This morning I was reading Antonio Tabucchi's essay Autobiografie altrui: poetiche a posteriori (Feltrinelli, 2003). His father suffered from a cancer in the larynx. (This word always reminds me of both "labyrinth" and "lynx," by the way.) He lost his voice. So the father and the author: "Per due anni e mezzo dialogammo dunque in silenzio, attraverso la superficie della lavagnetta" (19).
What they used was a "lavagnetta magica," and this must be Freudian "Magic writing pad." It was a series of dialogues in silence. Then long after his father's death, one day the father appears in his dream, speaking in Portuguese that in real life the father didn't know. The impression of the father's voice remains perfectly clear sounding.
E infatti la voce evocatrice di mio padre aveva dato il via al nostro dialogo con questa domanda: "Quantas letras tem o alfabeto latino?" Cioe: "Quante sono le lettere dell'alfabeto latino?" Mi aveva interrogato in portoghese, io gli avevo risposto in portoghese, e in portoghese avevo scritto le pagine del taccuino che stava sul tavolo di quel caffe, sotto gli occhi di quel cameriere che con la sua ingenua osservazione mi aveva dato la consapevolezza di quanto andavo scrivendo. (32)
This passage is so curiously attractive to me. My father has been bedridden for over six years, after an accident in his own garden. Falling off a ladder, he hit his head hard. He has never recovered his consciousness. At his bed side I sometimes talk to him in his accent (not mine); the accent and locution of a rural fishing village in the south, which I remember mostly from my paternal grandparents. Both of them died before I was 12, but I was old enough to pick up pieces of their orality through occasional visits during the summer.
Tabucchi quotes a phrase from Diderot: "La quantite des mots est bornee, celle des accents est infinie." And he goes on to write:
Ogni lingua umana possiede la sua peculiare intonazione per rendere le emozioni che Diderot paragona ai colori dell'arcobaleno. Collera, tenerezza, angoscia, malinconia, seduzione, ironia: l'uomo esprime le sue emozioni con l'intonazione della voce. (33)
Voices and colors, emotions expressed by accents and intonations. I have always been interested in people's accent, and I will always be.
