The Golden Age

The panopticon of grammar

The language of the islanders overflowed with an unbelievable quantity of prefixes and suffixes and these encased the roots of words front and back, denoting peculiar features of reality which to begin with I completely failed to grasp, or at least I did not understand why such trivialities were considered important enough to merit their own forms in the language. For example, there was a suffix which described how the thing indicated by the root of a word gave off a heavy scent of decay; a further suffix could be stuck onto this to make it clear that although the surface of a thing was now taut, it would soon begin to slacken; and a prefix might be attached to the front of a root form to communicate that the thing was submerged in shadow, and that this shadow was of either a mauve or a greenish colour.

In this way, the root of a word was smothered by prefixes and suffixes so that it gave the appearance of a mere appendage, while the thing itself disappeared beneath all the designations and determinations, all the shadows, lights, vibrations and rhythms, odours and degrees of tension and laxity communicated by the prefixes and suffixes. The prefixes and suffixes that came together in a particular word carried so much determination that it might seem that this in itself was enough for the designation of a thing and that the root of the word was no longer necessary. The determination indicated by the root of the word presented itself as a feature at once inessential and dispensable; and it was true that one’s failure in conversation to catch the root of a word was of no great consequence. (The roots of words were about as important for the island’s lexicon as the king was for its political organization.)

I believe that the language of the islanders was in a phase of transition, that it was heading towards a state where the roots of its words would disappear altogether and words would be formed only from clusters of prefixes and suffixes that would collide in the middle of words, although perhaps a hyphen or a weak vowel would serve as a kind of memorial to the now-extinct root. I do not think, however, that this tendency to eradicate its roots reigned over the history of the island’s language as a whole. Not only things themselves were subject to constant change on the island, but the manner of these changes was also constantly evolving. It is quite likely that once their language has reached the stage at which words are formed of nothing more than clusters of prefixes and suffixes, other longings and dreams will be awakened within the islanders, and perhaps the long-changing edifice of prefixes and suffixes will collapse, to be replaced by short, concise words to which it will be impossible to attach any prefix or suffix, as anything these could possibly indicate will already be contained in the words.

And as if all this were not enough to deal with, at the end of the series of suffixes there sprouted bunches of case endings. To this day I remain unsure of quite how many cases the island’s language had. I had the impression that the case system was constantly swelling; I counted seventeen cases, but after I had been on the island a year I discovered another, as if an inflexion had suddenly put out new shoots. I do not know whether an old, little-used grammatical form had risen back to the surface or whether someone had invented a new case because he had needed it or simply liked it. But other cases were dying off, so it seemed there was no danger that the case system would proliferate so as to contain an immeasurable quantity of endings.

Among the connections established by the island’s cases, those that seem to us most important (and that find expression in our own cases) were missing. The case endings of the island’s language expressed relations which seemed to me (at the time I was learning the language) wholly bizarre. For example, one of the cases was only used for nouns referring to things that were the subject of fear connected with the vague and probably not altogether pure intentions of a close relative; another was used for nouns referring to things placed on a soft surface which sagged slightly under the weight of the subject, forming on the surface a star shape of shallow pleats. Things were not much better with conjugation. Verb endings did not express which person the action concerned, nor indeed the number of actors. The ending — vi, for example, determined that the act signified by the verb occurred on a sandy seashore, while the ending — ark made it clear that the action took place on the surface of a cold mirror; if the ending — ut was attached to the verb, this signified that the action was somehow connected with green and red precious stones. Verb endings might also be linked together: for example, the word izarkut meant that it was visible in a mirror how something in which precious stones were sparkling was slowly submerged in water. A strange world emerged out of this declension and conjugation, a network of peculiar relations and roles which was antecedent to logic.

What irritated me most about the island’s extraordinary grammar was not that it concerned itself with unimportant features and relations of reality and created its forms based on the model they provided. The island’s lunatic grammar made me anxious more because of what seemed to me the grimace it gave the face of reality, modelling existence as a series of bizarre statues by pouring the substance of reality — admittedly diaphanous — into such peculiar moulds. One couldn’t really say that their grammar twisted reality, as it looked at reality in embryonic form: it penetrated to the germs of reality and adapted them to its own obscure dreams. The island’s grammar infected the sight, sound, and gesture through which reality comes to us, causing that reality to be composed exclusively of its bizarre and practically endless catalogue of prefixes, suffixes, and endings, its peculiar rhythms, beats, tensions, breaths, gleams, moving shadows, and its attention to whatever goes on inside things or on their surface, for which we do not even have a name.

However, and strangest of all, after a while on the island I began to find its grammar and the reality it created quite natural. This is one of the sicknesses I brought back from the island, of which, it seems, I shall never be cured. As I listen to Czech, now, I sometimes catch myself needing to translate it into the language of the island so that I can understand; and it seems to me that Czech, in common with all other European languages, has on the one hand very little to say about reality, and, on the other hand, contains much that is superfluous. When I hear someone say “They’re on their way,” and I ask myself unhappily why the form of the verb must communicate that more than one person is coming when this detail is not of the least interest to me and in any case will soon be made manifest, I am disturbed that we can’t simply attach an ending to the verb, — rao for instance, making clear that this is an action heightening our impatience while holding in check and subduing a vague fear of the goal that will soon be accomplished. This is the sort of thing that really interests me about whomever is on their way; this is the sort of thing that’s worth taking the time to express, unlike the banal detail that there happens to be more than one of them.

And so Czech and the language of the island grow together in my head; the cases of the island grow like obstinate weeds between the seven cases of Czech, and when I’m alone my thoughts are in this hybrid language — just as incomprehensible to a Czech as it would be to an islander. It happens once in a while that I am in a shop, standing in line at the checkout, lost in thought; that I fail to notice that I’ve reached the front of the line; that the checkout girl tries to get my attention; that I reply in my own language. By the way she looks at me I know she thinks I’m crazy, and I feel embarrassed; I pretend to have mispronounced my intention, or I make out that I’m a foreigner and adopt an accent. Having decided to compose this report on the island, I even considered, initially, writing it in my private language. Certainly no one would read such a book, and certainly too no one would want to publish it, but I dreamed of publishing it myself, of establishing my own press through which I would publish only novels of my own, written in my own language; who knows, perhaps one day someone would buy one of them and set about deciphering its text; on the basis of this perhaps he would then invent a language of his own with marvellous new cases and grammatical categories, in which — let’s say — there will be a verb ending indicating that in the action thus described, a burning energy full of a magnificent malice is gradually exhausting itself, and that this exhaustion evokes relief, nostalgia, and a kind of spine-tingling music.