LA GELOSIA DELLE LINGUE

What happens within a writer who decides to abandon his/her mother tongue in order to write in another language? What is lost and what is gained in the passage? Why leave one language for another? These are just some questions the book focuses on. Switching from one language to another means taking a risk. The reason is not linked to the degree of competence in one language or another, but it is about feeling the language, learning how to conceive the world, and interpreting it from a different point of view. This change implies a “rebirth”. We can write, think and dream in other languages, but we could never do so without the linguistic maternity of our native language because our mother tongue not only teaches us how to speak but also gives us a way to see the world and a way of being. We speak our mother tongue in many other languages.
In a series of short chapters somewhere between autobiography and essay, Adrián N. Bravi explores, on the one hand, the hospitality offered by his new language (in his case, the Italian language, in which he speaks, writes and narrates against the backdrop of a hidden language which whispers words and tones to him from his childhood) and, on the other hand, the experience of other writers who, for various reasons and vicissitudes, changed language and reflected on this existential metamorphosis.