It is impossible to transpose the human experience because there is this lack of communication to do it. Therefore the language I have learned to speak, the communication that I have learned to conduct is consequently imperfect because I cannot express a large amount of my experience as a human being. This is both frustrating yet encouraging. I am left in this incommunicative hell where the walls offer no sympathy for my dying desire to express my solitude. There is no one to sample the swirling questions in my head that are almost made for someone to hear. That is maybe the torment of it: my thoughts are designed in a way to be communicated to another identity, but cannot because of the lack socially induced situations where these thoughts might be fit to say. This obvious anger is directly linked to my torment, which in turn is directed towards modern society. Modern society can be blamed for this imperfect human experience because modern society set up a functional rat maze for the human brain that it has now grown too big for. Our intelligence has now superceded the conventional way of thinking, and society stands directly in the way of achieving absolute communication. On the other hand, the one thing that is solely encouraging to me is the possibility that absolute communication will, in the future be reached. That one day I will have my highest state of consciousness matched with another human’s highest state of consciousness, and together we collectively evolve communicatively.
Since communication is incomplete, the human experience is almost incomplete as well. The issue of the distinction between self and others gets intensified because of the latter point. Human beings can be compared to the solitary male African elephant, who spends most of his time alone, only interacting socially during the mating season. Can’t man be simply a solitary individual, unable to express his isolation simply because there is no way how? Man has an individualistic view of himself so amazingly different from how he interprets others. “Others†to man are characters of a play, or dreamt identities that are distantly cold and thus very far away from his own experience due simply to the lack of communication between his species.
The words that have just been read by a reader are an example of the limitations I have of expression. The words that formed in my brain are not necessarily the words that are interpreted by the reader. Consider this: I may have meant something totally different than what you just read. After considering that possibility I personally don’t think you can disagree that our primitive way of communicating is simply an unsophisticated method of symbols no greater in any respect to Egyptian hieroglyphics. In conclusion, the quest of man is no where near finished, and communication between his species is nowhere near absolute. What is conventional now, I hope will be obsolete in the future, and as a result of that, I hope to no longer be personally paused in obsoleteness.
you should really speak to (read) wittgenstein, who is incidentally on the left of the that 5-a-side philosophy team. his philosophy of language may answer your questions. his early philosophy espouses the belief that the world (and all of its elements) are linked at every level with language (and all of its elements). he used this link as a way of answering phil. questions.
i do sympathise with you. your imagination and knowledge need to be aware of each other, to play with each other, and it sounds like they’re at opposite ends of the maze.
i recommend you read, a lot. look for different ways of expression and you’ll find that your deepest thoughts can be communicated with all the precision and feeling that is needed. find any essays by seamus heaney, and notice the language he uses. he seems to be ignoring the elements of language and consequently can reel off his thoughts in a way which makes you entirely aware of what he is trying to say. he may not be the world’s most intelligent man (though he probably is!), but his control of the english language has left him able to put forward his deepest, most obscure and delicate thoughts with a clarity so divine and perfect, the feeling almost rubs off.
Pangloss, your analysis of Heaney is interesting. I read “Digging” a while back for a GCSE coursework essay (on the web at mtsn.org.uk/staff/staffpages … igging.htm - have a look if you reeeallly want, but it is 2 years old, and full of shite, dry bits thrown in to fulfil marking points). I was expecting it to be a masterpiece of linguistic precision: and it was, but I felt that Heaney’s tight control sometimes superseded the communicative element, whilst you feel the opposite about it.
Poetry like Plath’s “Daddy” (my point of comparison in the aforesaid essay) speaks volumes to me despite the apparent lack of any real linguistic order. Its spontanaiety and frankness convey an incredible inensity of emotion, perhaps because this very mode of writing does not really allow for the calculated use of various structures which characterises Heaney’s “Digging.”
You talk of Heaney’s mastery of language making him a great conveyor of human experience, but doesn’t this contradict what IG…BLiss said about language being an inadequate means of expressing what the human condition is all about? Or are you saying that Heaney’s writing transcends the limitations of language? If it is I have been reading the wrong stuff; can you point me to one or two of those essays you mention, because if they are as good as (I think) you are saying, I want to read them and witness genius at work. Until I see those essays, I will continue to be under the impression that Plath’s semi stream of consciousness style in most of Belljar is better than Heaney in terms of its ability to communicate the visceral.
Also, talking of emotional communication…scientists discovered several weeks ago that dolphins can ‘see/hear’ the emotions and feelings of their fellows by picking up sonar waves. So they know exactly how their little fishy friends (ok, mammalian mates) are feeling, with no need for watered down (no pun intended) interpretations through inadequate media like language. What if humans could somehow develop that ability? Though it’s an economist’s dream, would life really be worth living if the element of surprise in our social interactions ceased to exist? What would we do if we could no longer keep secrets? Maybe it’s for the best that our evolution has provided us with no more accurate form of emotional communication than language… Just an alternative way of looking at the issue.
poor poor sylvia plath. desperately wanting us all to know how much she is suffering for us. and on to seamus heaney. the essay i was (particularly) referring to was called ‘englands of the mind’ in his book ‘preoccupations’. reading one poem of heaney’s (a good essay, i must add) is not enough. his true impact cannot be felt until you get a real feel for his language. there seem to be these charges in his writing, latent in certain words and rythyms, which bring you back to an unexplainable primitive state. the unexplainable, mysterious abysmic quality to his work that makes him the finest writer of his generation that i am aware of. it differs from plath in its psychological content, as it is not only true, but, most importantly, positive. i’m sure that long after his death with advances in neurology, scientists will determine exactly what it is about heaney’s words which make the reader feel so completely religious, in a very secular way. it takes imagination, but his genius is not just trumpetted due to his name.
unlike plath, heaney did eventually find a satisfaction and purpose for his life and activity. always feeling slightly awkward about his past and his failure to focus much of his work on the n.i. conflict, he inevitably was to see his work as aesthetic, but ultimately futile. i shouldn’t really explain how it came to all make sense. (and shaekspeare’s punchline was … ). it’s worth knowing him first.
the best place to go for seamus heaney giving it wordly, is the nobel museum website, the recording of his nobel speech.
to hear the man’s voice is the ultimate heaney experience. christ! i make him sound like hendrix.
your last paragraph was something entirely separate from what i was saying. interesting nonetheless. heaney is beating the limitations of language. therefore, that picture of wittgenstein should be replaced with seamus heaney. he is part-human, part-dolphin.
this is still relevant ig…bliss. it could never not be.
I think that you are right and it’s clear that human experience defies our level of language for explanation. To define a word like freedom, as I once argued for a long time with HVD, is in my opinion impossible. Many abstract ideas such as this are beyond definition and beyond explanation. Maybe love is the best example. (Note: important link to A.I. which poses the question of what love is? if a robot is programmed to love, is his love genuine and therefore worthy of response, or not?).
But I don’t see this as frustrating in anyway. Consider a world in which you can convey everything that you want to through language, is that your idea of a Utopia? It’s not mine because that would be a world with no mysteries since everything would be definable or else with no abstract concepts. I can’t remember the figure I read exactly but I believe it was more than half of human communication which is not expressed through language. Our behaviour is a language of it’s own, a far more developed one than our language since we are permanently communicating through behaviour but only communication through language part of the time. Whilst the word is important, the body-language, gesture or mannerisms of our characters are more so.
In my opinion the source of happinness is your relations with others and not yourself. You understand your ideas but your frustration comes from an inability to communicate them to others. Being able to do so will inevitably bring happinness but language is not necessarily the answer. With those you know well enough, nothing needs to be said for meaning to be understood. It’s like a well made silent movie - no need for words, it’s all conveyed without them. Therefore I don’t think we should feel restricted by language’s limitations. This is a quotation from a short story called “Deux Amis” by Guy De Maupassant which struck me at the time of reading, 2 years ago: “En certain jours, ils ne parlaient pas. Quelquefois ils causaient; mais ils s’entendaient admirablement sans rien dire, ayant des gouts semblables et des sensations identiques.” It could be translated as meaning this: Some days they didn’t talk. Sometimes they chatted but they got on perfectly well without saying anything, having similar tastes and feelings. This is the sort of ideal relationship I think we should all strive for with those we chose to surround ourselves with.