Saturday, February 11

The Fall of Language?

Here's another interesting quote, this time from Paul Auster's book of novellas, "The New York Trilogy":

Adam's one task in the Garden had been to invent language, to give each creature and thing its name. In that state of innocence, his tongue had gone straight to the quick of the world. His words had not been merely appended to the things he saw, they revealed their essences, had literally brought them to life. A thing and its name were interchangeable. After the fall, this was no longer true. Names became detached from things; words devolved into a collection of arbitrary signs; language had been severed from God. The story of the Garden, therefore, records not only the fall of man, but the fall of language.

1 Comments:

At 4:33 PM, Blogger Zosja said...

quote some more from that

please

 

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