2018-02-23

Ursula K. Le Guin & Ilan Stavans on Esperanto

Conley, Tim; Cain, Stephen. Encyclopedia of Fictional and Fantastic Languages, foreword by Ursula K. Le Guin. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2006.

The preface mentions why languages like Esperanto are not covered. Nonetheless, Esperanto is mentioned in this reference work.

Note p. xxiii: "The polyglot mash [of James Joyce] is not an operative language but a poetics embodied, just as Esperanto is an allegory of a political vision."

Page references: xix, xxii, xxiii, and ...

3: Europanto
14: Atlantean like Esperanto
30: Code 46, Gattaca, Esperanto
35: The Confidential Agent: Entrenationo like Esperanto
45: Dinotopian like Esperanto
53: Dune's languages and Esperanto
170: Estimated number of speakers of Klingon and Esperanto
221: Zamenhof, Creator of Esperanto by Marjorie Boulton (1960), in the bibliography, with annotation mentioning its "conspicuously hagiographic tendencies"



In the encyclopedia's [of fictional languages] foreword, Ursula K. Le Guin, author of The Dispossessed, laments that its editors omitted examples like Esperanto, which, in Le Guin's words, “though utopian are not fictional.” Zamenhof, in his grave, could feel his achievement might have come short. But that it isn't fictional is proof that humankind never tires of looking for ways to becomes whole again."

  – in "Doctor Esperanto" in Stavans's Typewriter and Mine: Reflections on Jewish Culture by Ilan Stavans (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2012 ), p. 43.

2 comments:

Leland Bryant Ross said...

I'm used to seeing Klingon used as a glottonym, but the Encyclopedia of Fictional and Fantastic Languages seems to use Klingonese. Is there a story in this?

Ralph Dumain said...

I don't know. I hate Klingon so much I'm not interested in answering the question.