Literaturaren zertarakoa, itzulpenak eta hizkuntzaren auzia Orixerengan

Abstract

[EN] Since a time that has to be placed approximately after the war, Orixe moved away from the opinion (common among the euskatzale groups of the time) that literature would be what would give the Basque language life and the degree of development it needed; consistent with the belief that language is «every country’s first literary work», he saw literature as a mere instrument at the service of language and he thought that, at the moment in which Basque was, it could lead to more harm than good: «I am not in favour of literature being developed among us, for it would affect the language»; «[literature] corrupts [the language] the more it is written». Therefore, it was not only a moral issue. For Orixe, there were properly developed languages and degenerated ones; but that did not only depend on the purity of their lexis, but (just like grammar) on it being developed according to the ‘mood’ of the language itself in such a way that, for example, neologisms would be also crystal clear for the people with had no education: this is the path that languages like Latin or German followed and which Basque was still on time to follow. Also, literature did not guarantee the healthy development of a language: there was Greek, with extraordinary literature, which, however, had degenerated into the current Demotike. So, the mater was not making Basque a useful instrument for any field of life, but extracting the natural resources it hid by putting it to test in humanistic disciplines: this is where languages can go a long way with regards to what they are capable of, and not in the scientific disciplines which, in this particular regard, offer nothing. At first, Orixe found himself confronting both the Sabinians and those he considers in favour of a ‘popular Basque’ (Lafitte, Altube), although also in some way Azkue and Olabide; since the fifties, he had been witnessed with astonishment the rise of what he considered a perverse continuation of that populist trend and which, at least initially, he identified with Krutwig and Villasante. In his final years, Orixe found a satisfactory model in the Basque of Mitxelena who, in turn, will cited some of Orixe’s beliefs when criticising the translations that started to spread from the end of the seventies. The attempts that Orixe made in the final stage of his life, most especially with Aitorkizunak, are only understood in this context.