A life of languages

Michael Heim, professor of Slavic languages and literatures,
took up French in 1956. It fulfilled a foreign language requirement
at his Staten Island high school.

Two years later, he began learning German. He studied Russian
and Mandarin Chinese in college. Czech came next.

Today Heim, a native speaker of only English, knows more than a
dozen languages. Language is intrinsic in his life’s work, teaching
and translating, and he sees in language things that others might
not notice.

There is beauty in the structure. There is magic in the words.
He knows it now, and he knew it 50 years ago when he first learned
French.

"I still feel that magic … that you could make sense out of
what seems like arbitrary sounds. We don’t feel
that with English because we grow up speaking it, but when you
learn a foreign language, that’s what it is," he said.

Found in translation

It’s not easy to learn a language, Heim said, sitting in his
Westwood home early one recent afternoon.

He’ll start by studying the best grammars he can find. Then he
pores over texts from different time periods and literary genres,
engaging essays, novels, plays, poetry and other materials. He
likes to listen to new sounds on tapes.

Heim said Hungarian and Chinese have been the hardest to learn:
Chinese because of its writing system, which is not based on an
alphabet, and Hungarian because it’s unrelated to other European
languages.

Chinese requires a different way of looking at the world, Heim
said. He runs his fingers along the lines of a Chinese text, and
shows how a word-for-word translation into English creates an
incomprehensible jumble.

"If you try to translate literally … you get gibberish," he
said. "You really have to formulate (your thoughts) in a new
way."

It takes time to develop skills, but the return on Heim’s
investment in language has come in many forms.

He’s had the chance to see Hungary and Croatia, Holland and
Italy. In May, his work will take him to China for the first time.
Learning Dutch opened a rich new world of literature.

Boris Dralyuk, a graduate student in Russian language and
literature who considers Heim a mentor, said his professor’s
curiosity about cultures shows in his teaching.

In a Russian literature course, Heim might talk about
connections between Russian and French works or make allusions to
Italian authors, Dralyuk said.

Susanna Lim, a student who finished a dissertation in Heim’s
department in March, said he encourages students to look beyond
Russian to explore other Slavic cultures.

"He’s consistently been an advocate for broadening our
perspective," she said.

When he isn’t teaching, Heim reads foreign language literature
sent to him by New York and London publishers who want to know
whether the books are worth printing. It was after publishers sent
him numerous pieces in Dutch that he decided to learn it.

Heim also works in translation, moving always from another
language into English.

He has translated texts from at least seven tongues. The title
page of one version of Milan Kundera’s "The Unbearable Lightness of
Being" bears his name in italics: "Translated from the Czech by
Michael Henry Heim."

There are people who say translation is impossible, Heim
said.

"Maybe technically it’s true – you can’t absolutely reproduce
one work of literature in another language," he said. "But you can
come very close."

If two people can have a good conversation about a work, one
having read the original and one the translation, then that
translation is successful, Heim said.

"How many people know Hebrew and Greek? And yet we all read the
Bible," he said. "How many people know Spanish enough to read ‘Don
Quixote’? We all read that, and we should."

More than ordering coffee

For every language Heim has studied there was first a reason to
learn, he said.

His interest in Chinese philosophers like Lao Tse, who discussed
whether people are born good or evil, led him to major in oriental
studies in college. So he learned Chinese.

Dostoevsky and other Russian authors wrote of the same questions
Heim found intriguing in medieval Chinese philosophy. So he took a
second major in Russian literature and learned Russian. Czech
fulfilled graduate school requirements.

Still, despite knowing initially why he wanted to learn each
language, in life they have been useful in unexpected times.

When Soviet tanks rolled into Prague in the summer of 1968, Heim
was in the city working on a Czech-English dictionary.

The Soviet soldiers had been sent to crush a movement in
Czechoslovakia toward broader intellectual freedom within a
Communist framework.

Heim remembers how the Czechs spilled into the streets,
protesting and painting over signs so the Soviets
wouldn’t know where to go.

"I was in a very special position because I knew both Russian
and Czech," Heim said. "When we went out onto the streets to talk
to the Soviet soldiers and tell them, ‘No, you weren’t invited in,’
the Czechs couldn’t do it, but I could."

One evening, with Prague under a curfew, Heim found himself far
from his apartment and ducked into a hotel to get indoors.

In the lobby, he began talking to some Germans who told him they
needed an extra reporter to do interviews for television news. Heim
worked with them for about a week.

Learning language is more than learning to order coffee in a
foreign country, Heim said. He has been to places like Greece where
he doesn’t speak the native tongue, but in traveling prefers "being
a part of the society" over seeing sites.

Heim said knowing languages means he can understand other
cultures – and his own – a little more. He adds that while he loves
English, he wishes more Americans would learn new languages at a
young age.

"We as a country are losing a lot on many fronts by not studying
languages. … We are less conscious of other people’s mentalities
and what it means not to be us," he said.

His work, in a way, is a reflection of these ideas; he said he
translates to enrich his native English with what he has learned
from foreign cultures.

The opening words of "The Unbearable Lightness of Being," as
translated by Heim, are: "The idea of eternal return is a
mysterious one, and Nietzsche has often perplexed other
philosophers with it: to think that everything recurs as we once
experienced it, and that the recurrence itself recurs ad infinitum!
What does this mad myth signify?"

They are Kundera’s words, but also, they are Heim’s gift to his
native language.