Status Updates From Language and Silence: Essay...

“wherever possible, and often in disregard of its theoretic or moral commitments, the knowledge draws on the power. Thinking on the period of haute vulgarisation which preceded the French Revolution, one wonders whether such periods—a society making total inventory of its skills—are logical forerunners to political and social crisis. Do societies harvest before a storm?”

“After the novel, what then? I have tried to suggest elsewhere that in an era of electronic and primarily visual means of statement, and among the new collective societies now emerging, drama—and specially the kind of drama open to audience participation and critique—has an immense future.” Written in 1965.

“This world will end neither with a bang nor a whimper, but with a headline, a slogan, a pulp novel larger than the cedars of Lebanon. In how much of what is now pouring forth do words become word—and where is the silence needed if we are to hear that metamorphosis?”

“after Spinoza, philosophers know that they are using language to clarify language, like cutters using diamonds to shape other diamonds. Language is seen no longer as a road to demonstrable truth, but as a spiral or gallery of mirrors bringing the intellect back to its point of departure.”

“He who has read Kafka’s Metamorphosis and can look into his mirror unflinching may technically be able to read print, but is illiterate in the only sense that matters.”

“As never before, the student and the person interested in the current of literature reads reviews and critiques of books rather than the books themselves, or before he has made the effort of personal judgment.” Written decadesss ago mind you

“We come after. We know now that a man can read Goethe or Rilke in the evening, that he can play Bach and Schubert, and go to his day’s work at Auschwitz in the morning. To say that he has read them without understanding or that his ear is gross, is cant.”