'Ich habe ein Kind gesehen das unter ein baum geschlafen war'

The words have remained faithful through years. Constant in my memory. As clear and beautiful as the day I first heard them. As far as I remember, they have been my companions for years. I regularly thought about them, wondering why it had been so, and why they still have such an emotional impact on me. Time has allowed me to see clearer and I think I know now why I can consider them as a 'treasure'.

I was around 5 years old and was living in the countryside with my grandmother, my back grandmother and my aunt who was a teenager. She was going to high school during the week and was coming back home every week-end. I was so much eager to 'learn' about reading and writing and what she did at school that she often told me what she had learnt during the week. And one day, she told me THE Magical sentence. The German sentence that struck me and hypnotized me with its charms :

'Ich habe ein Kind gesehen das unter ein baum geschlafen war'

For the child that I was, I realize today that so much was contained into this 'simple' phrase. It could have been received just as a description. My aunt translated it to me in French : 'J'ai vu un enfant qui dormait sous un arbre' / 'I saw a child who was sleeping under a tree'. But I understand now that it contained much more. She told me these words were from a poem she had learnt at school. I do not remember the rest of the poem. I can't even remember if she told it to me. Only this sentence remained. Deeply anchored in me. Words both detached from any context, but at the same time opened onto infinite worlds. 

The words were resonating. They had grace and ampleness.They revealed a hitherto unknown music, unsuspected. I was feeling a great pleasure in repeating the phrase over and over. To whisper it to myself, repetitively, for the sake of words, and of their music. At different times of the day and sometimes at night in bed before falling asleep. Trying each time to perfect my speech, my intonation, the rhythm and the emotion. trying to achieve the impossible perfection. Trying to reproduce as faithfully as I could the 'music' I had heard. I remain convinced that the greatest gift we can give to someone who is dear to us are such words. Words wrapped of sensuality, sincerity and power. Say them, write them, read them, deliver them like a present ...

Words, gliding, singing, resounding. 

To melt with Language. To become Language. 

Language inhabiting you like a familiar music.

Realizing, or rather 'sensing' (for my child's mind) the Power of the words. Their danger too.. A revelation, an explosion. Revealing The Power, the Magic too. Language was Magic and mysterious but at the same time it brought me back to some essential familiar things.

Words could 'tell the world'. Words could 'create worlds'. And I think it must also have been the very first time I 'met' poetry. The words were in German. Not read, just 'heard', felt and 'recognized'.

Their richness and their beauty moved me to a point I would remember them all my life.

This 'experience' was all the more important to me because added to the conscience of language, of words and their poetic meaning, I was also considerably impressed by the fact that 'foreign languages' could tell such beautiful things. The shock to 'discover' new 'intonations' and new sounds. An opening on a New World. I realized that many other worlds like this one existed..and that Language was Multiple, could take different accents and yet still say the same things, convey the same ideas, vehiculate the same emotions. And it was both stunning and pleasurable to think about it. I think my interest for foreign languages was born then too. The Trans-lation, the Trans-formation of words from one language to another. The constancy of the thought yet. The coherence of the ideas kept intact.

All was there. And I instinctively understood the transcendant power of language. The idea had settled inside me, in the child that I was, without me being really conscious of it, that I would have to create my own words, my own language, to tell the world (or the vision I had of it).

But I also learnt that I would have to keep silence sometimes. Often. The Power of silence. As precious and necessary as words themselves. To standback. For reflexion. To create a weaving of words but also to build and find oneself there.

'Ich habe ein Kind gesehen das unter ein baum geschlafen war'....