275. A Sense Of Truth

In the end, language always fails. No matter how many words we use, no matter how we arrange them, no matter how much time we take, we cannot fully capture our experience. The best we can hope for is the transcending power of metaphor — that our words will somehow provoke a feeling close to the feeling of the actual experience.

Language is most powerful when it exceeds its ordinary boundaries. It does this through metaphors that take us to a place that each word on its own cannot reach. Here, the usual meanings of words give way to another kind of meaning that is deeply felt. It is only here that we might be moved towards a new way of seeing and being.

A text that makes us feel nothing cannot have any function beyond the purely practical. It is in its practical usage that language does its job well. It allows us to indicate and describe, to connect and distinguish, to identify and denote. We need these practical abilities in order to communicate and cooperate with each other. But our experience of life is not wholly practical. A purely practical existence would not allow for the beauty that grants us joy.

Writing that creates meaning for the whole of life is beautiful. It is by creating such meaning that we obtain a sense of truth. Not truth in the practical sense, like the truth of a proposition, but truth that aligns with our composite experience of life. How does this alignment occur? We cannot know. If we did, our metaphors would stop being metaphorical and there would be no point to poetry because we could communicate truth and feeling directly and without struggle.

It is our struggle with language, both in the writing and in the reading, that also helps to remind us that joy comes from action. Joy is not a passive state of being but the result of activity. That language always fails is, in the end, an enormous success. It means reading and writing are never finished. There is always more joy to be created.