Language In Zvi Litvinoff's The Age Of Silence

In the History of Love, language is a very present motif. In each chapter and character, language has an association with each of their lives in relation to translation and how misunderstandings are evident. In the third chapter, Zvi Litvinoff’s story, “The Age of Silence,” is described. This story describes when there was a time where humans communicated through gestures, which was the first language amongst humans. It describes how this language was very easy to misunderstand and misinterpret the gestures. Due to this problem, people always asked for forgiveness and soon the simplest gesture was asking for forgiveness by opening the palm of your hand (Krauss 73). This shows that to humans, forgiveness should be the simplest form of communication and yet it is not. The

passage states that we have lost the gestures that were complex and subtle, involving a delicacy of motion (Krauss 72). At the same time, we as humans have lost the skill of asking for forgiveness without having the sense of fear.

An example of this was when Zvi wanders off to a pond where he spots a topless women and when he goes back to his wife, he is unable to communicate to her and tell her the truth asking for forgiveness due to his fear. So this fear results in him lying to her which causes him to become full of regret (Krauss 69). These gestures are described to be natural and said that the gestures of language are the same as the gestures of life. When the Argentine doctor is on his deathbed, he finally understands the gestures after studying them for years (Krauss 73). This relates to how Leo is at loss for words when he is older, but when he was younger he was always able to find words for everything. It’s the same concept. When you’re at a closer natural age or state, you are able to communicate in more natural ways due to how these gestures and languages are natural concepts to human beings. The story continues to describe the concept of how we still understand language and gestures but we have grown distant from them as we have altered farther and farther away from our natural state as human

beings. The story goes on to state when your hands hang at the ends of your arms its because your hands remember a time when the division between mind and body, brain and heart, what’s inside and what’s outside, was so much less (Krauss 73). This again relates to the natural state that we have moved away from as human beings. All in all, language is a very complex concept that is very natural and is a gateway to being able to communicate and express your feelings, which is important and very evident in the characters of this book.