101 Letters to a Prime Minister (9 page)

Which says how deep language goes. It becomes part of our biology. Our lungs need and are made for air, our mouths and stomachs need and are made for nutrition; our ears and noses can hear and smell and, lo, there are things to be heard and smelled. The mind is the same: it needs and is made for language, and, lo, there are things to be said and understood.

I am no champion of any particular language. Every language, from Afrikaans to Zulu, does the job it is required to do: map
the world with sounds that conveniently identify objects and concepts. Given a little time, every living language spoken by a sufficient number of people will match any new object or concept with a new word. Have you heard the notion of how the Inuit are supposed to have twenty-six words for snow, while we in English have only the one, “snow”? Well, that’s nonsense. Ask avid English-language skiers and they’ll come up with twenty-six words or compounds to describe snow.

Just as there are many cuisines on this earth, many styles of dress and many understandings of the divine, each of which can keep the stomach content, the body smartly covered and the soul attuned to the eternal, so there are many different kinds of sounds with which we can make ourselves understood. Each language has its own sonority, cadence, specialized vocabulary, and so on, but it all evens out. Each of us can be fully human in any language.

But since you are a native English speaker, let me champion English in this letter as an introduction to the latest semi-monthly book I am sending you. The English language has by far the largest vocabulary of any language on earth, well over 600,000 words. French, by comparison, is said to have 350,000 words and Italian, 250,000. Now right away, before I get jumped upon by those from my native province and all my Italian-speaking friends, this exuberance of vocabulary is largely irrelevant. Just 7,000 words represent 90 percent of the root vocabulary the average English speaker uses.

And let’s not forget: the voluble Italians showed no reticence in launching—and thoroughly enjoying—their
Renascimento
with their fewer words while the reserved Britons sat in their dark and dank island idling away the hours of pouring rain by wondering whether they should adopt the Italian word for that explosion of optimism and sunshine or call it the
Rebirth
or the
Renaissance
.

How did a local-yokel language spoken on an island—truly, an insular language—come to span the globe? The explanation can be summarized in two words:
invasions
and counter-invasions; that is,
colonialism
. The Germanic language of the Anglo-Saxons was immeasurably enriched by a number of invasions. In linguistic terms, the Christianization of Britannia was a beachhead, the Norman invasion of 1066 was a flood, and the Renaissance was a flourish. After that, the verbally empowered English set out to conquer the world, a great plundering that made them wealthy, not only with other people’s gold but also with other people’s words.

English is a hot stew of many ingredients. In it can be found words that have their origin in Arabic, Breton, Czech, Danish, Finnish, Gaelic, Hindi, Inuit, Japanese, Latin, Malay, Norwegian, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Turkish, Welsh, to mention only a selection. And that’s only vocabulary. English usage—how people speak their English—is also extraordinarily varied.

And that’s the reason for my gift to you this time:
To Kill a Mockingbird
, by Harper Lee. It’s a modern classic, a great story, one that will make you love lawyers, but it’s for the usage that I chose it. Rural Alabama English of the 1950s as spoken by children is something else. And yet it is English, so you will understand it without a problem. That is the rare privilege of those who speak English: in reading untranslated books from every continent they can feel both at home and abroad.

Bonne lecture
!

Yours truly,

Yann Martel

H
ARPER
L
EE
(b. 1926) is an American writer, best-known for her Pulitzer Prize–winning novel
To Kill a Mockingbird
. This novel, which
is frequently taught in schools to this day, was made into an Academy Award–winning film starring Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch. Many autobiographical elements are present in the novel, and the character of Dill is based on Lee’s lifelong friend Truman Capote. After publishing her book to instant acclaim and long-lasting success, Lee retreated from public life. To date,
To Kill a Mockingbird
is the only work she has published beyond the scope of magazines.

Cher Monsieur Harper,

Vous parlez le français. Vous avez fait de grands et fructueux efforts pour apprendre et parler cette langue depuis que vous êtes premier ministre. Vous espérez ainsi apprivoiser les Québécois.

Par ailleurs, la dernière fois, je vous ai beaucoup entretenu de l’anglais. Alors cette fois-ci je vous envoie un livre en français. Il est très connu. C’est
Le Petit Prince
, de l’écrivain français Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Vous l’avez peut-être lu au cours de vos études mais il saura vous être encore assurément très utile, non seulement pour maintenir votre français, mais aussi pour vous aider auprès des Québécois, puisque
Le Petit Prince
c’est aussi l’histoire d’un apprivoisement, dans ce cas-ci, d’un renard.

Le renard fait cadeau d’une très importante leçon au Petit Prince, mais je ne vais pas la répéter. Je vous laisse la redécouvrir.

Le vocabulaire est simple, les scènes claires à comprendre, la morale évidente et attachante. C’est en fait un conte chrétien.

Vous allez soupirer, “Si seulement les Québécois étaient aussi faciles à apprivoiser que les renards.”

Mais nous sommes plutôt, nous Québécois, comme la fleur du Petit Prince, avec notre orgueil et nos quatre épines.

Dear Mr. Harper,

You speak French. You’ve made great and fruitful efforts to learn the language since you became Prime Minister. You hope in this way to tame Quebeckers.

In my last letter, I discussed the English language. So this time I’m sending you a book in French, one that is very well known. It’s
The Little Prince
, by the French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. You perhaps read it during your French-language studies, but I’m certain it will still be of use to you, not only to help you maintain your French, but also to help you with Quebeckers, since
The Little Prince
is also the story of a taming, in this case of a fox.

The fox teaches the Little Prince a very important life lesson, but I won’t divulge it here. I’ll leave it for you to find it.

The vocabulary is simple, the scenes easy to understand, the moral obvious and endearing. It’s a Christian tale.

You’ll sigh, “If only Quebeckers were so easy to tame.”

But we Quebeckers are rather like the Little Prince’s flower, with our pride and our four thorns.

Yours truly,

Yann Martel

A
NTOINE DE
S
AINT-EXUPÉRY
(1900–1944), a French novelist and artist, is most famous for his illustrated philosophical novella,
Le Petit Prince
(
The Little Prince
). This story is so beloved that Saint-Exupéry’s drawing of the Little Prince was printed on the French 50-franc note until the introduction of the euro. Saint-Exupéry was an aviator and, in most of his works, including
Night Flight
and
Wind, Sand and Stars
, he drew on his experiences as a pilot. He worked as a pilot for the postal service for years. During World War II, he flew reconnaissance missions for the Allies. On one of these flights he went missing and was presumed dead.

Dear Mr. Harper,

The great thing about reading books is that it makes us better than cats. Cats are said to have nine lives. What is that compared to the girl, boy, man, woman who reads books? A book read is a life added to one’s own. So it takes only nine books to make cats look at you with envy.

And I’m not talking here only of “good” books. Any book—trash to classic—makes us live the life of another person, injects us with the wisdom and folly of their years. When we’ve read the last page of a book, we know more, either in the form of raw knowledge—the name of a gun, perhaps—or in the form of greater understanding. The worth of these vicarious lives is not to be underestimated. There’s nothing sadder—or sometimes more dangerous—than the person who has lived only his or her single, narrow life, unenlightened by the experience, real or invented, of others.

The book I am sending you today is a perfect instance of a story that offers you another life. It is a
Bildungsroman
(from
the German, literally a “novel of education”), a novel that follows the moral development of its main character. Because it’s told in the first person, the reader can easily slip into the skin, see through the eyes, of the person speaking. Jeanette Winterson’s
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
is a brief 170 pages, but during those pages you become “Jeanette,” the main character. Jeanette is a young woman who lives in small-town England a few decades ago. Her mother loves the Lord in a big way, and so does Jeanette. But the problem is, the problem becomes, that Jeanette also loves women in a big way. And those two—loving the Lord and loving women when you are yourself a woman—are not compatible, at least according to some who love the Lord and take it upon themselves to judge in His name.

Written in sparkling prose,
Oranges
is the sad, funny, tender tale of a young woman who must break into two pieces and then choose which of the two she wants to become. And that, having to make hard choices, having to choose between competing loves and lives, having to lose oneself so that one might find oneself, is instructive—besides highly entertaining—not only to adolescent Lancashire lesbians, but to me, to you, to everyone who is interested in making the most of life.

So enclosed, a fifteenth book, a fifteenth life.

Yours truly,

Yann Martel

P.S. Note the dedication. A book signed by the author herself. I had the good luck of meeting Jeanette Winterson in England recently and she kindly inscribed a copy of her book to you
.

J
EANETTE
W
INTERSON
(b. 1959) is a British author and journalist. She shot to fame with the publication of her first novel,
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
, which won the 1985 Whitbread Prize for a First Novel. Since then, her novels have continued to push the boundaries of gender roles, sexual identity and imagination. Her continued contribution to British literature has earned her an Order of the British Empire. In addition to writing, Winterson owns a fine-food emporium, Verdes, in London.

Dear Mr. Harper,

Rainer Maria Rilke’s
Letters to a Young Poet
, the sixteenth book I am sending you, is a rich lode. These ten letters, written between 1903 and 1908 by the great German poet to a young man by the name of Franz Xaver Kappus, might be considered a precursor of creative writing instruction. They are useful to all of us who aspire to write. They have helped me, and I have no doubt that they will help you in the writing of your book on hockey.

For example, in the very first letter, Rilke asks the young poet to ask himself the vital question “Must I write?” If there is not that unstoppable inner necessity, then one should not even attempt to write, suggests Rilke. He also makes much of the need for solitude, for that quiet sifting of impressions from which comes good, true writing and which can occur only when one is on one’s own.

However, if Rilke’s letters were no more than technical advice on artful writing, I don’t think I would have sent them to you. Of what interest is a trade manual to someone who practices another trade? But these letters are much more than that, because what holds for art also holds for life. What illuminates the first illuminates the second. So, self-knowledge—must I write?—is useful not only in writing but in living. And solitude bears fruit not only for the one who aspires to write poetry but for anyone who aspires to anything. Whereas, to take a counter-example, I think it’s rare that advice to do with commerce has much use beyond commerce. Our deepest way of examining life, of getting to our existential core, is through the artistic. At its best, such an examination has nearly a religious feel.

Take this passage towards the end of Letter Four, in which Rilke advises the Young Poet to wrap himself in solitude: