| Abstrakt: |
How far languages are politically connotative is a very sensitive question. In the course of their centuries long history, languages are associated with a variable imaginary, fluctuating with the place from where they are regarded. The cultural contribution of languages could not be reduced to the political experience of the respective states but they rarely escape ideological associations. The scope of this paper is to step aside and consider a language that since its origins in the 19th. Century has been regarded as neutral and independent from both the nation-states and the political spectrum. This paper takes into consideration the experience and discourse of four writers : the Japanese anti-imperialist female writer Hasegawa Teru (1912–1947), the Polish-born poet Julius Balbin (1917–2006), a former deportee to four extermination camps who settled in the US after 1951, and the South African Edwin de Kock (1930–2022) whose poetry is deeply marked by the experience of Apartheid and race division. To what extent is a transnational and anthropological narrative possible in the context of war? How do these authors deal with an affiliation to multiple communities? Why did all these authors choose to write in Esperanto and not in their own native languages? Can Esperanto be still regarded as a «neutral» language or is it the vehicle for a specific world view? |
