The Trouble with Being Born
by
by
Richard Howard (Translator)
BlackOxford's review
it was amazing
bookshelves: french-language, philosophy-theology, epistemology-language, favourites Life Inside the Bubble
I feel entitled to interpret and respond to Cioran’s aphoristic mode with some of the same chiastic development (even if not nearly as witty):
Homo sapiens, uniquely in the animal kingdom, lives in a bubble of language. He (and she) is so immured in this bubble that language and experience are inextricably confounded. The consequence of this involuntary universal peonage is that everyone substitutes things with words and responds to words as if they were things. It’s the cost of living in the bubble.
Reality is what happens. Everything else is literature.
Literature is an evolved form of language. It is constituted by an ideal philosophy, and ideal religion, and an ideal politics. Or at least as ideal as can be reached by Homo sapiens.
The philosophy of literature is empirically grounded on observation: human beings are the only story-telling animal. Other sentient beings use gestures, sounds, words, phrases, even sentences to communicate with each other. Only people connect words in complex creative ways. This is a blessing and a curse. It makes life inside the language bubble bearable but more or less isolates story-tellers from experience since the stories they tell create their own experience. No one has ever found a way to untangle the two (the attempt is the failed science of epistemology).
To compensate for the consequences of entrapment inside the bubble human beings have invented a religion of language (and a language of religion) that tells the story (actually many stories) of what exists outside the bubble. This of course is paradoxical since that which is beyond the bubble is reality, which as soon as it is brought inside the bubble becomes literature. Prompted by this contradiction, some people declare their language about things outside the bubble to be sacred, thus making life inside the bubble toxic. These people are idolatrous and call those who are not idolaters: atheists, agnostics, non-conformists, dreamers, and sometimes artists, by which they mean useless.
Those who recognise the existence of the bubble and its implications strive to keep story-telling free from such ossification. Feeling in need of support in a hostile world, they too have succumbed to the religious impulse but in a very different way. Their alternative religion is a kind of ethical politics which allows any story to be told and heard. They make no claims to knowing what is outside the bubble or approaching closer to it by working hard at story-telling within the bubble. Their life consists of the unrestricted exchange of words in unusual and unexpected combinations. They often allude to what they imagine might be outside the bubble but remain interested in the imaginations of others. From this they derive pleasure from which many other inhabitants of the bubble take offence.
Typically, those who take offence, whether religious or not, claim that the imaginative new stories are not reflections of reality and should be ignored or even banned as dangerous. This, of course, is a story of limited imagination (and probably a restricted vocabulary; they tend to occur together). Such stories have little weight unless accompanied by violence. Violence - physical, psychological, and spiritual - is the only effective method which allows reality to enter the bubble. Violence shatters the bubble completely. This those offended perceive as satisfying.
Literature has no defense against violence. The bubble is an aberration, as fragile, ephemeral, and temporary as the language upon which it is based.
In the end violence, that is to say, reality prevails.
Of course Cioran is a laconic genius; so he summarises the situation much more compactly: "As long as you live on this side of the terrible, you will find words to express it; once you know it from inside, you will no longer find a single one." It is difficult to cope with such terseness, even among the literate. Such is the character of good literature.
I feel entitled to interpret and respond to Cioran’s aphoristic mode with some of the same chiastic development (even if not nearly as witty):
Homo sapiens, uniquely in the animal kingdom, lives in a bubble of language. He (and she) is so immured in this bubble that language and experience are inextricably confounded. The consequence of this involuntary universal peonage is that everyone substitutes things with words and responds to words as if they were things. It’s the cost of living in the bubble.
Reality is what happens. Everything else is literature.
Literature is an evolved form of language. It is constituted by an ideal philosophy, and ideal religion, and an ideal politics. Or at least as ideal as can be reached by Homo sapiens.
The philosophy of literature is empirically grounded on observation: human beings are the only story-telling animal. Other sentient beings use gestures, sounds, words, phrases, even sentences to communicate with each other. Only people connect words in complex creative ways. This is a blessing and a curse. It makes life inside the language bubble bearable but more or less isolates story-tellers from experience since the stories they tell create their own experience. No one has ever found a way to untangle the two (the attempt is the failed science of epistemology).
To compensate for the consequences of entrapment inside the bubble human beings have invented a religion of language (and a language of religion) that tells the story (actually many stories) of what exists outside the bubble. This of course is paradoxical since that which is beyond the bubble is reality, which as soon as it is brought inside the bubble becomes literature. Prompted by this contradiction, some people declare their language about things outside the bubble to be sacred, thus making life inside the bubble toxic. These people are idolatrous and call those who are not idolaters: atheists, agnostics, non-conformists, dreamers, and sometimes artists, by which they mean useless.
Those who recognise the existence of the bubble and its implications strive to keep story-telling free from such ossification. Feeling in need of support in a hostile world, they too have succumbed to the religious impulse but in a very different way. Their alternative religion is a kind of ethical politics which allows any story to be told and heard. They make no claims to knowing what is outside the bubble or approaching closer to it by working hard at story-telling within the bubble. Their life consists of the unrestricted exchange of words in unusual and unexpected combinations. They often allude to what they imagine might be outside the bubble but remain interested in the imaginations of others. From this they derive pleasure from which many other inhabitants of the bubble take offence.
Typically, those who take offence, whether religious or not, claim that the imaginative new stories are not reflections of reality and should be ignored or even banned as dangerous. This, of course, is a story of limited imagination (and probably a restricted vocabulary; they tend to occur together). Such stories have little weight unless accompanied by violence. Violence - physical, psychological, and spiritual - is the only effective method which allows reality to enter the bubble. Violence shatters the bubble completely. This those offended perceive as satisfying.
Literature has no defense against violence. The bubble is an aberration, as fragile, ephemeral, and temporary as the language upon which it is based.
In the end violence, that is to say, reality prevails.
Of course Cioran is a laconic genius; so he summarises the situation much more compactly: "As long as you live on this side of the terrible, you will find words to express it; once you know it from inside, you will no longer find a single one." It is difficult to cope with such terseness, even among the literate. Such is the character of good literature.
posted by The Mind of BlackOxford @ December 28, 2019
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