Sublime

metaphors, unlike nonfigurative language (e.g., "you are reading a book"), are neither right nor wrong.5 Metaphors can be classified in other ways: helpful or unhelpful; original or standard; etc. Yet all metaphors are literally false-by definition. We can say the same about myths: they may be literally false, but like metaphors, they are

The true artist disappears utterly. These other people are only technicians; I will not call them artists but technicians. I will not call them creators, I will call them only composers. Yes, to compose a poem is one thing, to create a poem is quite another. To compose poetry one needs to know language, grammar, rules of poetics. It is a game with

Meister Eckhart was both a brilliant speculative theologian and a majestically gifted writer. He was also given to expressing his more difficult ideas in almost willfully audacious language.

‘mereological fallacy’. This describes a way of thinking about things where we wrongly ascribe a value to a part of something that is properly ascribed to the whole. In

Language falters in the abyss; it fractures at the site of trauma. We need to find a different way of speaking from the depths, reclaiming the notion that language about God is always fractured language, always broken, and never complete.

d'autrefois, Victor Voconius, était mort ; je me chargeai de fabriquer son oraison funèbre ; on sourit de me voir mentionner parmi les vertus du défunt une chasteté que réfutaient ses propres poèmes, et la présence aux funérailles de Thestylis aux boucles de miel, que Victor appelait jadis son beau tourment.

A story is a metaphor for life that expresses the nature of being; a character is a metaphor for humanity that expresses the nature of becoming.