There
have been quite a lot of those who our universities nowadays present in courses
as “Great thinkers II” who have produced beautiful writings, at least sentences
the reader will remember because of their strange sound. Try young Hegel or
Nietzsche or Schopenhauer, try young Adorno or Heidegger. There you will find
an unusual attention to the choice of words and to the composition of the
whole.
Philosophers
take a certain distance to our everyday language, without entering the fenced
fields of academic language (Peer reviewed!). They write in their own way. They
necessarily do so. “Our language is full of traps” (Max Stirner). The more you
believe to speak straight forward, the more you are risking to fall: not to get
out of the limits of everyday understanding.
Some of these
thought traps have been analyzed by Lakoff and Johnson. In order to express our
pure thoughts, we use metaphors, we relate to images. An example: When we talk
about ourselves as intelligent beings, as minds, we often use the metaphor of
the container. Something is outside but then: “something comes into my mind”.
Or viceversa, a common
trap for philosophers at work, something (very precious?) is inside, but: “I
cannot put my ideas into words”.
If we want to
avoid these traps, we need to fight our common tendency of using prefabricated
images. Poets often do this, and philosophers have good reasons for joining them.
Get poetic, hesitate with each single word. And, read poems. The world and you,
both may be rewritten.
Consider a poem
from the German writer Rainer Maria Rilke:
Am Rande
der Nacht
Meine Stube
und diese Weite, / wach über nachbetendem Land, –
ist Eines. Ich bin eine Saite, / über rauschende breite
Resonanzen gespannt.
Die Dinge sind Geigenleiber / von murrendem Dunkel voll;
ist Eines. Ich bin eine Saite, / über rauschende breite
Resonanzen gespannt.
Die Dinge sind Geigenleiber / von murrendem Dunkel voll;
In English this
is translated:
“On the edge of
the night
My room and this vastness, / awake over parroting land, –
are one. I am a string, / strung over rustling wide
resonances.
The things are violin bodies, / full of grumbling dark”
My room and this vastness, / awake over parroting land, –
are one. I am a string, / strung over rustling wide
resonances.
The things are violin bodies, / full of grumbling dark”
Yes, the
one speaking here presents himself as a string, a chord, and things (not “the
outside world”, as there is no “inside”) as violins which wait for the string
to move: things desire to be sung. But seemingly there is already some noise
around. “The land” the poem says, is “parroting”. “Parroting” what? In German,
we read “nachbetendem Land”. It is true, that if you look up the word
“nachbeten” (“-ndem” are just endings for present participle and Dative) with
one of the internet dictionaries that rule our word (I have tried the first
five ones I have found) you get “to repeat”, “to parrot” and even “to
regurgitate”. Try to use these translations in this poem: none of them makes
sense here.
There are
still other means of language exploration. Without knowing anything about
German grammar, you could avoid dictionaries and move directly to Google
translator. As a translation of “nachbetendem”, there we get “worship”.
Obviously, “over worship land” is not an acceptable translation of a poetic text.
But the idea is there. At least, we get no parroting, no noise. We get
something strange. We might suppose the poet has chosen the word nachbetendem carefully. A poet does not use
language, as psychologists use to say, in order to express himself. He is
working within language, maybe struggling in order to avoid the traps.
If you
know some German, maybe you could try to split the word
nachbetendem up: nach, beten and the Grammar ending -ndem. Nach gives “after”, beten “pray”, and the Grammar ending is done
with “ing”. Construct “after-praying”, and that is what the poem in German
says. At night, the land would be after-praying because, for example, the
original prayer has been spoken during the day, or maybe the poet refers to
earlier music produced by him, the chord. And then he starts singing again.
Nachbeten, originally meant as repeating a prayer,
in today's German has become a synonym of “repeat without understanding”. Our
Internet dictionaries stick to the most recent, the most common usage. If you
stick to them, you will not understand what poets, and philosophers have done
when they struggled with language. And struggle it is.
About the poem:
Peter Fuchs: System als Metapher, Weierswil: Velbrück 2001.
