Olga Tokarczuk on (the Polish) language

       Eurozine prints Olga Tokarczuk's nice piece on Polish and writing in Polish, A finger pointing at the moon.
       Tokarczuk considers:

I wonder how far my own sensitivity, my perception and thinking have been formatted by the difficult, none too precise but very vivid Polish language. Could I express what is so crucial for me in writing -- a presentiment, a mood, the sense of unease that lurks beneath a seemingly fixed, safe configuration of events -- in another language ? Maybe I should be grateful for my linguistic destiny ?

       And she acknowledges:

I am able to communicate in two other languages, but it is simplified communication, and in some ways painful. You could put me in Sevres, near Paris, where all sorts of standard models are kept, as the perfect example of a Polish-language specimen. I am embedded in Polish like a fly in amber. It is not an objective point of view.

       Also nice:

For a writer, translators often perform the function of helpful psychoanalysts -- they ask the most surprising questions. One should write them down, keep them and publish them now and then in special editions, to give the reader a chance to appreciate the miracle of writing and the effort involved in translation.