular its orthography, had already progressed very far. This meant that while educated speakers were probably a small minority in most early colonial populations, contemporary British written norms were effectively in place f r o m the very start of the colonial enterprise. T h e standardisation of spoken British English, however, post-dates the separation between the British and North-American branches of English. F r o m the latter part of the Middle English (c. 1100 to c. 1500) period the "Southern" speech of the court and L o n d o n ' s elites carried increasing prestige, but w e need to bear in mind this Southern speech was remote f r o m the contemporary British reference accent "R. P . " (for "Received Pronunciation"). For example, the loss of post-vocalic /r/ and the lowering of the vowel in the c/c/wc-class of words - probably the two most salient present-day markers of a British standard pronunciation in comparison to an American one - did not start spreading f r o m lower-class London usage until the end of the 18 th century. T h e codification of the new standard - acrimoniously but correctly summarised b y R a y m o n d Williams in the following quotation - took place even later, in the 19 th and early 20 t h centuries: These and similar changes [e. g. the move from /ae/ to la:/ or the loss of post-vocalic /r/ in 18th century London pronunciation] were spread by improved communications, but the main agency, undoubtedly, in fixing them as class speech, was the new cult of uniformity in the public schools. It was a mixture of 'correctness', natural development, and affectation, but it became as it were embalmed. It was no longer one kind of English, or even useful common dialect, but 'correct English', 'good English', 'pure English', 'standard English'. In its name, thousands of people have been capable of the vulgar insolence of telling other Englishmen that they do not know how to speak their own language. And as education was extended, mainly under middle-class direction, this attitude spread from being simply a class distinction to a point where it was possible to identify the making of these sounds with being educated, and thousands of teachers and learners, from poor homes, became ashamed of the speech of their fathers. (Williams 1991 [1981], 247) It is significant that the new British prestige accent had only a very marginal impact in the United States. T h e "broad" la:/ took hold in Eastern N e w England and persisted as a mark of prestigious speech in the Boston area until the 20 t h century; the loss of post-vocalic Irl was emulated in N e w England and the coastal South, but for the speech of the mid-Atlantic states, historically the ancestor of all the major remaining dialects of American English, the British developments remained irrelevant. British norms of educated pronunciation were, of course,

English in North America and the

Caribbean

7

more influential in the colonial West Indies. However, even there their influence tended to be greater in the prestige pronunciation of the educated than in the development of the vernacular. Not surprisingly, the pathways of linguistic (and cultural) decolonisation are as different in North America and the Caribbean as the demographic history of colonisation in the respective regions. In the English-speaking world American English (alongside, possibly, Australian English) is the only former colonial variety of the language which can lay claim to fully "endonormative" status, that is the standards of polite usage are defined by the local educated elites and no longer by the current or former colonial power. Since at least the end of World War I educated Americans have been aware that a different standard from their own reigns in Britain; they have recognised this difference and have even been ready to cede to the British the prestige of historical priority as the community who got the language going, but and this is the crucial point - they would have found it by and large absurd to follow British norms of usage themselves. Note, however, that this linguistic and cultural self-reliance followed political independence only with a considerable time lag. More than a century elapsed between political independence, which came to the United States in 1776/1783, and the full linguistic decolonisation described above. Shifting the focus from the explicit recognition and codification of a local standard to the community's subconscious linguistic practices, the situation we observe is of course a different one. By 1776 distinctly American ways of pronouncing the English language had emerged, and large and growing numbers of locally coined expressions were in use (and were beginning to find their way back to England in increasing numbers). With regard to grammar, particularly in educated and written usage, conventions had been standardised to such an extent by the 17th and 18th centuries that there were few differences worth noting anyway. 4 Individual instances of resistance to British linguistic norms and early expressions of American linguistic nationalism can, of course, be traced back to the immediate aftermath of the American Revolution. Lexicographer and man of letters Noah Webster (1758-1843) is well known for his rash and ultimately unsubstantiated prediction in 1789 that political independence from Britain would result in the emergence of an equally independent American language in the foreseeable future: As an independent nation, our honor requires us to have a system of our own, in language as well as government. Great Britain, whose children we are, and whose 4

Interestingly, however, what little there is in the way of British and American grammatical contrasts today (such as the use of got vs. gotten, preference for -wards as against -ward in grammatical function words such as toward(s)) is relatively recent, and considerable fluctuation prevails on both sides of the Atlantic throughout the 19th century.

8

Christian

Mair

language we speak, should no longer be our standard; for the taste of her writers is already corrupted, and her language on the decline. But if it were not so, she is at too great a distance to be our model, and to instruct us in the principles of our own tongue. [...] America, placed at a distance from those [European] nations, will feel, in a much less degree, the influence of the assimilating causes; at the same time, numerous local causes, such as a new country, new associations of people, new combinations of ideas in arts and sciences, and some intercourse with tribes wholly unknown in Europe, will introduce new words into the American tongue. These causes will produce, in a course of time, a language in North America as different from the future language of England as the modern Dutch, Danish and Swedish are from the German, or from one another: Like remote branches of a tree springing from the same stock; or rays of light, shot from the same center, and diverging from each other, in proportion to their distance from the point of separation. (Webster 1951 [1789], 20-23) Not surprisingly, Webster's subsequent work is characterised by a greater degree of realism, which is of course the very quality that has made it so influential. The title of his major contribution to the description of English, An American Dictionary of the English Language (first published in 1828), definitely strikes a more appropriate balance between two equally patent truths, namely that (1) the citizens of the politically independent United States continued to speak English in their majority and (2) their English reflected the new natural and social environment and therefore deserved to be described in its own terms. On the practical side, Webster's American Spelling Book, first published in 1783 and distributed extremely widely well into 20 th century, propagated this eminently reasonable view effectively. Of course, Webster's point of view was not shared by all of his fellow citizens, and throughout the 19th century it remains easy to find voices expressing linguistic deference to Britain especially among the educated classes - a point which, incidentally, Noah Webster himself was keenly aware of: However they [Americans] may boast of independence, and the freedom of their government, yet their opinions are not sufficiently independent; an astonishing respect for the arts and literature of their parent country, and a blind imitation of its manners, are still prevalent among the Americans. Thus an habitual respect for another country, deserved indeed and once laudable, turns their attention from their own interests, and prevents their respecting themselves. (Webster 1951 [1789], 398) Such deference disappears almost completely after the early 20 th century. A situation is reached in which, barring a few minor orthographic and grammatical conventions and rather more lexical and idiomatic peculiarities, the US shares with Britain and other English-speaking countries a common written standard, whereas it cultivates its own norms of educated pronunciation. These norms were plural ones at first, with at least three major regional accents (New England, South, Inland / Midwest) being regarded as equally acceptable, whereas the latter

English in North America and the Caribbean

9

half of the twentieth century saw an increasing trend to focus on one single national (historically Midwestern) norm: Since the mid 20 th Century, however, there has been a trend among educated speakers, especially those of the younger generation, towards limitation of the use of marked regional features while speaking in formal settings. It is common for college students, for example, to speak without much influence of regional pronunciation in the classroom, but to use regionally marked pronunciations among friends in the hallway. [...] This model is quite similar to what one hears in the national broadcast media, since broadcasters have long participated in the more general trend of younger educated speakers. (Kretzschmar / Konopka in Upton / Kretzschmar / Konopka 2001, xiii-xiv)

Now for the first time in history it is possible to speak of a single national US standard of pronunciation - at least in public and formal usage. 5 The long story of the gradual but in the end complete linguistic emancipation of the American standard from the British model is worth telling not only for its own sake but also because it serves as a model for the description of developments which are currently unfolding in many parts of the former British Empire, including, of course, the Anglophone Caribbean (formerly known as the British West Indies). Historically, the English-lexicon Creoles (and the creolised varieties of English which sprang from them later) were omnipresent but denied any open sociolinguistic prestige or recognition. These were reserved for standard English. Since independence, which came to the larger territories such as Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados and Guyana in the 1960s, a more complex and differentiated picture has emerged. Creoles and creolised Englishes are still vital and thriving. Occasional efforts by language planners notwithstanding (e. g. Devonish 1986), there is little interest among the general population to see them standardised or promoted in the education system, and standard English continues to be seen as the road to economic prosperity, social status and - an important consideration in a region still labouring from the consequences of enforced overpopulation during slavery - migration to the United States or Canada. Behind this apparent continuity, however, subtle changes have occurred. For one thing, it is no longer very clear what is meant by the term "standard English" in the region today. While in colonial days "proper" English was unequivocally

5

Note that more standardisation in educated speech does not result in less diversity at the vernacular level: "This paradox - the strong continued existence of regional dialects when most Americans think that dialect variation is fading - is the topic for another essay [...], but it is possible to say here that American English has developed a national dialect for the usually welleducated participants in a national marketplace for goods, services, and jobs. The well-educated share a national speech pattern within their own social stratum, unlike earlier periods in the history of American English when they shared regional dialects with working-class and lowermiddle-class speakers." (Kretzschmar 2004, 55)

10

Christian

Mair

equated with the British standard, today the influence of Britain, while still felt, is declining. Conversely, American norms of usage have become enormously influential in recent decades. In addition to these two powerful foreign norms, local conventions of educated usage are forming which reveal some direct and many more indirect influences of the Creole substrate. With regard to Creoles and creolised Englishes, the traditional stigma attached to them has not been fully removed, but speakers have come to endorse their vernaculars as genuine expressions of their folk-cultural heritage to an increasing extent. In the words of Rickford and Traugott, attitudes towards Creoles and creolised English are "paradoxical", regarding them at the same time as "symbol of powerlessness and degeneracy" and as "symbol of solidarity and truth" (Rickford / Traugott 1985, 252).

3. Literary writers and the process of linguistic emancipation 3.1 The United States In the first few decades after independence American literary writers were generally not separatists - neither culturally nor linguistically. For example, the honour of being the pioneer of the "American" short story was bestowed on Washington Irving (1783-1859) by a literary critic only in the early 20 th century (Pattee 1966 [1923]). The author of "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" himself was blissfully unaware of this distinction and most likely saw himself as an author writing for a literary audience on both sides of the Atlantic. Of course, American subjects were given a prominent place by writers such as James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851), but the way they were being treated presented no challenge to the cultural and linguistic sensitivities of an educated British reading public. It was not until the latter half of the 19th century that a "vernacular" tradition (Lemke 2003 and forthcoming) began to gather momentum. A new generation of "local-color" writers emphasised the use of local and non-standard linguistic features as an appropriate stylistic strategy in the presentation of subject matter set in the newly opened up regions of the United States. Thereby, access of vernacular linguistic forms to a standard English literary text was regulated tightly - in stages of increasing difficulty. Nonstandard or distinctly local expressions found their way onto the written page most easily in passages of direct speech produced by fictional characters. The next step was extended first-person narrative by vernacular speakers. The final stage - obviously not reached in these early experiments - is represented by texts displaying unselfconscious use of vernacular American vocabulary, idiom and grammar in third-person narration.

English in North America and the Caribbean

11

The towering figure among a group of 19 th -century local-color writers, realists and regionalists who worked towards such linguistic and stylistic emancipation and the shaping of a distinctly American literary English is undoubtedly Mark Twain (1835-1910). His 1884 vernacular narrative The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was to be extremely influential both with regard to its general cultural message and its linguistic experimentation. In a well-known authorial preface to the book, Mark Twain emphasises the linguistic realism of the work and the richness of the linguistic resources at his disposal: In this book a number of dialects are used, to wit: the Missouri negro dialect; the extremest form of the backwoods Southwestern dialect; the ordinary "Pike County" dialect; and four modified varieties of this last. The shadings have not been done in a hap-hazard fashion, or by guesswork; but pains-takingly, and with the trustworthy guidance and support of personal familiarity with these several forms of speech. I make this explanation for the reason that without it many readers would suppose that all these characters were trying to talk alike and not succeeding. (Twain 1988 [1884], n. p. [lvii]) A reading of the work will show that this remark can be substantiated in the text and is only partly tongue-in-cheek. Note, though, that The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a first-person narrative, which - as has been suggested above - marks an intermediate stage in the full emancipation of a truly American literary idiom. The latter half of the 19th and the early 20 th century were periods not generally marked by such affirmative attitudes towards an American literary language. A good example of linguistic self-hatred among major American writers of the time is represented by Henry lames (1843-1916), who made the following observations about the linguistic culture of his native land: [...] the last of American idiosyncracies, the last by which we can be conceived as "represented" in the international concert of culture, would be the pretension to a tonestandard, to our wooing comparison with that of other nations. The French, the Germans, the Italians, the English perhaps in particular, and many other people, Occidental and Oriental, I surmise, not excluding the Turks and the Chinese, have for the symbol of education, of civility, a tone-standard; we alone flourish in undisturbed and - as in the sense of so many other of our connections - in something like sublime unconsciousness of any such possibility. (lames 1905, 12) Our national use of vocal sound, in men and women alike, is slovenly - an absolutely inexpert daub of unapplied tone. (lames 1905, 25) There are, you see, sounds of a mysterious and intrinsic meanness, and there are sounds of a mysterious intrinsic frankness and sweetness; and I think the recurrent note that I have indicated - fatherrr and motherrr and otherrr, waterrr and matterrr and

12

Christian

Mair

scatterrr, harrrd and barrrd, parrrt, starrrt, and (dreadful to say) arrrt (the repetition it is that drives home the ugliness), are signal specimens of what becomes of a custom of utterance out of which the principle of taste has dropped. (James 1905, 29) Let me linger only long enough to add a mention of the deplorable effect of the almost total loss, among innumerable speakers, of any approach to purity in the sound of the e. It is converted under this particularly ugly blight, into a u which is itself unaccompanied with any dignity of intention, which makes for mere ignoble thickness and turbidity. For choice, perhaps, "vurry," "Amurrica," "Philadulphia," "tullegram," "twuddy" (what becomes of "twenty" here is an ineptitude truly beyond any alliteration), and the like, descend deepest into the abyss. (James 1905, 31) The writers who eventually brought about the full emancipation from British norms of literary usage were the "modernists" coming to the fore in the 1920s and 1930s - writers such as Ernest Hemingway, acknowledging a profound debt to Mark Twain, William Faulkner or John Dos Passos. In the preface to his trilogy U. S.A. (1938), John Dos Passos (1896-1970) formulates a programmatic statement explaining his vision of what it means to be American. The vernacular, "the language of the people," emerges as the only tie that binds the whole nation together. The passage is worth quoting at length: Only the ears busy to catch the speech are not alone; the ears are caught tight, linked tight by the tendrils of phrased words, the turn of a joke, the singsong fade of a story, the gruff fall of a sentence; linking tendrils of speech twine through the city blocks, spread over pavements, grow out along broad parked avenues, speed with the trucks leaving on their long night runs over roaring highways, whisper down sandy byroads past wornout farms, joining up cities and fillingstations, roundhouses, steamboats, planes groping along airways; words call out on mountain pastures, drift slow down rivers widening to the sea and the hushed beaches. (Dos Passos 1938, vi) U. S. A. is the slice of a continent. U. S. A. is a group of holding companies, some aggregations of trade unions, a set of laws bound in calf, a radio network, a chain of moving picture theatres [sic], a column of stock quotations rubbed out and written in by a Western Union boy on a blackboard, a public library full of old newspapers and dogeared history books with protests scrawled on the margins in pencil. U. S. A. is the world's greatest rivervalley fringed with mountains and hills, U. S. A. is a set of bigmouthed officials with too many bankaccounts, U. S. A. is a lot of men buried in their uniforms in Arlington Cemetery. U. S. A. is the letters at the end of an address when you are away from home. But mostly U. S. A. is the speech of the people. (Dos Passos 1938, vii) The novels making up the trilogy - The 42nd Parallel (1930), Nineteen-Nineteen (1932) and The Big Money (1936) - display a broad range of techniques, from collage and montage to focalised narrative, which allows the author to experiment

English in North America and the Caribbean

13

with the full range of strategies for the representation of vernacular linguistic features in literary texts. A second wave of vernacularisation followed after World War II, when after the first experiments of the 1920s and 1930s, several ethnic writing traditions consolidated: African-American literature, Jewish-American literature, increasingly also Mexican-American and Asian-American writing have profited from the linguistic heritage of the respective communities and developed their own, sometimes highly successful variants of the American vernacular literary style. As Toni Morrison's achievement is the subject of a separate discussion in the present volume, ways of adapting and appropriating the African-American linguistic heritage in literature will be illustrated here by means of a brief passage from John Edgar Wideman's Homewood trilogy, which at one and the same time is an artistically successful contemporary extension of a long literary tradition and signals a distinctly and unmistakably American stylistic flavour for a contemporary international readership. The text stages the narrative voice of an elderly female vernacular speaker, who recounts her version of the history of Pittsburgh's Homewood section: They some the first settle here in Homewood. On Hamilton Avenue where Albion comes in. Trolley cars used to be on Hamilton but Charlie and Sybela Owens come here long before that. Most the city still be what you call North Side now. Old Allegheny then. Wasn't but a few families this side the river and hardly none at all out this way when Grandmother Owens come. Brought two children from slavery and had eighteen more that lived after they got here. Most born up on Bruston Hill after the other white men let Charlie know they didn't want one of their kind living with no black woman so Charlie he up and moved. Way up on Bruston Hill where nobody round trying to mind his business. Stead of killing them busybodies he took Grandmother Owens up there and that's the start of Homewood. Children and grandchildren coming down off that hill and settling. Then other Negroes and every other kind of people moving here because life was good and everybody welcome. They say the land Charlie owned on Hamilton was fixed. After he left, nothing grow or prosper there. They say Grandmother Owens cursed it and Charlie warned all them white folks not to touch his land. He said he would go to keep peace but nobody better not set a foot on the land he left behind. That spiteful piece of property been the downfall of so many I done forgot half the troubles come to people try to live there [...] And Mother Bess said Preach. Said Tell the truth. (Wideman 1992, 165f.)

3.2

Canada

The course of evolution which Canadian English was going to take was decisively shaped by an exodus of "Loyalist" settlers from the newly independent United States in the late 18th century, and in spite of Canada's remaining part of the British Empire and, subsequently, the Commonwealth of Nations, Canadian

14

Christian

Mair

English is a solidly North American dialect, sharing with the US standard such features as the presence of post-vocalic Irl, the "broad" a and the "flapping" of intervocalic IM. It takes fairly delicate phonetic analysis to detect Canadian features of pronunciation (such as "Canadian Raising" 6 ). There has been and still remains some British influence in spelling, but British conventions have left few marks on Canadian vocabulary, grammar and idiom. Canada's history of gradual and smooth political emancipation from Britain ensured that voices advocating cultural and linguistic self-reliance remained less strident than the more extreme spectrum of comparable U. S. ones. In addition, Canadian nationalism obviously found itself up against two "others" - the transatlantic European one on the one hand and the powerful neighbour to the South on the other, which latterly has been perceived to be the bigger threat. What this has meant for Canadian literature in English has been explored in Margaret Atwood's classic critical study Survival (1972). Numerous passages from Atwood's own works can be cited to show that the topic has not only appealed to her at the level of literary interpretation and historiography but also permeates her creative writing. Compare, for example, the following passage from her novel Surfacing, which encapsulates within the space of a few paragraphs several faultlines of the complex ethnolinguistic battles of the region: The woman looks at me, inquisitive but not smiling, and the two men still in Elvis Presley haircuts, duck's ass at the back and greased pompadours curving out over their foreheads, stop talking and look at me; they keep their elbows on the counter. I hesitate: maybe the tradition has changed, maybe they no longer speak English. "Avez-vous du viande hache?" I ask her, blushing because of my accent. She grins and then the two men grin also, not at me but at each other. I see I've made a mistake, I should have pretended to be an American. "Amburger, oh yes we have lots. How much?" she asks, adding the final Η carelessly to show she can if she feels like it. This is border country. "A pound, no two pounds," I say, blushing even more because I've been so easily discovered, they're making fun of me and I have no way of letting them know I share the joke. Also I agree with them, if you live in a place you should speak the language. But this isn't where I lived. She hacks with a cleaver at a cube of frozen meat, weighs it. "Doo leevers," she says, mimicking my school accent. (Atwood 1973 [1972], 27f.)

The liberal Anglo-Canadian narrator is caught in a double bind. In full sympathy with French Canadians' quest for linguistic and cultural rights, she wants to accommodate, by speaking her - atrocious - French. The French shop assistant

6

Which manifests itself in a more central first element of the diphthongs /ai/ and /ao/ when they occur before voiceless consonants, so that the diphthongs pronounced in rice and bout would sound different from the ones in rise and loud. This feature is not a perfect discriminator of Canadian English as it is variably used within Canada, and used by some elsewhere.

English in North America and the Caribbean

15

proves the more expert linguist, commanding all the options, from not choosing to speak English via translating the narrator's grammatically incorrect viande hache into French-accented 'amburger to speaking plain Canadian English. The obvious way out - to pretend that she is from the United States (and hence not supposed to speak a foreign language) - is an choice foreclosed to a Canadian looking for her roots. 3.3 T h e Caribbean If the story of Canadian linguistic and cultural emancipation from Britain presents a less agonistic and strident version than that of the United States, the Caribbean takes us to the other extreme. The history of the Caribbean has been a painful one for most of the time, characterised by fragmentation, discontinuity, disruption and destruction of traditions which has very often led to bizarre and unexpected types of forced cultural contact. Sometimes, this suffering released creative energies, which manifested themselves in various types of syncretism, the hybridisation and fusion of cultures. This double nature of the Caribbean experience is well described by the American anthropologist James Clifford: [Caribbean history] is a history of degradation, mimicry, violence, and blocked possibilities. It is also rebellious, syncretic, and creative. (Clifford 1988, 15)

"Rebellious, syncretic, and creative" would seem to be apt adjectives to describe the creole languages of the region, which are, of course, an essential part of its Afro-Caribbean folk-cultural heritage. However, history equally explains why these very Creoles were held in a degree of contempt by outsiders and to some extent even by their own speakers that goes far beyond the condescension the educated elites of Britain meted out to colonial settler varieties.7 It is thus not an exaggeration to say that the language issue has been at the very heart of English-language writing from the Caribbean from the very start. As for elite writing - that is literary works produced for educated readers locally and internationally and published through the usual channels - the Afro-Caribbean linguistic heritage was admitted into the texts in a long and gradual process, starting with careful and highly stylised experiments in the first half of the 20th century and broadening into a more daring and variegated current in the memorable creative flowering that marked the final years of the colonial period in the 1950s and early 1960s. The Nobel prizes awarded to Derek Walcott in 1992 7

Note that this condescension is evident primarily in later stages of development, for example when the colonial population shows signs of restiveness and, as in the case of the United States, finally secedes from the mother country. Earlier comments often tend to praise settler communities and their children for preserving their linguistic heritage in the wilderness.

16

Christian

Mair

and to V. S. Naipaul in 2001 bear witness to the fact that from small beginnings West Indian writing in English has now developed a truly global reach. Fragmentation is a cultural hallmark of the postcolonial Caribbean. The major island nations - Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Jamaica share the common heritage of neo-African New World slavery-based plantation societies to a greater or lesser extent, but apart from that each has a unique linguistic, social, cultural, political and demographic history. In the colonial period it was only the European cultural heritage of the region which was valued. Caribbean societies tended to be described negatively, in terms of their alleged cultural deficits, because the Afro-Caribbean and Creole culture remained marginalised. In the British West Indies, a pioneer in the recovery of the AfroCaribbean and Creole heritage was Barbadian historian, writer and philosopher Edward Kamau Brathwaite (Brathwaite 1971). To him we owe one of the profoundest philosophical meditations on what an appropriate literary idiom for the Caribbean might look like: History of the Voice: the Development of Nation Language in Anglophone Caribbean Poetry (1984). "Nation language" was defined vaguely but very appropriately, to cover both Creole and Creolised English put to literary use and standard English adapted to Caribbean context. Today, the status and function of Creoles and Creolised English in literary writing have become standard topics of academic investigation, with a recent burst of interesting work at the intersection of linguistics and literary and cultural studies (cf. e.g. Lalla 2005; Mühleisen 2002, 2005). Alongside this written tradition of elite writing, there is another, more popular and orally based current of creativity. Even before World War II, at a time when Creoles and creolised English had not yet become functional in the postcolonial struggle for self-definition and identity and were held out of the public domain, Jamaicans of all social backgrounds enjoyed listening to Louise Bennett's satirical poetry. Behind the genial facade of the folk poet there was a sophisticated commentator of contemporary social trends. Thirty years later, in the mid 1970s, one current of this local vernacular tradition erupted on the international pop-cultural scene in the wake of reggae musician Bob Marley's phenomenal success as a performer and an ideologue of the African diaspora.8 A strong Caribbean diaspora in Britain, the US and Canada has since added focal points from which a widening current of linguistic and cultural influence has emanated. Today, artists and writers from the region generally fall into three groups, depending on the strategies that they have developed to cope with its complex cultural heritage. 8

Previously, international audiences had been exposed to watered-down versions of Caribbean calypso, for example by performers such as Harry Belafonte, but in comparison to the impact of reggae these were timid beginnings.

English in North America and the

Caribbean

17

3.3.1 The globalisation of the vernacular The pioneer in this line is probably Bob Marley, icon of reggae and the first truly global superstar from the Third World. In the wake of reggae, Jamaican dancehall, dub poetry and other Caribbean styles got a global hearing. If one recalls that many of the pioneers of US rap and hip-hop, such as, for example, Grandmaster Flash, were of Caribbean ancestry, one might also include these African-American styles from the US in this list. The globalisation of aspects of Afro-Caribbean folk culture, of marginalised religions such as Rastafarianism, and - last but not least - of Caribbean Creole languages has been strikingly successful - to the extent that dreadlocks have become one standard hairstyle option for German adolescents and Jamaican Creole elements have entered white British youngsters' adolescent slang (cf. Rampton 1995). This success has come at a price, however. Much of the cultural content has been diluted along the way, and the vernacular poetry produced by reggae artists has not been considered prizeworthy by the Nobel committee. If reggae and its successor traditions provide the necessary background for an understanding of this tradition of vernacular Caribbean performance poetry, a survey of the development of Caribbean literary idioms must place the major emphasis on work which has appeared in print. Prominent dub poets who have sometimes taken this route to reach their audiences include Mikey Smith, Mutabaruka and - based in the Black British community - Linton Kwesi Johnson and Benjamin Zephaniah. 9 Michael ('Mikey') Smith (1954-1983) is the author of "Me cyaan believe it," an early classic of the genre. W e have recordings of powerful performances 10 and there is a printed version which shows that at least part of the effect survives the transfer into the written medium: ME CYAAN BELIEVE IT Me seh me cyaan believe it me seh me cyaan believe it Room dem a rent me apply widin but as me go een cockroach rat an scorpion also come een Waan good nose haffi run 9

10

Readers interested in further information on the history of the Afro-Caribbean performance tradition and its place in global youth culture are referred to works such as Bader 1988, Cooper 1995, Dorsey 2000 or Habekost 1993. For example on the 1982 LP Mi Cyaan Believe It - London: Island Records IL PS 9717.

18

Christian

but me naw go siddung pon high wall like Humpty Dumpty me a face me reality One little bwoy come blow im horn an me look pon im wid scorn an me realize how me five bwoy-picni was a victim of de trick dem call partisan politricks an me ban me belly an me bawl an me ban me belly an me bawl Lawd me cyaan believe it me seh me cyaan believe it

[...] Lawd me see some blackbud livin inna one buildin but no rent no pay so dem cyaan stay Lawd de oppress an de dispossess cyaan get no res What nex? Teck a trip from Kingston to Jamaica Teck twelve from a dozen an me see me mumma in heaven Madhouse! Madhouse! Me seh me cyaan believe it me seh me cyaan believe it Yuh believe it? How yuh fi believe it when yuh laugh an yuh blind yuh eye to it? But me know yuh believe it Lawwwwwwwwd me know yuh believe it (Smith 1986, 13-15)

Mair

English in North America and the Caribbean

19

3.3.2 The rejection of the vernacular: V. S. Naipaul The recent history of the Caribbean has been characterised by emigration, the mass emigration of manual labourers and the emigration of highly educated individuals who felt that the region did not afford them the opportunity to realise their full potential. One of these literary emigres is Vidiadhar Surajprasad [V. S.]. Naipaul. In his work, Naipaul emphasises the negative aspects of the Caribbean's colonial heritage. He has not only emigrated physically, like many other Caribbean writers, but also intellectually and emotionally. In particular, he refuses to be part of a third-world or post-colonial movement of cultural liberation and emancipation. In his view, slavery casts a long shadow, draining the human spirit even today and stifling creativity: So many things in these West Indian territories, I now began to see, speak of slavery. There is slavery in the vegetation. In the sugarcane brought by Columbus on that second voyage when, to Queen Isabella's fury, he proposed the enslavement of the Amerindians. In the breadfruit, cheap slave food, three hundred trees of which were taken to St. Vincent by Captain Bligh in 1793 and sold for a thousand pounds four years after a similar venture had been frustrated by the Bounty mutiny. And just as in the barren British Guiana savannah lands a clump of cashew trees marks the site of an Amerindian village, so in lamaica a clump of star-apple trees marks the site of a slave provision ground. (Trinidad, with only forty years of slavery, has proportionately far fewer star-apple trees than lamaica.) There is slavery in the food, in the saltfish still beloved by the islanders. Slavery in the absence of family life, in the laughter in the cinema films of German concentration camps, the fondness for terms of racial abuse, in the physical brutality of strong to weak. Nowhere in the world are children beaten as savagely as in the West Indies. (Naipaul 1962, 230f.)

It is against observations such as these that we have to judge Naipaul's oftenquoted verdict: History is built around achievement and creation; and nothing was created in the West Indies. (Naipaul 1962, 29)

Rejecting one's past in this way comes at a price. Naipaul is a very controversial figure in his native Trinidad. On the other hand, it has not prevented him being awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. 3.3.3 The fusion of the vernacular and the elite traditions in literature: Derek Walcott Derek Walcott, the poet and dramatist from St. Lucia, is part of a wave of literary creativity that emanated from the Caribbean in the latter half of the 20th century. Other Anglophone writers of international standing include Edward Brathwaite from

20

Christian

Mair

Barbados, Trinidad-born Samuel Selvon (1923-1994), and of course - in spite of his antagonistic stance towards his native region - V. S. Naipaul. The wave is by no means confined to the Anglophone Caribbean. It is also an issue in the works of Maryse Conde, Aime Cesaire or Patrick Chamoiseau (see Seiler and Poll in this volume), writers from the French Antilles, and one should not forget that one of the roots of Latin American "magical realism" is in the pockets of Creole culture on the Latin American mainland, for example in Colombia's Atlantic seaboard, the region around Aracataca, the birthplace of another Nobel Laureate, Gabriel Garcia Märquez. Derek Walcott's project is to celebrate the Afro-Caribbean folk-heritage of the Caribbean by showing how it might be integrated into world-literature and thus reconciling the native and colonial traditions. Where Naipaul sees cultural disaster, he celebrates survival: Deprived of their original language, the captured and indentured tribes create their own, accepting and secreting fragments of an old epic vocabulary from Asia and from Africa, but to an ancestral and ecstatic rhythm in the blood that cannot be subdued by slavery or indenture [...]. The stripped man is driven back to that self-astonishing elemental force, his mind. That is the basis of the Antillean experience, this shipwreck of fragments, these echoes, these shards of a huge tribal vocabulary, these partially remembered customs, and they are not decayed but strong. They survived the Middle Passage and the Fatel Rozack, the ship that carried the first indentured Indians from Madras to the canefields [...], that carried the chained Cromwellian convict and the Sephardic lew, the Chinese grocer and the Lebanese merchant selling cloth samples on his bicycle. And here they are all, in a single Caribbean city, Port of Spain, the sum of history, Froude's 'non-people.' A downtown babel of shop signs and streets, mongrelized, polyglot, a ferment without a history, like heaven. Because that is what such a city is, in the New World, a writer's heaven. (Walcott 1992, 28) This is the visible poetry of the Antilles, then. Survival. (Walcott 1992, 30)

In his poetry, Walcott shows himself to be a master in the handling of the "double voice." Most of his works can be read against the "global" background of the British and European literary canon, and such readings make sense. But his works also resonate with allusions to the "local" Afro-Caribbean folk-heritage. A full appreciation of his work requires the reader to be alert and sensitive to both dimensions. Thus the Creole cultural influence on the work goes far beyond the modest overt traces of the Creole dialect in Walcott's literary idiom. In fact, he defines himself as the literary voice of a people that have been creolised - in language, religion, music and their arts. I'm just a red nigger who love the sea, I had a sound colonial education,

English in North America and the Caribbean

21

I have Dutch, nigger, and English in me, and either I ' m nobody, or I ' m a nation. (from: "The Schooner 'Flight'" in: Walcott 1986, 346)

Note that this text is at the same time distinctly local in tone and remains easily intelligible to English-speaking readers everywhere in the world. The absence of the third-person singular inflection on the verb love, a grammatical creolism, does not constitute a very obvious and obtrusive code-switch, and the use of the taboo epithet nigger by the lyrical persona is an example of a universal communicative strategy conscious re-appropriation of terms of abuse by a marginalised group to foster ingroup solidarity. On the other hand, it deserves to be pointed out that the reader unaware with the meaning and use of the expression red nigger in the Caribbean does lose some important insight. The phrase is labelled as "anti-formal and derogatory" and defined as follows in Allsopp's Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage: A person of African descent with a yellowish skin and very tough hair, often one whose parents are both the immediate offspring of black and white parents. And what make her precious so? That fading yellow red-nigger skin? Cause she ain't no spring chicken again [...] The term is used as a strong insult usufally] by dark-skinned Black people. (Allsopp 1996, 470)

In his work, Derek Walcott has steered clear of two dangers confronting the postcolonial literary writer. First, he has not allowed the awesome literary heritage of Europe to intimidate him to the point that he would be reduced to unoriginal imitation. But neither has he thrown it overboard and turned into a literary activist sacrificing universal appeal to local concerns. He is a poet from the Caribbean, but not a folklorist. He writes in English rather than in the Creole dialect, but both in its form and its rhetoric the English he uses is unmistakable. In his work he has, in the words of the chairman of the Nobel Selection Committee, given a literary voice to the Caribbean which can be heard - and understood - everywhere.

4. Conclusion The history of English in North America and the Caribbean is part of a process in which a European language has been globalised and become pluricentric. The fact that there are now several co-existing standards of English and that several more are emerging should not be interpreted as an easy "democracy of voices" that has superseded the oppressive linguistic regime of the colonial period. The fact that there are now many standards does not mean that they are all equally prestigious or have an equal reach. The present paper provides ample illustration of this truth

22

Christian

Mair

in describing three very different ex-colonial varieties of English: one, American English, which has become the globally dominant standard, and two others, namely Canadian English and Caribbean English, which are still emerging, have a more restricted geographical reach and are still being shaped by often conflicting pressures exerted by British, American and local forces. If there is one over-arching generalisation emerging from the study of the role of literary writers in these processes, it is that successful literary writing in such situations thrives not when writers indulge in sterile attempts to emulate a European literary canon, but when they become sensitive to the sociolinguistic richness of their community and use this resource in order to fashion a new and truly American literary language.

5. References Algeo, John (ed.) (2001): The Cambridge history of the English language. Vol. 6: English in North America. Cambridge: CUP. Allsopp, Richard (1996): Dictionary of Caribbean English usage. Oxford: OUP. Atwood, Margaret (1972): Survival: a thematic guide to Canadian literature. Toronto: Anansi. Atwood, Margaret (1973 [1972]): Surfacing. Don Mills. Ontario: PaperJacks. Bader, Stasa (1988): Worte wie Feuer: Dance Hall-Dichtung in Jamaika und England. Neustadt: Schwinn. Berg, Walter B r u n o / M a i r , Christian (1999): "Kreol!" Sprachliche und kulturelle Grenzgänge in Argentinien und in der Karibik. In: Fludernik, Monika / Gehrke, Hans-Joachim (eds.): Grenzgänger zwischen Kulturen. Identitäten und Alteritäten 1. Würzburg: Ergon, 447^160. Brathwaite, Edward Kamau (1971): The development of Creole Society in Jamaica 1770-1820. Oxford: Clarendon. Brathwaite, Edward Kamau (1984): History of the voice: development of nation language in Anglophone Caribbean poetry. London: New Beacon Books. Clifford, James (1988): The Predicament of culture: twentieth-century ethnography, literature and art. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Cooper, Carolyn (1995): Noises in the blood: orality, gender and the 'vulgar' body of Jamaican popular culture. Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press. Devonish, Hubert (1986): Language and liberation: Creole language politics in the Caribbean. London: Karia. Dorsey, Brian (2000): Spirituality, sensuality, literality: blues, jazz, and rap as music and poetry. Wien: Braumüller. Dos Passos, John (1938): U. S. Α. New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace & Co. Habekost, Christian (1993): Verbal riddim: the politics and aesthetics of African-Caribbean dub poetry. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Holm, John A. (1994): English in the Caribbean. In: Burchfield, Robert (ed.): The Cambridge history of the English language. Vol. V: English in Britain and overseas. Cambridge: CUP, 328-381. James, Henry (1905): The Question of Our Speech / The Lesson of Balzac: Two Lectures. Boston, MA, and New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin. Krapp, George Philip (1969 [1919]): The pronunciation of standard English in America. New York: AMS Reprints. Kretzschmar, William A. (2004): Regional dialects. In: Finegan, Edward A. / Rickford, John R. (eds.): Language in the USA: Themes for the 21st Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 39-57.

English in North America and the Caribbean

23

Lalla, Barbara (2005): Creole and respec' in the development of Jamaican literary discourse. In: Journal of Pidgin and Creole Studies 20, 53-84. Lemke, Sieglinde (2003): Theories of American culture in the name of the vernacular. In: REAL: The Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature 19, 155-174. Lemke, Sieglinde (forthcoming): The Enigma of the Vernacular: The Vernacular Tradition in American Literature Exemplified by Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Their Eyes Were Watching God, and So Far From God. Morris, Mervyn (1999): Is English we speaking and other essays. Kingston: Ian Randle. Mühleisen, Susanne (2002): Creole discourse: exploring prestige formation and change across Caribbean English-lexicon Creoles. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Mühleisen, Susanne (2005): Introduction: Creole languages in Creole literatures - status and standardization. In: Journal of Pidgin and Creole Studies 20, 1-14. Muysken, Pieter / Smith, Norval (eds.) (1986): Substrata versus universals in Creole genesis. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Naipaul, V[idiadhar] S[urajprasad] (1962): The Middle Passage. London: Deutsch. Pattee, Fred Lewis (1966 [1923]): The development of the American short story: an historical survey. New York: Biblo & Tannen. Rampton, Ben (1995): Crossing: language and ethnicity among adolescents. London: Longman. Rickford, John R. / Traugott, Elizabeth Closs (1985): Symbol of powerlessness and degeneracy, or symbol of solidarity and truth? Paradoxical attitudes towards pidgins and Creoles. In: Greenbaum, Sidney (ed.): The English language today. Oxford: Pergamon, 252-261. Smith, Michael (1986): It a come: poems by Michael Smith, ed. Mervyn Morris. London: Race Today. Twain, Mark (1988 [1884]): The works of Mark Twain. Vol. 8: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press. Upton, Clive / Kretzschmar, William A. / Konopka, Rafal (2001): The Oxford dictionary of pronunciation for current English. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Walcott, Derek (1986): Collected poems 1948-1984. London: Faber & Faber. Walcott, Derek (1993): The Antilles: fragments of epic memory [The Nobel Lecture]. In: New Republic 28 Dec. 1992, 2832. Book publication 1993: New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Webster, Noah (1951 [1789]: Dissertations on the English language. Gainesville, FL: Scholars' Facsimiles and Reprints. Wideman, John Edgar (1992): The Homewood books. Pittsburgh, PA: Pittsburgh UP. Williams, Raymond (1981): The Long Revolution. London: Chatto & Windus.

Holger Kersten University of Magdeburg (Germany)

"I Know Grammar by Ear Only": Mark Twain and the Norms of American Literature

In der Literaturgeschichte der USA gilt Mark Twains Buch Adventures of Huckleberry Finn als ein wichtiger Wendepunkt: Die durchgehende Verwendung einer nonstandardsprachlichen Variante des Englischen und die damit verbundene Einführung einer neuen Erzählperspektive stellte eine Abkehr von der bis dahin gepflegten Literatursprache dar und leitete nach Ansicht von Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner und zahlreichen Literaturkritikern den Beginn der modernen amerikanischen Literatur ein. In einem Blick auf ausgewählte Aspekte im literarischen Schaffen von Mark Twain verdeutlicht der folgende Beitrag, dass sich die besondere Form des Buches nicht schlagartig einstellte, sondern sich in einem über Jahrzehnte andauernden Dialog mit den vielfältigen Faktoren seines kulturellen Umfeldes vollzog, unter denen bestehende Traditionslinien und zeitgenössische Entwicklungen eine ebenso bedeutsame Rolle spielten wie Twains Faszination für dialektgefärbte Sprache.

Few things would have surprised Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910) more than to find himself officially recognized as an innovator, a creator of a new norm in American writing. He was a prolific writer of novels, travelogues, short stories, essays, as well as a lecturer and a performer who became a national celebrity and the best-known American of his generation (Elliot 1988, 635). But throughout his career, the man whom America and the world knew as "Mark Twain" felt undervalued by a genteel literary culture, whose approval he both sought and disdained. His fame depended almost exclusively on his reputation as America's premier humorist, a distinction which earned him little more than the kindly condescension from America's cultural elite. The fact that he was considered to be "the funniest man in the English-speaking world" (Elliot 1988, 635) prevented him from achieving among his contemporaries the recognition one would expect for the man who was, as H. L. Mencken wrote as early as 1913, "the true father of our national literature, the first genuinely American artist of the blood royal"

26

Holger

Kersten

(Mencken 1985, 69-70). Although he solicited the advice and professional support of William Dean Howells, the influential editor, writer, and arbiter of literary taste in late nineteenth-century America, he ultimately resigned himself to the verdict of his contemporaries and decided to make a virtue out of being a "popular" writer, a humorist. "I have never tried, in even one single little instance, to help cultivate the cultivated classes," he wrote in 1889, "I was not equipped for it either by native gifts or training. And I never had any ambition in that direction, but always hunted for bigger game - the masses" (Neider 1999, 202). As modern literary histories show, Mark Twain finally did make his entry into the pantheon of American letters. Numerous critics have celebrated Twain's achievement as a milestone in American literary history. "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn," Ernest Hemingway famously wrote, "All American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since" (Hemingway 1935, 22). From that time on, the book has been assigned so much significance in American culture that it has become "an idol" (Arac 1998, 16). When Mark Twain entered America's literary scene in the 1860's, the ideas about literature and the terms by which it was judged were still dominated by English standards (Elliot 1988, 467—468) although Boston had become the literary capital of the republic. Here a group of highly respected writers represented the core elements of a literary culture which valued the traditional high arts and letters, understood its own creations as an extension of the European cultural world, and established this sense of value as a normative model throughout American society (Elliot 1988, 471). There was a clear sense of what were appropriate topics and it was equally clear that only a polished style of language was acceptable. The cultural prestige which accompanied the realm of "high" literature represented by Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Greenleaf Whittier, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and other "Boston Brahmins" left its mark on the contemporary readership who learned to accept the values of the literary establishment (Elliot 1988, 472). Like his fellow countrymen, Twain was aware of the rules that governed the field of literature proper, and, for a significant time of his writing career, he strove to become a part of it by seeking the approval of those whom he considered to be more in touch with the rules of propriety than he himself. He frequently invited his wife and even his children to comment on his manuscripts, and William Dean Howells was his lifelong literary advisor who, from 1875 on, "scrutinized all Twain's book manuscripts" (Blair 1962, 357; cf. also Spiller 1948, 925). Keenly aware that certain topics, themes, and ways of expression were closed to him by the strict standards of the Victorian conception of literature, Twain adhered to the rules and seemed pleased when his efforts found favor with the literary establishment. In response to Howells's friendly review of Roughing It

"I Know Grammar by Ear Only "

27

Twain described himself "as uplifted and reassured [...] as a mother who has given birth to a white baby when she was awfully afraid it was going to be a mulatto" (Anderson 1968, 9). The quest for genteel approval, however, had not completely erased in him the knowledge that human life offered more subjects than were permissible in the cultural climate in which he lived. In A Tramp Abroad, he openly denounced the double standard that allowed the visual arts to depict nudity, violence, and human suffering whereas a literary artist would be severely censured for such "grossness and coarseness." "Art retains her privileges, literature has lost hers," Twain concluded, "Somebody else may cipher out the whys and the wherefores and the consistencies of it - I haven't got time" (Twain 1996c, 579). Here, as in other matters of his character, Twain's true position is difficult to determine. As much as he may have aspired to being admitted into the inner circle of American letters, he simultaneously felt a strong opposition to the "distorting effect of conventional notions of propriety on the individual's responses to experience" (Smith 1974, 7). Occasionally Twain decided to venture far beyond the limits set by "a sad, sad false delicacy" which, as he said in a letter to Howells, robbed literature of one of the "best things" in literature: "obscene stories" (Anderson 1968, 101). Two unusual texts in the Twain canon, "1601" - a bawdy dialog dealing with the indelicacies of Elizabethan times - and a speech entitled "Some Thoughts on the Science of Onanism," testify to the fact that he found opportunities to indulge privately in the forbidden topics. Since these texts never circulated beyond a small groups of friends, they obviously had no impact on mainstream literature. In the stories and novels that established him as a writer of a national stature, however, he became a major voice of the new literature of the American West which began to dissociate itself from the European cultural tradition and from the polite culture of the East. It discovered and described a new region and its people, a new social order, exotic scenery, and a host of colorful characters. In addition to the new topics and themes it also introduced the perspective of the common people and their natural voice. It was characterized by an increasingly self-confident attitude about America and an irreverence toward the cultural prestige associated with Europe, two states of mind exemplified in Twain's early travelogues The Innocents Abroad (1869) and Roughing It (1872). With the growing popularity of the sketches and stories coming from the "local color" writers, a national audience began to relish the unique taste of a language that consciously moved away from the prevailing stylistic conventions. The appeal of the fresh new idiom coming from beyond the established speechways of the East may also have been stimulated by the nationalistic concerns inherent in the longstanding and mortifying debate about the status of the English language in America. For too long Americans had had to contend with the condescending view that their English was a defective version, a substandard dialect of the English language as

28

Holger

Kersten

spoken in England. As late as 1870, American writers felt the need to argue that "the English spoken and written in the United States was at least as good as that spoken and written in England" (Mencken 1937, 165). In Mark Twain's mind there was no reason for Americans to feel inferior to English writers. "Nobody writes a finer & purer English than Motley[,] Howells, Hawthorne & Holmes," he declared in 1879 (Anderson 1975, 348). He took an active interest in matters of language and style, "had a healthy respect for the art of writing, and he worked hard to master it" (Krause 1959, 169), although, in official statements, he often tried to downplay his own efforts and ambitions as a "literary" writer by claiming that writing for him was "totally automatic and unconscious" (Krause 1959, 171). In the matter of word choice, for example, he tolerated no sloppiness. "The difference between the almost right word & the right word is really a large matter," he insisted, "it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning" (Harnsberger 1972, 669). Spelling was a natural gift which he possessed but for which he claimed no praise. Grammar, on the other hand, was for him something nobody could fully master. "I have never seen a book which had no grammatical defects in it," he stated, and this observation led him to conclude "that all people have my infirmity, and are afflicted with an inborn inability to feel or mind certain sorts of grammatical particularities" (Twain 1880, 850). This realization was no reason for concern to the writer since he firmly believed that language was meant to be "a flexible tool, not as a set of rules to be slavishly followed" (Lowenherz 1958, 70). His allegiance was not to the authority of school grammars, the dictionary, or the opinions of the language purists who raised their voices in the leading magazines of the era. Twain believed that language was a human creation and that "the talk shall sound like talk" (Twain 1996a, 95). For this reason it was no great feat to admit in his autobiography that he knew "grammar by ear only, not by note, not by the rules" (quoted in Hoben 1956, 166). As many Twain scholars have pointed out, the "ear" is indeed a key to an understanding of Mark Twain's art. Throughout his life he experienced and participated first-hand in oral traditions (Zlatic 2005, 214) and thereby learned to appreciate the value of the spoken word. With "the most sensitive ear devoted to American speech" he ultimately succeeded in rendering the spoken dialects he employed in his fiction with "an infinite subtlety" (DeVoto 1951,266, 291). Naturalness and authenticity were his guidelines and his goals and he did not tolerate it when writers violated the rules that he held sacred. In his well-known assault on "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses" he argued strongly for, among other things, a "simple and straightforward style," "the right word, not its second cousin," and "that talk shall sound like human talk, and be such talk as human beings would be likely to talk in the given circumstances, and have a discoverable meaning, also a discoverable purpose, and a show of relevancy" (Twain 1996a, 95, 97). The notion that the literary representation of a speech variety should be

"I Know Grammar by Ear Only "

29

true to life is also at the heart of the criticism directed against Bret Harte. "No human being, living or dead, ever had experience of the dialect which he puts into his people's mouths," he wrote with reference to the dialect in Harte's stories from the California gold fields. According to Twain, "'dialect' writing looks simple and easy" but in truth it is "exceedingly difficult" and therefore "has rarely been well done" (Twain 1880, 850-851). Mark Twain himself began early to practice the use of a written dialect and he found many opportunities to capture the sounds that fascinated him and transfer them to the printed page. His method was to rehearse his writing practice by returning to the oral origin of the words: "I amend dialect stuff by talking and talking and talking till it sounds right," he wrote in 1876 (Wagenknecht 1961, 46). Examples for the use of nonstandard language can already be found in the earliest texts that Twain wrote. "A Gallant Fireman" and "The Dandy Frightening the Squatter," his two first known sketches (Branch 1979, 62, 64-65) feature instances of nonstandard speech as attempts to render realistically the language varieties of the characters involved. In 1856, he began a series of three fictitious travel letters written by a rural character named "Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass (Twain 1928). They represent a first sustained effort to write exclusively in a vernacular voice. From his childhood days, Twain's world had been ringing with its colorful regional dialects and the speech of the slaves in his hometown and its neighborhood. When he became a steamboat pilot, opportunities for absorbing even more speech varieties multiplied as he "became personally and familiarly acquainted with all the different types of human nature" (Twain 1996b, 217). With his move to the Far West in 1861, his exposure to the variability of the English language intensified once more. Virginia City, Nevada's capital of the gold and silver rush era of the 1860s, was a place brimming with people from various regional and national backgrounds. This combination, the narrator in Roughing It (1872) explained, "made the slang of Nevada the richest and the most infinitely varied and copious that had ever existed anywhere in the world" (Twain 1993, 309). The term "slang," in this context, draws attention to its oral character and, perhaps unexpectedly, to its literary potential. As defined by a contemporary periodical article, "slang" is "the spontaneous outburst of the thought-power become vocal" and "[i]t is spoken poetry, entirely dependent for its effect upon comparison and metaphor, and replete with invention - which is a truer test of song than rhyme or metre" (Caldwell 1870, 187). Both aspects obviously resonated with Twain who had used the vernacular he heard in the California gold fields to create "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" (1865), the sketch which gave him his first nationwide exposure and initiated his career as a literary writer. The tale itself, a frame story which contrasts a literate Easterner with a colloquial Western character, was not entirely original and therefore Twain's achievement did not lie in the subject matter. Instead, critics have

30

Holger

Kersten

pointed to the author's masterful transformation of an oral tale to the printed page which resulted from the combination of two narrators, one using conventional language in the narrative frame, the other speaking in his vernacular voice throughout the principal part of the story. The basic ingredients for the narrative were provided by the tradition of Southwestern Humor which had its roots in the 1830s and remained popular until the second half of the 1860s (Blair 1960, 62). In fact, much of this literature owed its existence to the art of oral story-telling and was a deliberate attempt to reproduce its effects in written form (Blair 1960, 70). Since it often employed a framework technique in order to set forth a mock oral tale, regional or local language forms had an important role to play. In their endeavor to capture the life of their region, Western writers spurned old forms and rules and created "a language that deliberately flouted polite conventions" (Lynn 1960, 31-32). Representative examples became widely available in the popular Crockett Almanacs (1835-1856) which publicized the outrageous adventures of their hero in the vernacular of the people, a language which was to become "the voice of a new America, welling up into the national literature from below" (Lynn 1960, 45). Other prominent and influential representatives of this type of literature were A . B . Longstreet's Georgia Scenes (1835) and Johnson J. Hooper's Some Adventures of Capt. Simon Suggs (1845). Their stories, and those of their contemporaries and successors, often capitalized on the juxtaposition of a genteel narrator and a vernacular character in which the resulting contrasts in manner and speech was intended "to suggest cultural absurdities in one or the other or both" (Baender 1963, 193). In "Jumping Frog," Twain adapted the formula developed by the Southwestern Humorists for his own purposes by stripping the exuberant language of his predecessors of its excess to create a literary dialect which clearly conveyed to the reader a sense of difference from the standard and yet remained sufficiently easy to read. At the same time, his adaptations liberated the vernacular from the social stigma it bore in the Southwestern tales and in doing so reversed the older tradition (Cox 1966, 27). As Kenneth Lynn has observed, in this tale "it is the vernacular, not the polite style, which 'teaches a lesson'" (Lynn 1960, 146). Once Mark Twain had discovered the literary potential of a language that was not bound by the rules of linguistic convention, his interest in it expanded. While he continued to revise the dialect of his "Jumping Frog" for a new edition in the first half of the 1870s (Branch 1981, 670-671), he also began to experiment with renditions of African American speech with which he had been familiar since his childhood days in Hannibal. His encounters with blacks of all ages in his hometown and, especially, on the farm of his Uncle John Quarles, put him in touch with speech sounds and speech habits, folk tales, legends, and songs popular in the African American community (Paine 1912, 15-18; Fishkin 1993, 5-7). In 1874, Twain used the characteristic idiom of the African Americans for

"I Know Grammar by Ear Only "

31

the first time in two stories which were published almost simultaneously - "A True Story," in the Atlantic Monthly, and "Sociable Jimmy," in the New York Times. Both stories begin with a short introductory passage given to a narrator's voice in standard English before the major part is handed over to the vernacular characters "Aunt Rachel" and "Jimmy." "A True Story" was Twain's first contribution to the prestigious Atlantic Monthly and it met with an enthusiastic reception from its editor, William Dean Howells, who pronounced it to be "extremely good" and especially praised its linguistic dimension by calling it "the best and reallest kind of black talk" (Anderson 1968, 21). Published before similar attempts to render the speech of African Americans were made by Albion Tourgee, George Washington Cable, Joel Chandler Harris and others, the linguistic form of the story was surely an innovation (Fishkin 1993, 96-97). In the manner of a conscientious literary craftsman, Twain continued to refine his skills with a medium that so far had not been used for serious literary purposes: "Privately, in notebooks and letters and loose bits of paper, Twain was constantly practicing his skill with black vernacularisms - playing with alternative spellings and pronunciations, honing the sound and the nuance to the highest possible pitch of perfection" (Pettit 1974, 128). The particular relevance of this innovation becomes clear in the light of the strong stigma which especially the speech of African Americans bore at time of Twain's writing. Abused, disparaged and instrumentalized as a vehicle for nonsense and raucous humor in the minstrel show, black language, in the general mind, signaled the mental inferiority of its speakers (Lott 1993, 119). The stories from Twain's pen gave black speakers a voice of their own and installed black language as one legitimate idiom among other linguistic constructions of English. In 1884, Twain's previous efforts at finding the best way to represent spoken language in print came to fruition in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the book which, according to dominant critical opinion, is the culmination of the vernacular style in American literature. Based on Twain's "knowledge of the actual speech of America" (Trilling 1985, 91) the book became what T. S. Eliot called "an innovation, a new discovery in the English language" (Eliot 1985, 106). As the explanatory note explicitly establishes, it reproduces a number of different regional dialects and the speech of a black slave "not by guess-work; but painstakingly, and with the trustworthy guidance and support of personal familiarity with these several forms of speech" (Twain 1988, [lvii]). Although the "Explanatory" drew special attention to its linguistic design, only a minority of the reviewers found it worthwhile to comment on it when the book appeared in 1884. No commentator saw any reason to suspect that a new era in American literature had begun. As a matter of fact, the response that received the most publicity at the time was a negative one. It came from the Concord Public Library which banned Huckleberry Finn from its shelves because, as one member of the library committee explained, the book "is couched in the language

32

Holger

Kersten

of a rough, ignorant dialect, and all through its pages there is a systematic use of bad grammar and an employment of rough, coarse, and inelegant expressions" (quoted in Fishkin 1993, 115). Among the positive reviews, a few prominent voices highlighted the novel's aesthetic dimensions. T. S. Perry astutely noticed the difference between the "conventional literary model" exemplified in Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and the more advanced autobiographical form which gave Huckleberry Finn a "unity in the narration which is most valuable" (Budd 1999, 278). Similarly, Joel Chandler Harris, the creator of the popular "Uncle Remus" dialect tales whom Twain admired, singled out the book's literary method which created "an almost artistically perfect picture of life and character in the Southwest" (Budd 1999, 280). In a long review written for the London Saturday Review, Brander Matthews, one of the major literary critics of his generation, called Mark Twain a "literary artist of a very high order" (Matthews 1985, 28); and an anonymous reviewer in the San Francisco Chronicle called the writer's achievement as "a tour de force [...] in which the most unlikely materials are transmuted into a work of literary art" (repr. in Fischer 1983, 14). One might suspect that the emphasis on Huckleberry Finn's literary quality must have gratified the author because the book was very slow to emerge from a long and laborious process of composition. Seven years of intermittent writing, pausing, and revising passed from the first draft in 1876 to the completion of the finished version in 1884 (Twain 1988, xxix). As the editorial interventions in the manuscript show, Twain was deeply concerned with voice, tone, and dialect throughout the novel. Numerous cancellations, insertions, rearrangements, and marginal notes testify to the intensity with which he fine-tuned the speech of the various characters, regardless of whether they were of central importance or of minor import (Doyno 1991, 39-52). The time span between the initial release of the book and the appearance of new editions in 1891 and 1896 gave a new set of reviewers a changed perspective on Huckleberry Finn and allowed them to form a different opinion of its author in terms of his literary achievement. Andrew Lang, the Scottish poet, scholar, and man of letters, now saw Mark Twain as "one among the greatest of contemporary makers of fiction" (Lang 1985, 39) and praised Huckleberry Finn as "nothing less" than a "masterpiece" (Lang 1985, 40). He also intimated that the book might in fact be "the great American novel" (Lang 1985, 41). British novelist Sir Walter Besant wrote that Huckleberry Finn was "a work of genius [...] which will live and will belong to the literature of the language" (Besant 1985, 44). Despite the cultural prestige of these voices, there was no consensus about the book's quality. Twain may perhaps have introduced a new quality into American writing but it was not entirely clear if this was a change for the better. In 1898, Theodore de Laguna, a professor of philosophy at Bryn Mawr College, reported that "the educated taste" still regarded Huckleberry Finn's unconventional linguistic and

"I Know Grammar by Ear Only "

33

literary practices as "unclean and repulsive" (Laguna 1898, 364-365). Twain's style "is said to have done more for the debasing of the English language than any other recent influence." Laguna himself sided with the book's defenders. He concluded that "historically [...] Mark Twain's style is of infinite import," because he wrote in "the living language, in 'modern English,' the unaffected speech of men in general, the medium of intelligent conversation" (Laguna 1898, 366). Modern Mark Twain scholarship has done much to support the positive appraisals by Laguna and other late-19th century commentators. Linguistically oriented studies have tended to answer in the affirmative the question of whether Twain lived up to his ambition of creating accurate renditions of the speech varieties he identified in his "Explanatory" (cf. Buxbaum 1927; Rulon 1967; Carkeet 1979; McKay 1985). In this context, it is important to note that Twain used his linguistic variations judiciously, avoiding the most extreme deviations from the standard that had marked much of the writing of his predecessors from among the Southwestern humorist. Apparently, he had a sense that too much linguistic divergence would have overtaxed his audience's capacity or willingness to engage in a potentially tedious and frustrating reading process. In her analysis of the overall effect of Twain's linguistic feat Janet Holmgren McKay concluded that the author used "certain strategically placed vernacular and colloquial features to create the impression of an untutored narrator, while simultaneously developing a sophisticated, innovative literary style which uses a full range of standard English constructions and literary devices" (McKay 1985, 201). In the course of the critical study of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, scholars of American literature have overwhelmingly agreed that the book constitutes a watershed in the history of American writing. Taking their cue from such prominent commentators as Hemingway and Faulkner, they have, over a period of more than seventy years, identified and elaborated on the stylistic and thematic features that establish the book's unique reputation. Among the aspects advanced in this context, the novelty in language and style has been consistently singled out as a dramatically innovative element and an indication for Twain's "revolution in language [...] [and] rebellion in form" (Cox 1966, 169). With this achievement he opened the door for later writers who now had at their disposal the tools for creating new forms of fiction in which the narrative voice was free to express itself by drawing on the full range of America's linguistic polyphony. In the final analysis, however, one should be cautious not to place too much emphasis on a single work of literature to have wrought a momentous change in American writing. It is worth noting that Adventures of Huckleberry Finn did not enter the American literary scene as a countercultural document issued by an underground press. It first saw the light of day couched between excerpts from Howells's The Rise of Silas Lapham and James's The Bostonians in the Century Magazine, one of America's most reputable periodicals of the era. Twain was

34

Holger

Kersten

clearly able to maneuver successfully between "his purpose as an autonomous, precedent-breaking literary artist and the diplomatic or expedient concessions he sometimes felt he had to make to the conventional taste of his audience and the demands of the book business" (Kaplan 1996, xi). Interestingly, the influence of Twain's unique novel did not manifest itself immediately in American literature. It took at least a generation for the book to leave a visible mark (Bridgman 1966, 131). One should also not forget that Twain was exposed to many literary schools and traditions which all left their traces on his writings and had their own share in eroding the dominant cultural norms. Ultimately, therefore, one may conclude that Mark Twain was fully aware of the rules that shaped the culture of his time. He followed them whenever it seemed wise to do so, but he looked for and found ways to extend them with the help of an artistic creativity which was nourished by the sounds of the language he had mastered so well. Just as he preferred to know English grammar "by ear only" he also allowed his ear, so finely attuned to the cadences of America's linguistic variety, to modify profoundly America's grammar of literary convention.

Works Consulted Anderson, Frederick / Gibson, William M. / Nash Smith, Henry (eds.) (1968): Selected Mark TwainHowells Letters. New York: Atheneum. Anderson, Frederick / Salamo, L i n / S t e i n , Bernard L. (eds.) (1975): Mark Twain's Notebooks & Journals: Vol. II (1877-1883). Berkeley, etc.: University of California Press. Arac, Jonathan (1998): Huckleberry Finn As Idol and Target. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Arac, Jonathan (1992): Nationalism, Hypercanonization, and Huckleberry Finn. In: Boundary 2 19:1, 14-33. Baender, Paul (1963): The "Jumping Frog" As a Comedian's First Virtue. In: Modern Philology 60:3, 192-200. Besant, Sir Walter (1985 [1898]): My Favorite Novelist and His Best Book (1950). In: Inge, M. Thomas (ed.): Huck Finn Among the Critics: A Centennial Selection. Frederick, Md.: University Publications of America, 43-52. Blair, Walter (1962): Mark Twain & Huck Finn. B e r k e l e y / L o s Angeles: University of California Press. Blair, Walter (1960): Native American Humor. San Francisco: Chandler Publishing Company. Branch, Edgar M. / Hirst, Robert Η. (eds.) (1979): Early Tales & Sketches: Vol. 1 (1851-1864) (The Works of Mark Twain). Berkeley / Los Angeles / London: University of California Press. Branch, Edgar M. / Hirst, Robert H. (eds.) (1981): Early Tales & Sketches: Vol. 2 (1864-1865) (The Works of Mark Twain). Berkeley / Los Angeles / London: University of California Press. Bridgman, Richard (1966): The Colloquial Style in America. New York: Oxford University Press. Budd, Louis J. (ed.) (1999): Mark Twain: The Contemporary Reviews. Cambridge: Cambrige University Press. Budd, Louis J. (ed.) (1985): New Essays on Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Cambridge / New York: Cambridge University Press. Buxbaum, Katherine (1927): Mark Twain and American Dialect. In: American Speech 2:5, 233-236. Caldwell, J. P. (1870): The Rationale of Slang. In: Overland Monthly and Out West Magazine 4:2, 187-190.

"I Know Grammar by Ear Only "

35

Carkeet, David (1979): The Dialects in Huckleberry Finn. In: American Literature 51:3, 315-332. Cox, James M. (1966): Mark Twain: The Fate of Humor. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. DeVoto, Bernard (1951): Mark Twain's America. Cambridge: Houghton Mifflin Co. Doyno, Victor (1991): Writing Huck Finn: Mark Twain's Creative Process. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Eliot, T. S. (1985 [1950]): Mark Twain's Masterpiece. In: Inge, M. Thomas (ed.): Huck Finn Among the Critics: A Centennial Selection. Frederick, Md.: University Publications of America, 103-111. Elliot, Emory (ed.) (1988): Columbia Literary History of the United States. New York: Columbia University Press. Fischer, Victor (1983): Huck Finn Reviewed: The Reception of Huckleberry Finn in the United States, 1885-1897. In: American Literary Realism, 1870-1910 16:1, 1-57. Fishkin, Shelley Fisher (1993): Was Huck Black? Mark Twain and African-American Voices. New York / Oxford: Oxford University Press. Goold, Edgar H. Jr. (1954): Mark Twain on the Writing of Fiction. In: American Literature 26:2, 141-153. Harnsberger, Caroline Thomas (ed.) (1972): Everyone's Mark Twain. South Brunswick:. Barnes. Hemingway, Ernest (1935): Green Hills of Africa. New York: Scribner's. Hoben, John B. (1956): Mark Twain: On the Writer's Use of Language. In: American Speech: A Quarterly of Linguistic Usage 31:3, 163-171. Jones, Gavin (2005): Twain, Language, and the Southern Humorists. In: Messent, Peter B . / B u d d , Louis J.: A Companion to Mark Twain. Maiden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 125-140. Kaplan, Justin (1996): Introduction. In: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. New York: Random House, [vii]-xi. Krause, Sydney J. (1959): Twain's Method and Theory of Composition. In: Modern Philology 56:3, 167-177. Laguna, Theodore de (1898): Mark Twain As a Prospective Classic. In: Overland Monthly 31:184, 364-367. Lang, Andrew (1985 [1891]): The Art of Mark Twain. In: Inge, M. Thomas (ed.): Huck Finn Among the Critics: A Centennial Selection. Frederick, Md.: University Publications of America, 37-41. Lott, Eric (1993): Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class. New York: Oxford University Press. Lowenherz, Robert J. (1958): Mark Twain on Usage. In: American Speech 33:1, 70-72. Lynn, Kenneth S. (1960): Mark Twain and Southwestern Humor. Boston: Little, Brown. Matthews, Brander (1896): Aspects of Fiction and Other Ventures in Criticism. New York: Harper & Brothers. Matthews, Brander (1985 [1885]): Unsigned Review [Adventures of Huckleberry Finn] In: Inge, M. Thomas (ed.): Huck Finn Among the Critics: A Centennial Selection. Frederick, Md.: University Publications of America, 27-32. McKay, Janet Holmgren (1985): 'Tears and Flapdoodle': Point of View and Style in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In: Inge, M. Thomas (ed.): Huck Finn Among the Critics: A Centennial Selection. Frederick, Md.: University Publications of America, 201-210. Meine, Franklin J. (ed.) (1939): 1601: Conversation As It Was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors. [Chicago]: Mark Twain Society of Chicago. Mencken, H. L. (1937): The American Language: An Inquiry Into the Development of English in the United States. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Mencken, H. L. (1985 [1913]): The Burden of Humor. In: Inge, M. Thomas (ed.): Huck Finn Among the Critics: A Centennial Selection. Frederick, Md.: University Publications of America, 67-71. Neider, Charles (ed.) (1999): The Selected Letters of Mark Twain. New York: Cooper Square Press. Paine, Albert Bigelow (1912): Mark Twain: A Biography. The Personal and Literary Life of Samuel Langhorne Clemens. 3 Vols. New York / London: Harper & Brothers. Pettit, Arthur G. (1974): Mark Twain & the South. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.

36

Holger

Kersten

Rulon, Curt Μ. (1967): Geographical Delimitation of the Dialect Areas in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In: Mark Twain Journal 14:1, 9-12. Sewell, David R. (1987): Mark Twain's Languages: Discourse, Dialogue, and Linguistic Variety. Berkeley / Los Angeles: University of California Press. Smith, David Lionel (2005): Mark Twain's Dialects. In: Messent, Peter B . / B u d d , Louis J.: A Companion to Mark Twain. Maiden, MA: Blackwell, 4 3 1 ^ 4 0 . Smith, Henry Nash (1974): Mark Twain: The Development of a Writer. New York: Atheneum. Spengemann, William C. (1985): American Writers and English Literature. In: English Literary History 52:1,209-238. Spiller, Robert E. et al. (eds.) (1948): Literary History of the United States. New York: The Macmillan Company. Trilling, Lionel (1985 [1950]): The Greatness of Huckleberry Finn (1950). In: Inge, M. Thomas (ed.): Huck Finn Among the Critics: A Centennial Selection. Frederick, Md.: University Publications of America, 81-92. [Twain, Mark] (1880): Contributors' Club. In: Atlantic Monthly 45:272, 849-860. Twain, Mark (1928 [1856-1857]): The Adventures of Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass. Ed. Charles Honce. Chicago: Pascal Covici. Twain, Mark (1988 [1884]): Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (The Works of Mark Twain). Eds. Walter Blair / Victor Fischer. Berkeley: University of California Press. Twain, Mark (1993 [1872]): Roughing It. Eds. Harriet Elinor S m i t h / E d g a r Marquess Branch. Berkeley / Los Angeles / London: University of California Press. Twain, Mark (1996a [1895]): Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses. In: How to Tell a Story, and Other Essays (The Oxford Mark Twain). New York: Oxford University Press, 93-116. Twain, Mark (1996b [1883]): Life on the Mississippi (The Oxford Mark Twain). O x f o r d / N e w York: Oxford University Press. Twain, Mark (1996c [1880]): A Tramp Abroad (The Oxford Mark Twain). O x f o r d / N e w York: Oxford University Press. Wagenknecht, Edward (1961): Mark Twain: The Man and His Work. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Zlatic, Thomas D. (2005): "I Don't Know A From B": Mark Twain and Orality. In: Messent, P e t e r / B u d d , Louis J.: A Companion to Mark Twain. Maiden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 211-227.

John Thieme University of East Anglia (United Kingdom)

Derek Walcott

Derek Walcotts Lyrik stellt ein besonderes Beispiel für einen mit der Norm kämpfenden Dichter dar, der schließlich eine Stimme für das findet, was er als die Realität der komplexen karibischen Welt erkennt. Die Landschaft von St. Lucia, in der Walcott aufwuchs, bot ihm einen deutlichen Kontrast zu den vom Mutterland vermittelten Naturvorstellungen, mit denen er in der Schule konfrontiert worden war, und er versuchte, dieser Landschaft durch eine metaphernreiche literarische Sprache Ausdruck zu verleihen. Für Walcott war die Insel ein noch nicht bewusst erfahrenes amerikanisches Eden, das darauf wartete, benannt zu werden, und sein Versuch, wie Adam den Dingen einen Namen zu geben, hat Parallelen mit Schriftstellern verschiedener Epochen in den Amerikas, u. a. mit den Puritanern und Transzendentalisten der Vereinigten Staaten des 19. Jahrhunderts. Der Beitrag analysiert u. a. Walcotts Gedicht "The Schooner Flight", das seine zwischen kreolisch beeinflussten und standardnahen Registern oszillierende Sprachverwendung illustriert.

The winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize for Literature, Derek Walcott was born in St. Lucia in 1930 and grew up there in the island's capital, Castries, in a culturally divided late colonial society. European "norms" were the major shaping force in the educational curriculum and the artistic life of Castries, but outside the capital St. Lucia's varied cultures and languages were dominated by French Creole folk traditions. The local landscape also offered a sharp contrast to the metropolitan representations of the natural world that Walcott encountered in the classroom and from most of his artistic mentors, several of whom were from the circle of friends of his late father, Warwick, a civil servant and amateur painter who had died when he was just a year old. The middle-class nature of Walcott's early upbringing particularly familiarized him with Renaissance and post-Impressionist art and with the canon of English literature and the Classics. At the same time, the young Derek and his twin brother, Roderick, looked on at another world, as:

38

John Thieme

two pale children staring from their upstairs window, wanting to march with that ragged barefooted crowd [of a Salvation Army "recruiting patrol"], but who could not, because they were not black and poor, until for one of them, watching the shouting, limber congregation, that difference became a sadness, that sadness rage, and that longing to share their lives ambition, so that at least one convert was made. They were the shadows of his first theatre, just as, at Christmas in the streets the Devil in red underwear, with a hemp beard, a pitchfork, and a monstrously packed crotch, backed by a molasses-smeared chorus of imps, would perform an elaborate Black Mass of resurrection at the street corners. (Walcott 1998, 19-20)

Such street theatre, then, fed into Walcott's imagination and particularly came to inform the language of his early plays, such as Τί-Jean and His Brothers (1958) and Dream on Monkey Mountain (1967), which drew on the folk forms of the island, liberally interspersing Standard English 1 with French patois to give a sense of the linguistic continua of St. Lucian speech. In his early poem, "Codicil", Walcott speaks of being "Schizophrenic, wrenched by two styles" (Walcott 1986, 97), but as he developed his poetic craft, local and imported voices came together in varying conjunctions and, while close to the English "norm", his most original and mature volumes of verse, including The Star-Apple Kingdom (1979), The Fortunate Traveller (1981), Omeros (1990) and Tiepolo's Hound (2000), subtly modify and subvert the syntax, diction and prosody of the English poetic discourse to which they approximate. As a young man Walcott aspired to become a painter, as he puts it in his poetic autobiography Another Life (1973), rendering "the visible world that [he] saw exactly", but he abandoned this possible vocation when he realized that his talents as a painter were limited and he "lived in a different gift, / its element metaphor" (Walcott 1986, 200-201). Throughout his life he has continued to paint, holding exhibitions such as his 2005 showing at the June Kelly gallery in New York 2 and reproducing twenty-six colour reproductions of his paintings in Tiepolo's Hound. At the same time his poetry has often returned to the relationship between painting and the tropical world, negotiating the distance between European art and the Caribbean landscape in verse that attempts to transfer the pictorial, tactile quality of landscapes onto the page. Gauguin, whom Walcott links with Martinique, where he spent time before his period in Tahiti, is the subject of two of the paintings reproduced in Tiepolo 's Hound, but Camille Pissarro, a Sephardic Jew born on the then Danish-colonial island of St. Thomas, looms larger in the volume. Walcott's Gauguin is a European artist encountering the vivid colours and lush vegetation of the tropics. His Pissarro is a Caribbean-born artist whose 1

I have used the term "Standard English" as a shorthand for the notion of an internationally recognized "norm" of English, while recognizing that it is a "convenient fiction" (McArthur 1992, 982) subject to controversy and variable interpretation. " "Derek Walcott: Another Life: Paintings and Watercolours", 18 November - 30 December 2005. I am grateful to Bruce King for drawing my attention to this.

Derek

Walcott

39

self-translation into the metropole after he moved to Paris engages Walcott's attention more extensively: though he is not simply a kindred-spirit for Walcott, the Pissarro of Tiepolo's Hound becomes a prototype for the situation of the artist born in the American tropics in a cultural climate that orients him towards European cultural "norms". Walcott's ethnic background was particularly mixed: his two grandfathers were both of European extraction, while the predominant strain in his two grandmothers' ancestry was African. His relationship to anglophone linguistic and literary "norms" was equally complex: although St. Lucia is a primarily francophone Catholic island, his own family was part of its English-speaking Methodist minority. Walcott went to a Methodist primary school, where his mother, Alix, was the head-teacher and subsequently to St. Mary's College, St. Lucia's leading secondary school, where he received a particularly Europeanoriented education. Later he was part of the first cohort of Arts undergraduates at the recently founded University of the West Indies in Mona, Jamaica. He subsequently worked as a teacher in Grenada, St. Lucia and Jamaica and lived for many years in Trinidad, where he founded and directed the innovative Trinidad Theatre Workshop and was an arts reviewer for the island's leading newspaper, The Trinidad Guardian. Both the Workshop and Walcott's journalism involved attempts to develop and nurture distinctive Caribbean theatrical practices and artistic forms that moved away from European "norms". 3 Subsequently Walcott held professorships in US universities and at the time of writing (2006) he divides his time between New York and St. Lucia. The move to North America rather than Britain, to which many Caribbean writers of his generation gravitated, was a natural one for a writer who has always seen himself as a poet of the Americas. Many of his poems have taken American subjects and his masterpiece, Omeros, travels between the Caribbean, North America and the Old World. However, the most significant New World movements away from European "norms" that one finds in Walcott's poetry and drama derive from St. Lucian and Trinidadian Creole forms. His forays into the cultures of other Caribbean territories, such as Ο Babylon! (1976), a play about a Jamaican Rastafarian community, are linguistically less convincing than his highly successful incorporation of St. Lucian speech and folk forms into Ti-Jean and Dream on Monkey Mountain and of Trinidadian popular culture into his creolized musical version of the Don Juan legend, The Joker of Seville (1974). In his essay, "Leaving School" (1965) Walcott talks of St. Lucia's history in terms of its colonial beginnings, explaining that it was called "The Helen of The West", because it was fought over and "regularly violated" by the British and the French, changing hands no less than thirteen times. In his view, even the island's name - Columbus christened it after the blind saint, Lucy - left it "clouded with 3

See my discussion in Thieme 1999, Chapter 3, 4 2 - 7 6 .

40

John Thieme

darkness and misfortune" (Walcott in Hamner 1993, 24) and when he later came of age as a poet and dramatist much of his early work was centred on an endeavour to give sight to his blinded country, enabling it to look outwards, as well rendering it visible to the outside world. In Walcott's early verse St. Lucia is frequently seen as an unrecorded American Eden, awaiting naming, and so in one sense his attempt to remedy this occlusion through poetry represents a refusal to accept the identity conferred on the island by Columbus through his act of naming and to legitimize an alternative onomastics for St. Lucia. This project particularly took the form of trying to chronicle the island's landscape. After witnessing the aftermath of a landslide and the destruction of half of Castries by fire and hearing about the volcanic eruption that had completely destroyed the city of St. Pierre on nearby Martinique in 1902, he came to believe that St. Lucia's natural history was as "tragic" (Walcott in Hamner 1993, 24) as its history. In Another Life, he writes: For no one had yet written of this landscape that it was possible, though there were sounds given to its varieties of wood; the bois-canot responded to its echo, when the axe spoke, weeds ran up to the knee like bastard children, hiding in their names, whole generations died, unchristened, [...] here was a life older than geography, as the leaves of edible roots opened their pages at their child's last lesson, Africa, heart-shaped, and the lost Arawak hieroglyphics and signs were razed from slates by sponges of the rain their symbols mixed with lichen [...]. (Walcott 1986, 195-196)

In one of his best-known essays, "The Muse of History", Walcott identifies a panAmerican tradition of writing when he says of the "great poets of the New World, from Whitman to Neruda" that: Their vision of man in the New World is Adamic. In their exuberance he is still capable of enormous wonder. Yet he has paid his accounts to Greece and Rome and walks in a world without monuments and ruins. They exhort him against the fearful magnet of older civilizations. (Walcott 1998, 37-38)

The essay goes on to allude to Walt Whitman, Aime Cesaire, Saint-John Perse and Jorge Luis Borges and these references have the effect of inserting Walcott into his own personally constructed canon of writing from the Americas. As it

Derek

Walcott

41

continues, "The Muse of History" outlines the dilemma encountered by anglophone Caribbean poets, forced to translate the nuances of their inner languages into the medium of the "official" language: [T]he West Indian poet is faced with a language which he hears but cannot write because there are no symbols for such a language and because the closer he brings hand and word to the precise inflections of the inner language and to the subtlest accuracies of his ear, the more chaotic his symbols will appear on the page, the smaller the regional dialect, the more eccentric his representation of it will become, so his function remains the old one of being filter and purifier, never losing the tone and strength of the common speech as he uses the hieroglyphs, symbols, or alphabet of the official one. (Walcott 1998, 49)

So as he grew to maturity Walcott's view of St. Lucia was that it was an island that awaited naming and his self-appointed task (shared with his friend, the painter Dunstan St. Omer) was to engage in "Adam's task of giving things their names" (Walcott 1986, 294), a post-Columbian project that has obvious affinities with writers of various periods in other parts of the Americas, such as the Puritans and Transcendentalists of the nineteenth-century United States, who came to embrace the "fortunate fall" (Lewis 1955, 54-73 and passim). Walcott borrowed the phrase "Adam's task of giving things their names" from the Cuban novelist, Alejo Carpentier's Los pasos perdidos (The Lost Steps), quoting it as the epigraph to Book II of Another Life and in so doing again located himself in relation to a broader tradition of New World writing concerned with the assertion of American difference. Walcott's poem "The Schooner Flight", which first appeared in his collection The Star-Apple Kingdom, typifies his probing of the relationships between Caribbean speech and notions of a supposed English "norm". Written in a style that international English speakers will have little or no problem in understanding, it nevertheless addresses the problematics of finding appropriate signifiers for Caribbean nature. In the sixth of the poem's eleven sections, this is foregrounded in a passage on the variant names given to "casuarinas": [W]hen I was green like them, I used to think those cypresses, leaning against the sea, that take the sea-noise up into their branches, are not real cypresses but casuarinas. Now captain just call them Canadian cedars. (Walcott 1986, 353)

The tensions between Caribbean landscape and language on the one hand and inherited forms of English on the other are particularly manifest in the speech of the narrator-protagonist of "The Schooner Flight", the sailor-poet Shabine. As a

42

John Thieme

"red nigger who love the sea", who has Dutch, African and English ancestry and has "had a sound colonial education" (Walcott 1986, 346), who writes poetry (347ff.), who has attended a Methodist chapel in Castries as a child (Walcott 1986, 359) and who feels he has "no nation now but the imagination" (Walcott 1986, 350), Shabine has obvious affinities with his creator and his seafaring becomes a trope for both writing and Caribbean life more generally. At the end of the first of the poem's eleven sections, Shabine outlines his metapoetic project very explicitly as an attempt to articulate a nautical Caribbean experience in vernacular speech: [...] when I write this poem, each phrase go be soaked in salt; I go draw and knot every line as tight as ropes in this rigging; in simple speech my common language go be the wind, my pages the sails of the schooner Flight. (Walcott 1986, 347)

Throughout his career Walcott has repeatedly identified with the figure of Odysseus and Shabine is an Odyssean traveller, whose voyage through the Caribbean parallels that of Homer's hero's travels in the eastern Mediterranean and involves encounters with defining episodes in the Caribbean past, such as the Middle Passage and the genocide of the Caribs on Dominica, and a quest for a Caribbean aesthetic practice. He tells his story in a verse that moves between Creole and Standard English registers and in so doing dramatizes the apparently dichotomous situation of a writer trying to reconcile the catoptric sides of his mixed heritage: "I look in the rearview and see a man / exactly like me" (Walcott 1986, 345). The beginning of "The Schooner Flight" evokes an unexpected English pretext. The sibilants of the first lines: In idle August, while the sea soft, [...] I blow out the light by the dreamless face of Maria Concepcion to ship as a seaman on the schooner Flight. (Walcott 1986, 345)

seem to echo the opening of Langland's Piers Plowman: In a somer seson, whan softe was the sonne, I shope me in shroudes, as I a schepe were [...]. (Langland 1965, 1)

Clearly Walcott's apparent use of this medieval English intertext does not develop a straightforward relationship with a European "norm", but in this instance it suggests more commonalities than differences. Walcott's opening line

Derek

Walcott

43

replaces the sun of Piers Plowman with the sea and Langland's protagonist's dream of a "faire felde ful of folke" (Langland 1965, 1), in the rural English setting of the Malvern Hills, is supplanted by Shabine's vision of a journey through the marine world of the Caribbean. The geography may have changed, but both openings are preludes to a spiritual reverie rooted in a very specific natural world and the apparent allusion to Langland's dream-poem links "The Schooner Flight" with the alliterative poetry of the pre-Renaissance era, a period when the orthography of modern English had still to be determined and when there was little or no consensus as to what constituted "literary English" - only a range of emergent suggestions as to what might conceivably become a "norm". Most significantly, it summons up a world in which the "common language" of the folk imagination was prominent among such emergent possibilities. Walcott's apparent indebtedness to the genre of the medieval dream-poem is, however, compounded with a contemporary Trinidadian lexis, which without deviating very far from Standard English nevertheless articulates the need to root the experience of his wandering Caribbean Everyman in a recognizably local English of the Americas: Man, I brisk in the galley first thing next dawn, brewing li'l coffee; fog coil from the sea like the kettle steaming when I put it down slow, slow, 'cause I couldn't believe what I see [...]. (Walcott 1986, 352)

Seen in terms of variations from "official" English, the passage includes the colloquial form of address, man, the use of brisk as a verb, the truncation of little into li'l, the historic present coil instead of coiled, the repetition of slow (for "very slow") as an intensifier and the non-Caribbean specific abbreviation, 'cause. It is, however, inappropriate to catalogue deviations from Standard, since Shabine's language is perfectly correct Trinidadian English, a Creole formation that no more needs to be validated through reference to a notional "norm" than do the vernacular voices of Twain's Huckleberry Finn or Morrison's Beloved. Other elements in Shabine's vernacular linguistic repertory, which embed his narrative within his Creole world, include "cussing" and tropes that draw on local natural history, It had one bitch on board, like he had me mark that was the cook, some Vincentian arse with a skin like a gommier tree, red peeling bark, and wash-out blue eyes; he wouldn't give me a ease, like he feel he was white. [...] (Walcott 1986, 354)

In short, Shabine's Odyssey has a very distinctive Caribbean inflection and his account of his seafaring can be read as a metonym for the Caribbean artist's

44

John Thieme

endeavour to capture the reality of the local world through the use of demotic speech, "common language". "The Schooner Flight" comes to an end with Shabine emerging from the visionary journey that has enabled him to traverse the Caribbean in both space and time. His dream over, he continues to express his yearning for a pristine Caribbean environment, in which the New World can be reconfigured as a prelapsarian Eden: Fall gently, rain, on the sea's upturned face like a girl showering; make these islands fresh as Shabine once knew them! Let every trace, every hot road, smell like clothes she just press and sprinkle with drizzle. I finish dream [...] (Walcott 1986, 360)

Shabine's quest, like the activity of writing, seems to be unending, suggesting that the rejuvenating potential of Caribbean alternatives to European "norms" is dependent on process rather than product, a matter of unceasing renewal, which once again is associated with the poetic reinvention of the Caribbean environment as a counter-force to the postlapsarian world of the Fall: The bowsprit, the arrow, the longing, the lunging heart the flight to a target whose aim we'll never know [...]. There are so many islands! As many islands as the stars at night on that branched tree from which meteors are shaken like falling fruit around the schooner Flight. But things must fall, and so it always was [...]. (Walcott 1986, 361)

In conclusion, Walcott's verse, affords a very particular instance of a poet of the Americas wrestling with the "norm" and coming to find a voice that enables him to express what he sees as the realities of his Caribbean situation. Given his early socialization, which involved a thorough-going immersion in European culture of a kind that few Europeans of his generation would have experienced, one wants to ask whether his poetic idiom is typical of Caribbean verse. There is, of course, no simple answer to this question, not least because of the range of registers to be found in each Caribbean country. Nevertheless one can venture a few generalizations. Much earlier Caribbean poetry demonstrates a more extensive indebtedness to European "norms" (cf. Baugh n. d.; Brown 1978; Breiner 1998), but as a member of the independence generation of West Indian writers, Walcott is most appropriately compared with his contemporaries and, viewed from the vantage point of the early twenty-first century, it seems relevant also to locate him in relation to those who have followed in his wake, in some cases writing under his influence. In an often-rehearsed oppositional pairing (cf. Ismond 1985), Walcott's verse has often been contrasted with the work of

Derek

Walcott

45

(Edward) Kamau Brathwaite, the other major anglophone Caribbean poet of his generation. In this commonplace contrast, Walcott is usually constructed as a Eurocentric literary poet and Brathwaite as an Afrocentric oral poet. Both representations are reductive, since they fail to tease out the extent to which the verse of both writers creolizes their supposed points of origin. Ultimately both locate themselves first and foremost within the Caribbean, transforming their intertexts. So Walcott's Homer is given his Greek name "Omeros" and this is creolized to convert him into a Caribbean protagonist: [...] and Ο was the conch shell's invocation, mer was both mother and sea in our Antillean patois, os, a grey bone, and the white surf [...] (Walcott 1990, 14)

Similarly, in "Masks", the second part of Brathwaite's Arrivants trilogy (1973), the restive travelling persona undertakes a journey to West Africa, in order to discover the African elements in his Caribbean psyche; and in the final part, "Islands", Brathwaite is primarily concerned to investigate the creolization of African retentions in the Caribbean. Later Caribbean verse has been increasingly demotic and dub poets such as the late "Mikey" Smith, Jean Breeze and the Jamaican-born British poet Linton Kwesi Johnson have privileged the oral over the literary, while poets such as M. Nourbese Philip and Dionne Brand, who have migrated northwards in the Americas, have engaged with the task of developing a poetics for Caribbean women. Despite the difference in the registers employed by these writers, there is a commonality in their quest to find a language that is appropriate for the expression of an experience that cannot be adequately expressed through any notional "norm". Each engages in the Oedipal struggle that commentators as different from one another as Harold Bloom and Roland Barthes have seen as central to the lovehatred relationship that writers have with their precursors. In Barthes' words: Death of the Father would deprive literature of many of its pleasures. If there is no longer a Father, why tell stories? Doesn't every narrative lead back to Oedipus? Isn't storytelling always a way of searching for one's origin, speaking one's conflicts with the Law, entering into the dialectic of tenderness and hatred? (Barthes 1975, 47)

However, in the case of writers raised in colonial or early post-independence societies, the struggle is compounded by the need to do battle with a tradition that both is and is not one's own and the response of particular writers can be located on a continuum that runs the gamut from complicity to oppositionality, but like Caribbean speakers who can express themselves at different points on the linguistic continua that characterize most Creole societies, they are seldom to be fixed at a single point. Walcott's verse and drama moves between different

46

John Thieme

registers, but a poem such as "The Schooner Flight" is typical of his verse in that its departures from Standard English appear to be comparatively minor, but the manner in which it holds a distorting-mirror up to the "norm" is arguably more subversive than the more obviously adversarial verse of poets such as "Mikey" Smith and Linton Kwesi Johnson. In one of the most famous aphorisms on the issue of influence, T. S. Eliot has commented: "Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal" (Eliot 1932, 182). Walcott offers a striking variation on this in a passage that seems to echo it in Another Life: I had entered the house of literature as a houseboy, filched as the slum child stole, as the young slave appropriated those heirlooms temptingly left with the Victorian homilies of Noli tangere. (Walcott 1986, 219)

The particular kind of theft that he practises in "The Schooner Flight" and in most of his poetry is an act of appropriation that claims ownership of the stolen property, by virtue of the fact that it has been remade in such a way that it is distinctively the houseboy / slave's own and no longer exists within the purlieu of the English "norm".

Works cited Barthes, Roland (1975): The Pleasure of the Text. Trans. Richard Miller. New York: Hill and Wang. Baugh, Edward (n.d. [1971?]): West Indian Poetry, 1900-1970: A Study in Cultural Decolonization. Kingston: Savacou Publications. Bloom, Harold (1973): The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry. London / Oxford / New York: Oxford University Press. Brathwaite, (Edward) Kamau (1973): The Arrivants. London: Oxford University Press. Breiner, Laurence A. (1998): An Introduction to West Indian Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brown, Lloyd W. (1978): West Indian Poetry. Boston: Twayne. Eliot, T. S. (1932): "Massinger", Selected Essays, 1917-1932. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Hamner, Robert (ed.) (1993): Critical Perspectives on Derek Walcott. Washington: Three Continents Press. Ismond, Patricia (1985): Walcott versus Brathwaite. In: ARIEL 16.3. 89-101. (Repr. in Hamner, ed., 1993. 220-36.) Langland, William (1965 [c. 1377]): Piers the Plowman. Ed. W.W. Sceat. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Lewis, R. W. B. (1955): The American Adam: Innocence, Tragedy and Tradition in the Nineteenth Century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. McArthur, Tom (ed.) (1992): The Oxford Companion to the English Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Thieme, John (1999): Derek Walcott. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Derek

Walcott

Walcott, Derek (1986): Collected Poems, 1948-1984. New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux. Walcott, Derek (1990): Omeros. London: Faber. Walcott, Derek (1998): What the Twilight Says: Essays. London: Faber.

Elizabeth Ann Beaulieu Champlain College (United States)

"How lovely it is, this thing we have done - together": Tradition and Innovation in Toni Morrison's Fiction

"For the transmission of a culture - a peculiar way of thinking, feeling and behaving - and for its maintenance, there is no safeguard more reliable than a language." (T. S. Eliot, Notes towards the Definition of Culture, 1948) I who am poisoned with the blood of both Where shall I turn, divided to the vein? I who have cursed the drunken officer of British rule, how choose Between this Africa and the English tongue I love? Betray them both, or give back what they give? (Derek Walcott, "A Far Cry from Africa," 1969)

Toni Morrison, die erste Afroamerikanerin, die mit dem Literaturnobelpreis ausgezeichnet wurde, ist eine der herausragenden Vertreterinnen einer von ihr selbst als "word-work" bezeichneten literarischen Praxis. Der vorliegende Beitrag zeigt, dass Morrison sich des African American Vernacular English (AAVE) bedient, um Geschichten zu erzählen, die ihrer Meinung nach mit den Mitteln des Standardenglischen nicht erzählt werden können. Morrison ist eine Meisterin, die es versteht, die Sprache und etablierte literarische Formen kreativ umzuformen und auszureizen, um das Leben der Schwarzen in all seinen Facetten zu evozieren. Dabei zollt sie der Tradition Schwarzer Literatur den ihr gebührenden Tribut und schafft neue, ihren Sujets angemessene Ausdrucksmittel.

Born Chloe Anthony Wofford on February 18, 1931, Toni Morrison grew up in Lorain, Ohio, the second of four children of George Wofford, a shipyard welder,

50

Elizabeth Ann Beaulieu

and Ramah Willis Wofford. 1 Both of her parents were raised in the deep South and relocated to Ohio to escape racism and provide their children with greater educational opportunities. Morrison's parents were avid storytellers and accomplished musicians, and even before she entered school Morrison developed a love for the African American oral tradition. Morrison attended an integrated school in Lorain (this was one of her parents' primary motivations for relocating to Ohio) and excelled early on, especially in reading. She graduated from Lorain High School in 1949 and enrolled at Howard University, where she majored in English and minored in classics. It was during her college years that Morrison changed her first name to Toni, because, as she tells it, so many people had trouble pronouncing Chloe. Morrison graduated from Howard University in 1953 and then attended Cornell University, where she earned a Master's degree in English. Her thesis was on William Faulkner and Virginia Woolf. From 1955-1957 she taught at Texas Southern University, the first of many academic appointments she has held. In 1957 she returned to Howard to join the faculty and subsequently met her husband, Jamaican-born architect Harold Morrison. They married in 1958 and had two children, Harold Ford and Slade Kevin. In 1964 the couple divorced and Morrison left Howard University for Syracuse, New York and a position at Random House. After a stint editing textbooks, Morrison was promoted in 1967 to senior editor at the company's headquarters in New York City and there had the opportunity to work with a number of prominent Black authors. During this time she also mentored a number of fledging Black women writers, including Toni Cade Bambara and Gayl Jones. While working at Random House Morrison continued to teach, first at SUNYPurchase (1971-1972), and then at Yale University (1976-1977). She left Random House in 1983 and was named the Albert Schweitzer Professor of Humanities at SUNY-Albany in 1984. She remained there until she was named the Robert F. Goheen Professor in the Council of Humanities at Princeton University in 1989, a position she held until her retirement in May of 2006. Morrison was the first Black woman to hold an endowed chair at an Ivy League university. Today Toni Morrison is considered among the most prominent American literary voices. Her work has received numerous awards, including a National Book Award nomination in 1975 for Sula, the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1977 for Song of Solomon, and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988 for Beloved, which many believe to be her finest novel; in 2006 the New York Times

1

To date there is no definitive biography of Toni Morrison. There are, however, many collections of interviews with her. Of particular note is Danielle Taylor-Guthrie's 1994 collection Conversations with Toni Morrison.

"How lovely it is, this thing we have done -

together"

51

selected Beloved as the greatest work of fiction to be published in the previous 25 years. The author of eight novels, many works of nonfiction, and several children's books co-authored with her son, Slade, Morrison's crowning achievement came in 1993 when she received the Nobel Prize in Literature. She is only the eighth woman ever to do so, and the first African American woman. The Swedish Academy proclaimed Morrison a writer "who, in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality." Morrison's interest in writing may have begun as a child, when she listened to radio drama, read voraciously, and participated in family storytelling. She speaks of reading Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Austen, but had virtually no exposure to literature by Black authors. Her first novel, The Bluest Eye (1970), evolved from a short story she wrote as a member of a writer's group when she was a newlysingle parent. Writing once her sons went to bed and seeking the support and company of like-minded individuals, she penned the story quickly, offered it to the group for feedback, and filed it away for several years. When she returned to the manuscript it was, she said, because the type of work she would have liked to read as a child was generally unavailable. When asked by an interviewer in 1981 what is distinctive about her fiction, what makes it "good," Morrison replied: The language, only the language. The language must be careful and must appear effortless. It must not sweat. It must suggest and be provocative at the same time. It is the thing that black people love so much - the saying of words, holding them on the tongue, experimenting with them, playing with them. It's a love, a passion. Its function is like a preacher's: to make you lose yourself and hear yourself. The worst of all possible things that could happen would be to lose the language. There are certain things I cannot say without recourse to my language. It's terrible to think that a child with five different present tenses comes to school to be faced with those books that are less than his own language. And then to be told things about his language, which is him, that are sometimes permanently damaging. He may never know the etymology of Africanisms in his language, not even know that "hip" is a real word or that "the dozens" meant something. This is a really cruel fallout of racism. I know the standard English. I want to use it to help restore the other language, the lingua franca. (LeClair 1981, 2 7 )

Morrison's preoccupation with language is indeed one of the primary hallmarks of her work. Her words, in this interview and others, were often quoted when the debate over Ebonics 2 caught fire in 1996. In December, 1996, the Oakland, CA

" The term Ebonics, first defined in 1975 in Ebonics: The True Language of Black Folks, a volume of conference proceedings edited by Robert L. Williams, means "the linguistic and paralinguistic features which on a concentric continuum represents the communicative competence of West African, Caribbean, and United States idioms, patois, argots, ideolects, and social forces of black

52

Elizabeth Ann

Beaulieu

School Board passed a resolution acknowledging Ebonics as the primary language of its African American students. The controversial resolution resulted from the substandard academic performance of the city's African American school children; the hope was that a bilingual pedagogy would assist the city's 53 % African American school-aged population achieve success in the classroom and beyond. 3 But Morrison, long before 1996, was aware of the complexity and beauty of vernacular English for blacks, and she was an active practitioner of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) in her fiction. She herself had heard it in the storytelling of her parents and in the African folktales she loved. The Bluest Eye established Morrison as a writer who was not afraid to employ AAVE; in fact, she is insistent in her claim that the stories she chooses to tell cannot be told in Standard English alone. Morrison has a fascinating relationship with Standard English; on the one hand she is a master craftsperson, manipulating and teasing the language to evoke black life in all its richness, and on the other hand she is constantly reappropriating, in order to tell stories that have not previously been told in the American literary canon. In this way Morrison simultaneously works within an established black literary tradition and creates a new version of that tradition that is uniquely her own. Outstanding examples of Morrison's linguistic innovation may be found in all of her works; in this essay I will confine myself to examples drawn from The Bluest Eye and Beloved (1987).4 The Bluest Eye offers both subject matter and style that was, in 1970, very different from mainstream American literature. Morrison sets Pecola Breedlove's story squarely in lower-class Black society to evoke the sordid life of a young Black girl equally victimized by her uneducated, violent parents and mainstream consumer culture and its promotion of white standards of beauty. Pecola, the novel's eleven-year-old protagonist, suffers from both racial self-loathing and invisibility and recognizes that her life is nothing like the lives of storybook children Dick and Jane. Morrison prefaces her novel with an excerpt from the

3

4

people... Ebonics derives its form from ebony (black) and phonics (sound, the study of sound) and refers to the study of the language of black people in all its cultural uniqueness" (Williams 1975, vi). The term arose in part as a reaction to other, more pejorative terms such as "broken English." Today, the phrase "African American Vernacular English" - AAVE - is most commonly used. John Russell Rickford and Russell John Rickford, in their book Spoken Soul: The Story of Black English (2000), provide an extensive discussion of the Oakland School Board proposal; (cf. 163— 80). In his book African American Vernacular English: Features, Evolution, Educational Implications (1999), John R. Rickford also notes the Oakland controversy and offers a thorough explication of the arguments in favor of the pedagogical value of using vernacular English as a teaching strategy (cf. especially 320-47). For an excellent essay that looks at Morrison's use of black English in several novels, see Yvonne Atkinson's "Language that Bears Witness: The Black English Oral Tradition in the Works of Toni Morrison," which appears in The Aesthetics of Toni Morrison: Speaking the Unspeakable, edited by Marc C. Conner (2000).

"How lovely it is, this thing we have done -

together"

53

Dick and Jane reader that is recognizable to all Americans as an early primer used to teach schoolchildren to read. Here is the house. It is green and white. It has a red door. It is very pretty. Here is the family. Mother, Father, Dick, and Jane live in the green-and-white house. They are very happy. See Jane. She has a red dress. She wants to play. Who will play with Jane? See the cat. It goes meow-meow. Come play. Come play with Jane. The kitten will not play. See Mother. Mother is very nice. Mother, will you play with Jane? Mother laughs. Laugh, Mother, laugh. See Father. He is big and strong. Father, will you play with Jane? Father is smiling. Smile, Father, smile. See the dog. Bowwow goes the dog. Do you want to play with Jane? See the dog run. Run, dog, run. Look, look. Here comes a friend. The friend will play with Jane. They will play a good game. Play, Jane, play. (Morrison 1970, 3)

As a frame narrative, the Dick and Jane primer throws into relief the lives of Morrison's African American characters. Pecola lives in an abandoned storefront, not in a pretty house; her mother does not laugh; her father does not smile but rather rapes and impregnates her. The only girls who befriend her are Claudia and Frieda, and even they are not really her friends; more accurately they are alternately awed and horrified by her situation when she comes to live with their family. Morrison reprints the excerpt from Dick and Jane three times before beginning her own narrative, and each time she compresses the words more tightly on the page. By the final time all the words run together with no punctuation: "Hereisthehouseitisgreenandwhiteithasareddooritisveryprettyhereisthefamily..." (Morrison 1970, 4). Morrison does this to suggest, perhaps, the accelerated pace of Pecola's childhood and her loss of innocence; even before the rape her impoverishment deprives her of the "normal" American childhood reflected in the Dick and Jane reader, and it is shortly after she becomes pregnant that her wish for blue eyes the ultimate sign of Eurocentric beauty - drives her to madness. The poetic richness of Morrison's prose, even in this, her first novel, also serves to underscore the poverty of her characters' lives. Consider, for example, her description of the dilapidated furnishings in the family's apartment: There is nothing more to say about the furnishings. They were anything but describable, having been conceived, manufactured, shipped, and sold in various states of thoughtlessness, greed, and indifference. The furniture had aged without ever having become familiar. People had owned it, but never known it. No one had lost a penny or a brooch under the cushions of either sofa and remembered the place and time of the loss or the finding. No one had clucked and said, "But I had it just a minute ago. I was sitting right there talking to..." or "Here it is. It must have slipped down while I was feeding the baby!" (Morrison 1970, 35)

54

Elizabeth Ann

Beaulieu

In this passage Morrison is able to convey her characters' complete lack of history as well as their complete lack of importance to American society. In a culture in which one is defined largely by one's possessions, the Breedloves barely exist. In addition to the poetic prose Morrison crafts in The Bluest Eye - this is, indeed, language that does not "sweat" - the novel relies on word usages that do not conform to Standard English. One such usage is Morrison's description of the Breedlove family finding itself "outdoors." The casual reader might interpret this to mean "homeless," but Morrison delineates the implications of being "outdoors" in a way that overtly connects this condition to race and class. There is a difference between being put out and being put outdoors. If you are put out, you go somewhere else; if you are outdoors, there is no place to go. The distinction was subtle but final. Outdoors was the end of something, an irrevocable, physical fact, defining and complementing our metaphysical condition. Being a minority in both caste and class, we moved about anyway on the hem of life, struggling to consolidate our weaknesses and hang on, or to creep singly up into the major folds of the garment... Knowing there was such a thing as outdoors bred in us a hunger for property, for ownership. The firm possession of a yard, a porch, a grape arbor. Propertied black people spent all their energies, all their love, on their nests... Cholly Breedlove, then, a renting black, having put his family outdoors, had catapulted himself beyond the reaches of human consideration. He had joined the animals; was, indeed, an old dog, a snake, a ratty nigger. (Morrison 1970, 17-18)

Using this term and carefully explicating its context, Morrison is able to depict for her readers the dire situation that Cholly Breedlove, head-of-household, has put his family in. She reserves authorial judgment, but provides ample material to lead the reader to form his or her own conclusions about a man who would act in a way that forces his family "outdoors." It is Morrison's unique gift that as her novels unfold she is able to problematize those very conclusions that passages such as this encourage readers to form. Morrison has said of her use of language that she intentionally leaves "gaps" for readers to enter into and thus collaborate in the making of meaning. 5 We see this invitation made explicit in the opening words of The Bluest Eye: "Quiet as it's kept" (Morrison 1970, 5). In a new Afterword to The Bluest Eye published in 1993, Morrison discusses the appeal this opening phrase held for her: First it was a familiar phrase, familiar to me as a child listening to adults; to black women conversing with one another, telling a story, an anecdote, gossip about some

5

In an interview with Claudia Tate, Morrison explains her rationale, saying, "My writing expects, demands participatory reading... We (you, the reader, and I, the author) come together to make this book, to feel this experience" (Tate 1994, 164). She emphasizes this point at the conclusion of her Nobel Acceptance speech, in the statement from which I take the title of this essay.

"How lovely it is, this thing we have done - together"

55

one or event within the circle, the family, the neighborhood. The words are conspiratorial ... The intimacy I was aiming for, the intimacy between the reader and the page, could start up immediately because the secret was being shared, at best, and eavesdropped upon, at the least. Sudden familiarity or instant intimacy seemed crucial to me. I did not want the reader to have time to wonder, 'What do I have to do, to give up, in order to read this? What defense do I need, what distance maintain?' (Morrison 1970, 211-13)

In opening the novel in this way,6 Morrison invites us to hear (and keep quiet) Pecola's story; in doing so she forces us to bear witness to her tragedy and implicates us in her downfall. By virtue of this opening phrase we become insiders, and when Morrison begins to incorporate AAVE in the dialogue she crafts for her characters, the readers find themselves wrapped in the language as if it were their own. Subsequently Morrison draws them into the characters' experiences, regardless of race, class, or gender. For instance, consider Mrs. MacTeer's tirade when she discovers Pecola's love for milk, which she drinks from the Shirley Temple cup: D o n ' t nobody need three quarts of milk. Henry Ford don't need three quarts of milk. That's just downright i w f u l . I ' m willing to do what I can for folks. Can't nobody say I ain't. But this has got to stop, and I ' m just the one to stop it. Bible say watch as well as pray. Folks just dump they children off on you and go on 'bout they business. Ain't nobody even peeped in here to see whether that child has a loaf of bread. Look like they would just peep in to see whether I had a loaf of bread to give her. But naw. That thought don't cross they mind... What kind of something is that? (Morrison 1970, 25)

Here Morrison employs characteristics of AAVE 7 to lend credibility to her characterization of Mrs. MacTeer; Mrs. MacTeer's manner of speaking goes beyond a mother's frustration, conveying key information about the circumstances of her life and her attitude towards those circumstances. The double negatives Mrs. MacTeer speaks in, a common feature of AAVE, accumulate to underscore her outrage and serve to establish her as the only person who is responsible for Pecola, a burden she clearly resents. The passage has a decidedly oral quality, suggesting that Mrs. MacTeer is venting to herself, perhaps because as an underclass, overburdened black woman she finds that no one else listens to her. She vows, with a sassiness that often characterizes strong black women, that "[T]his has got to stop, and I'm just the one to stop it," but the reader recognizes 6

7

It is interesting to note that Morrison chooses to begin her 1993 novel Jazz similarly. The wordsound, "Sth," suggests gossip, a secret, an invitation that immediately entices the reader into the narrative world of intimate conversation. Both books cited above, Rickford / Rickford (2000) and Rickford (1999), extensively document the characteristics of AAVE. Geneva Smitherman, in Talkin That Talk: Language, Culture and Education in African America (2000), raises the issue of whether AAVE is a language or a dialect and ultimately argues that it is a political, not a linguistic question (cf. especially 314-33).

56

Elizabeth Ann

Beaulieu

her words as empty; she is, in fact, powerless to effect change of any sort. And when she ends her tirade with the question, "What kind of something is that?" we know that it is purely rhetorical, that there are no answers to satisfy Mrs. MacTeer just as there is not enough milk to satisfy Pecola. The race-inflected idiosyncrasies of the spoken language with which Morrison endows Mrs. MacTeer suggest her blackness and all that attends it - poverty, want, frustration, rage with a force that mere description cannot convey. Geneva Smitherman in her 1977 book Talkin and Testify in says black English "is an Africanized form of English reflecting Black America's linguistic-cultural heritage and the conditions of servitude, oppression, and life in America. Black language is Euro-American speech with an Afro-American meaning, nuance, tone, and gesture" (Smitherman 1977, 2). Morrison's use of authentic black spoken English pervades the text, shaping characters and their relation to the world around them, inviting us to be a part of their world. Black English forces readers to become like the novel's child narrator, listening for and interpreting those things that are not stated outright in the domestic details: Their conversation is like a gently wicked dance: sound meets sound, curtsies, shimmies, and retires. Another sound enters but it is upstaged by still another: the two circle each other and stop. Sometimes their words move in lofty spirals; other times they take strident leaps, and all of it is punctuated with warm-pulsed laughter ... We do not, cannot, know the meanings of all their words ... [s]o we watch their faces, their hands, their feet, and listen for truth in timbre. (Smitherman 1977, 15)

Another particularly evocative passage occurs when Mrs. Breedlove, Pecola's mother, reflects on meeting the man who will become her husband: When I first seed Cholly, I want you to know it was like all the bits of color from that time down home when all us chil'ren went berry picking after a funeral and I put some in the pocket of my Sunday dress, and they mashed up and stained my hips. My whole dress was messed with purple, and it never did wash out. Not that dress nor me. I could feel that purple deep inside me. And that lemonade Mama used to make when Pap came in out the fields. It be cool and yellowish, with seeds floating near the bottom. And that streak of green them june bugs made on the trees the night we left from down home. All of them colors was in me. (Morrison 1970, 115)

Readers can identify with the stirrings of first love Polly describes, even though she speaks in non-Standard English. In fact, a certain poignancy develops from the interaction between the actual words as they are spoken and the poetry, the word-magic, they convey. Earlier I argued that Morrison's relationship to Standard English is one of both reappropriation and evocation; she reappropriates key texts and traditions, parlaying them to suit her uniquely African American purpose and crafts dialogue

"How lovely it is, this thing we have done -

together"

57

that reclaims and validates the black experience, making it accessible to readers of all backgrounds. These traits define her oeuvre, but nowhere are they more apparent than in her 1987 masterpiece Beloved. In Beloved Morrison signifies 8 on the tradition of the slave narrative, a genre that is distinctly American. Morrison and other twentieth-century writers have returned to the slave narrative as a literary form, creating neo-slave narratives, contemporary fictionalized accounts of slavery intended to amplify the historical record by telling previously untold stories. Morrison takes as her subject a mother whose escape from slavery with her children turns tragic when the slave catcher returns and she chooses infanticide over seeing her children returned to slavery. The genre affords Morrison the opportunity to return imaginatively to the antebellum South and give voice to "unspeakable thoughts, unspoken" (Morrison 1987, 199). Her novel also testifies to the power of storytelling to remember, recreate, and revise the past. Language and linguistic innovation are crucial to Morrison's endeavor. A quick perusal of any page of the novel yields examples of her craft, but I will limit myself to two examples here: in the ways in which Morrison adapts language to evoke the Middle Passage in the "monologues" section of the novel, and in the powerful expulsion of Beloved at the novel's climax. In Beloved, Morrison juxtaposes "book learning" (Morrison 1987, 36), represented by schoolteacher and his nephews, with the oral tradition, which the novel seeks to celebrate and extend. To do this, Morrison crafts prose that consciously draws attention to itself as primarily oral; she privileges the idioms and nuances of spoken black English and insists on the power of the spoken word. If, in a major theme of the novel, "definitions belong to the definers" (Morrison 1987, 190), then Morrison takes as her project empowering the disempowered in Beloved by giving language - a language of their own - and agency to a people long denied the very fundamental aspects of humanity. Morrison goes as far back as the Middle Passage to tell the story of enslaved African Americans. She dedicates her novel to the "Sixty Million and More" believed to have perished during the transatlantic journey into slavery, but more strikingly she attempts to capture in language the Middle Passage experience. She does this by imagining a series of monologues by the novel's protagonists, a sequence that culminates with Beloved's self-authenticating monologue. All of it is now it is always now there will never be a time when I am not crouching and watching others who are crouching tool am always crouching the man on my face is dead his face is not mine his mouth smells sweet 8

Signijyin(g) as defined by Henry Louis Gates Jr. is a key term in understanding the project of appropriation as undertaken by black authors. Gates defines signijyin(g) as "refiguring what we might think of as key canonical topi and tropes received from the black [English oral] tradition itself' (Gates 1988, xxii).

58

Elizabeth Ann

Beaulieu

but his eyes are locked ... In the beginning I could see her I could not help her because the clouds were in the way in the beginning I could see her the shining in her ears she does not like the circle around her neck I know this I look hard at her so she will know that the clouds are in the way I am sure she saw me I am looking at her see me she empties out her eyes I am in the place where her face is ... Sethe's face is the face that left me Sethe sees me see her and I see the smile her smiling face is the place for me it is the face I lost she is my face smiling at me doing it at last a hot thing now we can join a hot thing (Morrison 1987, 211-213)

While Morrison is not using AAVE here, it is apparent that she employs invention to transport her character to a place that is virtually indescribable via conventional language and to translate in some way the profound sense of loss Beloved feels. The language is completely freed from the grammatical rules and linguistic norms established by white patriarchy; the imagery suggests the Middle Passage, but since this was an experience that Morrison suggests the twentiethcentury mind cannot possibly grasp in the extent of its horror, she has to imagine a new linguistic structure to evoke it. Beloved's monologue attempts to answer her own question: "how can I say things that are pictures?" (Morrison 1987, 211). Indeed, Morrison's entire novel seeks to explicate that question, translating a "rememory" Sethe has long kept at bay into a word-tale that is not "a story to pass on" (Morrison 1987, 274) or overlook, as black people's stories all too frequently have been overlooked. Indeed, immediately following Beloved's monologue is a coda in which the three women's voices come together as they claim each other in a way that the tenets of American slavery have forbidden. Morrison also illustrates the power and the importance of non-Standard language when she imagines the force that eventually frees Sethe from Beloved's destructive spell. As the women gather in Sethe's yard, heeding Ella's injunction to act because "the children can't just up and kill the mama" (Morrison 1987, 256), Morrison describes the scene as follows: "They stopped praying and took a step back to the beginning. In the beginning there were no words. In the beginning was the sound, and they all knew what the sound sounded like" (Morrison 1987, 259). Perhaps Morrison implies here a type of cultural memory that stores the "sound" of the voyage from Africa into slavery. In any event, it is a direct revision of Christian tradition that holds that in the beginning was the Word. At the climax of the novel, the women's "sound" compels Sethe to act. For Sethe it was as though the Clearing had come to her with all its heat and simmering leaves, where the voices of women searched for the right combination, the key, the code, the sound that broke the back of words. Building voice upon voice until they found it, and when they did it was a wave of sound wide enough to sound deep water and knock the pods off chestnut trees. It broke over Sethe and she trembled like the baptized in its wash. (Morrison 1987, 261)

"How lovely it is, this thing we have done -

together"

59

The moment Morrison describes is beyond language, and she takes as her challenge to convey it nevertheless. No American author has dared to go as far as Toni Morrison has in recreating events beyond the scope of ordinary language and linguistic structures. She creates words, such as Sethe's name for Beloved, her "crawling-already? baby"; she imagines characters such as Baby Suggs, who exemplifies the African American sermon tradition in a most unlikely place, a clearing in the woods, for a most unlikely group of people, runaway slaves, preaching a most unlikely message that emphasizes loving and celebrating the flesh rather than cultivating the spiritual; she devises a narrative structure that mirrors the way Sethe "rememories" and eventually tells her story to Paul D, Circling him in the way she was circling the subject. Round and round, never changing direction, which might have helped his head ... Circling, circling, now she was gnawing something else instead of getting to the point ... Sethe knew that the circle she was making around the room, him, the subject, would remain one. That she could never close in, pin it down for anyone who had to ask. (Morrison 1987, 161-63)

To invite us, entice us, compel us to confront our collective human history, Morrison exploits the participatory nature of the African / African American expressive arts tradition. Drawing on the oral quality of language and insisting that the reader join in what becomes an act of call-and-response between author and audience, Morrison's texts become inclusive and performative. While it may be argued that many writers reappropriate literary forms and traditions and experiment with language, 9 Toni Morrison has done so with the conscious aim both of telling stories that have gone untold and of telling them in a way that is honest, that underscores their content and their implications. The risks she has taken and the confidence and expertise she has modeled in doing so have inspired the next generation of African American writers, including J. California Cooper, Tina McElroy Ansa, Dori Sanders, Bebe Moore Campbell, and Terry McMillan. Taking delight in life and in language, Morrison, when queried about her tendency to depict larger-than-life characters and events, proclaimed, "Life is large" (Moyers). She places the responsibility for those stories squarely on her readers, and challenges other writers to do the same. Accepting the Nobel Prize in Literature, Morrison offered a "Once upon a time" parable10 of a wise old blind woman who is asked whether a bird placed 9

10

In Spoken Soul, Rickford / Rickford devote an entire chapter to writers (both black and white) who employ black English in their works. They look at, among others, Joel Chandler Harris and Thomas Nelson Page, Paul Laurence Dunbar (known for both his "dialect" poems and his poems written in Standard English), Langston Hughes, Ntozake Shange, and June Jordan, whom the authors credit with writing the first novel entirely in black vernacular. For an excellent reading of Morrison's acceptance speech, see Cheryl Lester's article "Meditations in a Bird in the Hand: Ethics and Aesthetics in a Parable by Toni Morrison" (Lester 2000).

60

Elizabeth Ann

Beaulieu

b e f o r e h e r i s l i v i n g o r d e a d . H e r r e s p o n s e t o t h e c h i l d r e n is s h o c k i n g i n

its

simplicity; r a t h e r t h a n r e p l y i n g w h e t h e r t h e bird is alive or d e a d , s h e a n s w e r s , "It is

in

your

hands."

The

bird

becomes

language,

the

old

woman

a

writer.

C o n c e r n e d a b o u t t h e a b u s e s of l a n g u a g e a n d a w a r e of its t r a n s f o r m a t i v e p o t e n t i a l , t h e o l d w o m a n / M o r r i s o n r u m i n a t e s o n w h a t e a c h of u s h o l d s in o u r h a n d s . B e it g r a n d or slender, b u r r o w i n g , blasting, o r r e f u s i n g to sanctify; w h e t h e r it l a u g h s o u t l o u d or is a cry w i t h o u t a n alphabet, t h e c h o i c e w o r d , t h e c h o s e n silence, u n m o l e s t e d l a n g u a g e surges t o w a r d k n o w l e d g e , n o t its d e s t r u c t i o n . . . W o r d - w o r k is s u b l i m e , s h e thinks, b e c a u s e it is generative; it m a k e s m e a n i n g that s e c u r e s o u r d i f f e r e n c e , o u r h u m a n d i f f e r e n c e - the w a y in w h i c h w e are like n o o t h e r life. W e die. T h a t m a y b e t h e m e a n i n g of life. B u t w e d o l a n g u a g e . T h a t m a y b e the m e a s u r e of o u r lives. ( M o r r i s o n 1994, 2 1 - 2 2 ) M o r r i s o n ' s reception a m o n g both critical a n d p o p u l a r audiences as e v i d e n c e d b y the awards and accolades she has accrued and the reverence she inspires indicates t h a t h e r w o r d - w o r k is, i n d e e d , s u b l i m e , t h e s c o p e of h e r c o n t r i b u t i o n t o n a t i o n a l and international literature virtually immeasurable.

Works Cited Atkinson, Yvonne (2000): Language The Bears Witness: The Black English Oral Tradition in the Works of Toni Morrison. In: Conner, Marc C. (ed.): The Aesthetics of Toni Morrison: Speaking the Unspeakable. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 12-30. Gates, Henry Louis Jr. (1988): The Signifyin(g) Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism. New York: Oxford UP. LeClair, Thomas (1981): 'The Language Must Not Sweat': A Conversation with Toni Morrison. In: The New Republic. March 21, 25-29. Lester, Cheryl (2000): Meditations on a Bird in the Hand: Ethics and Aesthetics in a Parable by Toni Morrison. In: Connor, Marc C. (ed.): The Aesthetics of Toni Morrison: Speaking the Unspeakable. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 125-38. Morrison, Toni (1987): Beloved. New York: Knopf. Morrison, Toni (1970): The Bluest Eye. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Morrison, Toni (1994): Lecture and speech of acceptance, upon the award of the Nobel prize for literature, delivered in Stockholm on the seventh of December, nineteen hundred and ninetythree. New York: Knopf. Moyers, Bill (1990): A World of Ideas with Bill Moyers: Toni Morrison. Parts I and II. Videotape. New York: PBS. Rickford, John R. (1999): African American Vernacular English: Features, Evolution, Educational Implications. Maiden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, Inc.. Rickford, John R. / Rickford, Russell John (2000): Spoken Soul: The Story of Black English. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.. Smitherman, Geneva (1977): Talkin and Testifyin: The Language of Black America. Detroit: Wayne State UP. Smitherman, Geneva (2000): Talkin That Talk: Language, Culture and Education in African America. New York: Routledge.

"How lovely it is, this thing we have done -

together"

61

Tate, Claudia (1994): Toni Morrison. In: Taylor-Guthrie, Danielle (ed.): Conversations with Toni Morrison. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 156-170. Taylor-Guthrie, Danielle (ed.) (1994): Conversations with Toni Morrison. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Williams, Robert L. (ed.) (1975): Ebonics: The True Language of Black Folks. St. Louis: Institute of Black Studies.

II. BRASILIEN

Christopher F. Laferl Universität Salzburg (Österreich)

Brasilien und die Norm

As the different versions of Chico Buarque's first novel Estorvo (1991) published in Lisbon and in Säo Paulo show, there exist minor differences between the European and the Brazilian written norm of Portuguese that concern the vocabulary, orthographic rules and attitudes towards neologisms and foreign words. Taking Chico Buarque's novel as point of departure, the following essay delineates the use and the importance of literary texts for the discussion about correct and good Portuguese. In Brazil, the debate about literature and the norm gained importance only after a Brazilian literature had come into being in the minds of the Brazilians themselves, i. e. in the first decades after political independence from Portugal in the early 1820s. The three main moments in which changing attitudes towards the Brazilian written norm culminated were: first, the discussions about Jose de Alencar's romantic novel Iracema (1865), whose "incorrect" language was severely attacked by the Portuguese critic and writer Pinheiro Chagas; second, the debate about the drawing of the Civil Code at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, in which the statesman Rui Barbosa, a stout defender of the classics, such as Camöes, Vieira and Filinto Elisio, highlighted the importance of correct and good Portuguese; and third, the iconoclastic proposals of the Brazilian avant-garde, mainly Mario de Andrade, who had in mind the creation of a new written norm for Brazilian Portuguese. As much as the Brazilian modernists stressed the idea of Brazilianness and the need for new forms to articulate a specific Brazilian imaginary, their claims for more linguistic freedom in literary matters only reduced the potential of literary texts to define the linguistic norm. The principle of absolute artistic freedom and thus its questionable use for normative purposes, as well as the increasing importance of the mass media, led to the marginalization of literary texts in the process of defining the language norm. In some Brazilian dictionaries of Portuguese, such as the excellent Dicionario Houaiss, literature is not even used any more to illustrate the correct use of language.

1. Die Steine des Anstoßes Im Jahr 1991 brachte der brasilianische Sänger, Liedermacher und Schriftsteller Chico Buarque (geb. 1944), der - genauso wie sein Vater, der Historiker und

66

Christopher F. Laferl

Essayist Sergio Buarque de Holanda (1902-1982) - der brasilianischen Lexikographie als Autorität gilt,1 seinen ersten Roman Estorvo heraus, der im selben Jahr sowohl in Brasilien als auch in Portugal verlegt wurde. Wenn der Text auch zugleich in beiden Ländern erschienen ist, so ist es dennoch nicht derselbe, denn bei genauerem Hinsehen finden sich einige Unterschiede zwischen der brasilianischen (B) und der portugiesischen Ausgabe (E).2 Die Unterschiede zwischen den beiden Ausgaben hängen zum Großteil mit den geringfügig verschiedenen Orthographieregeln zusammen, manche haben aber für das Textverständnis auch weiter reichende Folgen. Wenn in dem Satz "Deve ser coisa importante, pois ouvi a campainha tocar värias vezes [...]." in der brasilianischen Version (B 11) nach dem importante ein Beistrich steht und dies in der portugiesischen Ausgabe nicht der Fall ist ( E l l ) , oder es einmal Hei de (B 12) und abotoo (B 13) und das andere Mal Hei-de (E 12) und abotoo (E 13) heißt, dann sind das Unterschiede, die nichts an der Bedeutung des Textes ändern. Etwas anders sieht die Sache schon aus, wenn man einmal camera (Β 12) und einmal cämara (E 12) lesen kann. Noch schwerer wiegt der Unterschied zwischen de fato (Β 12) und de facto (Ε 12), denn kein Brasilianer - und der Ich-Erzähler des Textes kann nur ein Brasilianer sein - würde de facto (mit einem ausgesprochenen [k]) sagen, was in Portugal sehr wohl der Fall ist, da es sich bei dem in diesem Wort um keinen so genannten stummen Konsonanten (consoante muda) handelt, wie bei so vielen anderen Wörtern mit ähnlicher Schreibweise. 3 Hinzukommt noch, dass in der portugiesischen Version alle Fremdwörter die Graphie ihrer Ursprungssprache beibehalten und zusätzlich durch Kursivierung ausgewiesen sind, was in der brasilianischen Ausgabe nicht der Fall ist. Einige Fälle wie videogame (Β 27, Ε 27), cream cracker (Β 17, Ε 17) oder peignoir (Β 16, Ε 16)4 stechen wegen der gleichen Schreibweise kaum ins Auge, andere fallen, wie ζ. B. guiche (Β 11) vs. guichet ( E l l ) , wegen der zusätzlich zur Frage der Kursivierung unterschiedlichen Graphie schon mehr auf, und gänzlich in die Irre führend sind chofer (B 18) vs. chauffeur (Ε 17) und marrom (Β 29) vs. marron (Ε 29), denn die alten französischen Schreibungen chauffeur und marron kennt die brasilianische Lexikographie gar nicht mehr, was vielleicht bei 1

So kann man im Novo Aurelio unter dem Lemma figurino als Beleg für die Wendung "como manda ο figurino" einen Satz aus Chico Buarques Theaterstück Roda-Viva finden. " Mit (B) wird hier die brasilianische Ausgabe bezeichnet und mit (E) - für Europäisch - die portugiesische. 3 Siehe dazu C u n h a / C i n t r a 1985, 73-74: "Rarissimos säo os exemplos que se apontam em que esta consoante e efetivamente pronunciada era Portugal e näo no Brasil, como facto (em Portugal) e fato (no Brasil)." 4 Interessant ist in diesem Zusammenhang, dass in der brasilianischen Ausgabe ebenfalls peignoir ('Morgenmantel') zu lesen ist, obwohl auch die Schreibung penhoar als normkonform angesehen wird (cf. Novo Aurelio, s. v. penhoar, der für diese Graphie auch ein literarisches Beispiel von Maria Julieta Drummond de Andrade anführt).

Brasilien und die Norm

67

chauffeur nicht so sehr ins Gewicht fällt, da in Brasilien ohnehin mehrheitlich der Ausdruck motorista verwendet wird. Bei marron hingegen stört die französische Schreibung und die Kursivierung sehr, weil in Brasilien dieses Wort für braun allenthalben das in Portugal übliche castanho ersetzt hat, wenn man einmal von seiner Verwendung für die Farbe der Augen und der Haare absieht.5 Die graphische Hervorhebung der fremdsprachlichen Neologismen verschiedener Provenienz und verschiedenen Übernahmedatums könnten bei den Leserinnen und Lesern der portugiesischen Ausgabe den Eindruck hervorrufen, dass der Ich-Erzähler des Textes auf den Gebrauch dieser Gallizismen und Anglizismen hinweisen wollte, was mit der allgemeinen Zeichnung der Figur in keiner Weise übereinstimmt. Man könnte sogar meinen, sie wiesen ihn als Snob aus, was noch weniger richtig ist. Aber nicht nur aus einer narratologischen Perspektive stellen die originalen Schreibungen und die Kursivierungen der Fremdwörter eine prekäre Vorgangsweise dar, auch aus einer linguistischen tun sie das, weisen sie die Anglizismen und Gallizismen auf diese Weise doch sehr deutlich als Fremdkörper aus (was sie in Brasilien gar nicht oder kaum mehr sind) und stellen so eine weitere Phase im schon Jahrhunderte dauernden Kampf der Sprachpuristen gegen Xenismen und Neologismen dar, wie noch zu zeigen sein wird. Des Weiteren machen die beiden Ausgaben des Erstlingsromans von Chico Buarque deutlich, dass der Streit um die korrekte sprachliche Norm stets auch ein Streit um die Frage ist, welcher der beiden Varietäten des Portugiesischen, der brasilianischen oder der europäischen, in der Schriftsprache der Vorzug zu geben ist. Sieht man allerdings von den Unterschieden hinsichtlich der Orthographie 6 und der Hervorhebung von Neologismen ab, so entspricht Estorvo einem Umgang mit Sprache und Schrift, den man durchweg als normgerecht bezeichnen kann, und zwar sowohl in Brasilien als auch in Portugal. So manche Sprach-Steine des Anstoßes, die auf dem Weg von der Mündlichkeit zur Schriftlichkeit und von der europäischen zur brasilianischen Varietät des Portugiesischen liegen, finden sich in diesem Roman gar nicht. Wenn man die wichtigsten Unterschiede zwischen europäischem und brasilianischem Portugiesisch benennen müsste, so wären v. a. folgende Punkte hervorzuheben. 7 Auf der Ebene der Phonetik sind es in erster Linie die für Portugal so typische, in Brasilien aber nicht erfolgte Abschwächung der unbetonten

5

6

7

Siehe auch hier wieder den Eintrag im Novo Aurelio, s. v. marrom: "[Do fr. marron.} Adj. 2 g. 1. Castanho (1): "Vestia um costume marrom, avivado no peito por um pequeno len^o branco" (Xavier Placer, Doze Histörias Cartas, 17)". Der Acordo Ortogrdfico des Jahres 1990, der zumindest eine Minimalvariante an Vereinheitlichung darstellen würde, ist bis heute nicht in Kraft getreten (siehe dazu: Winkelmann 1993, Estrela 1993, Baxter 1992, Adragäo / Estrela / Moura 1995). Für eine tiefer gehende Diskussion dieser Frage siehe u. a. Poll 2001, 917-920; Noll 1999, 27-88, Caetano 1986, 275-281, Teyssier 1990, 78-88 und Barme 2002.

68

Christopher F. Laferl

vortonigen Vokale 8 und der chiamento, die in Portugal übliche Aussprache des auslautenden und silbenschließenden Isl und Izl als [ J ] , die in Brasilien fast ausschließlich in Rio de Janeiro anzutreffen ist. Andererseits ist in Brasilien das auslautende Irl oft kaum hörbar, was in Portugal nicht der Fall ist. Ebenfalls auffällig ist in Brasilien die Palatalisierung von IM und /d/ vor [i] (graphisch vielfach als wiedergegeben), die im europäischen Portugiesisch nicht beobachtet werden kann. Im Bereich der Morphosyntax fallen die unterschiedlichen Verwendungsweisen der Auxiliare estar, ir, vir und andar auf, denen in Portugal in der Regel die Präposition α mit Infinitiv in jenen Fällen folgt, in denen in Brasilien ein Gerundium verwendet wird. Des Weiteren werden ter und haver unterschiedlich gebraucht. Einen weit höheren Stellenwert hatte und hat in der Diskussion um die sprachliche Norm aber die Frage der unbetonten Personalpronomen, die genau genommen in zwei unterschiedliche, wenngleich mit einander verbundene Teilfragen zerfällt, denn einerseits geht es um ihre Stellung innerhalb des Satzgefüges und andererseits um ihre Morphologie. Allgemein lässt sich sagen, dass die Stellung der unbetonten Personalpronomen in Objektposition in Brasilien weniger rigoros geregelt ist als in Portugal, wo die Enklise die Regel darstellt, während in Brasilien zumindest im Bereich der gesprochenen Sprache die proklitische Stellung fast ubiquitär ist. In der Schriftsprache wird die Proklise auch in Brasilien vielfach als unkorrekt angesehen, so ζ. B. am Beginn eines Hauptsatzes. Wenngleich das diesbezügliche strenge Normverständnis nach wie vor in der schulischen Ausbildung vorzuherrschen scheint und der jetzige mündliche Usus in Brasilien der europäischen Norm des Portugiesischen zuwider läuft, so muss doch gesagt werden, dass eigentlich eher die Proklise als die Enklise dem Sprachgebrauch der Klassiker des 16. Jahrhunderts entspricht, v. a. jenem der Lusiaden, dem normsanktionierenden Text schlechthin. 9 Neben der Frage der Stellung der Personalpronomen erregt auch immer wieder die Verwendung der betonten Objektpronomen anstelle der unbetonten die Gemüter. In der gesprochenen wie auch in der geschriebenen Sprache gilt in die8

9

Es scheint mir allerdings übertrieben, so weit zu gehen, wie vor Kurzem Marcos Bagno, der dem europäischen Portugiesisch einen Vokalkollaps prophezeit: "[...] um dos aspectos mais salientes desse portugues europeu moderno e a redu^äo extrema (e eventual colapso) das vogais ätonas, que serve de trago de distingäo imediata entre Portugueses e brasileiros [...]" (Bagno 2003, 89). Cf. ζ. B. Cunha/Cintra 1985, 300-301: "Sendo ο pronome ätono objeto direto ou indireto do verbo, a sua posigäo logica, normal, e a enclise. [...] Hä, porem, casos em que, na lingua culta, se evita ou se pode evitar essa colocagäo, sendo por vezes conflitantes, no particular, a norma portuguesa e a brasileira." und Cunha / Cintra 1985, 307: "A colocagäo dos pronomes ätonos no Brasil, principalmente no coloquio normal, difere da atual colocagäo portuguesa e encontra, em alguns casos, similar na lingua medieval e clässica." Siehe auch Bagno (2003, 90): "Outra pergunta que poderiamos fazer, entäo, e: por que a norma-padräo lingüistica brasileira näo se baseia no portugues clässico, que tem mais a ver com ela, e se inspira, ao contrario, no portugues moderno, que e a lingua dos Portugueses?"

Brasilien und die Norm

69

sem Zusammenhang die Verwendung von ele oder ela statt ο oder α als unrichtig, gerade aber der gezwungene Gebrauch von α und ο wird von Linguisten, die gegen die vorgegebene und als europäisch-portugiesische angesehene sprachliche Norm aufbegehren, vehement bekämpft. Die beiden derzeit besten einsprachigen Wörterbücher des Portugiesischen, der Novo Aurelio und der Dicionärio Houaiss, vertreten in dieser Frage unterschiedlich akzentuierte Meinungen. Während der Dicionärio Houaiss relativ neutral davon spricht, dass der informelle Gebrauch der betonten Personalpronomen sowohl bei ungebildeten als auch bei gebildeten Personen vorkomme, schreibt der Novo Aurelio diese Verwendung nur ungebildeten oder gebildeten, allerdings sprachlich sorglosen Personen zu.10 In Estorvo ist von Sorglosigkeit nichts zu finden, und Chico Buarque erweist sich in diesem Roman als dezidierter Anhänger der als gebildeter geltenden Variante der Enklise, was bei einem Ich-Erzähler, der seine Geschichte im Präsens vorbringt, fast etwas gekünstelt wirkt, wie der folgende Abschnitt deutlich macht: No ermo em que estou, so posso fugir em diregäo ä casa, e ο volume crescente dos latidos da-me a impressäo de estar correndo ao encontro dos cäes. Ε por fugir ao contrario, sinto-me duas vezes mais veloz; imagino romper a matilha como dois trens que se cruzam. Atiro-me contra a porta da frente, que estä travada por dentro com cravelho. (B 25; Hervorhebungen von C. F. L.) Umso mehr muss es verwundern, dass die portugiesische Auflage bei einem derart normgerechten Sprachgebrauch Änderungen vornahm.

2. Literatur und Sprachnormierung in Portugal Was als sprachlich richtig und was falsch und schließlich was als stilistisch gelungen gilt, spiegelt sich wie in vielen anderen Sprachen auch im Portugiesischen seit dem 16. Jahrhundert in zunehmendem Maße in Wörterbüchern und Grammatiken wieder (cf. Messner 1994, V-VIII, 1-7). Als Beispiele und Vorbilder für den guten Sprachgebrauch finden sich bereits in den Grammatiken

10

Novo Aurelio, 724, s. v. ele: "Na fase arcaica da lingua, empregou-se como objeto direto, uso que persiste no Brasil, entre pessoas incultas e na fala de pessoas cultas descuidadas: Vi ele. No portugues moderno, ainda pode ser usado nessa fungäo, desde que antecedido da prep. a, constituindo, com ela, ο objeto direto preposicionado (como sucede, alias, com vös e nos): "Nem ele entendeu a nos, nem nos a ele" (Luis de Camöes, Os Lusiadas, V. 28). Usa-se com preposigöes ("Mal com ele, pior sem ele" - prov.); [...]." und Houaiss, 1107, s . v . ele: "[...] aparece esporädicamente, em textos arcaicos, mormente com valor enfätico, na fungäo de objeto direto; no port, do Brasil, tal uso e extremamente normal na Variante informal do idioma, tanto de pessoas näo escolarizadas como das escolarizadas, embora condenado pela gramätica normativa. "Proyectos academicos" > "Nueva gramätica de la lengua espanola". Cf. http://www.congresodelalengua.gov.co (24.3.2007): "Aprobada 'La Gramätica de Medellin'."

Norma pluricentrica

del espanol y Academias

237

de la Lengua

prepar(ab)an en un proceso consensuado entre las Academias de la Lengua. Ademäs de las aclaraciones gramaticales sobre palabras determinadas, el DPD contiene articulos temäticos sobre varios aspectos del sintagma nominal ("concordancia", "genero", "plural"), del uso pronominal ("laismo", "leismo", "loismo", "pronombres personales", "voseo") y del empleo de la conjuncion que ("dequeismo", "queismo"). Para comprobar el grado de avance de la idea del pluricentrismo en las instituciones academicas, el articulo sobre el voseo es muy revelador (DPD, 672-676). De entrada, se distinguen "voseo reverencial" y "voseo dialectal americano". A continuation se ofrecen una description estructural del voseo americano y un panorama de su extension geogräfica. Concluye el articulo con un apartado importante sobre la "aceptacion del voseo en la norma culta". Sin reticencias algunas, se constata, p. ej. para el espanol rioplatense: "En los paises del Rio de la Plata, el voseo goza de total aceptacion en la norma culta, tanto en la lengua escrita como en la oral, y ha sido explicitamente reconocido como legitimo por la Academia Argentina de Letras" (DPD 2005, 674). Mas importante aun, por su fuerte carga simbolica, es la inclusion del voseo verbal culto en los modelos de conjugation del DPD (2005, 691-724). Se trata de la "pauta verbal" mäs extendida, es decir la que combina formas de presente monoptongadas, futuro tuteante e imperativo voseante (Fontanella de Weinberg 1999, 1409): Indicativo Presente

Indicativo Futuro

Imperativo

amas (amds) femes (femes) partes (partis)

amards temerds partirds

ama (amd) feme (ίεηιέ) parte (parti)

Otro aspecto importante de la description lingüistica del DPD es la manera en que los academicos utilizan el CREA para corroborar sus afirmaciones. En los articulos gramaticales temäticos se trata de ilustrar usos generales con citas que proceden de todas las areas del espanol europeo y americano. Presentamos en la pägina siguiente una estadistica de las citas presentadas en el articulo "concordancia". A ella sigue la lista de las areas lingüisticas del DPD (2005, VIII). En relation con las enormes diferencias de peso demogräfico, politico y social que existen entre las distintas areas llama la atencion la sobrerrepresentacion de un pais como Espana de donde proviene casi la mitad de los ejemplos. Otro caso extremo es el de Puerto Rico que se explica, quizäs, por el papel que desempena, almenos desde la perspectiva de los academicos, el "Estado libre asociado" en la "defensa" del espanol frente al ingles de los Estado Unidos. Por otra parte, se podria esperar una representation mucho mäs importante de paises como Mexico ο Argentina.

238

Franz. Lebsanft

Chile

8

Rio de la Plata

18 Argentina

14

Uruguay

4

Paraguay

0

Ecuador

0

Area andina

2 Peru

2

Bolivia

0

Venezuela

4

Colombia

9

Area del Caribe continental

13

Area de Mexico y Centroamerica

15 Mexico El Salvador

12 0

Guatemala

1

Costa Rica

2

Panama

0

Nicaragua

0

Honduras

0

Puerto Rico

5

Area de la Antillas

Area de los Estados Unidos Espana Total

10 Republica Dominicana

1

Cuba

4 1 51 118

La seleccion de las citas depende, por supuesto, de la constitucion y de las caracteristicas del CREA. Sin embargo, dentro de las posibilidades que ofrece el corpus, si hay opciones. En la estructura "Determinante + binomio (dedication y empeno / empeno y dedication)" se podria ilustrar la concordancia del determinante con el sustantivo mäs cercano no solamente con una cita peruana (DPD 2005, 159), sino tambien con otra nicaragüense (TODO su empeno y dedication, Prensa de Nicaragua [Nie.] 25.7.02) ο costarriquense (TODA SU dedication y empeno, Revista Comunicacion [C. Rica] 3.6.01). Un caso anälogo seria el de la

Norma pluricentrica

del espanol y Academias

de la Lengua

239

estructura "Determinante + ventanas y balcones / balcones y ventanas" que el DPD ejemplifica con una cita de Espana, mientras que el CREA proporciona citas de varios paises (LAS ventanas y balcones, Arg.: 2, Peru: 1, Col.: 1, P. Rico: 1, Esp.: 1; LOS balcones y ventanas, Peru: 1, Espana: 5).

6. Lexico Como se sabe, la tarea de una codification pluricentrica del lexico espanol es inmensa. Un diccionario pluricentrico digno de este nombre deberia informar adecuadamente sobre las areas y paises donde se usa cada una de las palabras del acervo lexico espanol. En el camino hacia tal description, el proyecto de los Diccionarios contrastivos del espanol de America (espanol de America - espanol de Espana) podria ser una etapa importante, a condition de tomar escrupulosamente al pie de la letra su intention descriptiva, tal como la expresan los autores en el Diccionario del espanol de Argentina (DEArg): Como diccionario descriptivo, el DEArg no se propone propagar norma lingiiistica alguna, de la indole que sea, sino que pretende informar sobre elementos lexicos del espanol tal como se habla y se escribe en Argentina. No se atiene, por lo tanto, a ningun criterio restrictivo que implique la exclusion, condena ο estigmatizacion de usos lingüisticos que segun pautas fundadas en convicciones morales, la idea de la pureza de la lengua ο el afän de defender la unidad del idioma espanol, puedan implicar la exclusion, condena ο estigmatizacion de determinados usos lingüisticos. (DEArg 2000, XVI) 20

Esto significa que el espanol peninsular no sirve en el DEArg de norma prescriptiva sino simplemente de espanol de "referencia" en el sentido que da la lexicografia francofona a este concepto.21 No se trata de erigir en modelo los usos peninsulares, sino de servirse de ellos para fines descriptivos. Desafortunadamente, la serie de los Diccionarios contrastivos comprende por el momento (marzo de 2007) solamente los dos diccionarios del espanol argentino (DEArg 2000) y del cubano (DECu 2000). Precedio la nueva serie el proyecto del Nuevo diccionario de americanismos con los tomos dedicados a los colombianismos (NDC 1993), argentinismos (NDA 1993; el DEArg es una refundicion del NDA) y uruguayismos (NDU 1993).22 En esta situation y por muy imperfecto que sea, el Diccionario de la lengua espanola de la Real Academia Espanola (DRAE) sigue siendo la linica obra 20 21 22

Cf. tambien DECu 2000, XX. Francard / Geron / Wilmet (ed.) 2001. No es posible consultar la pägina web http://www.answer.uni-augsburg.de/decea (o / woerterbuch) que se indica en DEArg 2000, XIII y DECu 2000, XVII (20.3.2007) para obtener informaciones sobre la situacion actual del proyecto.

240

Franz. Lebsanft

lexicogräfica q u e intente cumplir con los requisites de u n a description pluricentrica del espanol. Por u n a parte, el D R A E a u m e n t a de edicion en edicion el n u m e r o de americanismos; por la otra "regionaliza" paulatinamente el lexico de Espana, antes considerado c o m o de uso general. E n L e b s a n f t (1998, 2 6 9 - 2 7 0 ) llame la atencion sobre los doce " e s p a n o l i s m o s " que, por primera vez en la lexicografia academica, registra la vigesima primera edicion de 1992. E n el 22

D R A E 2001 n o solamente el n u m e r o de espanolismos pasa a 39 entradas con 46 acepciones, 2 3 sino que se deja constancia de la n u e v a marca diatopica en la introduction: " T o d a s aquellas entradas de uso general en E s p a n a cuyo e m p l e o en otros paises h a sido expresamente n e g a d o por las A c a d e m i a s correspondientes, llevan la marca Esp." ( D R A E 2 2 2001, X X X I V ) . D e la lista de 1992 se han eliminado besana (Esp., C u b a y M e j . 'haza, p o r t i o n de tierra labrantia'), canon (estar ~ Esp. 'estupendo, fenomenal, m u y b u e n o ' ) y diesel (C. Rica, Cuba, Esp., M e j . y Puerto R i c o 'aceite pesado, gasoil'), se han retomado las otras nueve entradas y acepciones (bonobüs, bonoloto, dar cana, capitän general [2], comisaria de policia, tener mäs cuento que Calleja, chachi, chanchi, cheli) y se han anadido 36. L a lista de 2001 se presenta asi: apartamento. 2. m. Esp. Piso pequeno para vivir. - apartamiento. Esp. p. us. apartamento. - bonobüs. 1. m. Esp. Tarjeta que autoriza al portador para un cierto numero de viajes en autobus. - bonoloto. 1. f. Esp. Cierto tipo de loterfa primitiva consistente en participar con un mismo boleto en uno ο en varios sorteos de los que se efecliian por semana. - bote 2 , estar algo en el 1. fr. coloq. Esp. Ser considerado como ya ganado.tener algo en el 1. fr. coloq. Esp. Dario por conseguido. - capitän ~ general. 1. m. Esp. Cargo correspondiente al mando militar supremo en las regiones terrestres y en los departamentos marftimos. 3. com. Esp. Grado supremo del Ejercito. - claxon. 1. m. Esp. Bocina electrica. - comisaria. ~ de Policia. 1. f. Esp. Cada una de las que, con funcion permanente, existen en las capitales de provincia distribuidas por distritos. - conducir 5. tr. Esp. Guiar un vehiculo automovil. - cheli. 1. m. Esp. Jerga con elementos castizos, marginales y contraculturales. - cana. dar 3. fr. coloq. Esp. Pegar, golpear, vapulear. - chachi 1 . 1. adj. Esp. chanchi. U. t. c. adv. - chanchi 1 . adj. Esp. Estupendo, muy bueno. U. t. c. adv. - caldo ~ de gallina. 1. m. Esp. Tabaco de picadura poco elaborado. - cuento. tener alguien mäs ~ que Calleja. 1. fr. coloq. Esp. Ser quejicoso ο fantasioso, falsear la realidad, exagerando lo que le afecta particularmente. - cubata 1 . m. coloq. Esp. cubalibre. - drogueria. 1. f. 3. f. Esp. Tienda en la que se venden productos de limpieza y pinturas. - duro. 15. m. Esp. Moneda de cinco pesetas. - gris. 6. m. coloq. Esp. Miembro de la antigua Policia armada, cuyo uniforme era de ese color. U. m. en pl. - guay 2 . 1. adj. coloq. Esp. Muy bueno, estupendo. 2. adv. m. coloq. Esp. Muy bien. - ganchito. 1. m. Esp. Aperitivo ligero y crujiente, de forma alargada ο de gancho, generalmente hecho con maiz ο

23

Con referencia a Lebsanft 1998, Poll 2005, 78 se muestra esceptico sobre un cambio de actitud normativa en la RAE. Como ejemplo de una entrada que deberia llevar la marca "espanolismo" (y no lo hace en el DRAE 21 1992) cita la palabra ordenador. A este respecto, cf. la nueva lista del DRAE 22 2001, que doy a continuacion.

Norma pluricentrica

del espanol y Academias

de la Lengua

241

patata. - grapo. (De GRAPO, y este acrön. de Grupo Revolucionario Antifascista Primero de Octubre). 1. com. Esp. Miembro de la banda terrorista GRAPO. - hierba. mala 1. f. Esp. Planta herbäcea que crece espontäneamente dificultando el buen desarrollo de los cultivos. - interinidad. 1. f. Esp. Cualidad de interino. 2. f. Esp. Tiempo que dura el desempeno interino de un cargo. - IVA. 1. m. Esp. Impuesto sobre el consumo que grava las transacciones comerciales, los servicios, las importaciones, etc. - legal . adj. coloq. Esp. Leal ο formal en su comportamiento. - mader. 5. m. despect. vulg. Esp. Miembro del cuerpo de Policiaco. - mir. 1. m. Esp. Medico que realiza präcticas en un hospital para obtener el titulo de especialista en alguna rama de la medicina. 2. m. Esp. Examen para acceder a un puesto de mir. U. t. c. adj. 3. m. Esp. Este sistema de especializacion medica. U. t. c. adj. El sistema mir es similar al estadounidense. - nacionalidad. 3. f. Esp. Comunidad autonoma a la que, en su Estatuto, se le reconoce una especial identidad historica y cultural. 4. f. Esp. Denomination oficial de algunas comunidades autonomas espanolas. nicaragiienismo. 1. m. Esp. nicaraguanismo. - ordenador, ra. m. Esp. Mäquina electronica dotada de una memoria de gran capacidad y de metodos de tratamiento de la information, capaz de resolver problemas aritmeticos y logicos gracias a la utilization automätica de programas registrados en ella. - pelicula. alia ~s. 1. expr. coloq. Esp. U. para indicar que alguien se desentiende de cualquier responsabilidad. Por mi, alia peliculas. - piso. ~ franco. 1. m. Esp. Vivienda clandestina en que se realizan diversas actividades ilfcitas. - paston2. 1. m. coloq. Esp. Gran cantidad de dinero. - pecero, ra. 1. m. y f. coloq. Esp. Miembro del Partido Comunista de Espana. - penene. 1. com. coloq. Esp. PNN. - PNN. 1. com. Esp. Profesor que ejerce en un centra de ensenanza del Estado mediante contrato temporal. - sudaca. 1. adj. despect. coloq. Esp. suramericano. Apl. a pers., u. t. c. s. - tragaperras1. 2. f. Esp. Mäquina de juegos de azar que funciona introduciendo monedas. U. t. c. adj. Mäquina tragaperras. Como se ve, en la mayoria de los casos se trata ο bien de lo que mi maestro belga Jacques Pohl (1984) llamaba "statalismes", es decir 'palabras que se refieren a la realidad de un Estado' (bonobus, bonoloto, capitän general, etc.), ο bien de palabras marcadas diafäsicamente como "coloquiales". Mucho mäs raro es el caso de palabras que no llevan marca alguna dentro del area donde son usuales, como p. ej. conducir 'guiar un vehiculo automovil' (frente a manejar, Am. 'conducir [guiarun automovil]'). 24 Se podria poner a prueba la utilidad del estado actual de la lexicografia policentrica a la hora de descifrar textos concretos. Tomamos un ejemplo. Si una obra como Cien anos de soledad forma parte del patrimonio cultural del hispanohablante culto, este deberia encontrar en los diccionarios las informaciones necesarias para poder descodificar las palabras que no pertenecen a su propia competencia lingüistica (y enciclopedica). Desde una perspectiva peninsular, un 24

El DRAE 22 2001 conoce tambien choferear (intr. coloq. Chile ,Conducir un vehiculo motorizado'. U. t. c. tr.). - Segun el DEUM, conducir 'guiar un vehiculo automovil' no estä desconocido en Mexico: "4 Manejar un automovil ο un tranvia". Cf. tambien, en internet, el mapa de Varilex que corresponde al concepto "llevar el control de un automobil (to drive)", http://gampx.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~ueda/varilex/ (20.3.2007).

242

Franz. Lebsanft

fragmento como el siguiente contiene palabras que se refieren a "cosas colombianas" ο "caribenas" y que - con la excepcion de ahuyama - utilizaria tambien un hispanohablante peninsular para hablar de ellas: "[...] Ursula y los ninos se partian el espinazo en la huerta cuidando el plätano y la malanga, la yuca y el name, la ahuyama y la berenjena." (Garcia Märquez 1967, 11) En cuanto diccionario del espanol peninsular, el DEA registra estas palabras en la medida en que figuran tambien en el corpus que forma la base de este diccionario. Es el caso de berenjena, name, plätano y yuca, pero no de ahuyama ni de malanga. El NDC informa de todas estas palabras con precisiones enciclopedicas que faltan en el DEA. En el caso de ahuyama (cucurbita maxima) senala las equivalencias peninsulares calabaza amarilla y calabaza grande. El DRAE 22 2001, por su parte, registra tambien todas las palabras escogidas. Solo las entradas ahuyama y malanga estän marcadas diatopicamente. En el articulo ahuyama, la definicion por sinonimo trata la palabra como un colombianismo "de lengua" considerando el sinonimo como la palabra de uso general: ahuyama. (De auyama). 1. f. Col. calabacera (II planta cucurbitäcea). 2. f. Col. calabaza (II fruto). No se sabe muy bien porque el DRAE zz 2001 registra la palabra tambien con otra grafia e informaciones diatopicas diferentes: auyama. (Del caribe auyama).\. f. Col. y Ven. calabacera (II planta cucurbitäcea). 2. f. Col. y Ven. Fruto de esta planta, grande, redondo, de pulpa amarilla y abundantes semillas. 3. f. R. Dom. Tuberculo comestible. He aqui la informacion que proporciona CREA (46 casos en 17 documentos): Marca Arg. Col. Esp. R. Dom. Ven. Total

ahuyama 6 4 0 0 10

auyama 0 2 10 8 16 36

Las citas peninsulares provienen casi todas de una sola obra, la novela Galindez de Manuel Vazquez Montalbän, texto en el que la palabra evoca en la memoria del protagonista - un exiliado republicano - su estancia en la Republica Dominicana de Ramon Trujillo:

Norma pluricentrica

del espanol y Academias

de la Lengua

243

-1 Donde estoy? Se te acerca un techo blando y con el un olor a fritos frfos que sabes puedes localizar, que estän aqui ο en un lugar concreto de tu memoria, arepitas de auyama, arepitas de auyama, arepitas de auyama, y repetias los nombres de comidas de sorprendente eufonia hasta convertirlos en un ritmo, bailable, naturalmente (Vazquez Montalbän 1990, 54-55). Si bien es cierto que el uso de calabaza (amarilla) es mucho mäs extendido, tampoco faltan geosinonimos como ayote (Mexico y Centroamerica) y zapallo (Rio de la Plata; DRAE 22 2001, s. v.)· En comparacion con ahuyama /auyama, el estatus de la marcacion diatopica de malanga en el DRAE 22 2001 es algo diferente. malanga. 1. f. Col., Cuba, El Salv., Hond., Pan. y P. Rico. Planta aräcea, de hojas grandes acorazonadas, tallo muy corto y tuberculos comestibles, que se cultiva en terrenos bajos y humedos. 2. f. Co/., Cuba, Hond., Pan. y P. Rico. Tuberculo de esta planta. 3. f.El Salv. dinero (II moneda corriente). Las marcas senalan que, por ser una cosa caribena y antillana, el uso de la palabra estä confinado a las zonas de Centroamerica, del Caribe continental y las Antillas. No se trata de un regionalismo de "lengua" sino de "cosa".

7. Conclusion En gran parte, la description de las normas nacionales y regionales de alcance supranacional estä aun por hacer. Sin embargo, la idea de tomar en consideration estas normas en las obras de referencia panhispänicas se abre paulatinamente Camino en las instituciones academicas de cuyo espiritu reformador dan testimonio los esfuerzos para renovar, bajo el lema del pluri- ο policentrismo, la doctrina ortogräfica, gramatical y lexica que sustenta la codification academica. Con toda evidencia, estos esfuerzos pueden contar con un amplio consenso en los circulos mäs influyentes en la lengua, no solamente en Europa sino tambien en America. La base de este consenso de politicos e intelectuales es la voluntad de mantener y desarrollar el espanol como vehiculo de comunicacion de una comunidad historica y cultural de veinte naciones. En el nuevo contexto de la globalization donde el espanol compite con otras lenguas supranacionales, el viejo debate sobre la "unidad de la lengua" como expresion de un eurocentrismo anticuado queda superado por la idea de un mundo hispänico multipolar que admite la "unidad en la diversidad".

244

Franz. Lebsanft

8. B i b l i o g r a f i a Alarcos Llorach, Emilio (1994): Gramatica de la lengua espanola. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe. Berschin, Helmut/Julio Fernändez-Sevilla / Josef Felixberger ( 3 2005): Die spanische Sprache. Verbreitung, Geschichte, Struktur. München: Olms. Cartagena, Nelson (2003): Externe Sprachgeschichte des Spanischen in Chile. In: Ernst, Gerhard / Gleßgen, Martin-Dietrich / Schmitt, Christian / Schweickard, Wolfgang (eds.) (2003): Romanische Sprachgeschichte. Ein internationales Handbuch zur Geschichte der romanischen Sprachen. Vol. 1. Berlin / Nueva York: de Gruyter, 1027-1035. CILE - I Congreso Internacional de la lengua espanola, Zacatecas, abril de 1997; II Congreso Internacional de la lengua espanola. El espanol en la sociedad de la information, Valladolid, octubre de 2001; III Congreso Internacional de la lengua espanola. Identidad y globalization, Rosario, noviembre de 2004; IV Congreso Internacional de la lengua espanola. Presente y futuro de la lengua espanola: unidad en la diversidad, Medellin, marzo de 2007. URL: http://cvc.cervantes.es/obref/congresos (20.3.2007). CREA - Real Academia Espanola: Corpus de referencia del espanol. URL: http://www.rae.es (20.3.2007). DEA - Manuel Seco / Olimpia Andres / Gabino Ramos (1999): Diccionario del espanol actual, Madrid, 2 Vol. DEArg - Haensch, Günther / Werner, Reinhold (2000): Diccionario del espanol de Argentina. Espanol de Argentina - espanol de Espana. coord. Claudio Chuchuy. Madrid: Gredos. DECu - Haensch, Günther / Werner, Reinhold (2000): Diccionario del espanol de Cuba. Espanol de Cuba - espanol de Espana, coord. Cardenas Molina, Gisela / Tristä Perez, Atonia Maria / Werner, Reinhold. Madrid: Gredos. DEUM - Luis Fernando Lara (1996/2000): Diccionario del espanol usual en Mexico. Mexico D.F. / Alicante. URL: http://www.cervantesvirtual.com (20.3.2007). DPD - Real Academia Espanola / Asociacion de Academias de la Lengua Espanola (2005): Diccionario panhispänico de dudas. Madrid. URL: http://www.rae.es (20.3.2007). DRAE - Real Academia Espanola ( 21 1992, 22 2001): Diccionario de la lengua espanola. 2 Vol. Madrid. URL: http://www.rae.es (20.3.2007). Ernst, Gerhard / Gleßgen, Martin-Dietrich / Schmitt, Christian / Schweickard, Wolfgang (eds.) (2003): Romanische Sprachgeschichte. Ein internationales Handbuch zur Geschichte der romanischen Sprachen. Vol. 1. Berlin / Nueva York: de Gruyter. Fontanella de Weinberg, Beatriz (1999): Sistemas pronominales de tratamiento usados en el mundo hispänico. In: Bosque, Ignacio / Demonte, Violeta (dir.): Gramatica descriptiva de la lengua espanola. Vol. I. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1399-1425. Francard, Michel / Geron, Genevieve / Wilmet, Regine (eds.) (2001): Le fran^ais de reference. Constructions et appropriations d'un concept. Actes du colloque de Louvain-la-Neuve (3-5 novembre 1999 (= Cahiers de Γ Institut de Linguistique de Louvain, 27, 2001). Fuentes, Carlos (2001): Unidad y diversidad del espanol, lengua de encuentros, II CILE (http://cvc.cervantes.es/obref/congresos/valladolid/plenarias/fuentes_c.pdf). Garcia Märquez, Gabriel (1967): Cien anos de soledad. Buenos Aires: Ed. Sudamericana. Garcia Yebra, Valentin (1998): Defensa y cultivo de la lengua en la Real Academia Espanola. In: Greule, Albrecht / Lebsanft, Franz (eds.): Europäische Sprachkultur und Sprachpflege. Tübingen: Narr, 245-253. Gleßgen, Martin-Dietrich (1996/1997): Variedades ejemplares y no ejemplares en el espanol americano: El caso de Mexico. In: Anuario de lingüistica hispänica 12/13, 597-627 (Studia hispanica in honorem German de Granda). Gleßgen, Martin-Dietrich (2003): Historia externa del espanol en Mexico. In: Ernst, Gerhard / Gleßgen, Martin-Dietrich / Schmitt, Christian / Schweickard, Wolfgang (eds.) (2003): Romanische Sprachgeschichte. Ein internationales Handbuch zur Geschichte der romanischen Sprachen. Vol. 1. Berlin / Nueva York: de Gruyter, 979-995. Lara, Luis Fernando (2004): Lengua historica y normatividad. Mexico D.F: El Colegio de Mexico.

Norma pluricentrica

del espanol y Academias

de la Lengua

245

Lebsanft, Franz (1996): Das Spanische als Kultur- und Weltsprache. Anmerkungen zu neuen Lobreden (elogios) auf die Sprache aus der Sicht der Linguistik. In: Schmitt, Christian / Schweickard, Wolfgang (eds.): Kulturen im Dialog. Die iberoromanischen Sprachen aus interkultureller Sicht. Akten der gleichnamigen Sektion des Bonner Hispanistentages (2.-4. 3. 1995). Bonn: Romanistischer Verl., 208-232. Lebsanft, Franz (1997): Spanische Sprachkultur. Studien zur Bewertung und Pflege des öffentlichen Sprachgebrauchs im heutigen Spanien. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Lebsanft, Franz (1998): Spanische Sprachkultur. Monozentrisch oder plurizentrisch?. In: Greule, Albrecht / Lebsanft, Franz (eds.): Europäische Sprachkultur und Sprachpflege. Tübingen: Narr, 255-276. Lebsanft, Franz (1999): 'Lingüistica popular' y cultivo del idioma en Internet. Los resultados de una encuesta a participantes de la lista de correo 'Apuntes'. In: Espanol Actual 72, 47-58. Lebsanft, Franz (2000): Nation und Sprache: das Spanische. In: Gardt, Andreas (ed.): Nation und Sprache. Die Diskussion ihres Verhältnisses in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Berlin / New York: de Gruyter, 643-671. Lebsanft, Franz (2004): Plurizentrische Sprachkultur in der spanischsprachigen Welt. In: Gil, Alberto / Osthus, Dietmar / Polzin-Haumann, Claudia (eds.): Romanische Sprachwissenschaft. Zeugnisse für Vielfalt und Profil eines Faches. Festschrift für Christian Schmitt zum 60. Geburtstag. Frankfurt / Main etc.: Lang, 205-220. Lope Blanch, Juan M. (1993): Ensayos sobre el espanol de America. Mexico D.F: Univ. Nacional Autonoma de Mexico. NDC - Haensch, Günther / Werner, Reinhold (1993): Nuevo diccionario de colombianismos. Santafe de Bogota: Inst. Caro y Cuervo. Oesterreicher, Wulf (1995): Die Architektur romanischer Sprachen im Vergleich. In: Dahmen, Wolfgang et al. (eds.): Konvergenz und Divergenz in den romanischen Sprachen. Tübingen: Narr, 3-21. Oesterreicher, Wulf (2001): Plurizentrische Sprachkultur - der Varietätenraum des Spanischen. In: Romanistisches Jahrbuch 51, 281-311. Oesterreicher, Wulf (2004): El problema de los territorios americanos. In: III CILE, Identidad lingüistica y globalization, Rosario, noviembre de 2004. URL: http://cvc.cervantes.es/obref/ congresos/rosario/ponencias/aspectos/oesterreicher_w.htm (20.3.2007). ORAE - Real Academia Espanola (1999): Ortografia de la lengua espanola. Edition revisada por las Academias de la Lengua Espanola. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe. Poll, Bernhard (2005): Le frangais langue pluricentrique? Etudes Sur la variation diatopique d'une langue standard. Frankfurt / Main etc: Lang. Pohl, Jacques (1984): Le statalisme. In: Travaux de linguistique et de litterature 22, 251-264. Polzin-Haumann, Claudia (2005): Zwischen unidad und diversidad. Sprachliche Variation und sprachliche Identität im hispanophonen Raum. In: Romanistisches Jahrbuch 56, 271-295. Stepanov, Georgij V. (1971): Algunas cuestiones metodologicas del espanol americano. In: Rosetti, Alexandra (ed.): Actele celui de-al XII-lea congres international de lingvisticä §i filologie romanicä (Bucure§ti, 15-20 aprilie 1968). Vol. II. Bucure§ti: Acad. Republ. Soc. Romania, 1165-1167. Stepanov, Georgij V. / Svejcer, Aleksandr D. (1981): Toward a Study of Transplanted Languages. In: Geckeier, Horst / Schlieben-Lange, Brigitte / Trabant, Jürgen / Weydt, Harald (eds.): Logos semantikos. Studia lingüistica in honorem Eugenio Coseriu 1921-1981. Vol. 5. B e r l i n / N u e v a York / Madrid: Gredos, 219-225. Stepanov, Georgij V. (2004): La lengua espanola de Espana y America Latina. Sobre la variabilidad lingüistica. Munich: LINCOM Europa. Svejcer, Aleksandr D. (1978): Standard English in the United States and England. La Haya: Mouton. Varilex - Ueda, Hiroto (coord.): Variation lexica del espanol en el mundo. URL: http://gampx.utokyo.ac.jp/~ueda/varilex/index.php (20.3.2007). Vazquez Montalbän, Manuel (1990): Galindez. Barcelona: Seix Barrai.

246

Franz. Lebsanft

Zamora Salamanca, Francisco J. (1990): The Standardization of the 'National Variants' of Spanish. Problems and Goals of a Language Policy in the Spanisch-Speaking Countries. In: Bahner, Werner (ed.): Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Congress of Linguists (Berlin, GDR, August 10-August 15, 1987). Berlin: Akademie-Verl., 1681-1685.

Peter Cichon Universität Wien (Österreich)

Domingo Faustino Sarmiento

Domingo Faustino Sarmiento was a multi-faceted, yet controversial figure. He was a journalist, newspaper founder, writer, translator, educator of the people and statesman. As a discriminating man of letters and fervent supporter of the Enlightenment, he was inspired by European Romanticism to become a confident advocate of an autonomous literature for Argentina. At the same time, though, Sarmiento could be narrow-minded or dogmatic, and over-zealous on the subject of social progress. While doing much to forge a new Argentine national identity, he rigorously excluded three of its constituent parts, its Ibero-Spanish roots, its Gauchos and its indigenous population. Although praise is due to Sarmiento for his contribution to Chilean and Argentine general education, he encouraged a cruel campaign against the Pampas Indians which contributed to their downfall. In fact, through his Latin American and Argentine nationalism, he became a staunch advocate of something that Walter Bruno Berg would later call European cultural imperialism. Sarmiento's ambivalence is also seen in his literary approach to Gaucho and Caudillo life. He draws the literary figure of Facundo as the prototype of a barbarian Caudillo, while somehow lending him amiable traits as a person. There was a wide-spread assumption amongst Argentines that in order to create a lengua nacional argentina as well as an identidad argentina a creative act was necessary. This act could only take place if social, linguistic and cultural change were to coincide. Since that happens in Sarmiento's literary work, particularly in his Facundo, it explains his lasting social impact and why he is credited with being the fundador de la literatura argentina and the creador de la lengua escrita argentina. His prose was part societal, part political and part didactical and, in my opinion, it achieves its effect in three ways: First, there is Facundo's loud motto civilizacion y barbarie. Its superficially brusque antithesis was embraced with enthusiasm by his compatriots, because it seemed to be a political program, an answer to questions about the way forward for the country in times to come. Second, there is the antiacademic, journalistic and even anti-classical tone of his writing. Much of the originality and innovation of Sarmiento's work derives from its stylistic and grammatical slackness, its use of verbal and formal sub-standards, its political manipulativeness and anti-Spanish tone. For Argentina's modernisers it was the first successful attestation in their search for a sense of self in their literature. Third there was his large commitment as an educator of the people and advocate of mass literacy. His Metodo de la lectura gradual was used by

248

Peter Cichon

tens of thousands, while his rigorously anti-traditional proposals for spelling reforms paved the way for the self-assured norms of Argentine Spanish orthography.

1. Biographische Skizze Domingo Faustino Sarmiento ist eine ebenso vielschichtige wie widersprüchliche Persönlichkeit: Journalist, Zeitungsgründer, Literat, Übersetzer, Volkserzieher und Politiker, ist er ein feinsinniger Homme de lettres und glühender Anhänger des Gedankenguts der Aufklärung, der, 'angestiftet' durch die europäische Romantik, zum selbstbewussten Fürsprecher einer autonomen argentinischen Literatur wird, zugleich jedoch ein dogmatisch verengter Fortschrittsfanatiker, der aus der Neudefinition der nationalen Identität seines Heimatlandes Argentinien gleich drei Konstituenten schroff ausgrenzt, nämlich dessen iberospanische Wurzeln, die Gauchos und die Indigenas. Er ist jemand, der sich auf der einen Seite große Verdienste um die chilenische und argentinische Volksbildung erwirbt, auf der anderen Seite einen grausamen Ausrottungsfeldzug gegen die Pampaindianer führt. Amerikanischer und argentinischer Nationalist, macht er sich zugleich zum vehementen Fürsprecher eines, wie es Walter Bruno Berg (1995, 120) nennt, "europäischen Kulturimperialismus". Ambivalent ist auch sein literarischer Umgang mit dem Gaucho- und Caudillotum: so zeichnet er die literarische Figur seines Facundo als Prototypen des barbarischen Caudillos, gibt ihm als Person aber durchaus sympathische Züge. Geboren wird Sarmiento am 15. Februar 1811 in San Juan in der gleichnamigen Provinz, "en una provincia ignorante y atrasada", wie er in seinen Jugenderinnerungen 'Recuerdos de Provincia' (Sarmiento 1962, 32) schreibt. Gestorben ist er am 11. September 1888 in Asuncion / Paraguay. Seine Eltern Paula Zoila Albarracin und Jose Clemente Sarmiento leben in ärmlichen Verhältnissen. So berichtet er von seinem Vater: Mi padre es un buen hombre que no tiene otra cosa notable en su vida que haber prestado unos servicios, en un empleo subalterno, en la guerra de la independencia. (Sarmiento 1962, 32)

Hineingeboren wird Sarmiento in die turbulenten Anfänge des argentinischen Staates, in dem sich immer unversöhnlicher zwei gesellschaftliche Gruppen gegenüberstehen: auf der einen Seite die sog. 'Unitarier', ein stärker europäischaufklärerisch und fortschrittsorientiertes städtisches Handels- und Bildungsbürgertum, das sich vor allem in Buenos Aires konzentriert, auf der anderen Seite die sog. 'Föderalisten', stärker konservativ, am Subsidiaritätsprinzip und agrarisch ausgerichtete Grundbesitzer der Parana- und Andenprovinzen.

Domingo Faustino

Sarmiento

249

Schon als Grandschüler an der 'Escuela de la Patria' in San Juan und angeregt durch seinen Vater zeigt Sarmiento eine ausgeprägte Leseneigung und einen Hang zum Selbststudium. Nach dem frühen und krankheitsbedingten Abbruch des Besuchs einer weiterführenden Schule in Cordoba gelangt seine weitere Ausbildung in die Hände seines Onkel Jose de Oro, eines presbyterianischen Geistlichen und Veterans der Unabhängigkeitsbewegung, der ihm u. a. das Gedankengut des politischen Liberalismus nahebringt und mit dem er nach San Francisco del Monte in die Nachbarprovinz San Luis geht. Inzwischen 15 Jahre alt, arbeitet er dort für zwei Jahre als Kaufmannsgehilfe im Geschäft eines anderen Onkels, Juan Pascual Albarracin, und setzt sein ambitioniertes Selbstund Sprachstudium fort. Dabei vergleicht er sich gerne mit Benjamin Franklin, einem der Gründungsväter der Veinigten Staaten von Amerika und seinerseits ein bekannter Autodidakt. So schreibt er in seinen Jugenderinnerungen: [...] Estuve triste muchos dias, y como Franklin, a quien sus padres dedicaban a jabonero, el que debia robar al cielo los rayos y a los tiranes el cetro, tomele desde luego ojeriza al Camino que solo conduce a la fortuna. (Sarmiento 1962, 175)

Und an anderer Stelle lesen wir: Yo me sentia Franklin; i y por que no? Era yo pobrisisimo como el, estudioso com el, y dändome mana y siguiendo sus huellas, podia un dia llegar a formarme como el, ser doctor ad honorem como el, y hacerme un lugar en las letras y en la politica americanas. (Sarmiento 1962, 179)

1827 mündet der schon lange schwelende Antagonismus zwischen Unitariern und Föderalisten in einen Bürgerkrieg. Sarmiento wird ins Föderationsheer eingezogen, überwirft sich aber mit seinen dortigen Vorgesetzten und schließt sich den Unitariern unter Jose Maria Paz an. Mit dem Sieg der Truppen des Föderalisten Facundo Quiroga 1831 geht er in sein erstes Exil nach Chile, wo er ein wirtschaftlich eher bescheidenes Dasein führt, jedoch intensiv an seiner Fortbildung, vor allem an seinen englischen Sprachkenntnissen, arbeitet. Nach fünf Jahren und aufgrund gesundheitlicher Probleme wird ihm 1836 vom Gouverneur von San Juan die Rückkehr in seine Heimatstadt gestattet. Hier gründet er 1838 mit Gleichgesinnten die 'Sociedad Literaria', eine örtliche Dependance der 'Asociacion de Mayo', auch bekannt unter der Bezeichnung 'Generation del 37'. Dieser Literaturzirkel um die Protagonisten Esteban Echeverria, Juan Bautista Alberdi und Juan Maria Gutierrez, der sich zunächst in der Buchhandlung von Marcos Sastre in Buenos Aires trifft und nach seiner polizeilichen Aushebung im Verborgenen agiert, bemüht sich um die Wiederbelebung des liberalen Gedankengutes der Unabhängigkeitserklärung der 'Provincias Unidas del Rio de la Plata' vom 25. Mai 1810 - daher der Name. Im politischen Bereich zielt dies vor allem

250

Peter Cichon

auf Konstitutionalismus und Zentral Staatlichkeit, im Kulturellen auf den Aufbau einer sprachlich-literarisch autonomen, nationalen argentinischen Identität, die, wie Hans Hinterhäuser vermerkt, geprägt ist von einem "Fortschrittsdenken im Sinne Condorcets, in das die romantische Vorstellung von der geschichtsteleologischen Rolle der nationalen Individualitäten einfließt" (cf. Hinterhäuser 1995, 177). Literatur wird in diesem Kontext zur 'litterature engagee'. Obwohl sich die 'Asociacion de Mayo' um eine Überwindung des innergesellschaftlichen Schismas bemüht, sieht sie sich doch vor allem in fundamentaler Opposition zur 1835 errichteten blutigen Diktatur des Föderalisten Juan Manuel de Rosas. Diese Diktatur, in der weite Teile der Bevölkerung in der 'Mazorca' zwangsrekrutiert werden, einer paramilitärischen Truppe, die zugleich als Geheimpolizei fungiert und den politischen Gegner der Unitarier rigoros bekämpft, dauert bis 1852. Die wirkungsmächtigste Artikulation der politischen und identitären Ambitionen der 'Asociacion de Mayo', die sich ideell vor allem am Gedenkengut der französischen Revolution und der französischen, englischen und deutschen Romantik orientiert, wird Sarmientos literarisches Hauptwerk Facundo werden. Wichtigstes Instrument des politischen Widerstandes Sarmientos gegen die Diktatur Rosas ist zunächst aber seine publizistische Arbeit. So gründet er 1839 die Wochenzeitung El Zonda - der Name leitet sich von einem trockenen und heißen, bisweilen sehr heftigen Wind in der Region San Juan her - , in der er kompromisslos gegen die Regierung anschreibt. In der Folge entgeht er am 18. November 1840 nur knapp einer antiunitarischen Lynchjustiz. Bevor er sich am folgenden Tag neuerlich in die Verbannung nach Chile begibt, schreibt er unter ein republikanisches Wappenschild den berühmten Satz: "On ne tue point les idees." Denselben Ausspruch stellt er seinem Facundo voran, ergänzt um eine spanischsprachige Fassung: "A los hombres se degüella: a las ideas no." In seinem zweiten Exil in Chile entwickelt Sarmiento von Beginn an eine intensive publizistische, politische und volkserzieherische Tätigkeit. 1842 gründet er die erste Pädagogische Hochschule Lateinamerikas und übernimmt deren Leitung. Im darauf folgenden Jahr beruft ihn die neu gegründete 'Universidad de Chile' zum Gründungsmitglied der philosophischen Fakultät, in der er sich vorrangig mit Fragen der Grundschulerziehung beschäftigt: so schreibt er didaktische Aufsätze, pädagogische Leitfäden und ABC-Bücher, u. a. Memoria sobre la ortografia americana und vor allem seinen Metodo de la lectura gradual, mit dem geschätzte zwei Millionen junger Chileninnen lesen lernen. Politischen Schutz und zugleich Unterstützung in seinen pädagogischen Ambitionen findet er durch seine Freundschaft zu Manuel Montt Torres, dem späteren Präsidenten Chiles und seinerzeitigen Bildungsminister. Über die erste Begegnung mit ihm schreibt Sarmiento: Es don de talento del buen tino politico arrojar una palabra como el acaso, y herir con ella la dificultad. "Las ideas, senor, no tienen patria", nie dijo el ministro al introducir

Domingo Faustino

Sarmiento

251

la conversation, y todo desde aquel momento quedaba allanado, entre nosotros, y echado al vinculo que debia unir mi existencia y mi porvenir al de este hombre. (Sarmiento 1962, 204)

Gleichzeitig setzt Sarmiento seine publizistische Agitation gegen das RosasRegime fort, vor allem als Leiter der chilenischen Tageszeitung Έ1 Progreso' (1842-1845). Auch literarisch ist er in der Zeit seines zweiten Exils in Chile sehr produktiv: so entstehen hier Mi defensa (1843), eine kurzgefasste Rechtfertigungsschrift, in der er einiges von seinem Selbstbild preisgibt: [...] complaciendo a veces, chocando otras, y no pocas reuniendolos a todos en un solo coro de aprobacion ο vituperios; predicando el bien constantemente y obrando el mal alguna vez; atacando las ideas generales sobre literatura; ensayando todos los generös; infringiendo por ignorancia ο por sistema de reglas; impulsando a la juventud, empujando bruscamente a la sociedad, irritando susceptibilidades nacionales; cayendo como un tigre en una polemica, y a cada momento conmoviendo la sociedad entera, y siempre usando un lenguaje franco hasta ser descortes y sin miramiento; diciendo verdades amargas sin otro titulo que el creerlas utiles [...] (Sarmiento 1962, 27)

Als eine Erklärung für diesen Rigorismus gibt er an: "Mi vida ha sido desde la infancia una lucha continua." (Sarmiento 1962, 29). Vor allem aber entsteht in dieser Zeit der bereits erwähnte Facundo (1845). Als Rosas verstärkt diplomatische Protestnoten gegen die politische Agitation Sarmientos im Nachbarstaat einbringt, trifft es sich gut, dass ihn Montt Torres 1845-1848 auf eine dreijährige Forschungsreise schickt, um im Auftrag der chilenischen Regierung die Primarschulerziehung in Europa und in den USA zu untersuchen. 1849 veröffentlicht er seine gesammelten Reiseeindrücke in 'Viajes en Europa, Africa y America'. Im gleichen Jahr publiziert er 'Education Popular', das er selbst als sein liebstes Werk ansieht, im Jahr darauf erscheint seine Autobiographie 'Recuerdos de Provincia'. 1851 wird er Berichterstatter im Heer jenes Justo Jose de Urquizas, der 1852 die Rosas-Diktatur militärisch beendet. Er überwirft sich jedoch mit Urquiza, weil sich dieser politisch auf die alten Eliten stützt und nicht auf die Garde junger Intellektueller um Sarmiento (cf. Halperin Donghi 1994, 268), und tritt sein drittes Exil in Chile an. 1855 kehrt er endgültig nach Argentinien zurück, wird Senator und später Gouverneur seiner Heimatprovinz San Juan, setzt sein bildungspolitisches Engagement fort und wirkt an der Verfassungsreform mit. Nach einem dreijährigen diplomatischen Dienst in Chile, Peru und den USA wird er 1868 für sechs Jahre zum Staatspräsidenten gewählt. Seine Präsidentschaft ist geprägt von der Öffnung des Landes für ausländisches Kapital, vom Aufbau neuer Verkehrswege, einer massiven Förderung der Immigration - getreu der berühmten Devise Alberdis gobernar es poblar - , sowie einem beträchtlichen Ausbau des öffentlichen Schulwesen: unter dem Motto educar el soberano richtet

252

Peter Cichon

er hunderte von Grundschulen und Bibliotheken ein; Schätzungen zufolge kommt es in seiner Amtszeit dadurch zu einer runden Verdreifachung der Schülerzahlen, in absoluten Zahlen von rund 30 000 auf etwa 100 000. Zugleich führt er einen euphemistisch als 'Wüstenkampagne' titulierten Ausrottungsfeldzug gegen die Indianer, von dem Carlos Fuentes meint, dass die Argentinier in ihm genauso barbarisch handeln wie die spanischen Despoten früherer Jahrhunderte (cf. Rehrmann 2005, 150). Nach dem Ende seiner Präsidentschaft wirkt er neuerlich als Senator seiner Heimatprovinz, unterbrochen durch eine kurze Episode als Innenminister. 1881 wird er zum Superindendant für das öffentliche Schulwesen berufen. 1888 auf einer Auslandsreise in Asuncion / Paraguay stirbt Sarmiento. 1.1 Verzeichnis der wichtigsten W e r k e Sarmientos 1843: 1843: 1843: 1845:

Mi defensa. Santiago de Chile: Imprenta de Julio Belin y Cia. Memoria sobre ortografia americana. Santiago: Anales de la Universidad de Chile. Metodo de la lectura gradual. Valparaiso: Mattensohn & Grimm, Librerfa Alemana. Civilizacion y barbarie. Vida de Juan Facundo Quiroga, aspecto fisico, costumbres y häbitos de la Repüblica Argentina. Buenos Aires: Imprenta del Progreso. 1849: De la education popular. Santiago de Chile: Imprenta de Julio Belin y Cia. 1849-1850: Viajes por Europa, Africa y America. Santiago de Chile: Imprenta de Julio Belin y Cia. 1850: Recuerdos de Provincia. Santiago de Chile: Imprenta de Julio Belin y Cia. 1883: Conflictos y armonias de las razas en America. Buenos Aires: Imprenta de D. Tunez. 1885: Coronel Francisco Muniz. Buenos Aires: Felix Sajouane. 1886: Vida de Dominguito. Buenos Aires: Fondo Nacional de las Artes. 1889-1909: Obras de D. F. Sarmiento. 52 Bände. Santiago de Chile: Imprenta Gutenberg.

2. Sprachlich-literarische Norm und Normdiskussion zur Zeit Sarmientos Als Anfang des 19. Jahrhunderts die koloniale Herrschaft Spaniens über den Großteil seiner amerikanischen Besitzungen zu Ende geht, sind die unabhängig werdenden Gebiete noch weit von jenem Maß an Hispanisierung entfernt, das sie heute kennzeichnet. Gemeinsam ist ihnen eine großen Diskrepanz zwischen der hochsprachlichen, exoglossisch bzw. iberisch definierten Norm und dem umgangssprachlich verwendeten Spanisch, dies gleichermaßen in Wort und Schrift. Hören wir zu diesem Thema Andres Bello, einen der bedeutendsten Gelehrten seiner Zeit, Gründungsrektor der 'Universidad de Chile', Autor der wohl wichtigsten spanischen Grammatik des 19. Jahrhunderts und anders als Sarmiento kaum des Antihispanismus verdächtig: [...] aunque sea ruboroso decirlo, es necesario confesar que en la generalidad de los habitantes de America no se encontraban cinco personas en ciento que poseyesen

Domingo Faustino

Sarmiento

253

gramaticalmente su propia lengua, y apenas una que la escribiese correctamente. Tal era el efecto del plan adoptado por la corte de Madrid respecto a sus posesiones coloniales, y aun la consecuencia necesaria del atraso en que se encontraba la misma Espana. (cf. Bello 1951,71)

Traditionell wird diese Differenz in Amerika als eigene Defizienz wahrgenommen, befördert u. a. durch jene abstruse und im 18. Jh. besonders virulente These von Amerika als 'inferiorem Kontinent' (cf. Rehrmann 2005, 114ff.). Diese Einstellung ändert sich im Rahmen der Unabhängigkeitsbewegung grundlegend. Mit dem Ende der politischen Hegemonie des spanischen Mutterlandes wird auch dessen kulturelle Vormundschaft in Frage gestellt. An die Stelle einer monozentrischen Kulturdoktrin, die jede Abweichung zur Folklore degradiert, tritt die Forderung nach einer Pluralität von nationalen Kulturen spanischer Sprache. Diese bedienen sich zwar weiterhin eines gemeinsamen sprachlichen Mediums, fordern jedoch das gleichberechtigte Nebeneinander unterschiedlicher sprachlicher Ausdrucksformen und mit ihnen das Recht auf eigene hispanophone nationale Literaturen. Besonders ausgeprägt ist dieses Emanzpationsstreben im ehemaligen Vizekönigreich Rio de la Plata, dessen Nachfolgestaaten Argentinien, Bolivien, Paraguay und Uruguay in den Jahren 1816ff. als erste die Unabhängigkeit erlangen. Die Sprachfrage ist dabei auf das engste mit der Kultur- und Identitätsfrage verknüpft. Emblematischen Ausdruck findet dieses neue Selbstbewusstsein in veränderten Selbstbezeichnungen: aus espanoles argentinos werden americanos bzw. sudamericanos sowie, noch weiter binnengegliedert, portenos und - oder auch versus - argentinos. Dass die wachsende identitäre Parzellierung der spanischamerikanischen Sprachgemeinschaft mit einer Diversifizierung sprachlicher Normkonzepte einhergeht, hat auch damit zu tun, dass sie anders als die USA oder Brasilien über keine Referenzform für die Formulierung einer gemeinsamen hochsprachlichen Norm verfügt (cf. Eberenz 1995). Im Zentrum der Sprachpolitik der 'Generacion del 37' steht das Konzept des idioma nacional argentine, wobei allerdings der Terminus nacional zunächst noch nicht im staatsnationalen Sinn verstanden wird, sondern im Sinne des Antagonismus Spanischamerika-Spanien, d. h. als Bezeichnung für die gesamte spanischamerikanische Sprachgemeinschaft, die als Kollektiv der iberospanischen Norm entgegengestellt wird. Ganz in diesem Sinne äußert sich Sarmiento 1841 während seines zweiten chilenischen Exils: ... [...] Nuestra lengua, nuestra literatura y nuestra ortografia, se apegan rutinariamente a tradiciones rutinarias y preceptos que hoy nos son casi enteramente extranos y que nunca podrän interesarnos [...] El idioma de America deberä, pues, ser suyo propio, con su modo de ser caracterfstico y sus formas e imägenes tomadas de las virginales, sublimes y gigantescas que su naturaleza, sus revoluciones y su historia indigena le presentan. Una vez dejaremos de consultar a los gramäticos espanoles, para formular la gramätica hispanoamericana, y este paso de la emancipacion del espiritu y del

254

Peter Cichon

idioma requiere la concurrencia, asimilacion y contact» de todos los intersados en el [...] (cf. Rosenblat 1984, 273)

Die Definition des idioma argentine als nacional verweist zugleich auf dessen entwicklungspolitische Instrumentalisierung. In den Vorstellungen Sarmientos und der 'Generacion del 37' ist eine Alphabetisierung breiter Bevölkerungsschichten die notwendige Voraussetzung für den angestrebten sozialen und ökonomischen Aufbau einer modernen argentinischen Gesellschaft. Damit eine Massenalphabetisierung jedoch sozial greift, bedarf es einer endoglossischen Sprachnorm, die sich an der kommunikatorischen Praxis der Menschen orientiert. Eine exoglossische, rein europäische Norm, die von der sprachlichen Wirklichkeit Amerikas abstrahiert, ist viel schwerer zu vermitteln. Wenn auch Einigkeit darüber besteht, dass sich die zukünftige schriftsprachliche Norm am amerikanischen bzw. argentinischen Spanisch orientieren soll, so ist dessen konkrete Referenzform noch nicht verfügbar, weil auch das Gesellschaftsmodell, in dem sie funktionieren soll, noch zu formulieren ist. So meint Sarmientos Weggefährte Juan Bautista Alberdi: Si es necesario abandonar la estructura espanola de la lengua que hablamos, y a darla una forma americana y propia, ^cuäl pues deberä ser esta forma? Ella no estä dada como no estä dada tampoco la forma de nuestra sociedad: lo que sabemos es que a quien toca darle es el pueblo americano y no al pueblo espanol. (cf. Martinez de Codes 1986, 225)

3. Die normierende Wirkung Sarmientos auf die argentinische Literatur und Schriftsprache Die verbreitete Annahme, dass die Schaffung einer lengua nacional argentina ebenso wie die einer identidad argentina gewissermaßen eines noch ausstehenden Schöpfungsaktes bedarf, dass dabei die gesellschaftliche und die sprachlichkulturelle Erneuerung des Landes Hand in Hand gehen müssen, macht deutlich, warum Sarmientos literarisches Werk, vor allem sein Facundo, eine solch nachhaltige gesellschaftliche Wirkung hat und ihm Zuschreibungen wie fundador de la literatura argentina (cf. Piglia 1994) und creador de la lengua escrita argentina (cf. Malmberg 1992, 174) einbringen. Nach meiner Einschätzung liegt dies daran, dass er mit seiner literarischen, gesellschaftspolitischen und wissenschaftlich-didaktischen Prosa gleich dreierlei leistet: -

Zum einen ist es das plakative Motto civilizacwn y barbarie seines Facundo und dessen vermeintlich schroffe Antithetik, die von vielen Landsleuten begeistert als programmatische Antwort auf die Frage nach dem Weg in die Zukunft des Landes aufgenommen wird;

Domingo Faustino

-

-

Sarmiento

255

zum zweiten ist es die antiklassische und antiakademische, bisweilen journalistische Art seines Schreibens, sind es seine stilistischen und grammatischen Nachlässigkeiten, die Verwendung von Formen sprachlichen Substandards, die politische Instrumentalisierung und der antispanische Grundton, die seiner Prosa ihren originellen und innovativen Charakter verleihen und den argentinischen Modernisierern als erstes gelungenes Zeugnis ihrer literarischen Selbstsuche gilt; und zum dritten ist es sein großes Engagment als Volkserzieher und Massenalphabetisierer, sein vieltausendfach verwendeter Metodo de la lectura gradual sowie sein rigoros antitraditionalistischer Vorschlag für eine Orthographiereform, die ihn zu einem wichtigen Wegbereiter einer selbstbewusst formulierten (Schrift-)Norm des argentinischen Spanisch machen.

Im Folgenden einige Ausführungen zu diesen drei Punkten:

3.1 Civilization y barbarie Sarmientos programmatisches Konzept der civilization y barbarie ist natürlich in starkem Maße von der Tagespolitik geprägt, d. h. von der bereits erwähnten Auseinandersetzung zwischen Föderalisten und Unitarier. Barbarie bezeichnet dabei das Rosas-Regime, alles Iberospanische, alles Gaucheske und Indianische, civilization zielt auf eine Europäisierung des Landes nach englischen, französischen und preußischen Vorbildern. Facundo steht damit ganz im Dienste des Argentinienbildes der 'Asociacion de Mayo'. So sieht Hans Hinterhäuser in Facundo die "brillante Erfüllung" des Aufrufs Alberdis und Echeverrias zum Streben nach der "wahren Wirklichkeit" Argentiniens (cf. Hinterhäuser 1995, 178). Entstanden im Geiste einer bewusst antiklassischen Romantik, begreife Sarmiento sein Werk "in einem schöpferischen Akt, und nicht ohne geheime Sympathie, als reine Naturkraft, als elementare Frucht der jungfräulichen amerikanischen Erde" (cf. Hinterhäuser 1995, 179). Facundo ist die Lebensgeschichte des Caudillos Juan Facundo Quiroga und zugleich die Entstehungsgeschichte der Diktatur von Rosas. Der Protagonist ist ein grobschlächtiger, ungebildeter und unsensibler Caudillo, gleichwohl ein Mann des Volkes mit durchaus positiven Charakterzügen. Mitstreiter von Rosas, wird er 1835 unter Bedingungen ermordet, die, wie Sarmiento (1993, 301) deutlich zum Ausdruck bringt, eine Schuld Rosas nahelegen. Damit ist Facundo laut Malmberg (1992, 174) weniger eine Anklageschrift gegen den populären ungebildeten Caudillo, sondern gegen den gebildeten, aber gewissenlosen Diktator Rosas. Literatur wird so zu einem Instrument politischer Auseinandersetzung, zu einem Tribunal mit den Lesern als Zeugen der Anklage (cf. Berg 1995, 127).

256

Peter Cichon

Sarmientos Kritik an Spanien, für ihn ein weiterer Hort der barbarie, kommt vor allem in seinen Reiseberichten zum Ausdruck. So berichtet er aus Madrid, wohin er schon mit Vorurteilen gereist war: He venido a Espana con el santo proposito de levantarla el proceso verbal, para fundar una acusacion, que, como fiscal reconocido ya, tengo de hacerla ante el tribunal de la opinion en America. (Sarmiento 1996, 128)

Mit welch konträrer Disposition er dagegen nach Frankreich reist, zeigt die folgende Kundgabe: Avise usted a los mios, mi buen amigo, que he tocado tierra en Europa, que he abrazado, mas bien dijera, esta Francia de nuestros suenos. Puedo permitirme tal hiperbole con usted que apenas conoce el espanol como se escribe en Espana (que es, du reste, como debe escribirse) a fuerza de no pensar, ni sentir, sino como nos ha ensenado a pensar y sentir la literatura francesa, tinica que usted y yo llamamos literatura aplicable a los pueblos sud-americanos. (Sarmiento 1996, 75)

Natürlich kann es angesichts solcher Vorurteile nicht verwundern, dass auch die Beschreibung der Sprachsituation in den beiden Ländern deutlich kontrastiv ausfällt. So finden wir heftige Polemiken gegen die 'verdorbene' Sprache der Madrilenen, an der laut Sarmiento vor allem die katholische Kirche schuld ist, weil sie die gesamte Gesellschaft dominiere und in Unmündigkeit gefangen halte. Als Beispiel für die diagnostizierte sprachliche Unkultur dienen ihm u. a. die Verbalinjurien eines Kutschers im Umgang mit seinen Maultieren: [...] el cochero [...] las alienta con una retahila de blasfemias a hacer reventar en sangre otros oidos que los espanoles [...] i Dios, los santos del cielo y las potestades del infierno entran pele-mele en aquella tormenta de zurriagazos, pedradas, gritos y obsenidades horribles. Triste cosa por cierto, que en los dos paises exclusivamente catolicos en Europa, en Italia y Espana, el pueblo veje, injurie, escupa a cada momento todos los objetos de su adoration, de manera de hacer temblar un ateo. (Sarmiento 1996, 130)

Den gleichen Rigorismus zeigt Sarmiento in Bezug auf die 'Gaucho-Barbarei'. So schreibt er am 20. November 1861, drei Tage nach der Schlacht bei Pavon, seinem politischen Mitstreiter und späteren Präsidenten der Republik, General Mitre, den furchtbaren Satz: "No ahorre usted sangre de gauchos. Es lo unico que denen de seres humanos." Trotz aller Polemik gegenüber Caudillismo und Gauchismo ebenso wie in ihrem Antihispanismus sind sich die Modernisierer um Sarmiento und Alberdi sicherlich des Umstandes bewusst, dass ihr Kampf gegen diese 'Barbarei' immer nur ein in Teilen erfolgreicher Kampf sein kann, weil diese Elemente zutiefst in der argentinischen Gesellschaft verankert sind und jede gesellschaftliche

Domingo Faustino

Sarmiento

257

Erneuerung, die sich durchsetzen will, diesem Umstand Rechnung tragen muss (cf. dazu Reinhard 1985, 253). Entsprechend verhält sich Sarmiento in seiner literarischen Praxis durchaus anders als in seiner politischen Rhetorik: während er auf der einen Seite, als Modernisierer, die 'Gauchos' wegen ihrer 'Rückständigkeit' bekämpft, benutzt er auf der anderen Seite ihren sprachlichen Substandard, um seiner Literatur ein argentinisches Profil zu geben. Hier wirkt sicherlich auch die in seinem intellektuellen Umfeld zirkulierende romantische Vorstellung eines in der oralen 'Volkspoesie' zum Ausdruck kommenden argentinischen 'Volksgeistes' (cf. Schäffauer 2000, 112). Zugleich muss man Sarmiento zugute halten, dass er schon im Titel seines Facundo von civilization y barbarie und nicht von civilization ο barbarie spricht, was nicht nur eine antagonistische, sondern auch eine komplementäre Lesart zulässt. 3.2 Inspirierung einer autonomen argentischen Literatur Was Sarmiento zum 'fundador' oder, etwas zurückhaltender formuliert, zum 'inspirador' einer autonomen argentinischen Literatur macht, ist, dass er ihr durch sein eigenes, gegen formale Traditionen verstoßendes Schreiben den Weg zu einem eigenen Stil weist, dass er ihr mit seiner politisierenden Prosa zu einer nationalen, argentinischen Thematik verhilft und dass er durch den unermüdlichen Ausbau des Schul- und Bibliothekswesens überhaupt erst jenes nationale Lesepublikum entstehen lässt, ohne das jede Literatur gesellschaftlich eine Saat wäre, die nicht aufgeht. Dass für ihn die gestalterische Freiheit der Schlüssel zu einer sich neu konstituierenden argentinischen Literatur ist, kommt besonders deutlich im folgenden, emphatischen Aufruf an die literarische Jugend seines Landes zum Ausdruck: Cambiad de estudios, y en lugar de ocuparos de las formas, de la pureza de las palabras, de lo redondeado de las frases, de lo que dijo Cervantes ο Fray Luis de Leon, adquirid ideas de donde quiera que venga, nutrid vuestro espiritu con las manifestationes del pensamiento de los grandes luminares de la epoca; y cuando sintäis que vuestro pensamiento a su vez se despierta, echad miradas observadoras sobre vuestra patria, sobre el pueblo, las constumbres, las instituciones, las necesidades actuates, y en seguida escribid con amor, con corazon, lo que se os alcance, lo que se os antoje, que eso serä bueno en el fondo, aunque la forma sea incorrecta... (cf. Rosenblat 1984, 277)

Diesen Aufruf kam man sicherlich auch als autobiographischen Hinweis lesen, zeugt doch sein eigenes Werk sehr deutlich vom Vorrang des Inhalts gegenüber der Form. Häufig unter schwierigen Bedingungen entstanden - vor allem seinen Facundo hat Sarmiento aus Furcht vor den Verfolgungen der Rosas-Diktatur

258

Peter Cichon

gewissermaßen auf gepackten Koffern sitzend verfasst - merkt man manchen seiner Texte an, dass sie schnell geschrieben wurden bzw. dass in ihnen die (politische) Botschaft vor Fragen der Ästhetik rangiert. Der Qualität seines Werkes tut dies jedoch keinen Abbruch. So schreibt Jorge Luis Borges im 'Prologo' der 1944 im Verlag 'Emece Editores' in Buenos Aires erschienenen Ausgabe der 'Recuerdos de provincia': [...] La virtud de la literatura de Sarmiento queda demonstrada por su eficacia. El curioso lector puede comparar algun episodio de estos Recuerdos ο de cualquier otro libro autobiogräfico de su pluma, con la correspondiente version del mismo episodio en las trabajadas päginas de Lugones; linea por linea, la version de Lugones es superior; en consunto es harto mäs conmovedora y patetica la de Sarmiento. Cualquiera puede corregir lo escrito por el; nadie puede igualarlo. (Borges 1944, prologo)

Sicherlich falsch wäre es, angesichts mancher formaler Nachlässigkeiten Sarmiento einen schlichten literarischen Stil zuzuschreiben. Ganz im Gegenteil, die zahlreichen hier präsentierten, durchaus nicht nach formalen Kriterien ausgesuchten Textauszüge aus seinem umfangreichen Werk zeigen einen Autor, der verschiedene sprachliche Register ebenso souverän beherrscht wie komplexe Syntaxformen, der über ein breites Spektrum an sprachlichen Stilmitteln verfügt, das er für seine politischen Zwecke auch gezielt und virtuos einzusetzen weiß. Was die Resonanz bzw. Wirkungsmächtigkeit seines Schreibens angeht, so gilt festzuhalten, dass Sarmientos politische Exponiertheit in einer tief gespaltenen argentinischen Gesellschaft dazu führt, dass sein literarisches Werk seine suggestive Wirkung nur auf einen Teil der Bevölkerung ausübt. Entsprechend wäre er wahrscheinlich mit viel mehr Mühe in den Kanon der argentinischen Nationalliteratur eingegangen, hätte es nicht 1872 mit 'El gaucho Martin Fierro' von Jose Hernandez sozusagen auch den Gegentext zum Facundo und eine Rehabilitierung der Figur des Gaucho gegeben. 3.3 E n g a g e m e n t für eine spanischamerikanische Orthographie Dieselben kulturpolitischen Positionen, aus denen Sarmiento sein Literaturmodell herleitet, prägen auch sein Schriftsprachkonzept. So formuliert er: "Los pueblos en masa, y no las academias, forman los idiomas" (cf. Rosenblat 1984, 276), wobei es natürlich Intellektuellen wie ihm obliege, diese angemessen zu beschreiben. Sein eigenes Engagement zielt vor allem auf die Orthographie. Und dies aus gutem Grund. Während seines zweiten Exils wird Anfang der 1840er Jahre in Chile jene große Alphabetisierungskampagne gestartet, an der Sarmiento an zentraler Stelle mitwirkt. Alle Bildungsplaner sind sich dabei einig, dass eine erfolgreiche Massenalphabetisierung eine gewisse 'Amerikanisierung' der spanischen Schriftsprache notwendig macht, d. h. eine Berücksichtigung spanisch-

Domingo Faustino

Sarmiento

259

amerikanischer Aussprachegewohnheiten. Zugleich sollte ihr ein Schriftsystem zur Verfügung stehen, das einen möglichst hohen Korrelierungsgrad zu seiner phonologischen Bezugsebene aufweist. Orthographiediskussionen gibt es zu Beginn des 19. Jh. in ganz Spanischamerika, im Cono Sur werden sie jedoch besonders intensiv geführt, weil hier die gesellschaftliche Durchdringung mit hochsprachlichen Formen des Spanischen später und weniger nachhaltig erfolgt als in anderen Gebieten Spanischamerikas und daraus eine besonders große Diskrepanz zwischen Standard- und Vernakularsprache resultiert. Sarmientos Reformentwurf für eine phonologisch flache Graphie lässt sowohl die Etymologie als auch die etablierte Schreibtradition des Spanischen gänzlich außer Acht. Es ist eine Graphie, die er selbst polemisch als "una ortografia vulgar, ignorante, americana" bezeichnet (cf. Rosenblat 1984, 278) und in der er die Möglichkeit sieht, "de desprenderse de la unica garra que tiene la Espana sobre nosotros" (cf. Vorwort Rosenblat in Bello 1951, CX). Konkret schlägt er die Streichung von vier Graphemen vor: (stummes) , (Ersetzung durch ), (Ersetzung durch ) und (Ersetzung durch ). Daneben allerdings ohne die Wirkung einer weiteren Graphemreduzierung, empfiehlt er die Streichung des stummen , die Verwendung des Graphems nur mehr in den Kombinationen , und sowie nur mehr in den Kombinationen und . Damit reduziert Sarmiento das Schriftsystem auf 23 Grapheme. Angewandt auf einen Auszug aus dem Kapitel Aspecto fisico de la Republica Argentina y caracteres, häbitos e ideas que engendra aus Sarmientos Hauptwerk Facundo (Sarmiento 1979 [1845], 29) ergibt dies folgendes Schriftbild: [...] La inmensa ecstension de pais qe estä en sus ecstremos, es enteramente despoblada, y rfos nabegables posee qe no a surcado aun el fragil barqichuelo. El mal que aqeja a la Republica Argentina es la ecstension: el desierto la rodea por todas partes, y se le insinua en las entranas; la soledad, el despoblado sin una abitasion umana, son, por lo general, los limites incuestionables entre unas y otras probinsias. Alli, la inmensidad por todas partes: inmensa la llanura, inmensos los bosqes, inmensos los rfos, el horisonte siempre insierto, siempre confundiendose con la tierra, entre selajes y bapores tenues, qe no dejan, en la lejana perspectiba, senalar el punto en qe el mundo acaba y prinsipia el cielo [...]

Andres Bello sieht laut Angel Rosenblat in diesem Reformvorschlag "todo signo de escicion lingüistica, de fraccionamiento de la amplia comunidad hispänica" (cf. Vorwort zu Bello 1951, CVII) und stellt ihm ein eigenes, moderateres Modell entgegen, das 1843 von der Philosophischen Fakultät der Universidad de Chile angenommen und durch Regierungsbeschluss zur offiziellen Graphie des Landes erklärt wird. Der immer noch erhebliche Antitraditionalismus auch der BelloGraphie stößt jedoch in weiten Teilen der chilenischen Bevölkerung auf Ablehnung, sodass sein Autor sie aus Sorge vor einem graphischen Schisma Schritt

260

Peter Cichon

für Schritt wieder zurücknimmt. Was schließlich als 'Ortografia de Bello' in die Geschichte eingeht, ist nur ein karger Rest seines ursprünglichen Reformmodells. Sarmiento kann sich mit seinem Reformvorschlag nicht durchsetzen, dafür ist dieser zu radikal und zu polemisch. Bleibt er somit als konkreter Sprachnormierer auch ohne Resonanz, so ist seine literarische Valorisierung der argentinischen Umgangssprache eine Pioniertat mit erheblichem Einfluss auf die weitere Entwicklung des kollektiven Sprachbewusstseins. Die Langlebigkeit und zugleich tiefe soziale Staffelung eines Sprachkonzeptes, das vor allem auf das Recht auf Eigensprachlichkeit pocht, lässt sich leicht dokumentieren. So konstatiert Amado Alonso zwei Generationen nach Sarmiento die weiterhin bestehende gesamtgesellschaftliche Bindewirkung substandardlicher Sprachformen: La masa cierra sus poros con recelo - su burla es tambien recelo y defensa - a toda posible infiltration idiomätica culta [...] Esta actidud recelosa de la masa ante los elementos cultos del habla, incluso se contagia algo a las personas realmente cultas y aun refinadas que me cuentan como es necesario limitarse en la conversation y en el escribir para no parecer afectado. (cf. Alonso 1932, 156)

Auch nach zwei weiteren Generationen zeigt sich die ungebrochene Konstanz dieses Denkens, so wenn 1982 die 'Academia Argentina de Letras' entscheidet, "[de, P. C.] reconocer como legitimo el empleo del voseo siempre y cuando se conserve dentro de los limites que impone en buen gusto, esto es, huir tanto de la afectacion como del vulgarismo" (cf. Boletin de la Academia Argentina de Letras, XLVII 1982, 294). Interessant ist dabei der Hinweis von John Lipski, wonach der Voseo im heutigen Argentinien im öffentlichen und privaten Sprachgebrauch so stark verbreitet ist, dass er seine negative Konnotierung verloren hat - und nicht nur das: "En Argentina, un criollo que intente usar tu con un compratiota se arriesga a ser objeto de criticas" (cf. Lipski 1996, 159).

4. Bibliographie Alonso, Amado (1932): El problema argentino de la lengua. Buenos Aires: Sur. Bello, Andres (1951): Estudios Gramäticales. Obras Completas, vol. V. Caracas: Ministerio de Educacion. Berg, Walter Bruno (1995): Lateinamerika. Literatur, Geschichte, Kultur. Eine Einführung. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Borges, Jorge Luis (1944): Recuerdos de provincia. Buenos Aires: Emece Editores. Criscenti, Joseph (ed.) (1993): Sarmiento and his Argentina. Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Eberenz, Rolf (1995): Norm und regionale Standards des Spanischen in Europa und Amerika. In: Müller, Oskar / Nerius, Dieter / Schmid-Radefeldt, Jürgen (eds.): Sprachnormen und Sprachnormenwandel in gegenwärtigen europäischen Sprachen. Rostock: Universität Rostock (Rostocker Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft), 47-58. Halperin Donghi, Tulio (1994): Geschichte Lateinamerikas. Frankfurt / Main: Suhrkamp.

Domingo Faustino

Sarmiento

261

Hinterhäuser, Hans (1995): Cono sur: Aufbruch zu neuen Ufern. In: Rössner, Michael (ed.): Lateinamerikanische Literaturgeschichte. Stuttgart, Weimar: Metzler, 176-90. Lipsky, John M. (1996): El espanol de America. Madrid: Cätedra. Malmberg, Bertil (1992 [1966]): La America hispanohablante. Unidad y diferenciacion del castellano. Madrid: Istmo. Martinez de Codes, Rosa Maria (1986): El pensamiento argentino (1853-1910). Una aplicacion historica del metodo generacional. Madrid: Editorial de la Universidad Complutense. Piglia, Ricardo (1994): Sarmiento the Writer. In: Halperin Donghi, Tulio et al. (eds.): Sarmiento. Author of a Nation. Berkely / Los Angeles / London: University of California, 127^14. Rehmann, Norbert (2005): Lateinamerikanische Geschichte. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt. Reinhard, Wolfgang (1985): Geschichte der europäischen Expansion. Bd. 2: Die Neue Welt. Stuttgart / Berlin / Köln / Mainz: Kohlhammer. Rosenblat, Angel (1960): Las generaciones argentinas del siglo XIX ante el problema de la lengua. Buenos Aires: Universidad de Buenos Aires / Facultad de Filosofia y Letras. Rosenblat, Angel (1984): Estudios dedicados a la Argentina. Biblioteca Angel Rosenblat. Tomo IV. Caracas: Monte Avila Editores. Sarmiento, Domingo Faustino (1962 [1853]): Mi defensa. Buenos Aires Sur. Sarmiento, Domingo Faustino (1979 [1845]) Facundo. Civilisation y barbarie. Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de America Latina. Sarmiento, Domingo Faustino (1993 [1845]): Facundo. Civilization y barbarie. Madrid: Cätedra. Sarmiento, Domingo Faustino (1962 [1845]): Recuerdos de Provincia. Buenos Aires: Sur. Sarmiento, Domingo Faustino ( 2 1996 [1849/50]): Viajes por Europa, Africa y America. Madrid etc.: Allca XX / Ediciones Unesco. Schäffauer, Markus Klaus (2000): scriptOralität in der argentinischen Literatur. Freiburg: FreiDok.

Martha

Guzmän

Universidad de Munich (Alemania)

Andres Bello y la norma del espanol (americano)

Andres Bello ist einer der bedeutendsten Intellektuellen Hispanoamerikas. Bello, der sich für die Gestaltung der lateinamerikanischen Nationen engagierte, verfasste während und nach dem Unabhängigkeitskrieg neben literarischen Werken mehrere Texte über die spanische Sprache: Vorschläge für orthographische Reformen, mehrere präskriptive Arbeiten und eine der Grammatiken des Spanischen, die von größter Bedeutung für alle spanischsprachigen Länder war. Außerdem spielte er eine zentrale Rolle in der Bildung mehrerer Generationen von Lateinamerikanern. Es stellt sich die Frage, welche sprachliche Norm Bello vertritt und vorschreibt und welchen Status lateinamerikanische Varietäten und Merkmale in diesem Zusammenhang haben. Die Behandlung dieser Fragen sowie die Motivationen und möglichen Wirkungen von Bellos Positionen sind das Thema dieser Arbeit.

Introduccion Hablar de Andres Bello en relacion con la norma de la lengua espanola no es un tema baladi. Poeta, jurista, periodista e historiador, Bello es uno de los intelectuales mäs fecundos y completos que ha dado el continente americano y desarrollo una intensa labor educativa, en la que la lengua ocupa un lugar primordial, justamente en el periodo que sigue a las guerras de independencia en Hispanoamerica. Pero, sobre todo, Bello es uno de los mäs brillantes gramäticos que ha tenido nuestro idioma y escribio, entre otros textos sobre la lengua, una segun el titulo original - Gramätica de la lengua castellana destinada al uso de los Americanos. Esta obra es un texto, ademäs de prescriptivo, excepcional, por su capacidad de esclarecimiento y porque no encontramos nada comparable en el contexto de las gramäticas de la epoca, plagadas de repeticiones seculares. Hemos de anadir que esta Gramätica gozo y goza de una amplia difusion en toda America y en Espana. Bello es, pues, no solo un autor que con su obra podria, en mayor ο menor medida, marcar pautas a sus coetäneos, sino tambien un lingüista

264

Martha

Guzmän

preocupado por la normativizacion de la lengua, de quien se ha dicho en muchas ocasiones que desempeno un papel muy importante en la formacion de la identidad lingüistica y cultural americana. Ahora bien, / ciialcs son sus criterios de autoridad?, ^que norma parece seguir en sus textos? y ^que lugar ocupan, en ambos casos, las variedades y rasgos americanos del espanol? A continuation intentaremos aportar elementos para responder a estas preguntas, asi como acercarnos tanto a las motivaciones como a los efectos de dichas actitudes ante la lengua.

1. Datos sobre el autor Sobre Andres Bello existen numerosas y bien documentadas biografias. Estas suelen, sin embargo, pecar de exaltation y pintarnos un santo americanista, o, como en la obra de Jaksic Andres Bello: La pasion por el ordert, un hombre demasiado perfecta, reduciendo ademäs a "orden" lo que es metodo, erudition y razonamiento logico. Tampoco le han faltado detractores, mucho menos conocidos, quienes, sobre todo en su etapa chilena, hablan de un Bello aferrado a lo tradicional, por lo que a los estudios se refiere. Ya que no es nuestro objetivo hacer una nueva biografia de Bello, ni mucho menos juzgarlo, intentare resumir algunos datos relevantes de su vida y obra, comentando su relation con el tema que nos ocupa. Andres Bello nacio el 29 de noviembre de 1771 en Caracas, en la zona que seria a partir de 1777 la Capitania General de Venezuela, y murio en Santiago de Chile el 10 de octubre de 1865. Vivio, por tanto, desde el final de la epoca colonial hasta bien entrada la de la Independencia y en diferentes regiones del continente americano. En Venezuela se graduo de Bachiller en Artes, estudio Medicina y Derecho y trabajo como periodista y maestro, entre otros, de Simon Bolivar. Bello, que procedia de una familia de intelectuales y artistas - su padre era abogado y musico y su abuelo materno un conocido pintor de la epoca - no solo poseia una solida formacion, y, ya en aquella epoca, conocia y traducia ademäs del latin, del frances y del ingles, sino que fue un hombre de una intensa curiosidad intelectual en numerosos ämbitos, quien, entre otras cosas, acompano a Alejandro de Humboldt en algunas de sus expediciones y se intereso y escribio sobre temas como la astronomia. 1 Cuando el 19 de abril de 1810 los caraquenos, al tiempo que fundaban una junta para oponerse a la ocupacion francesa y defender los derechos de Fernando VII, deponen y expulsan del pais al Capitän General y otras autoridades coloniales, dejando en manos de criollos el control de la region, Bello no solo redacta documentos del nuevo gobierno al Consejo de Regencia reinante en Espana, 2 sino 1 2

Vease su Cosmografia..in: Vease Jaksic (2001, 60).

Obras completas, Vol. XXXIV.

Andres Bello y la norma del esparto I (americano)

265

viaja junto a Bolivar a Inglaterra para solicitar el apoyo britänico. Aunque los ingleses no acceden a la petition de los venezolanos, que, aunque proclamaban su adhesion al rey, no escondian sus pretensiones independentistas,3 Bello se queda en Inglaterra hasta 1829. El objetivo de esta estancia era, en un principio, representar los intereses del nuevo gobierno venezolano. Tras las victorias independentistas y el paulatino reconocimiento de la emancipation americana, Bello pasa a desempenar un papel mucho menos importante, y menos politico, si bien cumple diversas funciones en las legaciones de Chile ο de la Gran Colombia. Sobre la pertinencia y los verdaderos motivos de la estancia de Bello en Europa se han manejado hipotesis y especulaciones que no vienen al caso. Sea como fuere, esta etapa londinense, en la que Bello sigue escribiendo, ilusträndose y entrando en relation con otras culturas, puede tener una influencia en el tema que nos ocupa, es decir, en la actitud de Bello hacia la lengua y sus variedades. Por una parte, se va convirtiendo en un hombre de mundo, conocedor, ya no solo indirectamente, de otras civilizaciones y costumbres y desprovisto de todo provincianismo, que se relaciona no solo con personalidades politicas y cientificas inglesas, sino con los emigrados liberales espanoles de los periodos absolutistas de 1814—1820 y 1823-1833. Por otra parte, y esto es algo que pueden entender especialmente aquellos que han vivido anos alejados de su lengua y su cultura, America y la lengua espanola van tomando una dimension especial y, cada vez mäs, se convierten en tema de sus preocupaciones y proyectos. Ahora se trata, eso si, no de proyectos politicos, sino "civilizadores" y educacionales, pero que no son ajenos a la situation y necesidades de una America independiente. Por aquella epoca Bello colabora en la revista El Censor Americano, destinada principalmente a defender la causa de la independencia americana, en la que se ocupa, sobre todo a traves de trabajos periodisticos, de una divulgacion de lo americano en Europa. Participa, ademäs, en la fundacion de la Sociedad de Americanos, y trabaja intensamente en la edition de dos revistas: la Biblioteca Americana (1823) y El Repertorio Americano (1826-1827). Estas, destinadas al publico hispanoamericano, incluian textos de materias tan diversas como la divulgacion cientifica ο la creation literaria. Menos conocido resulta su trabajo en la "reconstruction" del Poema del Cid, elogiada por Menendez Pidal. Paralelamente comienza la redaction de sus Silvas Americanas. Bello, que parece haber comprendido que las identidades nationales ο regionales necesitan de textos fundacionales, lleva a la poesia las contiendas independentistas y la naturaleza americana. En 1829 Bello vuelve a America, esta vez a Chile, pais en el que vivirä hasta el final de sus dias en 1865 (a los 84 anos de edad) y donde se le habia otorgado,

3

Los ingleses, interesados en la oposicion a Napoleon, no tenian, mäs alia de ciertas ventajas comerciales, ningun interes en entrar en conflicto con su por aquel entonces aliada Espana.

266

Martha

Guzmän

en 1832, la nacionalidad. 4 El Chile anärquico y convulso al que Bello habia llegado se convierte, a partir de 1830, en un pais estable en el que hizo, en las etapas que nos ocupan, mucho por la educacion de los ciudadanos. Bello, quien desde 1832 integraba la Junta de Educacion que se ocupaba de los planes y programas de todos los colegios del pais, fue fundador, en 1842, de la Universidad de Chile, de la que fue rector hasta su muerte. En esta fase de su vida, ademäs de trabajar en sus obras de tema juridico, Bello sigue escribiendo y, por lo que respecta a la lengua, no solo crea sus obras mäs importantes, sino que tiene, dado su papel de rector y su protagonismo en los programas educacionales, una position de la que pocas veces han gozado los intelectuales, por no hablar de los gramäticos, para garantizar la transmision de sus concepciones. Hemos de anadir, para evitar equivocos, que no se trato de una imposition ciega de sus ideas acerca de la lengua. El ejemplo mäs fehaciente de esta actitud lo tenemos en que Bello, quien habia elaborado una reforma ortogräfica, no solo crea una comision para estudiar la reforma creada contemporäneamente por Sarmiento 5 , sino que, ante el peligro de una fragmentation del espanol, renuncia a su propia reforma. En 1851, Bello fue designado miembro honorario de la Real Academia Espanola y fue, a parir de 1861, miembro correspondiente. Estamos, pues, ante un hombre extraordinariamente culto y polifacetico, tanto por lo que respecta a sus ocupaciones, como a sus intereses cientificos y culturales, ante un prolifico autor y un estudioso constante, que no fue, sin embargo, ajeno a su tiempo. Sus obras y su correspondencia dejan entrever a un hombre mäs dado al diälogo y la reflexion que a los monologos diatribicos tan en boga en su epoca, dispuesto a admitir sus propios errores. Se trata, ademäs, hemos de repetirlo, de un hombre intensamente interesado en la lengua, que dedico grandes esfuerzos, no solo a su normativizacion, sino tambien a que lo que el entendia como una lengua correcta y eficaz que llegara a los mäs diversos estratos de la poblacion.

2. Principales obras La cuantia y variedad de las obras de Bello harian tan imposible como poco util para los propositos de este trabajo un listado exhaustivo de las mismas. Hemos intentado, pues, ofrecer una vision muy general de la variada production de este autor y presentar sus obras literarias y lingüisticas fundamentales." 4

5 6

Bello fue, ademäs, Senador de la Republica, subsecretario de relaciones exteriores y consultor del gobierno y participo en la elaboracion del Codigo Civil chileno. Vease Cichon en este volumen. Todas las obras mencionadas aparecen en las Obras Completas de Bello, ed. 1981, Caracas: Casa Bello, en los volumenes correspondientes a Poesia I II, Gramätica IV, Estudios gramaticales V, etc.

Andres Bello y la norma del esparto I (americano)

267

1981 [anterior a 1810]: Poesia: A la vacuna, Al Anauco, A una artista, A un samän, A la nave, A la victoria de Bailen y Mis deseos; Drama: Venezuela consolada y Espana restaurada. 1810: Calendario manual y guia universal de forasteros en Venezuela para el ano de 1810, con superior permiso. Caracas: Imprenta de Gallagher y Lamb. 1823: Alocucion a la poesia. 1981 [1823]: "Indicaciones sobre la conveniencia de simplificar y uniformar la ortografia en America". In: Biblioteca americana ο Miscelänea de Arte y ciencias, Londres, 1, 16—IV—1823, 50-62 1824: Arte de escribir con propiedad, compuesto por el Abate Condillac, traducido del frances y arreglado a la lengua castellana. Caracas: Imprenta Tomas Antero. 1826: La agricultura de la zona torrida. 1832: Principios de derecho de jentes. Santiago de Chile: Imprenta de La Opinion. 1833: "Advertencias sobre el uso de la lengua castellana dirigida a los padres de familia, profesores de colegios y maestros de escuela". 1835: Principios de la ortologia y metrica de la lengua castellana. Santiago de Chile: Imprenta de La Opinion. 1838: Gramätica de la lengua latina. Santiago de Chile: Imprenta de La Opinion. 1841: Anälisis ideologica de los tiempos de la conjugation castellana. Valparaiso: Imprenta de Μ. Rivadeneyra. 1841: El incendio de la Compania. Canto elegiaco. Santiago de Chile: Imprenta del Estado. 1957 [1842]: "Ejercicios populäres de lengua castellana". In: Durän Cerda, Juan (ed.): El movimiento literario de 1842. Vol. 1. Santiago de Chile: Editorial Universitaria, 241-243. 1847: Gramätica de la lengua castellana destinada al uso de los americanos. Santiago de Chile: Imprenta del Progreso. 1848: Cosmografia ο description del universo conforme a los Ultimos descubrimientos. Santiago de Chile: Imprenta de La Opinion. 1850: Compendio de la historia de la literatura; por don Andres Bello redactado para la ensenanza del Institute Nacional. Santiago de Chile: Imprenta Chilena. 1850: Opusculos literarios y criticos, publicados en diversos periodicos desde el ano 1834 hasta 1849. Santiago de Chile: Β. I. M. Editores. 1856: Codigo Civil de la Republica de Chile. Santiago de Chile: Imprenta Nacional. 2006 [1881]: Filosofia del entendimiento. Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Economical

3. Lengua, variedades y polemica sobre la(s) norma(s) en la epoca de Bello La larga vida de Andres Bello transcurre, como hemos visto, desde las ultimas decadas del periodo colonial hasta 1865. De especial importancia para el tema que nos ocupa aqui es, sin embargo, la epoca que comienza con y sigue a la independencia americana, pues en ella se producen la mayor parte de los trabajos de Bello sobre la lengua y buena parte de su creation. Cuando hablamos de la situation de la lengua espanola en dicha epoca en America, debemos comenzar diciendo que la hispanizacion lingüistica del continente era, tras trescientos anos de vida colonial, bastante precaria. Si bien los 7

Para la comprension de las ideas filosoficas de Bello, vease el estudio introductorio a esta edition de Jose Gaos.

268

Martha Guzmän

datos sobre este punto varian ligeramente, aquellos que se han ocupado del tema coinciden en afirmar que mäs de la mitad de la poblacion de los territorios coloniales espanoles en America no tenia como lengua materna el espanol y que, para muchos de sus habitantes, se trataba de una lengua desconocida. 8 La lengua espanola, que habia sido, por tanto, solo hasta cierto punto companera del imperio, convivia, pues, con varias lenguas indigenas, muchas de las cuales, por ejemplo, el nahua, contaban con numerosos hablantes y con una extension muy superior a la que poseian antes de la llegada de los espanoles. 9 Esta situation seria, desde luego, mucho mäs favorable al espanol en las grandes ciudades y variaria segun las zonas. Paralelamente, entre los hablantes del espanol existian variedades que diferian de aquellas que se hablaban en la Peninsula, si bien los estudios diacronicos no nos permiten - y quizäs no puedan permitirlo nunca - conocer con precision sus limites y caracteristicas. Unamos a este panorama el hecho de que, aun entre aquellos que hablaban la lengua, el analfabetismo ο una education muy deficiente estaban a la orden del dia. Por tanto urgian, y se llevaron a cabo en algunas zonas como Chile, campanas alfabetizadoras y educacionales. Por otra parte, debemos tener en cuenta que, si bien la hispanizacion lingüistica del continente era, a nivel global, deficitaria, la hispanizacion lingiifstica y cultural - e incluso etnica - fue muy intensa en ciertas zonas y el espanol era linica lengua de ciertas capas ο grupos. Ademäs de ello, aunque existian variedades del espanol americano ο rasgos caracteristicos de ciertas regiones, a pesar de que muchos criollos eran conscientes de ello, como se evidencia en las polemicas que surgen a raiz de la Independencia, no existian normas americanas descritas y reconocidas por una determinada comunidad de hablantes. Una vez finalizadas las contiendas independentistas, es innegable que, como sostienen algunos autores,10 la hispanizacion lingüistica del continente americano se acelero notablemente. No obstante, la atmosfera anticolonial y la nueva situation socio-politica y sus imperativos tambien provocaron una reflexion - e incluso un debate muchas veces abierto - acerca de que forma de lengua resultaba conveniente a las nacientes repiiblicas americanas e incluso se dieron intentos de construir identidades nationales con ayuda de una identidad lingüistica propia. Esta situation se puede percibir con claridad tanto en la prensa como en numerosos textos de intelectuales hispanoamericanos de la epoca, como Rufino Jose Cuervo, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, Juan Bautista Alberdi, Juan Ignacio de Armas, Juan Maria Gutierrez, Rafael Maria Merchän, Jose de la Riva Agüero y el propio Andres Bello. Si bien no podemos exponer aqui en detalle la discusion 8 9

10

Vease Lopez Morales (1998) y Lopez Garcia (2005). Para la conservation - y la extension- de las lenguas amerindias fue determinante el empleo de algunas de ellas en la evangelization de la poblacion autoctona americana. Para un comentario mäs amplio sobre este tema, vease Guzman (2006). Vease, por ejemplo, Lopez Garcia (2005) y Alvar (1996).

Andres Bello y la norma del esparto I (americano)

269

acerca de la lengua en el periodo postindependentista, si debemos presentar brevemente los aspectos que influyen en ella y los temas tratados con mäs frecuencia, pues de lo contrario nos faltarian elementos para ubicar y calibrar las posiciones de Bello.11 Hemos de tener presente, sin embargo, que en la existencia y los derroteros de estos debates postindependentistas y en las actitudes acerca de la lengua en America en dicha etapa influyen no solo el hecho de la independencia politica en si, sino, por una parte, actitudes y situaciones a el asociadas, como el rechazo a Espana y lo espanol ο la necesidad de estandarizacion de la lengua para la alfabetizacion y la ensenanza generalizada. Por otra parte, no debe olvidarse la influencia de ideas en boga provenientes de otros puntos del planeta. Por ejemplo, tendencias esteticas, filosoficas y lingüisticas como el romanticismo - que impulsaba una valoracion de lo vernacular - , el positivismo - que exigia que la lengua fuera capaz de ir a la par de la razon y del progreso - y los estudios lingüisticos de tipo genealogico y comparatistico, que llevaron a pensar que el espanol, como antes el latin, se fragmentaria, llegaria a desaparecer y daria lugar a otras lenguas, quizäs ininteligibles entre si. Las posiciones acerca de la lengua que debia hablarse en America ο en determinadas repiiblicas de la misma varian no solo en dependencia de las personalidades ο regiones, sino tambien a lo largo del tiempo. Por un lado, encontramos numerosas opiniones hostiles a todo aquello que viniera de Espana, tambien a la lengua. Esta postura, que conlleva una valoracion de lo regional y/o una fe en una hipotetica paulatina separation del espanol, es, sobre todo, frecuente en autores argentinos, y principalmente en los primeros anos de la Independencia, como ponen al descubierto los siguientes fragmentos: Es evidente que aim conservamos infinitos restos del regimen colonial [...] ya que los espanoles nos habian dado el despotismo en sus costumbres oscuras y miserables [...] no tenemos hoy una idea, una habitud, una tendencia retrograda que no sea de origen espanol. (Alberdi en: Costa Alvarez 1922, 31) Si Espana quiere conservar su autoridad literaria en Sudamerica, träte de procurärsela primero en la Europa misma. (Alberdi 1923, 122) jEstamos hablando un idioma muerto! Las colonias no se emanciparän sino abandonändolo, ο traduciendo entero otro. Esto ultimo serä obra de varon. Lo otro sucederä por la lenta action de las razas, que poblarän nuestro suelo, sirviendo nosotros de abono a la tierra. (Sarmiento 1899, 316)

Este rechazo, que no resulta extrano despues de una guerra y una vez obtenida la independencia politica, significaba no solo un intento de separation de la 11

Para mayor informacion vease Lopez Morales (1998) y Guzman (2006).

270

Martha Guzmän

metropolis. Espana era ademäs simbolo del atraso cientifico e industrial, de un pasado incompatible con los suenos de edificacion de las nuevas republicas americanas; las nuevas naciones necesitaban ademäs de una nueva lengua, no solo propia, sino tambien apta para la construction del future. Hemos de tomar en cuenta, sin embargo, que no siempre se trato de una negation del espanol y de una aspiration de llegar a hablar una lengua diferente, sino tambien de una actitud, no desprovista de la valoracion de lo vernacular aupada por el romanticismo, pero desde todo punto de vista logica y legitima, de defensa de la existencia de una norma regional, independiente de la europea. En este sentido, resultan ilustrativos los argumentos con los que el intelectual argentino Juan Maria Gutierrez rechaza su nombramiento a la Real Academia, de los cuales hemos seleccionado un fragmento: Aqui, en esta parte de America, poblada primitivamente por espanoles, todos sus habitantes, nacionales, cultivamos la lengua heredada, pues en ella nos expresamos, y de ella nos valemos para comunicarnos nuestras ideas y sentimientos; pero no podemos aspirar a fijar su pureza y elegancia por razones que nacen del estado social que nos ha deparado la emancipation polrtica de la antigua Metröpoli. (Gutierrez en: Cambours 1983 [1876], 46)

Si bien estas opiniones aparecen con frecuencia en textos de argentinos, seria inexacto, sin embargo, afirmar que solo encontramos esta position. Ademäs de ello es tambien posible apreciar como, paulatinamente, el derecho a formas lingüisticas propias se va desligando de una actitud beligerante hacia Espana. Veamos los siguientes fragmentos del escritor, poeta y abogado argentino Florencio Varela y del propio Alberdi. Nada hay en nuestra patria mäs abandonado que el cultivo de nuestra lengua; de esta lengua, la mäs rica, sonora y numerosa de todas las vivas, aun en el concepto de los extranjeros sensatos, [...] y de la cual, sin embargo, han dicho, poco hace, los diarios de Buenos Aires, que era pobre e incapaz de competir con los idiomas extranjeros probando que no saben su habla, ni han leido los buenos libros que hay en ella. (Varela en: Costa Alvarez 1922, 22-3) Mi preocupacion en ese tiempo, hacia todo lo que era espanol me enemistaba con la lengua Castellana, sobre todo con la mäs pura y cläsica, que me era insoportable por difusa. [...]. No hace sino muy poco que me he dado cuenta de la suma elegancia del lenguaje de Cervantes. (Alberdi 1945, 52)

A pesar de que la actitud hacia Espana se hiciera menos negativa y de que, si exceptuamos el intento de reforma ortogräfica del espanol llevado a cabo por Sarmiento, en Argentina no se produjeron en aquella epoca obras relevantes por

Andres Bello y la norma del esparto I (americano)

271

lo que respecta a la estandarizacion de la lengua, 12 si puede afirmarse que en esta region se dieron pasos importantes hacia la consolidation de una norma propia. En tal sentido, no solo se dio lugar a rasgos lingüisticos caracteristicos de la zona en la literatura, sino que los mismos aparecieron como norma en materiales escolares, si no memorables lingiiisticamente, si de amplia difusion. Las actitudes hacia el espanol y hacia aquel espanol que debia hablarse en America que apreciamos en intelectuales provenientes de otras zonas tienden en mucha menor medida a priorizar lo regional y elevar su estatus. No encontramos en otras zonas, por ejemplo, referencia a una lengua ο idioma nacional. Los temas preponderantes en las reflexiones ο discusiones de otras regiones son la paradojica situacion de la identidad lingüistica americana, y, algunos anos despues, la posible fragmentation lingüistica de America. El primer tema parece ocupar especialmente a intelectuales de zonas mäs profundamente hispanizadas que el cono sur. Pongamos de ejemplos los proximos fragmentos provenientes de un intelectual colombiano y uno cubano: No hemos hecho la guerra a la lengua espanola, sino a los malos gobiernos espanoles que nos oprimian; a ella no, porque es nuestra, porque es esencia misma de nuestra personalidad cultural, en la que nuestro continente ha escrito numerosas päginas de gloria. (Merchän en: Lopez Morales 1998, 105-106) La lengua es en nosotros la mäs fuerte espanolidad, el mäs grueso aislador de lo vernäculo, porque nacemos a la lengua como a la vida, sin oportunidad de eleccion: cuando pensamos, cuando existimos, el lenguaje de Castilla es ya nuestro unico lenguaje. Somos a traves de un idioma que es nuestro siendo extranjero. (Marinello 1899, 4) La identification con el espanol no significa que no se dieran tambien, incluso en autores tan poco sospechosos de antiespanolismo como Cuervo, intentos de que se reconocieran y valoraran los rasgos propios del espanol americano, como puede observarse en el siguiente fragmento: "Los espanoles, al juzgar el habla de los americanos, han de despojarse de cierto invencible desden que les ha quedado por las cosas de los criollos" (Cuervo 1950, 288). El segundo tema, la posible fragmentation del espanol, estaba en perfecta consonancia con la idea de que a cada nation corresponde una lengua, como con los estudios lingüisticos que describian el surgimiento, a partir del latin, de diferentes lenguas romances. Esta posibilidad es vista como una realidad inevitable por algunos intelectuales y es ansiada por otros, como vimos en el fragmento de Sarmiento antes mencionado. Algunos autores, como es el caso de Rufino Jose Cuervo, ven en la fragmentation del espanol americano un peligro 12

El idioma nacional de los argentinos del frances Luciano Abeille es muy posterior y se ocupa, sobre todo, del lexico.

272

Martha Guzmän

que era necesario parar a tiempo, ya que implicaba no solo una diferenciacion con respecto al espanol peninsular, sino, ademäs, una separation dentro de America. Cuervo, quien en un principio se habia mostrado esceptico ante esta posibilidad, expresa posteriormente: Tal evolution se realiza por fuerza en todas partes, en Espana como en America, y si con sinceridad se desea mantener la unidad del habla literaria, unica posible, tanto espanoles como americanos han de poner de su parte para lograrlo. (Cuervo 1907, xiii) [...] y cuando varios pueblos gozan del beneficio de un idioma comun, propender a su uniformidad es vigorizar sus simpatias y relaciones, hacerlos uno solo. Nadie hace mäs por el hermanamiento de las naciones hispano-americanas, como los fomentadores de aquellos estudios que tienden a conservar la pureza de su idioma, destruyendo las barreras que las diferencias dialecticas oponen al comercio de las ideas. (Cuervo 1955, 6)

En este ultimo fragmento, Cuervo alude a un aspecto que tendrä no poca influencia en los intentos de normativizacion del espanol americano y en su fortuna: en Hispanoamerica existian no solo, como en los Estados Unidos ο Brasil, muchisimos hablantes, sino tambien, justamente tras las guerras de independencia, muchas naciones, cuyas diferencias - e incluso sus enfrentamientos - se acentuarian en la etapa a la que nos referimos. La seleccion y estandarizacion de "una" variedad, era por tanto problemätica desde diferentes puntos de vista. Mäs allä de las opiniones y debates acerca de la lengua que hemos comentado, la etapa que sigue a la guerra de independencia se caracterizo, quizäs como ninguna otra en la historia de America, por los intentos de reformas lingüisticas, como las reformas ortogräficas de Sarmiento y del propio Bello y por la aparicion de obras tales como gramäticas escolares. Tambien en esta epoca aparecen obras como el Diccionario de construction y rigimen de Cuervo ο la Gramätica de Bello, de la que hablaremos posteriormente.

4. La obra literaria y lingüistica de Bello: su posicion ante la norma Andres Bello, ademäs de proponer una reforma de la ortografia espanola, escribe varios textos en los que intenta no solo describir de manera sistemätica y detallada el sistema de la lengua espanola, sino tambien establecer que rasgos, usos lingüisticos ο elementos lexicos eran correctos y cuäles no, es decir, prescribir a los hablantes como debian hablar y escribir. Su labor reformadora, prescriptiva y normativizadora de nuestra lengua abarca desde la ortografia hasta la sintaxis y aspira a llegar a hablantes de los mäs diversos niveles educacionales

Andres Bello y la norma del esparto I (americano)

273

y sociales y de diferentes edades.13 Podnamos preguntarnos, sin embargo, en que se basa Bello para considerar correcto y ejemplar un uso lingüistico ο elemento lexico y, dado que nos hallamos en un periodo en el que la perspectiva de los americanos ante la lengua puede cambiar, adquiriendo no solo derechos sino tambien responsabilidad ante la misma, como son valorados y que estatus da este autor a los rasgos caracteristicos del espanol de America. Este segundo aspecto tiene especial relevancia si pensamos que Bello, que como todos saben fue maestro de Simon Bolivar y escribio una Gramätica de la lengua castellana en cuyo titulo se especifica "destinada al uso de los Americanos", ha sido usualmente considerado como un americanista, tambien por lo que respecta a la lengua. 4.1

A n d r e s Bello c o m o autor literario

La obra literaria de Bello, que es, primordialmente, poetica, fue escrita en diferentes momentos de su vida, tambien en aquellos en los que se hallaba implicado politicamente en la independencia ο en la construccion de las nacientes republicas americanas y/o intensamente ocupado en la tarea de la educacion de sus ciudadanos. En muchos autores que escriben en la epoca de Bello es posible apreciar un intento de crear un modo de decir nuevo, propio, en el que ocupan un lugar primordial los rasgos tipicos del espanol de determinadas regiones americanas; en algunos casos se intenta incluso, como es el caso de la Argentina, crear una literatura nacional que iria de la mano con una lengua nacional. Andres Bello, autor con quien Juan Maria Gutierrez comienza su antologia America poetica (1846), ha sido considerado con frecuencia como un autor fundacional de la poesia americana.14 Sus textos mäs conocidos tienen, ciertamente, con frecuencia, una temätica americana, que puede ir desde la exaltacion de la naturaleza (La agricultura de la zona torrida), hasta la propia historia de las gestas independentistas y la alabanza de los proceres de las mismas (Alocucion a la Poesia).15 No tenemos, sin embargo, como en el caso de los autores argentinos, ningiin dato, ni lo encontramos en sus prologos, ο textos de critica literaria ο periodisticos, que nos lleve a pensar que Bello aspirara a crear una literatura autoctona, mucho menos, propia de un pais determinado, ,fi ni siquiera de que intentara que su literatura fuera definida como americana. 13

14 15

16

Piensese, por ejemplo, en "Advertencias sobre el uso de la lengua castellana dirigida a los padres de familia, profesores de colegios y maestros de escuela" ο en los "Ejercicios populäres de lengua castellana". Vease sobre este tema Gomes (1998). Tambien encontramos, y no se trata de una critica, sino de una constatacion, textos como Oda a la vacuna, en los que se alaba a monarcas espanoles. La identificacion con una determinada zona resultaria, por otra parte, contradictoria en un autor que, nacido en una zona, vive en el extranjero largos anos y ejerce un cometido fundamental en la cultura y en la construccion nacional de otro.

274

Martha Guzmän

Si nos concentramos en el modo de decir y hacemos una lectura de sus textos atendiendo a los elementos ο rasgos lingüisticos propios del espanol americano presentes, no solo no podemos encontrar indicios de que Bello aspirara a una forma de decir nueva, americana, sino nos vemos obligados a concluir que su literatura rara vez incluye elementos que pudieramos considerar caracteristicos de las hablas americanas. A continuation presentaremos algunos de estos escasos ejemplos. En toda la poesia de Bello encontramos, algunas veces repetidas, ciertas palabras que provienen de America, constituyen hoy americanismos y que no Consta - y resultaria sumamente raro- que formaran parte en la epoca del vocabulario general del espanol. Ejemplo de ellas son: zapote (del nahua tzapotl, 'fruto de sabor dulce'), palta (de origen quechua, 'nombre del aguacate en ciertas regiones de America'), yaravi ('tonada original de Peru y Colombia'), jicara (del nahua xicalli, 'vasija pequena'). Se trata, por lo general de nombres de frutas ο vegetales tipicos de America, ο de cosas para cuya designation no existe un equivalente peninsular. Llama la atencion que en algunos casos, si bien existe una palabra generalizada en America, emplea la forma que hoy, y con mucha probabilidad en aquella epoca, era tipica de Espana. Asi nos habla en La Agricultura ... de patata, aunque es probable que en la election de este termino haya influido la rima. Mucho mäs llamativo resulta el uso reiterado de formas de tratamiento ο posesivos que, si atendemos a los estudios diacronicos, serian en aquella epoca propios del espanol peninsular y ajenos al americano. Asi usa, para referirse a mäs de una persona en plural las formas verbales correspondientes a vosotros: "^Arnais la libertad?" y, hablando a las naciones americanas, dice: "se animarän, citando vuestro ejemplo" (en: La Agricultura 1953, 54). Estas caracteristicas no deben, sin embargo, entenderse, como una recomendacion ο modelo para los hablantes de la lengua. Escribir, y escribir poesia quizäs mäs, es una forma de production lingüistica sumamente especifica, en la que intervienen aspectos tales como la situation comunicativa y los generös ο tradiciones discursivas. En otro orden de cosas podemos apuntar que sus obras resultan un marco no propicio para que afloren rasgos diatopicamente marcados, ya que no hay personajes, para cuya caracterizacion resulte util servirse de rasgos diatopicos, y el estilo general de sus obras no facilita la aparicion de rasgos diatopicos marcados. 17

17

Independientemente de ello, algunos autores tienden mäs que otros a servirse en sus obras de una expresion en la que aparezcan rasgos tipicos de una determinada region y de determinado estrato.

Andres Bello y la norma del esparto I (americano)

275

4.2 La reforma ortogräfica Antes de comenzar a hablar de la reforma ortogräfica que propone Bello, debemos anotar, por una parte, que en Espana tampoco existia por aquella epoca una ortografia unica generalizada, como podemos apreciar en las ediciones conservadas. Por otra parte, hemos de recordar que otro intelectual contemporäneo, Sarmiento, tambien concibe una reforma ortogräfica. 18 Las primeras propuestas de Bello datan de 1823 y estän relacionadas con su proyecto de alfabetizar America, para lo cual resultaba util simplificar la ortografia y hacerla mäs "logica". Para conocer los principios de la propuesta de Bello podemos leer los siguientes fragmentos, de los cuales el segundo refleja, ademäs, su propia ortografia: Deben desterrarse de nuestro alfabeto las letras superfluas; fijar las reglas para que no haya letras unisonas; adoptar por principio jeneral el de la pronunciation ("la buena pronunciation") i acomodar a ella el uso comun i constante. Abolido el sonido es fuerza abolir la letra, i si no lo hicieron nuestros abuelos, no es esa una razon para que dejemos de hacerlo nosotros. (Bello 1823, 62) El mayor grado de perfection de que la escritura es susceptible, i el punto a que por consiguiente deben conspirar todas las reformas, se cifra en una cabal correspondencia entre los sonidos elementales de la lengua, i los signos ο letras que han de representarlos, por manera que a cada sonido elemental corresponda invariablemente una letra, i a cada letra corresponda con la misma invariabilidad un sonido. (Bello 1823, 58)

La propuesta de reforma ortogräfica de Bello no tiene, a diferencia de la de Sarmiento, un caräcter estrictamente americanista. Bello no solo estä a favor de conservar la , sino aspira a que su reforma se adopte en todo el dominio de la lengua espanola, como lo evidencian sus propias palabras: "La escritura uniformada de Espana i de las naciones americanas, presentarä un grado de perfeccion desconocida hoi en el mundo" (Bello 1823, 57). Bello sigue en este caso un criterio fonico, pero sigue, por una razon ο por otra, la norma castellana, superponiendo la unidad de la lengua a ambos lados del oceano a que ciertos sonidos pudieran resultar, a todos los americanos, extranos, y una dificultad para el aprendizaje. Sin embargo, Bello, quien gozaba, al menos en Chile en aquel momento, de suficiente poder e influencia para haber impuesto su reforma, no desestima la propuesta de Sarmiento, sino hace una comision para su estudio y finalmente, cuando ve que podria atentar con cualquier reforma que solo

18

Para mayor information sobre la reforma de Sarmiento, vease Cichon (2007), en este volumen.

276

Martha Guzmän

fuera aceptada por algunas regiones a la unidad del espanol, renuncia a todo intento de cambio. 19 4.3 La Gramätica y otros textos prescriptivos Ya en 1824, Bello traduce un texto sobre la forma de expresarse correctamente en castellano; sin embargo, su Gramätica, y sus otros textos prescriptivos se escriben en Chile, es decir, en un momento en el que se van consolidando las republicas surgidas tras la independencia, y en el que, tambien, en algunas de ellas como en Chile, se ponen en marcha importantes proyectos educacionales. Si bien el publico y la propia naturaleza de este tipo de obras de Bello cambian, ni en los criterios de autoridad que sigue, ni en su posicion acerca de los fenomenos que trata, pueden apreciarse cambios considerables. Hemos intentado dilucidar tanto sus fines como que autores ο variedades considera como lo "correcto" y como ejemplares en su normativizacion del espanol, sobre todo en su Gramätica, pero tambien en otras obras como "Advertencias sobre el uso de la lengua castellana dirigida a los padres de familia, profesores de colegios y maestros de escuela" ο "Principios de ortologia y metrica de la lengua castellana". El titulo original de su gramätica es Gramätica de la lengua castellana destinada al uso de los Americanos, y en su prologo Bello afirma que no tiene la pretension de escribir para los castellanos, sino que se dirige a sus "hermanos, los habitantes de Hispano-America" (Bello 1972, 12). Estas palabras, el propio titulo y aspectos ajenos al texto en si, como el hecho de que Bello hubiera sido maestro de Simon Bolivar y el que la Gramätica se hubiera escrito en un momento de atmosfera independentista y clave para la formacion de la(s) identidad(es) americana(s) han llevado a hablar de - m ä s que a analizar- esta obra en clave americanista, y a definirla como un texto fundacional y decisivo para el espanol americano. Si vamos al texto, Bello afirma en su prologo que sus fines son la conservacion de la lengua en su posible pureza, con lo que intentaba ademäs garantizar la unidad del idioma "como un medio providencial de comunicacion y un vinculo de fraternidad entre las varias naciones de origen espanol derramadas sobre los dos continentes" (Bello 1972, 12). Ademäs de ello, dice que persigue corregir ciertas präcticas viciosas del habla popular de los americanos y anade: No se crea que recomendando la conservacion del castellano sea mi änimo tachar de vicioso y espurio todo lo que es peculiar de los americanos. Hay locuciones castizas que en la Peninsula pasan por anticuadas y que subsisten tradicionalmente en Hispano America /,por que proscribirlas? Si segun la practica general de los americanos es mäs 19

En diversos paises de America se editaron libros que seguian una de las dos propuestas ortogräficas u otras afines.

Andres Bello y la norma del esparto I (americano)

277

analogica la conjugation de algun verbo, /,por que razon hemos de preferir la que caprichosamente haya prevalecido en Castilla? Si de raices castellanas hemos formado vocablos nuevos, segun los procederes ordinarios de derivation que el castellano reconoce, y de que se ha servido y se sirve continuamente para aumentar su caudal,