Jhumpa Lahiri on embracing the Italian language

I choose Rome. A city that has fascinated me since I was a child, that conquered me immediately. The first time I was there, in 2003, I felt a sense of rapture, an affinity. I seemed to know it already. After only a few days, I was sure that I was fated to live there.

I have no friends yet in Rome. But I'm not going there to visit someone. I'm going in order to change course, and to reach the Italian language. In Rome, Italian can be with me every day, every minute. It will always be present, relevant. It will stop being a light switch to turn on occasionally, and then turn off.

In preparation, I decide, six months before our departure, not to read in English any more.

From now on, I pledge to read only in Italian. It seems right, to detach myself from my principal language. I consider it an official renunciation. I'm about to become a linguistic pilgrim to Rome. I believe I have to leave behind something familiar, essential.

Ordinary objects

Suddenly none of my books are useful any more. They seem like ordinary objects. The anchor of my creative life disappears, the stars that guided me recede. I see before me a new room, empty.

Whenever I can - in my study, on the subway, in bed before going to sleep - I immerse myself in Italian. I enter another land, unexplored, murky. A kind of voluntary exile. Although I'm still in America, I already feel elsewhere.

Reading, I feel like a guest, happy but disoriented. Reading, I no longer feel at home. I read Moravia's Gli indifferenti (The Time of Indifference) and La noia (The Empty Canvas). Pavese's La luna e i falò (The Moon and the Bonfires).

The poetry of Quasimodo, of Saba. I manage to understand and at the same time I don't understand. I renounce expertise to challenge myself. I trade certainty for uncertainty. I read slowly, painstakingly.

With difficulty. Every page seems to have a light covering of mist. The obstacles stimulate me. Every new construction seems a marvel. Every unknown word a jewel.

I make a list of terms to look up, to learn. Imbambolato, sbilenco, incrinatura, capezzale. Sgangherato, scorbutico, barcollare, bisticciare (dazed, lopsided, crack, bedside or bolster. Unhinged, crabby, sway, bicker).

After I finish a book, I'm thrilled. It seems like a feat. I find the process more demanding yet more satisfying, almost miraculous.

I can't take for granted my ability to accomplish it. I read as I did when I was a girl. Thus, as an adult, as a writer, I rediscover the pleasure of reading. In this period I feel like a divided person. My writing is nothing but a reaction, a response to reading. In other words, a kind of dialogue. The two things are closely bound, interdependent.

Now, however, I write in one language and read exclusively in another.

I am about to finish a novel, so I'm necessarily immersed in the text. It's impossible to abandon English. Yet my stronger language already seems behind me.

I think of two-faced Janus. Two faces that look at the past and the future at once. The ancient god of the threshold, of beginnings and endings.

He represents a moment of transition. He watches over gates, over doors, a god who is only Roman, who protects the city. A remarkable image that I am about to meet everywhere.

(Reprinted with publisher's permission. Courtesy of Mail Today.)