Language as Self Hiding Persona Fabric
Related to a discussion I had with Ian (aka, I-Dawg), language is both a means of approaching the truth, and a trap that hides us from meaning - a truth obfuscator. Language in its highest forms is a tool for self revelation and artistic discovery, yet if we are not careful we fall in love with the sounds we make on the page our prose and verses hides from Truths we may find difficult to broach, usually a truth about ourselves. Language is a way to "know thyself" but can become a self hiding persona fabric that keeps us a safe distance from ourselves, from truths and revelations too hot and painful to touch.
This is nothing new. For Socrates, it was those sophisticated sophists and their elaborate linguistic structures that enabled them to evade, indeed relativ-ize the truth, to hide the Logos from their audiences. Thus, he developed the dialog for busting through the layers of language barriers. In the Elizabethan era, it was those lovers of the euphuistic language of the courtiers who fell in love with their own verbal displays of Wit. This ornate style, which eventually led to the stuffy puffy formalism of Pope, had to give way to the blustering romantic wailings of Wordsworth and Coleridge, who thought they would imitate a "natural language" that was closer to the keeping it real with the common uneducated folks whose speech were not diluted with a classical Latin education.
Writing is a powerful tool, and it has more than once saved my life by allowing me to write down all the horror and ugliness in my own head & heart. I learned to trust language, trust that I could write down all my bones and everything I thought, regardless of how disgusting, trust that I wasn't going to burn up right there at the computer.
Writing, if done honestly, can give us insight powerful enough to lead us to an intimation of the truth, such as when poetry reaches the limits of literal and figurative meaning and we catch glimpses of the infinite, of God, of the heart of human emotions - poetry being neither pure fantasy nor pure fact, but somewhere in between, the line dividing the fixed and floating worlds.
But, as with all habits, there is the danger that language and writing becomes yet another means of hiding from the truth, positioning my tragic and delicate, sad-sack self behind some fancy linguistic lattice work: elaborate structures, ornate sentences, and abstract theoretical expostulations (for example).
Language, if we are afraid to say something from the heart and soul, leads us to Prufrock's ironic, pathetic predicament, when we realize: "It is impossible to say exactly what I mean!"
Related to a discussion I had with Ian (aka, I-Dawg), language is both a means of approaching the truth, and a trap that hides us from meaning - a truth obfuscator. Language in its highest forms is a tool for self revelation and artistic discovery, yet if we are not careful we fall in love with the sounds we make on the page our prose and verses hides from Truths we may find difficult to broach, usually a truth about ourselves. Language is a way to "know thyself" but can become a self hiding persona fabric that keeps us a safe distance from ourselves, from truths and revelations too hot and painful to touch.
This is nothing new. For Socrates, it was those sophisticated sophists and their elaborate linguistic structures that enabled them to evade, indeed relativ-ize the truth, to hide the Logos from their audiences. Thus, he developed the dialog for busting through the layers of language barriers. In the Elizabethan era, it was those lovers of the euphuistic language of the courtiers who fell in love with their own verbal displays of Wit. This ornate style, which eventually led to the stuffy puffy formalism of Pope, had to give way to the blustering romantic wailings of Wordsworth and Coleridge, who thought they would imitate a "natural language" that was closer to the keeping it real with the common uneducated folks whose speech were not diluted with a classical Latin education.
Writing is a powerful tool, and it has more than once saved my life by allowing me to write down all the horror and ugliness in my own head & heart. I learned to trust language, trust that I could write down all my bones and everything I thought, regardless of how disgusting, trust that I wasn't going to burn up right there at the computer.
Writing, if done honestly, can give us insight powerful enough to lead us to an intimation of the truth, such as when poetry reaches the limits of literal and figurative meaning and we catch glimpses of the infinite, of God, of the heart of human emotions - poetry being neither pure fantasy nor pure fact, but somewhere in between, the line dividing the fixed and floating worlds.
But, as with all habits, there is the danger that language and writing becomes yet another means of hiding from the truth, positioning my tragic and delicate, sad-sack self behind some fancy linguistic lattice work: elaborate structures, ornate sentences, and abstract theoretical expostulations (for example).
Language, if we are afraid to say something from the heart and soul, leads us to Prufrock's ironic, pathetic predicament, when we realize: "It is impossible to say exactly what I mean!"
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