A Life-long Love Affair with Language

The questions that fascinate me today are exactly those that fascinated me in earliest childhood and which, except for the years immersed in my work as historian of the Ancient World, have almost never ceased to fascinate me since. These are questions of language, of course. Language grasped in its amazing complexity. And first of all in its materiality: the organization of sounds for both speaker and listener, the organization of signs for both writer and reader. Yes, everything that touches upon language—closely or remotely, directly or indirectly—has always attracted me. It has moved, seduced, surprised, charmed, captivated, intrigued, enchanted, distracted, overwhelmed, irritated, delighted, or dazzled me. Early on I took pleasure in ranking the diverse elements of language, tackling first letters (their origin, their form, the countless ways to manipulate them), then words (assemblages of letters) then sentences (assemblages of words), and finally books (assemblages of sentences).