The Fragility of the Mother Tongue

The paper examines the relationship between the mother tongue and the foreign language in the works of the Hungarian-born Swiss writer Agota Kristof, and its poetic, literary and theoretical consequences. The analysis is based on the approach adopted by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in their book entitled Kafka. Toward a Minor Literature, addressing the Czech writer’s specific use of language. In examining and interpreting Kafka’s life and works, the two French philosophers challenge the concept of a homogeneous, authentic, ‘natural’ mother tongue. Using this starting point, the present paper analyses examples of language learning, foreign language and mother tongue related passages in Agota Kristof’s oeuvre and explores their poetic implications, with reference to the short novel The Notebook and its ‘postmodern’ narrative. In this respect, Agota Kristof’s piece can be seen as a poetic experiment that adds to Deleuze and Guattari’s concept in the sense that it attempts to disconnect language from the individual and individuality. In her novel, language learning is therefore nothing other than the conditioning of the individual to a harsh foreign world deprived of the immediacy and homeliness of the mother tongue.