Personal Statement:English and French 1

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English and French Personal Statement

In French, ‘language’ and ‘tongue’ are the same word. In English, they are synonyms; but French gives the ability to use and structure words the status of an organ of the body. Language is intrinsic to human experience, but as our countries and our cultures have diverged, so have the images embedded in our speech. The relationship between English and French is fascinating; Chaucer’s English is littered with French borrowings, while the Académie Francaise today sees English words as litter in the pure streets of its language. I want to study literature because I love these oppositions and connections, showing as they do the power of words. Words are the currency of life, and from Shakespeare to Simon Armitage, nothing else inspires so greatly my capacity for wonder. Reading Armitage’s ‘Kid’ on an English classroom poster was the first time I encountered the contemporary language used in poetry. It had never occurred to me that words in the vernacular could chime to such effect; structurally the compressed, incessant nature of the half-rhymes showed me what form could do for language.

Form has been described as both restraining and liberating language. It gave Swinburne the framework for his aesthetic grace, and it is used with great dexterity by Paul Farley, who taught the Arvon Centre course that I attended as a winner of the 2006 Foyle Young Poets award. I had written creatively before, including the obligatory bad first novel, but the course taught me to read my own work and the work of others critically, which was invaluable.

With the other Foyle’s winners I have helped to start an e-Zine titled Pomegranate Poetry, for which I write regular articles and work on the selection team to choose the best submissions for the website. Along with my role as a music reviewer for Stylus Magazine and my co-editing of the school newspaper, I enjoy this chance to develop writing skills outside the classroom. I also study Theatre, and hope one day to act in French when I have reached a standard of language where my performance can seem as believable as one in my mother tongue.

The first French writer whose books I read was Boris Vian, as a result of my preparation for my oral exam on ‘le mouvement Zazou’. Although some puns may have been lost in translation, I enjoyed his flamboyant wordplay and his wry characterisation. In poetry, the author I have found most engaging is Charles Baudelaire. I was struck by his use of sound devices in ‘Au Lecteur’ to intensify the dark power of the poem’s message. In his defiant, innovative contrast to the writing of his time, he exemplifies the writer as ‘free spirit’. Of course, such terms do not exist in a vacuum; ‘freedom’ in literature is constructed much like any other concept by the pre-conceived ideas of the reader and society. For instance, my favourite poet, John Clare, is often seen as one-dimensional, reduced to mere rurality and madness. On reading his work, I discovered that nature for Clare was often a metaphor more than a literal topic, used to show security and order in the face of political change. Politics is key to literature, and having read ‘Candide’ I would enjoy the chance to study the development of politics in France, in light of the recent banlieue riots and other signs of public disaffection.

I am particularly interested by the period from the French Revolution to the First World War, as political shifts in both countries meant that no writer could ever be neutral, and in such a light the work of authors like Byron, Blake and Saki can be read at two levels – that of its surface beauty, and that of class, and society’s expected moral values. I am keen to find out more about how French authors interpreted this period. My main ambition as a student is to raise my language skills to the levels where the two cultures will be equally accessible, equally communicative, and will seem to me as individual yet as connected as the history of the languages themselves.

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