Writers can express untranslatable worlds through different languages, Columbia University Prof. Gustavo Perez-Firmat told about 30 faculty members and students Monday in Harris Hall.

Perez-Firmat, who was invited to speak by the Hispanic studies department, discussed the importance of a writer’s choice of language, citing the works of Calvert Casey. Casey was the Baltimore-born son of a Cuban mother and an Irish-American father. Although his first language was English, Casey wrote in Spanish except for his first and last books.

Writing in several languages was common until the rise of nationalism in the 18th and 19th centuries, when citizens began to consider language a “cultural possession,” Perez-Firmat said.

Casey’s question: Which language?

Casey grew up in Cuba but left the country in the early ’60s during the revolution, just as his short stories and novels were gaining popularity.

Afraid to return to Cuba for political reasons and perhaps fearing persecution for his homosexuality, Casey nevertheless continued to write in Spanish until he penned his final novel.

He burned all of his final composition except for a fragment entitled “Piazza Margada,” an intimate journey through the body of his partner Gianni.

Perez-Firmat asked why Casey would write what a Cuban critic called “our most supreme text of bliss” in English.

The answer lies in what Perez-Firmat calls “diglossia,” or the tendency to choose a language based on what it represents for the speaker.

Writing in Spanish gave Casey a sense of family and community, Perez-Firmat said. But he said Casey’s writing in his second language seemed like “semantic dehydration,” dry compared to the flowing metaphors and puns of his English work.

“In English, Casey is a different writer and maybe a different man than he is in Spanish,” Perez-Firmat said. “When he has no other place, the writer must live in the writer. As a citizen of the state of bliss, his homeland exists only in his lush and lovely English prose.”

Casey overdosed on sleeping pills and died in May 1969 after he and Gianni broke up.

His work lapsed into obscurity until the early ’90s when it appeared in literary journals and was later re-released in books.

Perez-Firmat, who left Cuba at age 11, said he identifies with Casey. He regrets using Spanish less often, having published only English works for the past 10 years. This summer he plans to translate his recent book, “Life in the Hyphen,” into Spanish.

Some students said they, like Casey, find themselves using different languages for different purposes.

“I associate Spanish with my wonderful experience studying abroad (in Costa Rica),” said Kate Boersma, a Weinberg junior. “It’s romanticism — I want to use it when writing poetry or doing expressive things.”