Memory In Exile: Eva Hoffman's "Lost In Translation"

Eva Hoffman’s memoir, Lost in Translation, is a timeline of events from her life in Cracow, Poland вЂ" Paradise вЂ" to her immigration to Vancouver, Canada вЂ" Exile вЂ" and into her college and literary life вЂ" The New World. Eva breaks up her journey into these three sections and gives her personal observations of her assimilation into a new world. The story is based on memory вЂ" Eva Hoffman gives us her first-hand perspective through flashbacks with introspective analysis of her life “lost in translation”. It is her memory that permeates through her writing and furthermore through her experiences. As the reader we are presented many examples of Eva’s memory as they appear through her interactions. All of these interactions evoke memory, ultimately through the quest of finding reality equal to that of her life in Poland. The comparison of Eva’s exile can never live up to her Paradise and therefore her memories of her past can never be replaced but instead only can be supplemented.

Eva starts the memoir in the middle of the action on the boat to Canada. We instantly become aware of the situation and before we are presented with memories of the home she is leaving, she establishes the idea of memory. After hearing the Polish anthem after departing, Eva comments, “I am suffering my first, severe attack of nostalgia or tesknota вЂ" a word that adds to nostalgia the tonalities of sadness and longing” (4). The sound of the Polish anthem is an instant reminder that she is leaving her whole life behind. “I’m filled to the brim with what I’m about to lose вЂ" images of Cracow, which I loves as one loves a person, of the sun-baked villages where we had taken summer vacations, of the hours, I spent poring over passages of music with my piano teacher, of conversations and escapades with friends” (4). All of these memories that Eva holds near to her heart become the foundation of her life and future experiences. Eva later comments, “How absurd our childish attachments are, how small and without significance. Why did the one, particular, willow tree arouse in me a sense of beauty almost too acute for pleasure, why did I want to throw myself on the grassy hill with an upwelling of joy that seemed overwhelming, oceanic, absolute? Because they were the first things, the incomparable things, the only things. It’s by adhering to the contours of a few childhood objects that the substance of ourselves вЂ" the molten force we’re made of вЂ" molds and shapes itself.” (74).

The changes create a world of comparisons вЂ" knowing the world of paradise in Cracow presents an instant dichotomy with that of her newly uncharted American culture. Eva presents many examples of the differences between the two cultures.

The significant difference is, of course, the language barrier. Eva explains her actual loss in translation вЂ" that the words of Eva’s native language don’t hold the same meaning as that of the words in English. She explains, “вЂ?River’ in Polish was a vital sound, energized with the essence of riverhood, of my rivers, of my being immersed in rivers. вЂ?River’ in English is cold вЂ" a word without an aura. It has no accumulated associations for me, and it does not give off the radiating haze of connotation. It does not evoke” (106). This loss of meaning is omnipresent in all of American culture in Eva’s eyes. Eva laments that, “I have no interior language, and without it, interior images вЂ" those images through which we assimilate the external world, through which we take it in, love it, make it our own вЂ" become blurred too“ (108). Due to this blurred vision of what is meaningful and what is not, there is a constant comparison with that of her foundation in Poland, evoking old memory.

This becomes present in her writing as she explains about her dairy. Eva finds it hard to decide whether she should write her private thoughts in her native language or her present one. She decided to write in English even though it’s not the language of her inner-self. “There is a certain pathos to this naÐ"Їve snobbery, for the diary is an earnest attempt to create a part of my persona that I imagine I would have grown into in Polish. In the solitude of this most private act, I write, in my public language, in order to update what might have been my other self. The diary is about me and not about me at