Date: Fri, 18 Aug 2000 20:44:54 -0400 (EDT)
From: atri2715-AT-postoffice.uri.edu (Alex Trifan)
Subject: PLC: Reading Writing


Somebody wrote:

>Couldn't a talented group like
>this find meaning in almost any group of words?

and somebody else wrote:

>It's too clear at this point that the word [some word] is too relativistic
to be 
>of any use--that it means whatever a particular speaker wants it to mean.

**********************

Any one word can ultimately conjure a whole world. Had we but world enough
and time...from a word we could retrace everything else in the dictionary,
and beyond. ("Odor", "Beauty", "Corn", for example, will point toward
endless connections. Similarly, "Nazism" or "Marxism" or "TS Eliot").
Interpretation, like argument itself, is both limitless and redundant. In
the end we must inevitably express the same things over and over again, in
perfect agreement with each another. 

Words can never be contrived to stand in for anything firm or solid. They
always inflate into vast clouds of limitless allusions, ironic connections
legitimating all kinds of fancy. Literature and rhetoric are essentially
cloudbusting and cloudhunting activities, about as relevant as the play of
children. 


Alex Trifan
on a cloudy night, in
Providence, RI





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