Searching for the Words
A literary musing on Wittgenstein’s private language argument
BY SOPHIE DAVISON
Bound up in wire-faced cases, countless parcels of inspiration are at my immediate disposal. Each one is another’s thoughts, made a material reality. Books, of course, have mass; given shape by language, they have even grown spines. To be published is to give one’s words weight. Such weight is the reward for faithful and fresh expression.
Natural light fades and I am slowly consumed by the large, looming presence of the floor-to-ceiling bookcases spanning all four walls. I am reminded that, similarly, all I write must exist in the shadows of words already recorded. I cannot be satisfied with this.
Behind the wire of the cases, which now appear to me as remarkably cage-like, reside enlightened words that taunt me. It is the illuminating path their author trod to find them which I seek, but which I am barred from. Reading the words of others, especially those heavy with conviction, only pushes one further into that incommunicative darkness.
Formless words that I store deep within myself dissolve as they reach the tip of my pen; my summoning is in vain. The search is disorienting—vertiginous, even. Sometimes the Word will resurface and find its way to my tongue, only to fall out of my mouth as quickly as it appeared. Perhaps one ought to take comfort in the constant of that ever-present, nameless Word, but it infuriates me. In the beginning of things, there it was, and here it remains, yet I cannot find it!
Without emancipation from outside voices, I cannot sincerely call any word I speak, nor write, my own. I am forced, then, to betray myself twice in using public terms; first, in conceiving and then in expressing. My inner world is obscured by a tongue that is not mine and I am smothered by its excess. Impeded by this irksome buffer, I might as well let my pens dry out and stuff my mouth with cotton wool. What is the use of formalising my raw experience in language that is warped by the subjectivities of so many others? I must escape from the lexical cage that is this library.
But now, I reach an impasse. To divorce from the words of others would be to forgo a cardinal hope—that anyone might participate in my intended meaning. Should I withdraw from using public terms entirely, my paper may be blank no longer, but my efforts would be fruitless. My words would falter in achieving their essential purpose of shaping mutual understanding.
Must I settle for partial accord? If I mix my words with yours, will I be able to successfully elucidate my meaning to you? Such trust requires me to surrender the ideal of a perfect description, to fall from the grace I had thought all good writers must have.
Whilst the search for such perfect and immediate transmission of meaning is futile, the nearest thing to it might just be found between us.
Upon reflection, it seems I have indeed been mistaken—even arrogant in assuming that the only active agent here was myself. I had forgotten that reading and listening are processes as engaged as writing and speaking. The cage that I saw in the radial image of the bookcases was, I now realise, not hiding the secret to exact articulation. Rather, it was a self-imposed prison.
Cover Image: John Asare, Unsplash, 2023.