PASCAL BRUCKNER
The Edge
of Babel
In his autobiography,
Conclusive Evidence,
Vladimir Nabokov recounts that
when he was at Cambridge from 1919 to 1922, after the Bolshevik Revo–
lution, he was surprised to unexpectedly come upon "a Russian work, a
second-hand copy of
Dahl's Interpretative Dictionary
if
the Living Russian
Language.
I bought it and resolved to read at least ten pages per day, jotting
down such colorful words and expressions as might especially please me,
and I kept this up for a considerable time. My fear oflosing or corrupting,
through alien influence, the only thing I had salvaged from Russia - her
language - became positively morbid."
Today, such concern for his lost country, his small linguistic heritage,
would earn Nabokov charges of "regressive identification" or "fastidious
timidity" as our age, more than any other, values multiplicity and open–
ness as extremely progressive traits. In fact, rumor has it that a titanic
battle is being waged by two camps as allergic to each other as capitalism
and communism are. On the one side is the nationalist and xenophobic
camp, clinging to its heritage like Moliere's Harpagon to his treasure
chest; on the other, the cosmopolitan camp, starving for otherness, curi–
ous about everything, anxious to exchange constricting nationalism for a
roomier garment. The former, barricaded within their Frenchness (or
Germanness) are depicted as resentful, doddering, and provincial. The
latter are said to exude the aura of open spaces, youth, and hope. On the
one side, the ugly contractions of fear and stinginess; on the other, the
beauty of friendship and audacity. These alternatives surely exist, but must
we accept them in such a narrow, simplistic version? Are we really con–
demned either to remain imprisoned in our birthplaces or to immerse
ourselves in the many-hued multitude of cultures? Must we respond to
this commandment that appears to be an inescapable obligation?
Cosmopolitanism constitutes
a priori
an eminently desirable value for
no other reason than the attacks it has suffered from Fascists and Stalinists.
Cosmopolitanism was once the privilege of European aristocracy and the
bourgeoisie's children, then the curse of minorities routed by the war,
exterminated through persecution and the Holocaust. Now, according to
its adherents, cosmopolitanism is becoming our common condition. A
new man is being born: no longer the isolated man of former times,
cloistered upon his patch of earth, he is both bound and mobile, the sum
of all preceding wi"sdom, an individual without borders, as adaptable to
