Hybridity and the Afterlife of a Poem
The central love story of Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Afterlives begins with the translation of a love poem from German, the colonizing language of the region, to Kiswahili. In giving this poem to Afiya, Hamza not only offers an explanation of his feelings for her but also communicates his own history and hybridity. The languages themselves act as symbols of the colonial encounter, imbuing the text with Gurnah’s greater messaging. Through the act of translation, Schiller’s poem becomes a hybrid of cultures and an afterlife of itself, symbolizing the relationship between the two characters as well as the greater themes of the novel.
The poem referenced on page 213 of Afterlives is Friedrich Schiller’s “The Secret”. Its translation in English is never given in full on the page, symbolizing the secrecy of the moment but also the “right to opacity” proposed by Edouard Glissant. In the chapter, “For Opacity”, Glissant argues that “The opaque is not the obscure, though it is possible for it to be so and be accepted as such. It is that which cannot be reduced, which is the most perennial guarantee of participation and confluence” (Glissant 191). Thus, by only presenting the poem in its original language and its intentional translation by Hamza, Gurnah preserves the significance of this translation as a sacred moment of shared experience between the two characters. For clarity, Gurnah does translate the latter two lines of the poem into English in the following paragraph, “My eye can see for certain / the language her eye is speaking” (Gurnah 214). However, the first two lines are left untranslated, reading roughly, “She sought to breathe one word, but vainly; / Too many listeners were nigh;” (Schiller). These “listeners” take on several identities within the novel: there are the original listeners that Schiller refers to in the German, Afiya’s family as brought into being in the Kiswahili, and finally the English-speaking readers of the novel who cannot perceive their own reference through the omission of an English translation. Through this exclusion, the reader themself becomes the unwitting subject of Gurnah’s message.
The ability of the two characters to read the poem in their respective languages is also representative of their individual journeys throughout the novel, both Afiya’s story of liberation and Hamza’s of captivity. Afiya is first taught to read and write in Kiswahili by her older brother, Iliyas, who later abandons her to join the German army. The family she is left with abuses her for this ability, but Afiya is ultimately able to employ the skill to send for help from her adoptive father, freeing herself through the power of the written word. Thus, Kiswahili to her represents not only the language of her culture but also her independence, liberation, and ability to shape her own destiny. This is expressed through her actions in the paragraph immediately following the Kiswahili translation, “She was already waiting at the door when he hurried back from the cafe, and as she took the basket of bread and buns from him, she did not let go of his hand. She wanted to make sure he did not misunderstand her. ‘I can read what your eye is saying too,’ she said,” (Gurnah 214). For Afiya, the translated poem becomes a source of empowerment, agency, and autonomy over her feelings and future, allowing her to communicate her desires in a culture that limits her ability to speak them aloud.
For Hamza, however, the source of his ability to read and translate the original version of Schiller’s poem comes from his captivity within the German army and the cruelty of the German officer who taught him the language against his will. Throughout Hamza’s time in the Askari, the Oberleutnant he is placed under forces him to learn German as a source of entertainment, often forcing him to perform the language for other German officers as one would have a dog perform tricks. This objectification represents Homi Bhabha’s theory of colonial mimicry as “the desire for a reformed, recognizable Other, as a subject of a difference that is almost the same, but not quite…a complex strategy of reform, regulation, and discipline, which ‘appropriates’ the Other as it visualizes power” (Bhabha 126). Thus, this mimicry is employed by the German officer as a way to assert power and control over Hamza, a power he intends to maintain through the gift of the Musen-Almanach fur das Jahr 1798 that Hamza later finds Schiller’s poem in. However, through the act of translating this poem out of German and into his native language of Kiswahili, Hamza reclaims his own power and autonomy, hybridizing the text meant to separate him from his identity. By gifting this translation to Afiya, he symbolically shares with her his history and hybrid identity, kindling love and connection out of the very materials intended to ensure his subjugation.
The Kiswahili translation of “The Secret” also carries with it the culture of the language, creating a new meaning that is not present in the original German. Because of the courtship norms present in East African culture, any outward perusalpursual of Afiya could be perceived as indecent and even offensive to her family. This cultural restriction gives new meaning to the lines, “She sought to breathe one word, but vainly; / Too many listeners were nigh;” (Schiller). In Kiswahili, these lines represent Afiya’s inability to express her desire for a man aloud due to the confining expectations of decency, prompting her to ask for the poem as a token of said desire. Hamza even states in the paragraph between the two poems that, “He knew how it would look if this scrap of paper was intercepted. If Afiya was Khalifa’s wife as he feared, then at the very least Hamza would be thrown out of his room accompanied by a stream of abuse and perhaps some fully justified blows” (Gurnah 213). Because of this risk, the two communicated only through subtle looks until this point, redefining the meaning of the latter lines of the poem, “My eye can see for certain / the language her eye is speaking” (Gurnah 214). While Schiller’s original version of the poem does speak of a secret love that cannot be spoken aloud, he could not have anticipated the unique cultural context the words hold in Kiswahili. In this way the translated poem truly becomes an afterlife of the original, creating new meaning not only from the translated words themselves but also from the perspective and intentions of the translator, Hamza.
Therefore, analysis of this passage and the translated poem therein allows the reader to more fully grasp Gurnah’s greater messaging, demonstrating the power of language, culture, hybridity, and the written word as an expression thereof. While the language of the oppressor can be wielded as a weapon against the colonial subject, it may also be repurposed and given new meaning as a hybrid text. Just as the characters and region portrayed in the novel represent the afterlife of the colonial encounter, so does this translated poem become an afterlife of itself, birthing meaningful human connection and understanding from a text intended for assimilation and dehumanization.
References
Bhabha, Homi. “Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse.” October, vol. 28, 1984, pp. 125–33. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/778467.
Gurnah, Abdulrazak. Afterlives. First United States edition. Riverhead Books, 2022.
Glissant, Édouard, 1928-2011. Poetics of Relation. Ann Arbor. University of Michigan Press, 1997. https://www.jackie-inhalt.net/reh/bilder/edouard-glissant-for-opacity.pdf
Schiller, Friedrich. "The Secret." Poem Hunter, 1 Jan. 2004, www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-secret-5/.
