Sunday, May 03, 2009
Out of Context, but Still Apt
...I begin indeed to fear that I have undertaken an impossibility, undertaken to tell what I cannot tell because no speech at my command will fit the forms in my mind.
Already I have set down statements I would gladly change did I know how to substitute a truer utterance; but as often as I try to fit the reality with nearer words, I find myself in danger of losing the things themselves, and feel like one in process of awaking from a dream, with the thing that seemed familiar gradually yet swiftly changing through a succession of forms until its very nature is no longer recognisable.
- From Lilith, by George MacDonald.
The quote above? I am taking it way out of context here in lifting it from a Victorian dark fantasy novel that obviously had nothing to do with blogging or any of the usual stuff I write about here (well, when I'm not explicitly writing about fiction).
But it's a great quote and I wanted to put it here because, while again I am applying it way outside the author's use of it, it very well articulates what using language is always like for me.
There's a reason I don't tend to actively engage with lengthy flamewars and why I don't always answer when people ask me a barrage of questions...there's just so much that seems to elude language, even as language facilitates so much in some contexts.
Anyway I just wanted to leave this here so I could perhaps refer back to it later, and/or point others back to it whenever it might seem I am not addressing something that ought to be addressed, or not commenting on some news story that seems like I'd be interested in it.
It's not that I don't have any thoughts in those situations, it's that often it takes me a long time to figure out how to say what I actually mean, and sometimes when I finally do manage to express what I actually mean, it might not even be through the sort of spontaneous, original sequence of words that people seem to expect (but by, say, drawing or quoting or referring to a song or object).
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15 comments:
Thank you Anne, for expressing this bit of truth which I experience everyday but can hardly share.
I should append that for me nearly every concept, group of concepts,..., appears in my mind like complex visual geometry. The "truth" of a concept (or rather, its mapping to my own model of reality) is reflected almost instantly as distortions in an otherwise smooth structure, attracting attention and deeper examination. Contexts are like intersecting bubbles...
I've always been perceived as "quiet", not for lack of something to say, but for too much.
With these words I may expose too much and be seen as arrogant or just weird, but it's nice to be occasionally, even if only partially, understood.
I seem to be more comfortable with language, but I still run up against states of mind that are very clear and distinct, but that I have no words for.
> The quote above? I am taking it. . .
> from a Victorian dark fantasy novel
> that obviously had nothing to do with
> blogging or any of the usual stuff
> I write about here. . .
Fancy you quoting George MacDonald.
C. S. Lewis was a great admirer of MacDonald. In fact, the latter actually appears as a character in Lewis's _The Great Divorce_:
'Where are ye going?' said a voice with a strong Scotch accent. I stopped and looked. The sound of the unicorns had long since died away and my flight had brought me to open country. I saw the mountains where the unchanging sunrise lay, and in the foreground two or three pines on a little knoll, with some large smooth rocks, and heather. On one of the rocks sat a very tall man, almost a giant, with a flowing beard. I had not yet looked one of the Solid People in the face. Now, when I did so, I discovered that one sees them with a kind of double vision. Here was an enthroned and shining god, whose ageless spirit weighed upon mine like a burden of solid gold: and yet, at the very same moment, here was an old weather-beaten man, one who might have been a shepherd -- such a man as tourists think simple because he is honest and neighbours think 'deep' for the same reason. His eyes had the far-seeing look of one who has lived long in open, solitary places; and somehow I divined the network of wrinkles which must have surrounded them before re-birth had washed him in immortality.
'I -- I don't quite know,' said I.
'Ye can sit and talk to me then,' he said, making room for me on his stone.
'I don't know you, Sir,' said I, taking my seat beside him.
'My name is George,' he answered. 'George MacDonald.'
'Oh!' I cried. 'Then you can tell me! You at least will not deceive me.' Then, supposing that these expressions of confidence needed some explanation, I tried, trembling, to tell this man all that his writings had done for me. I tried to tell how a certain frosty afternoon at Leatherhead Station when I first bought a copy of _Phantastes_ (being then about sixteen years old) had been to me what the first sight of Beatrice had been to Dante: **Here begins the New Life.** I started to confess how long that Life had delayed in the region of imagination merely: how slowly and reluctantly I had come to admit that his Christendom had more than an accidental connexion with it, how hard I had tried not to see the true name of the quality which first met me in his books is Holiness. He laid his hand on mine and stopped me.
'Son,' he said, 'Your love -- all love -- is of inexpressible value to me. But it may save precious time' (here he suddenly looked very Scotch) 'if I inform ye that I am already well acquainted with these biographical details. In fact, I have noticed that your memory misleads you in one or two particulars.'
'Oh!' said I, and became still.
'Ye had started,' said my Teacher, 'to talk of something more profitable.'
'Sir,' said I, 'I had almost forgotten it, and I have no anxiety about the answer now, though I have still a curiosity. It is about these Ghosts. **Do** any of them stay? **Can** they stay? Is any real choice offered to them? How do they come to be here?'
'Did ye never hear of the _Refrigerium_? A man with your advantages might have read of it in Prudentius, not to mention Jeremy Taylor.'
'The name is familiar, Sir, but I'm afraid I've forgotten what it means.'
'It means that the damned have holidays -- excursions, ye understand.'
'Excursions to **this** country?'
'For those that will take them. Of course most of the silly creatures don't. They prefer taking trips back to Earth. They go and play tricks on the poor daft women ye call mediums. They go and try to assert their ownership of some house that once belonged to them: and then ye get what's called a Haunting. Or they go to spy on their children. Or literary ghosts hang about public libraries to see if anyone's still reading their books.'
'But if they come here they can really stay?'
'Aye. Ye'll have heard that the emperor Trajan did.'
'But I don't understand. Is judgment not final? Is there really a way out of Hell into Heaven?'
'It depends on the way ye're using the words. If they leave that grey town behind it will not have been Hell. To any that leaves it, it is Purgatory. And perhaps ye had better not call this country Heaven. Not **Deep Heaven**, ye understand.' (Here he smiled at me.) 'Ye can call it the Valley of the Shadow of Life. And yet to those who stay here it will have been Heaven from the first. And ye can call those sad streets in the town yonder the Valley of the Shadow of Death: but to those who remain there they will have been in Hell even from the beginning.'
. . .
'Son,' he said, 'ye cannot in your present state understand eternity: when Anodos[*] looked through the door of the Timeless he brought no message back. But ye can get some likeness of it if ye say that both good and evil, when they are full grown, become retrospective. Not only this valley but all their earthly past will have been Heaven to those who are saved. Not only the twilight in that town, but all their life on Earth too, will then be seen by the damned to have been Hell. That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, "No future bliss can make up for it," not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say, "Let me have but **this** and I'll take the consequences:" little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin. Both processes begin even before death. The good man's past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of Heaven: the bad man's past already conforms to his badness and is filled only with dreariness. And that is why, at the end of all things, when the sun rises here and the twilight turns to blackness down there, the Blessed will say "We have never lived anywhere except in Heaven," and the lost, "We were always in Hell." And both will speak truly.'
[*] the hero of George MacDonald's _Phantastes_
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0802860605
I note that the Wikipedia entry on MacDonald's _Lilith_ asserts:
"_Lilith_ is considered among the darkest of MacDonald's works, and among the most profound. It is a story concerning the nature of life, death and salvation. Many believe MacDonald is arguing for Christian universalism, or the idea that all will eventually be saved."
And from a further Wikipedia link, "Universal reconciliation, also called universal salvation or sometimes simply universalism, is the Christian doctrine or belief that all can receive salvation, regardless of belief, due to the love and mercy of God."
This is, of course, considered a heresy by some people.
C. S. Lewis is himself is branded a heretic by a lot of folks. Lewis, the big softie, said: "I couldn’t believe that 999 religions were completely false and the remaining one true." Similarly he stated: "We are not pronouncing all other religions to be totally false, but rather saying that in Christ whatever is true in all religions is consummated and perfected." Kathryn Lindskoog wrote: "Lewis expressed hope that many true seekers like Akhenaton and Plato, who never had a chance to find Christ in this life, will find Him in the next one."
This doctrine (referred to as "universalism" above) is also called "inclusivism", and it's fightin' words to a lot of self-accounted Christians -- particularly American evangelical fundamentalists.
More Lewis heresies:
"I willingly believe the damned are, in one sense, successful rebels to the end; that the doors of Hell are locked on the inside."
-- Lewis, _The Problem of Pain_
"There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘**Thy** will be done.’ All that are in Hell choose it."
-- Lewis, _The Great Divorce_.
A passage from Lewis's _The Last Battle_ (the last book in the Chronicles of Narnia) has a similar bent. This passage is about Emeth [Hebrew "truth"], a noble soldier from Calormen, who was an enemy of Narnia. He served a god named Tash. The Narnians served the lion, Aslan, who was the Christ figure in the stories.
“For always since I was a boy I have served Tash and my great desire was to know more of him, if it might be, to look upon his face. But the name of Aslan was hateful to me.” Through a series of events (I won’t go into details), Emeth finds himself in Aslan’s country after having been told that Aslan and Tash are the same God. This is what is said, when he encounters Aslan for the first time:
"So I went over much grass and many flowers and among all kinds of wholesome and delectable trees till lo! in a narrow place between two rocks there came to meet me a great Lion. The speed of him was like the ostrich, and his size was an elephant's; his hair was like pure gold and the brightness of his eyes, like gold that is liquid in the furnace. He was more terrible than the Flaming Mountain of Lagour, and in beauty he surpassed all that is in the world, even as the rose in bloom surpasses the dust of the desert. Then I fell at his feet and thought, 'Surely this is the hour of death, for the Lion (who is worthy of all honour) will know that I have served Tash all my days and not him. Nevertheless, it is better to see the Lion and die than to be Tisroc of the world and live and not to have seen him.' But the Glorious One bent down his golden head and touched my forehead with his tongue and said, 'Son, thou art welcome.'
But I said, 'Alas, Lord, I am no son of Thine but the servant of Tash.' He answered, 'Child, all the service thou has done to Tash, I account as service done to me.' Then by reason of my great desire for wisdom and understanding, I overcame my fear and questioned the Glorious One and said, 'Lord, is it then true, as the Ape said, that thou and Tash are one?' The Lion growled so that the earth shook (but his wrath was not against me) and said, 'It is false. Not because he and I are one, but because we are opposites. I take to me the services which thou hast done to him, for I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him. Therefore if a man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath's sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him. And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted. Dost thou understand, Child?' I said, 'Lord, thou knowest how much I understand.' But I said also (for the truth constrained me), 'Yet I have been seeking Tash all my days.' 'Beloved,' said the Glorious One, 'unless thy desire had been for me, thou wouldst not have sought so long and so truly. For all find what they truly seek.'"
Even though I'm an atheist, C. S. Lewis -- and J. R. R. Tolkien -- get to me on an emotional level. And I'm not the only one -- even Elf Sternberg, indefatigable badgerer of the faithful on alt.atheism, admits
"The Great Divorce shook me like few books ever have. I'll admit that. Lewis' understanding of human pain was so real and intense that he actually had me in tears, especially over the one man who could not give up his manly pride enough to really love his wife, rather than himself for "succeeding" in his marriage. His description of Heaven was likewise compelling for its symbolism, as the ghosts became real.
It's one of those books that I, for one, dearly wish depicted reality. (I also dearly wish that it depicted Christianity; Hell in Lewis' story is a place one can leave if one finds the will to do so, even after you get there.) It resonates with me on an emotional level that I have trouble putting into words."
jimf wrote: Fancy you quoting George MacDonald.
For some reason I thought you in particular might comment on that. :)
A friend recently recommended some of MacDonald's stories to me, and since they're basically all available for free (via the Internet Archive and elsewhere), I've been perusing a few. Definitely interesting, and not Christian in that obnoxious fundie way despite obvious Christian influence and references. More L'Engle-ish, almost, if that makes any sense. And I've been sort of fixating on the Victorian era lately so MacDonald fits right in.
Jef: Weird, I can definitely relate to the "complex visual geometry" form of thought, even though our expressive styles and relationship to abstraction seem to differ considerably. Another way I've described my thinking is in terms of something called a "mindspace", where it's as if thinking shows me a huge landscape upon which various forms and figures play, and there are different (but somehow connected) entire landscapes for different subjects. Not only that but I have a lot of "raw recordings" in my head of sounds, images, etc., to the point where sometimes I end up post-processing this stuff for years before I understand it.
I actually started writing a blog because I wanted to express myself better with words, which for me is exactly what you said "express what I actually mean with words".
But now that I read this, I am thinking that I might be expecting to much, not everything could be expressed accurately with words. Because language is just a representation model, therefore limited and inaccurate.
Language meaning depends mostly on the context, implying that it is very important to put words where they belong, not only to use the right words.
@Anne: "a huge landscape upon which various forms and figures play"
For many years I've carried in my mind a vision of a graphical artwork that I would create (if I only I had the drawing skills or the time to develop them.)
The vision is something like this:
A children's playground, with jungle gym, various other playground toys, and diverse children happily playing and running around on the sand and tree bark ground.
The playground is in a slight hollow, such that the horizon shows only surrounding grass lawns, a few sidewalks leading past and away, and in the background appear parents, vague and indistinct, as if obscured by a perceptual mist.
Each child is seen to be surrounded by a nearly transparent bubble, moving with them as they run and play. On the inside surface are reflected images familiar to the child, of home, school, pets and toys and friends, with the intensity of the reflection corresponding in some way to personal emotional connection. The bubbles' span varies from child to child, a measure in some sense of the child's inward-lookingness versus breadth of engagement with the world around them.
As the children run and climb and play, each within their own bubble, it can be seen that most of the bubbles reflect a great deal in common, and these commonalities constrain patterns in their play, experienced through perceptual bubbles, within the closeness of the grassy horizon, seen through a mist, with almost empty walkways leading to other vistas.
FWIW,
- Jef
Mariana wrote:
Because language is just a representation model, therefore limited and inaccurate. Language meaning depends mostly on the context, implying that it is very important to put words where they belong, not only to use the right words.
Indeed, that is related to one of the reasons I started this blog as well. Way back in 2006 I was having a rather lengthy discussion about human longevity on a BBS and I kept running into the problem of knowing I had this huge amount of stuff in my head on the subject but could not get it all out very well in the conversational format.
And just in general I seem to run into a *lot* of conversations (mostly in speech but sometimes in writing as well, like in that BBS conversation) wherein I will just end up doing what people have called "digging myself into a hole". Where basically most of what I say gets taken the wrong way, and either I end up having to argue my way OUT of being assumed to hold views I don't hold, or the person gets the impression that I'm incredibly ignorant and continually explains to me things I already know, while not really paying attention to where I actually DO want information.
So, in a way this blog is one fraction of what I have tried to do in order to show that I am actually really myself, if that makes any sense. It's not the WHOLE of who I am contained here, and there are most certainly things that don't come through in words at all (but rather in art or movement or something), but it's definitely "more of what I actually think" which CAN be put into words than people are going to get a sense of interacting with me elsewhere.
And I liked the quote I posted not just because it applies to how I often feel when trying to language things, but because it sort of describes the whole human quest of trying to use language (and perhaps blogging in particular!) to begin with.
As in, language is not by any means a "pointless" endeavor (and I hope nothing I have written so far implies such), but it is an endeavor which must be used and understood according to its nature.
And its nature is not one of perfect crystalline correlation unmistakably bound objectively to concrete objects in reality, but one in which we have a progressively improving approximation if we're doing it right.
In blogging I would say that my goal overall is to help, in terms of the subjects I write about, to shift the signal-to-noise ratio on those topics in favor of "signal".
Thans a lot MY FRIEND
Language is ambiguous, and imposible to fully desambiguate. Anyway I am not going to
get much in the subject that there are grammars that are context free and there are those that
not, and that is the main differenciation among the different grammars.
(Grammar is the field of linguistics that covers the rules governing the use of any given spoken
languages. It mainly includes morphology and syntax, but it can be complemented with other
linguistic fields.
Extremly intresting the rasong why you begain posting, I am just going to tell you 2 things about me that relate to your reasons.
1.I started studying english cause I wanted to read poe's poems in english (without english I could not be doing this)
2.I started my blog in order to be able to express with words what I mean, I still have along way to go.
Misunderstanding, I asked myself thousands of times if people care about understanding each other (maybe communication is mostly about demostrating who is the one that
has most prestige, or is the more confident).
I do not think language is pointer either, you need models,
you can protest against them, say they are limited, innaccurate etc..
but it is what we have, and I think it is extremelly usefull.
check this out if you want to know more about language:http://singyourownlullaby.blogspot.com/2009/04/language-according-to-pinker.html
Well, that is nature defined from a scientific that belives in
the progress of science (and nature is one of the crystaline...)
I like what you said about why you blog, to help, that's very noble, that should be it, I coud aproximate myself to your idea
but instead I would say to encaurage people to learn, think for themselves and make them want to research, inspire them in that way.
Best regards
m
Anne wrote:
> . . .language is not by any
> means a "pointless" endeavor. . .
Helen: E, it's great to see you, but I gotta tell you I have **no** idea what you're talking about.I just. . .
Edna: Yes, words are useless! Gobble gobble gobble gobble gobble gobble. Too much of it dahling, too much! That is why I **show** you my work. That is why you
are **here**!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOpH6E7T6I0
(I've never been too keen on people who take Ayn Rand seriously, but I **love** Edna Mode.)
Victorian fiction always resonated with me too, even when I was a small child and had no idea of the historical and cultural context. I wouldn't go so far as to describe it as autistic fiction, but it seems to reflect a society where autistic perception was accepted as a valid way of experiencing the world, and where autistic people made significant contributions. I used to wish that I could go back in time and live in those days.
Now I'd rather live in the future...
Having lots of thoughts but not expressing them. I relate a lot to that. Especially when I was a kid I had all kinds of thoughts that it never even occurred to me to share, much less how to share them if I thought of it and wanted to. Good post!
Incidentally, reading the comments... I started blogging because I wanted to try better expressing my thoughts in words too. More specifically, I wanted to write my thoughts down in a way that anybody should be able to "get what I meant." That is something really hard for me, for some reason, I will often think I said or wrote something in a way that makes sense but then other people get the wrong meaning from it. I've even had people think I meant to say something opposite in meaning, from what I meant to say, and I have no idea how that happens. Very discouraging.
Fleecy wrote:
More specifically, I wanted to write my thoughts down in a way that anybody should be able to "get what I meant."
Yes, exactly. But I have discovered that there is likely no way to write in such a way that EVERYONE is going to know what I mean. I find that there are some people I just don't need very many words with at all in order for them to know what I mean (and vice versa) because we are coming from some sort of shared context (and I do not only mean in terms of neurology here, this can also be in terms of experiences, etc.). This isn't a bad thing or anything, just a fact of reality I know about now that I didn't before.
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