My Father’s Books

My Father’s Dictionaries

33 My ­ Father’s Dic­ tion­ ar­ ies In the final years of his life, as he ­ slowly lost the ­ strength to read, my­ father be­ came less and less alive. When I saw that he no ­ longer read or com­ mented on the books I ­ brought him, but only held them ab­ sently in his hands, ap­ pear­ ing to read, tak­ ing in some mean­ ing that he alone under­ stood, tears would come un­ bid­ den to my eyes. I would ­ gently try to take the book from him and read aloud from the ­ opened page, but this ­ created a dif­ fer­ ent prob­ lem, since he could not com­ pletely fol­ low what I was read­ ing. Thus I ­ slowly lost my ­ father and he his books. In a life ex­ tended ­ across many lan­ guages, my ­ father never at­ tained com­ plete mas­ tery of one lan­ guage. He had ­ within him the en­ ergy of the many lan­ guages he knew, that he had stud­ ied in depth, com­ pared, and en­ riched. To­ ward the end of his life, as his ­ strength for read­ ing de­ creased, my­ father, to our great amaze­ ment, con­ tin­ ued to learn new lan­ guages, to pe­ ruse old and new gram­ mars, to buy new dic­ tion­ ar­ ies, to fall into a­ strange as­ so­ cia­ tive lan­ guage dream. He ­ learned new words, ­ created inter­ lin­ gu­ is­ tic co­ in­ ages, be­ liev­ ing that he would come at last to his own lin­ guis­ tic eu­ reka, which would en­ able him to move, when nec­ es­ sary, from one lan­ guage to an­ other and so be under­ stood by every­ one. He died with a dic­ tion­ ary in his hands. My ­ father died un­ trans­ lated . . . ...