Language and Existence

As we've been saying these last few posts, is is the soul of judgment: that which is, is, and that which is not, is not.

I know -- complicated!

But it does highlight a critical point, the relationship between language and being, existence, reality. 

Language communicates to us what is, but what is language? This question is somewhat above my praygrade, so let's consult some experts. Better read s-l-o-w-l-y:

Like Universal Existence, which is its prototype, language encloses us ontologically in the truth, whether we wish it or not: before all words, its all-embracing meaning is ‘Be’; it is Divine in its essence. ‘In the beginning was the Word'” (Schuon).

I was about to say "in other words," but I don't know that there are other words. Let's try the same words in a different order.

"Universal Existence" is the prototype of language; language encloses us in the truth of being, and is itself Divine; for which reason John's affirmation that (in the present tense) in the beginning is the Word, that the Word is with God, and the Word is God.

Well, clearly, something important is being conveyed here vis-a-vis speech and ultimate reality.

In fact, John's conscious mirroring of Genesis 1 highlights the same thing, what with the relationship between God's "saying" and his creating, i.e., bringing into being.

Now, the closest we come to deploying speech to "bring into being" is poetry. In other words, everyday speech is usually deployed to refer to what already is, like "what is the temperature outside?" But poetry... 

Damn. It takes a poet to say what poetry is, and I'm not one. I know it when I see it, and I also know that, in addition to being merely creative, it is a mode of speech for communicating the isness of transcendent truths -- the business of higher isness. I really only knew one poet: Vanderleun, help us out here!  

Really? Just google it? Okay.

A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape of the universe, helps to extend everyone’s knowledge of himself and the world around him. --Dylan Thomas

Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood. --T.S. Eliot

If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. --Emily Dickinson

I have a book of poems by Schuon. From the Foreword:

It seems that mystical experience almost inevitably leads to poetry. The great mystics all over the world used the language of poetry when trying to beckon to a mystery that lies beyond normal human experience...

Which doesn't necessarily make it "abnormal," rather, trans-normal (although there are plenty of abnormal poets, or people who hijack language to express their sub- or abnormality -- those lousy little poets comin' round tryin' to sound like Charlie Manson --Leonard Cohen). But

the poetical word can more easily lead to the mystery that is hidden behind the veils of intellectual knowledge and which cannot be fettered in logical speech.

Which again doesn't make it "illogical," rather, trans-logical.

Now I'm looking at a book called Music of the Sky: An Anthology of Spiritual Poetry. In the preface, it says that

Just as it is the ordering principle of the Logos which enters into manifestation and allows us to realize that God is immanent, so it is the Logos, understood as Sound and Word, which is reflected in the prosodic norms of all authentic spiritual poetry.

The poet is 

a mediator or a channel between the essence of things and the magic of words, crystallizing his perceptions into sounds and images that pierce through the veil of trivial usage and bring miracles out of language. 

I'll buy that. Also this, which reflects some of the things said at the top of the post: 

[T]he Greek word poiesis literally means "creation," and specifically refers to creation in the realm of the logos.

Moreover, 

The human ability to "name" beings clearly pertains to the Word as point of junction between the Divine and human. The Logos is the nexus between these two realms, and thus the means of communication par excellence between the two; it is both divine Revelation and human Invocation. 

In this sense, Man as such is a poem -- a nexus -- and "the prototype of the whole Creation."

We're getting pretty far afield. Let's re-ground ourselves in some plain-speaking aphorisms:

The work of art is a covenant with God.

Aesthetics is the sensible and secular manifestation of grace.

Aesthetics cannot give recipes, because there are no methods for making miracles.  

Every work of art speaks to us of God. No matter what it says.

One can only reread what suggests more than what it expresses.

Metaphor supposes a universe in which each object mysteriously contains the others.

Words do not decipher the mystery, but they do illuminate it.

Poetry is God's fingerprint in human clay.

Not sure how to wrap this one up, but I remember back when my book was published, and I gave a copy to a friend at work. I was warning him about the unorthodox language of the opening and closing sections, and he said something to the effect of "Bob, that's poetry!" 

I was taken aback and a little embarrassed, and responded that poetry was the furthest thing from my mind, and besides, what on earth makes you think I'm gay?!

Thinking back, I guess it is "poetic" in some sense, but I was really just trying to have a good laugh with and about God -- like "observational comedy," only observing something on a higher plane. I'm also thinking of Wittgenstein's comment that 

A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.

One can dream, anyway.