The “true language” is the natural, unstructured language that the Child teaches to Ovid, representing a naturalistic worldview that sees the universe as one large, interconnected whole. Although Ovid refers it as a “language,” the true language is not actually an audible way of speaking, but a way of interacting with and understanding the natural world which shows a person that he or she is not distinct from nature but a part of it, indistinguishable from the rest. Although Ovid remembers knowing this language as a young boy, one of his first glimpses of it as an adult is when the Child shows him how to call to the animals in the forest. Rather than simply mimicking bird calls, the Child shapes his face like the bird’s beak and “becomes” the bird itself, perceiving no distinction between himself and the plants and animals around him.
As the Child teaches Ovid about the natural world, Ovid begins to understand this true language himself. He wants to “let the universe in,” and senses that the true language reconciles him to the world around him. Ovid tries to eliminate his sense of self and conceptualize himself as one with the world around him, though he struggles to let go of his own individualism. However, when Ovid and the Child flee Tomis and cross the River Ister into the northern lands, thus abandoning human society forever, Ovid finally grasps the true language and understand that he is only one element in the whole of creation. Ovid’s separation from human civilization and sophisticated Latin language—which encourages him to separate himself from the world around him—enables him to realize his connection to the universe. In this way, the true language more broadly represents humanity’s oneness with the rest of the universe. In his final days, Ovid faces his impending death with the perspective, which the true language grants him, that his body will break down and feed the soil, and he will thus live on in the new organisms fed by his remains.
The True Language Quotes in An Imaginary Life
Does the boy watch all this, I wonder? And what does he make of it? What species does he think he might belong to? Does he recognize his own?
All this world is alive for [the Child]. It is his sphere of knowledge, a kind of library of forms that he has observed and committed to memory, another language whose hieroglyphs he can interpret and read.
Slowly I begin the final metamorphosis. I must drive out my old self and let the universe in. The creatures will come creeping back—not as gods transmogrified, but as themselves. Beaked, furred, fanged, tusked, clawed, hooved, snouted, they will settle in us, re-entering their old lives deep in our consciousness. And after them, the plants, also themselves.
The language I am speaking of now, that I am almost speaking, is a language whose every syllable is a gesture of reconciliation. We knew that language once. I spoke it in my childhood. We must discover it again.
The days pass, and I cease to count them. The river is far behind us. […] I no longer ask myself what we are making for. The notion of a destination no longer seems necessary to me. It has been swallowed up in the immensity of this landscape, as the days have been swallowed up by the sense I now have of a life that stretches beyond measurable time.
From here I ascend, or lower myself, grain by grain, into the hands of the gods.
The True Language Symbol Timeline in An Imaginary Life
