Did you say Utopia?

Some intellectuals say snobbishly that a language for Manhood is a utopia. Because, they say, every people have a special spirit which is expressed in their national tongue. That is why authentic communication between people from different nations and languages is not possible. According to them, for example the thought of somebody native from East Asia is totally inaccessible for somebody from the West, and vice versa. Then: how could they understand one another? Even using the same words, they would interpret them in a different way.

When I find these heavy arguments, I laugh; and I re read the letters from my friends in East Asia, or the books by Miyamoto Masao, or a page of El Popola Ĉinio (From People's China). I remember that fluent chat with esperantists from China, Japan or Indonesia. When using our common communication tool I never had any difficulty to know what we were saying. I realize we state thoughts and feelings in the same way, even if sometimes we use different similes or metaphors, but however understandable. The wail of a Japanese woman who lost her son in the Pacific War or under the Hiroshima Bomb is similar to that of an American mother whose child was killed in Pearl Harbour, or the German mother whose children were slaughtered in the Dresden or Hamburg bombing. The same happy smile appears at the lips of young lovers in Peking or Moscow. At every longitudes and latitudes the brain works the same inside a human head, and the heart beats in the same way inside any human breast. Everywhere the body and soul react in the same way to suffering and joy, and they find the same words to express their feelings and thoughts.

Let's not be cheated by sophist theories. Let's counterpoise our practical experience quietly.

Did you say utopia, impossibility? We do prove movement by walking.

Valo

Bibligraphical note.- This is a translation of the essay in page 98 of Vortoj de Valo, edited by SAT en 1995. You can get the book from the Hale Book Service, or from SAT itself (SAT, FR 47470 Beauville, France). The book was edited just a few months before Valo's death, and is a selection of his writings along more than 70 years.

Valo was the pseudonym of Raymond Laval', who died recently, as we did already report in our Kajeroj el la Sudo.
Click to go back.