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| Self Portrait of Myself Writing This Blog |
"What can be said, can be said clearly. What cannot be said clearly, is not in the world and one must be silent about it."
- Wittgenstein.
I have this quote written in one of my notebooks. I just realized today that I've been misreading it (because my handwriting is so horrible) as saying "What cannot be said clearly, is not in the world and one
cannot be silent about it." As in, one is compelled to art by those things outside of the world that we cannot say. The very fact that they cannot be said necessitates the attempt to say them. I've long thought that poetry was an attempt to say what is impossible to say. To speak the unspeakable. And anything sayable isn't worth saying at all.
Wittgenstein though is talking about God. He has said that he likes the idea of a silent religion, and I agree with him there. He was not referring to the arts, so I am not only misreading, but taking the quote out of context and applying it to a different subject altogether. This, I guess, is also what poets do. That ruthless and unethical race of baboons.
