“Language is a cracked kettle on which we bang out tunes to make the bears dance, when what we long for is to move the stars to pity.” said Flaubert. Why is it that we always try to say what we can’t find words to say?T. S. Eliot, in Burnt Norton, says” Words strain,Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,Will not stay still.Furthermore, how do we KNOW our words are imprecise? Why is it that we sense there’s something we’re not quite saying? How do we KNOW that there’s a “something” that needs to be expressed? When we’re babies, we start out screaming and making bubbling noises with our lips. We learn to say mama-mama and the face in front of us smiles. We learn the culture of call and response.So there is this poem from the great Polish poet Wisława Szymborska, who died this February:
View With a Grain of SandWe call it a grain of sand,but it calls itself neither grain nor sand.It does just fine, without a name,whether general, particular,permanent, passing,incorrect, or apt.Our glance, our touch means nothing to it.It doesn't feel itself seen and touched.And that it fell on the windowsillis only our experience, not its.For it, it is not different from falling on anything elsewith no assurance that it has finished fallingor that it is falling still.The window has a wonderful view of a lake,but the view doesn't view itself.It exists in this worldcolorless, shapeless,soundless, odorless, and painless.The lake's floor exists floorlessly,and its shore exists shorelessly.The water feels itself neither wet nor dryand its waves to themselves are neither singular nor plural.They splash deaf to their own noiseon pebbles neither large nor small.And all this beneath a sky by nature skylessin which the sun sets without setting at alland hides without hiding behind an unminding cloud.The wind ruffles it, its only reason beingthat it blows.A second passes.A second second.A third.But they're three seconds only for us.Time has passed like a courier with urgent news.But that's just our simile.The character is inverted, his haste is make-believe,his news inhuman.Okay, so the universe goes on, with us in it, meaning only itself. We anthropomorphize it like crazy, because we have these huge brains that like to own everything. What is “meaning” except what we add onto what simply is the case?To my mind, the work of an artist/writer is to simply see and praise what’s there, in all its perfection of being. Of course there's what we call right and wrong and good and bad and pain and bliss. I think what a writer does is to simply SEE what's there and make sure the rest of us see it, too--so that things begin to get clear, and what appears to be crooked can appear to right itself. Notice I'm saying "appears." This is all I have to go on. I don't know nothin'.
Our Cracked Kettle of Words
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