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"

Our relation to the language we belong to is our essential contribution to the unfolding of a world shaped and reinvented by ideas.

"Language is thirsty for the absolute, straining to become new and thus to survive.

"To found a community of language means to found a fatherland of mind and heart, where the foreigner automatically has his place, the place of honor. For taking down barriers means going to meet him.

"Thereafter, he will relate to others through language , to discover, along with his foreignness, the deep sense of his commitment.

"Loving, respecting a language means loving, respecting those who speak and write it.

...

"Never will the sun reign over all the night.

"

*
"What comes from elsewhere, from so far away it has to be dazzling, what has been expected in vain for so long that no one expects it anymore, what name can I give it except the one I had hoped to bear and never will, the name that designates me by its silence, by its absence of name?

Here language loses all authority.

"

Edmond Jabes, trans from French by Rosemarie Waldrop

A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of his Arm a Tiny Book