[New-Poetry] Logocentrism

[Anny Ballardini]

Taken from: http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/litoral/litoral4.html



 Indeed, people often say 'there are no words to describe how I feel'. As Edward Ballard puts it: 

Many of the most typical human experiences, such as experiences of introjection, decision, anxiety, insight, self-awareness, self-identity seem in fact to be resistant to precise and literal description even in languages having the richest logical resources. The immediacy characteristic of these experiences (or aspects of experience)... offers nothing to formalize. (Ballard, 1978: 213) 

It is unlikely that there is anyone who has not experienced the frustration of being, on some occasion, 'at a loss for words'. All we can say is that 'I can't explain' or 'I don't know how to say this'. Where I feel obliged to use language which I nevertheless find inadequate, I may feel that language is 'coming between' 'me' and an 'experience'. Or I may feel that I have been lured by language into allowing an experience to be shaped by the words I 'find myself using'. 




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Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com/
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
http://www.moriapoetry.com/ebooks.html
I Tell You: One must still have chaos in one to give birth to a dancing star! 
Friedrich Nietzsche 
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