Thoughts on Language and Identity in Jabotinsky's "The Five"
While reading, The Five, the 1935 novella by Vladimir Jabotinsky, I was especially struck by the following passage in which the narrator, a Russian Jew in Odessa, is visiting a Russian family home and reflects on the difference he perceives between the speech of the Russians and that of his own Jewish social circle:
âIt was only while sitting in their house that I could appreciate how much exhilarating brilliance there was in our own everyday conversation at Marusyaâs house â and I suddenly felt how very nice and cosy it was when this brilliance was lacking⊠. everything lacked brilliance; they used everyday, commonplace words, not long, not short, not witty, not moving â simply nice words; unadorned, ancestral thoughts, a sweet infusion of the soul, Galakhovâs anthology âŠâ[1]
The difference between the speech of this family and that of the narratorâs circle is not a matter of the language being used. The Jewish social circle Jabotinsky describes is the one of his youth in Odessa â assimilated young Jewish intellectuals whose native language was Russian. Jabotinsky taught himself Hebrew, but had no connection to either Jewish languages or religious culture in his early life. At the turn of the century Odessa was far ahead of the rest of the Pale of Settlement in terms of progressive ideas, but even so social interaction between Jews and non-Jews was limited. Jabotinsky later became an ultra-nationalist and argued that Hebrew must be the national language of the Jewish state toward which he worked, but as a young man in Odessa he had not entirely come to terms with his own Jewish identity. In many ways Piatero, written towards the end of Jabotinskyâs life, seems to be a return to the time when he was grappling with the question of what makes an individual âJewishâ or âRussianâ â language, religion, or culture?
           The passage quoted above describes the moment in which the narrator clearly experiences that there is, after all, some kind of innate difference between Russians and Jews, and that it is manifested in language. A whole cultural history, âunadorned ancestral thoughts,â imbues the speech of these Russians with a certain quality. The question then arises, how can we define this difference, and out of what does it originate?
           One explanation comes from Mikhail Bakhtin, the 20th century philosopher/literary theorist who, although not Jewish, grew up in the several of the major cities in the Pale of Settlement. Bakhtin defines as âaccentâ that quality that distinguishes one individualâs speech from that of another. This is by no means what we usually understand as âaccentâ â the way a non-native speaker pronounces words. Rather, Bakhtinâs accent is the inevitable reflection in speech of the unique social, historical, cultural, and experiential position of the individual. As no two individuals will ever have the exact same experience or situation in the world, everyoneâs speech possesses this accent. Bakhtinâs accent could also be described as the semantic intention of speech that results from the speakerâs unique experience and situation. If accent is framed in terms of semantic intention, it is implicated in dialogue, possibly the most important concept in Bakhtinâs thought. Dialogue presumes another person who is capable of understanding and responding to oneâs speech. This relationship also affects the speech itself â speech anticipates the future response, and addresses the other individual in a specific social context and historical moment. Bakhtin uses the term âdialogicâ to refer to speech that is engaged in this kind of relationship, and in order to separate his discussion from the limits of dialogue in its formal definition. In order for an utterance to be dialogic, it must be connected to a speaking subject, and therefore to a particular social and historical moment and place, to a particular semantic position in regard to the surrounding world. Thus for Bakhtin each individualâs speech is determined and conditioned by his or her unique situation. Â
I find Bakhtinâs idea very attractive, but it does not entirely coincide with the situation described by Jabotinsky. In The Five the differentiating quality of language is tied to an entire social group rather than an individual. While Bakhtin does suggest that national languages relate to each other in a dialogic manner â that is, they âinter-illuminateâ one another â and that social groups can also have a shared semantic position towards others, his writings do not provide a clear indication that these positions will manifest in the speech of individuals within the group. In addition, while reading The Five one gets the sense that Jabotinsky is suggesting, or at least worrying about the possibility, that oneâs language reveals some inimitable and innate aspect of oneâs identity that is predetermined. The Five follows five Jewish siblings as they each attempt to decide who they will be and how they want to live â it is essentially a Bildungsroman five times over. In such a novel, in which the social and political settings are both on the verge of total upheaval and the decisions one makes can have fatal consequences, the idea that you may not actually have the freedom of self-formation looms like a terrifying sentence. I canât help but wonder if Jabotinsky, who had spent most of his adult life in a radical project of self-definition and national definition, was using the writing of this novel as a way to look back at the time when he chose the direction of his life and to wonder if everything that had followed had been an illusion.
- Anne Buke is a PhD Candidate in Slavic Languages and Literatures.Â
[1] Jabotinsky, V. The Five: A Novel of Jewish Life in Turn-of-the-Century Odessa. Trans. Michael Katz. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005, 54.Â
