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Dialogues@RU is published annually
by the
Writing Program at
Rutgers, The State
University of New Jersey
Volume One
Spring 2002
The Voice
of Melancholy in Eva Hoffman's Lost in Translation -
Page 2
by Joanna H. Martinez
The feeling of overwhelming cultural alienation as well as the burden of the deeper understanding of cultural relativity may be the reason why many immigrants do not chose to record and publish their experiences. And even if they do, their writings are usually published and "scrutinized primarily as documents of social history; seldom are they treated as literature in the sense of belles-letters" (Fjellestad 3). Many choose to write in their native languages and for their fellow countrymen precisely for the fear that the American audience is oblivious to and uninterested in the immigrant plight. Moreover, even between the volumes of the existing immigrant literature there are very few books describing the immigrant experience of exile from Eastern and Central Europe, a fact that makes Hoffman's autobiography a valuable source. Why is it that "the refugees from the Communist system have seldom bothered to document their plight" even though "among the hundreds of post Second World War 'Communist' emigrants a substantial number can boast of university education" (Fjellestad 30)? There are many reasons and some of them have a lot to do with the Polish brand of melancholy (tesknota in Hoffman's book), that is characteristic of the Slavic people in general, and that often becomes an obstacle, rather than an asset, in any attempt to materialize experiences in writing. But there is one major reason that Fjellestad is able to pinpoint: "Central and East Europeans have grown up in political and social system which created specific cultural techniques for constructing, monitoring, and controlling the self, techniques which were radically different from those of the West" (2-3). A retrospective writing is not one of the modes of such a cultural expression in that part of the world. That is why Hoffman's book is such a pearl in a sea of conspicuous silence of the 'Communist' refugees. Moreover, Hoffman's book is a, probably unintentional, statement of defiance of her own culture because it betrays the unwritten law of the Polish cultural sensitivity, which forbids such a deep, psychological discourse about one's suffering to wide audiences.
The suffering of spiritual and linguistic alienation will last for Hoffman until she finally masters the English language. The road to such mastery, however, leads Eva through an almost schizophrenic state of spiritual confusion. She knows two languages and as a result she has a separate consciousness for each of them. The decision of getting married to an American man, even after many years of living in the New World, will change her psyche into a battleground for a cultural wrestling match:
Should you marry him? the question comes in English.
Yes.
Should you marry him? the question echoes in Polish.
No. (Lost 199)
As a result of the conflict of the two cultures Eva develops a double consciousness. It is, however, different from the kind of double consciousness Friedman describes. Friedman argues that women develop the schizophrenic-self because of the fact that they are constantly judged by other people, especially men: "It is a peculiar sensation, this double consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of the world that looks on in amused contempt and pity" (Friedman 40). Hoffman's double consciousness is not created by the fact that she is being judged from outside. It is a result of a painful inner self-judgement. The Polish Eva always watches and castigates the American Eva. A cultural displacement, therefore, can be as effective as social oppression in creating the phenomenon of double consciousness in women. This schizophrenic double soul finally disappears when Hoffman is able to reconcile the two cultures through an open expression of her suffering. Felski's contention that pain becomes meaningful through confession is illustrated by Hoffman's autobiography. But while Felski asserts that "the act of writing promises power and control, endowing subjective experience with authority and meaning" (Felski 84), Hoffman shows that only an actual act of confession in front of another human being can have that effect. The validation of her pain doesn't come from writing but from therapy: "For me the therapy is partly translation therapy, the talking cure a second-language cure. My going to a shrink is, among other things, a rite of initiation: initiation into […] a way of explaining myself to myself" (Lost 272). It is only when she is ready to admit that the Polish voice inside of her doesn't have monopoly on her happiness, and when the American culture stops to feel like "the other", Eva finally finds peace.