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Coleridge once wrote that "the combination of the imagination of a child and the power of an adult is the true task of genius." At least I think he wrote that; I can't find the quote anywhere. In any case, if he didn't write it, he should have; the statement is concise as it is accurate.
I think that Coleridge's dictum is too restrictive; it needs to be extended. "The combination of the imagination of a child and the power of an adult is the touchstone of a lively mind," is more inclusive and turns the statement into a useful prescription for leading an interesting life. You don't have to be a Coleridge; you can go right on being anyone at all. But you will surely have more fun while gaining a deeper understanding of what is truly important, if your inner life is as familiar with the seriousness of Dr. Martin Luther King as it is with the jabberwocky of Lewis Carroll. (No need to frown--this article will concentrate, more or less, on the latter.)
Coleridge's aphorism applies generally to us all, but specifically to us poets. Houdini-like acts of legerdemain fascinate the child and adult in us all; Coleridge-like feats of "legerdebrain," as it were, can be even more magical. An astonishing production of live rabbits made entirely of words is the task of the poet; pulling them out of one's head is never old hat for a poet.
Neither a genius nor a major writer, I, like every poet, am able to illustrate what Coleridge said by what I write. I will provide an example, a poem I wrote nearly a half century ago:
Requests
Since you are absolutely nothing,
why not sit up and get dressed?
Here are no hat and non-pearls,
just for your head that's not there.
And what a tip-top absent body haven't you got!
Such towers of hair aren't there
over such lovely eyes--
Such beauty I never have seen.
So let me unmake not a promise:
come out from wherever you're not,
there, don't come here straightaway,
for I've nothing for you: do hurry,
it's heavy.
I will leave it up to the reader to find several illustrations of the Coleridge duality in this poem. I will point out two. When the adult in us reads the line, "Such beauty I never have seen" he takes it figuratively, that is, as meaning: "Wow! You're really beautiful." The child in us takes the sentence literally, as meaning "I've never seen your beauty since you aren't there." When an author uses (plays around with) the literal and the figurative in a way we're not used to, we are surprised and amused; this sort of fun keeps us young.
For a child, nouns tend to be concrete depictions of something tangible. "Nothing" becomes a "something." Using "nothing" in this way brings out the adult's inner child. Things become delightfully ambiguous in the poetic world on the other side of the looking glass. "Heavy" to the child means something physically difficult to carry; "heavy" in this context for the adult means something difficult to bear--emotionally. Poetry, where would we be without you?
2.
Another good way to stay young is to be around children. I remember an old TV show entitled, "Kids Say the Darndest Things." They do, usually because of their concrete thinking and relative inability to think abstractly. An example is the dialogue between mother and toddler, which my wife's niece, the mother of two precocious kids, posted on social media:
Toddler: I'm hungry!
Mother: You can't be hungry. You just brushed your teeth.
Toddler (very confused) But toothpaste isn't food??
The mother was speaking figuratively What her sentence means is something like "You're all ready for bed; it is not time to eat now." The toddler takes it literally. He thinks he can't be hungry because he just brushed his teeth. He didn't think toothpaste is food, but his mother apparently does. He is therefore confused; we are thereby amused.
Delighting in a child's innocence and naivete certainly--it has been demonstrated--has a positive effect on adults. Our pleasure comes from witnessing childish and child-like behavior, not from becoming one again. If we did, no one would be laughing, quite the contrary.
What if the exact same dialogue took place between two adults? An example: My wife's niece has a father just a bit younger than I am. Let's imagine this vignette:
Father: I'm hungry!
Daughter: You can't be hungry. You just brushed your teeth.
Father: (very confused) But toothpaste isn't food??
Comedy is thus turned into tragedy; the humor of the first turns into the horror of the second vignette simply by changing the ages of the speakers. The fear of Alzheimer's disease among people my age--the eighth decade--is often even greater than the fear of cancer. And with reason; the loss of reason while the body vegetates on is nothing to look forward to. The inability of an adult to think abstractly means she has become, tragically, a child again. It isn't funny.
This is not the way to preserve one's inner child. I have found a way--at least it works for me--to regain some of the wonder and imagination of childhood without doing any harm to one's inner adult. In fact, with this method, some of the best characteristics of childhood combine with some of the best characteristics of adulthood and thus result in a sanier, brainier and zanier adult.
It entails an activity high on the list of proven ways to keep the mind vibrant: learning a foreign language. But you have to do it the right way! I highly recommend that you give your inner child an executive role while your inner adult assumes the role of executive assistant. . The latter will like that. So will the former.
3. An Interlude
Before we discuss what I think to be the right way to learn a language, I would like to present two anecdotes that happened to me. When one is learning a foreign tongue, one is apt to make mistakes, much as a toddler would. It's all part of the fun, along with the embarrassments, of growing up--again. Here are two examples:
I spent my junior year of college (1965-66) in Germany. I had just arrived. I was staying in a Catholic dorm called "The Thomas Morus Burse." My room was in the male section--there were separate buildings for males and females--how times have changed! (Perhaps not in Catholic dorms, though.) I was walking to the tram stop from the Burse, in the company of two pretty young women my age.
"Where are you staying?" one of them asked me. "Wo wohnen Sie?"
I replied, "Im Menschengebäude."
Both of the young ladies laughed for some time. I had obviously made a joke. Since I didn't know it, the joke was on me. I turned red.
What I wanted to say was, "I'm staying in the guy's building of the Catholic dorm." But that's not what I said. In German, der Mensch (die Menschen) means "human being." Each German noun is either of the masculine, feminine or neuter gender--you can tell which gender a noun belongs to by the form of the definite article. In German dialect, however, das Mensch means something very different. (I was a nineteen year old German toddler just learning how to talk; mistakes will be made.
This is the correct translation of the brief exchange:
"Where are you staying?"
"In the whorehouse!"
The second anecdote occurred a dozen years later, in 1977. My wife and I, accompanied by her sister and brother-in-law, were in India. Nirmala and I wanted to adopt an Indian child. Nirmala's sister was helping us. We were on our way to see the medical doctor on-call in a hospital in the Kilpauk section of Chennai, a city then known as Madras.
Romy said something like this, "It's almost lunch time. We've got to hurry to see the buffalo now."
I was flummoxed, but didn't say anything. As we walked on, she said, "I hope the buffalo is in his office!"
I had to find out why she thought the medical officer was a beast. I said to my wife in a loud voice so everyone could hear: "Why is Romy calling the medical officer a buffalo?" Romy gave Nirmala one of those looks as if to say, "I told you not to marry him. This guy is nuts!"
I soon discovered my error. I had just learned the Tamil word for buffalo, erama. In Indian hospitals the doctor on call is called the Resident Medical Officer, or R.M.O. When she said, "I hope the R.M.O is in his office," I heard it as "I hope the eramu is in his office!" (The erama we eventually met was quite friendly and weighed only about 70 kilos.)
Such toddler-like mistakes are funny, but they sometimes make the mistaken adult feel like an idiot. It's a way to stay humble, sure, but no one really likes to be laughed at. The method of learning a language that I will now discus enables one to rediscover one's inner child to the amusement of one's inner adult. It is a win-win way to learn a new language.
4. The Modified Schliemann Method
Many years ago, (around 1960), my brother, who is five years older than I, had a girlfriend named Sylvia P. One day she was at our house studying for a few hours while my brother was working. She was studying a text in German which had been assigned. Over nearly every word of the text she had penciled in the English equivalent. If the teacher ever called on her to translate, she would have get an A. She, however, deserved an F. This is not the way to learn a foreign language. From the onset, you have to begin trying to think in the language you're studying. That's the only way to make progress. I have discovered what I think is the best way to do this. It works well whether you're living in your native land or are living in a country that speaks the language you want to learn. I call it (somewhat pompously, I must admit) the Modified Schliemann Method, an explanation of which is the "take home message" of this essay.
Heinrich Schliemann (1822-1890) was a German businessman and pioneer of archaeology, famous for his discovery of the site of Troy and notorious for his destructive methods of excavating it. He was multi-lingual, to put it mildly--by the end of his life he could read, write and converse in at least a dozen languages. How did he do it? It was his wont to compare a novel, word by word, in a language he knew with the translation of the same text, in a language completely foreign to him. He proceeded to memorize the text in the new language. He was able to memorize up to twenty pages a day! He is said to have memorized the entire text of The Vicar of Wakefield and other writings! He did not use a dictionary very much; he never studied grammar. As he memorized and read aloud texts in a new tongue, the grammar eventually became innate. He insisted on thinking, conversing and writing in the language of any county he happened to be in. He claimed to learn a language in six weeks! (I remember buying a little booklet with the laughable title of "Learn Malayalam in 30 days." Even the linguistic genius Schliemann would have needed a lot more help to learn a language in 30 days this way--a little booklet will not do.)
It can't be said that he learned languages without the help of native speakers, however. He sometimes hired tutors and used every opportunity to speak with native speakers of the language in question. It's safe to say, however, that the bulk of his proficiency was acquired by private study.
Very few of us possess such a prodigious ability to memorize. His method is basically sound, however. Hence the need for a Modified Schliemann Method (MSM) adapted to the more humble abilities of the rest of us.
Here are the principles of the Modified Schliemann Method. ( First an axiom: You must be interested in learning a language and be willing to keep at it. It's well worth it--as Goethe said, leaning a new language is like learning a new world. It is also a proven way to keep the mind vigorous as one ages.)
1. Get yourself to the early toddler stage of language proficiency in the new language you are learning. A few weeks of casual listening to introductory language lessons, such as the Pinsler Method, is all you need. However, taking a basic language course for a few weeks will do just as well. At this stage, one should have some vocabulary and some idea of sentence structure. (In this article, I will illustrate the MSM with the learning of Spanish.) It doesn't take much knowledge to graduate from this stage. You are about three years old again, and can say things such as, "Mamá, tengo hambre!"--"Mommy, I'm hungry." You don't have to be able to say a lot; just a few of the basics.
2. The second stage is the most important one. Find something that you know well in English, such as a favorite passage from the Bible or the Gettysburg Address. Read the text several times. Then read that same text--many times--in Spanish translation. Important: just like a child learning a language, you don't have to understand every word. Since you know the meaning in English, the meaning in Spanish will eventually be clear--or at least clearer. Do not use a dictionary! It's O.K. not to know everything!
In this way, you'll learn to begin thinking in the new language. You will be able to read the text without thinking of the English equivalent. Don't try to learn a language like my brother's old girl friend! I've come across persons, unfamiliar with MSM principles, who have taken several years of language in high school and now, years later, just about the only thing that they can say, is ¡Hola!
It's important, of course, to keep the practice up. You will soon be able to handle longer and more complicated texts. Always begin with uncomplicated passages. For instance, the French of Camus's The Stranger is simple and direct. If you have a working knowledge of French, read paragraphs, pages or even the whole text in French and then start reading the Spanish translation--this way you surely won't be thinking in English. (If you don't know French, the English translation will also work well.)
It's important to hear the new language spoken. Living in the United States, one has many opportunities to hear Spanish. For instance, I listen to the news in Spanish several times a week; nearly all cable programs include at least one Spanish station. Another example: when at the ATM machine, I choose Spanish; I choose the Spanish-language option at the check-out computer at the grocery store as well. The opportunities are myriad.) For languages less popular than Spanish, the Internet is there--cyberspace is very multi-lingual.(The ideal way of learning a language is, of course, living in a country that speaks it. This is not practical for many of us. A vacation or a business trip to that country helps a lot--but it is not necessary.) Important: Insist on speaking the new language whenever possible. A tourist trip to Spain with a group of Americans and a tour guide that talks only in English? As far as language learning goes, you might as well stay home listening to re-runs of The Big Bang.
3. Now you're ready for the third stage. Choose novels, stories or non-fiction that are not too complex. Read them in your new language without referring to a dictionary--one can look something up when one is really stuck--but if one gets stuck too frequently, one needs to choose something simpler. Then, as we say in medicine, "advance as tolerated."
This is a wonderful stage to be in. You're a kid again, but you're growing up rapidly It's a good feeling to experience growing mastery in a new language; the wonder of childhood and the power of adulthood are combined in a very good way.
I remember reading an article by James Thurber long ago; he was going blind, but put a humorous and positive light on his darkening affliction. The gist of the article: Normal people may see a mailman across the street, for instance; Thurber just might first see a unicorn to the delight of his inner child. At close range, the unicorn would morph into a mailman to the delight of his inner adult, who discovers that he still has his feet on the ground of an objective world.
This is the stage of Spanish I am currently in. I just read my first novel in Spanish, Isabel Allende's Maya's Notebook, or in my version, El Cuaderno de Maya. I will present a few Thurbian blurs I experienced, which began to resolve as my mind's eye cleared.
Example one: "Los que fumaban marihuana y los que patinaban tenían su sector." "Those who smoked and those who skated had their own sector," Now there's a unicorn for you! I guessed that "patinaban" means "skated" since I knew "patiner" means "to skate" in French. I was confused, so I took it up with the Translator in the Sky.
Thomas: What does skating have to do with smoking marijuana?
Sky: Ho, Ho, Ho! Think. In Spanish, skating can figuratively mean gadding about aimlessly. Here skating refers to those without purpose, slackers. Ho Ho Ho!--That's funny, Son--and I'm laughing with you.
Thomas: Thanks, Dad!
Example two: "Mi Nini publicó una carta en The Berkely Daily Planet proponiendo que el grupo LGBTD (lesbianas, gays, bisexuales, tranasexuales y dudosos) agregara una H al nombre para incluir hermafroditas." "My granny wrote a letter to The Berkeley Daily Planet suggesting that the letter H for hermaphrodite be added to the LGBTDD (lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transsexuals and dudosas) group."
Dudosas? What are they? Some form of duds? Deviants? Dodos? Dentists? The Translator in the Sky began to laugh again. Figure it out, Thomas. You know the word dudar, to doubt. Dudosos are the doubtful ones, those that are not classified; in other words, they're in a category that includes all the sexual minorities that aren't mentioned in the acronym! I was learning, I was growing up as Tomás, an Hispanic youth.
There are many such examples--With one book, Tomás, to his delight, approaches puberty! (By the end of the novel, by the way, he could translate into Spanish the vulgar sentence that the angry president of Mexico said, in English, regarding paying for Trump's infamous wall.)
If you are basically a self-learner and want to learn a new language, trust me: the MSM works well. (I'm an autodidact interested in languages as well.) Since what works for me will most likely work for you, I will conclude with a brief account of the progress I've made, which I hope will encourage you to become fluent in one or more foreign languages:
Thomas and Tomás are enjoying very much the MSM of learning Spanish. The main advantage is that little Tomás is now able to think fairly well in Spanish. El niño is growing up.
Thomas, Thomas, Thomas and Tomás now can read novels in English, French, German and Spanish. Isn't this enough? After all, the original Thomas is an older, average guy with limited neuronal storage ability--I'm afraid (time is passing!) Thomas will attempt to scoot over to a new bowl of verbal pablum in an attempt to be a little kid once again--Will his fifth childhood be Japanese?
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