Angela Rodel: The Human Voice Is the Organ of the Soul
Honorable ACS President, dear seniors, parents, teachers, advisors and guests,
I wanted to greet the ACS community with a Bulgarian folk song, a жътварска песен or reaping song from the Pazardzhik region, because as I sat down to write this commencement speech for the ACS class of 2022, I realized that this year marks a deeply important personal milestone for me as well: it is the 30-year anniversary of when I “fell in love at first sound” with the Bulgarian voice. I was a freshman at Yale in 1992, equal parts elated and terrified, looking for some way to fit in to that intimidating new place, so I let a roommate drag me along to a Yale Slavic Chorus try-out.
When I heard the choir sing the first few notes of a Bulgarian song, belted out at sternum-shattering volume, I was hooked. The dissonant harmonies, the unapologetically loud women’s voices meant to be heard across a field—it made my hair stand on end and my whole soul resonate. Little did I know, I had stumbled across a truth that the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow had discovered more than a century earlier: “The human voice is the organ of the soul.” And so I followed that Bulgarian voice, and it has led me on a strange and wonderful journey that my 18-year-old self could never have imagined.
In 1996, after I graduated from Yale, I was off to Bulgaria like a shot to study language and folk-singing. But when I landed in gritty, gray Sofia at the height of an economic and political spasm brought on by hyperinflation and instability, the Bulgarian voice I thought I knew was nowhere to be found; the haunting voice of women reaping the fields had been largely drowned out in the post-socialist cacophony. Yet once I met a couple of poets through musical circles, I tuned in to other voices – those of the reapers’ great-grandchildren: democratic dreamers trying to build a new type of society, writers delighting in a new-found verbal freedom, young people eager for opportunities abroad. This was a whole new chorus of Bulgarian voices every bit as intriguing as le mystere des voix bulgares – and every bit as powerful. This was also the period when the American College of Sofia itself was reopening after a nearly fifty-year lull, adding a long-silenced international accent to the mix.
One of the values ACS holds dear is service, which I know many if not most of you engage in. Always be on the lookout for unexpected opportunities to give back. For example, after I spent years honing my singing voice to sound Bulgarian, the time came for karmic pay-back: I found my calling a literary translator helping Bulgarian writers find their “voice” in English and on the international literary stage. I’ve had the honor of working with some of the best of them: Georgi Gospodinov, Zachary Karabashliev, Virginia Zaharieva, to name only a few. The experience is as exhilarating, as well as every bit as challenges as learning folk-singing – trying to make the text itself sing, without changing the key entirely or tripping up the beat.
I imagine that in your five years at ACS, you have undergone a journey similar to mine, albeit in the opposite direction. And in your case, I would guess you were lured to study English not by voices from gramophone records but from Cartoon Network and Youtube. But anyone who commits to studying a foreign language and culture knows, this “trying on a new tongue” is a way of expanding one’s identity, of slipping into a new way of being. My fellow translator and musician Johanna Warren captured this well when she called translation the “Art of Empathy” – but I would say her label applies not just to literary translators, but to all of us working between languages and cultures and communities: we are “empathy artists.”
And your empathetic voices are necessary now more than ever. I hope I won’t dampen the joy of your graduation day by stating the obvious – you are launching into the adult world at one of the most uncertain times in recent history: we have just experienced the first global pandemic in living memory; we are witnessing a ground war in Europe in real time on our social media; floods and wildfires have brought the threat of climate change to our doorstep. Yet I am not pessimistic because I have heard your voices. In my work with the Fulbright Commission and as member of the Yale Club of Bulgaria, I have had the honor of meeting so many ACSers and other young Bulgarians, and I have heard you speak with empathy and compassion: you have generously raised money for Ukrainian refugees, you have founded the first GSA in Bulgaria, your environmental and volunteering clubs work tirelessly to improve your community. In short, you are empathy artists extraordinaire.
Your generation has recognized the power of the voice far more clearly than mine ever did; and I suspect technology has played a large hand in this. The Internet was barely on our radar in 1992, we were just getting used to dial-up modems back then, while now you are digital natives, the most wired generation in the history of humanity, able to hear and speak with voices from all over the world. On the upside, while I was searching for soulfulness in my little analog world, you have been in dialogue with the entire digital word. Gen Z has recognized with a new urgency the age-old truth that WORDS MATTER, as does the choice of which voices to elevate – we see this in calling the Russian invasion of Ukraine a war and not a military operation, in using an individual’s preferred pronouns, in finding opportunities to amplify marginalized voices. Some might worry that this close attention to language runs the risk of censoriousness – which is why we must always, always remember empathy.
Of course, the global chatroom has its downside. Since anyone can say anything they please in the online space, protected by anonymity, we are bombarded by voices filled with rage and hatred. Yet I nevertheless believe in the power of an authentic voice to trump even the worst of trolls: Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s famous quote – I need ammunition, not a ride – will live on as some of the most powerful words yet spoken in the 21st century. The right words and the right voice can drown out even the propaganda machine of a nuclear-armed superpower.
The beautiful Bulgarian language offers a very obvious reminder in this regard. In Bulgarian, glas has a double meaning: glas as in voice, and glas as in vote. Actually, in English the etymology is the same, both words are descended from the Latin vox, but many native speakers no longer consciously make this connection. Yet Bulgarian reminds us that using our voices is a political act. ACS has taught you not only to speak English, but to write, to persuade, to inspire, in short to hone your authentic voices, in both your native and adopted language. I hope you use the incredible education you received at the American College of Sofia to become the eloquent leaders we so desperately need in Bulgaria, Europe and the US to build a more just and equitable society.
In closing let me return to Longfellow and share the full quote from Hyperion:
“O, how wonderful is the human voice! It is indeed the organ of the soul! The intellect of man sits enthroned visibly upon his forehead and in his eye; and the heart of man is written upon his countenance. But the soul reveals itself in the voice only.”
Echoing the poet, I challenge you: as you leave ACS on your life journey, find your soul’s voice and follow it, even if the paths it calls you to may seem strange and winding. Don’t just lip-synch along with a comfortable job, a practical major, a superficial opinion; step out centerstage and sing at the top of your lungs, as nerve-wracking as this may be, as I can testify firsthand! Find the people and the communities your voice resonates best with, even if the harmonies might seem dissonant and jarring at first, as those Bulgarian folk tunes did to me 30 years ago. Find the place where your voice can sound as loud and as powerful as your great-great-grandmother’s reaping song. Because your soul reaps what your voice sows. And the field is wide open before you.
Congratulations и на добър час, ACS class of 2022!