concordance
How a concordance is a book that breaks down all the words of an author and lists them alphabetically, according to how many times they appear, where they appear. Shakespeare, for example, says natural x number of times. Milton says God x times and Satan x times. Imagine having your own concordance: all your words indexed. You could find out how many times you said love. Or yes. Or your name. And what it would be like to discover the concordance of whom you love left by your door one day in August. And what it would be like to hide it under your bed, afraid. And how long it took to look up your own name.
Ray Hsu (Concordance, in “Anthropy”)
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And would it have been worth it, after all, [...] To have squeezed the universe into a ball To roll it towards some overwhelming question, To say: ‘ I am Lazarus, come from the dead, Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all’ – If one, settling a pillow by her head, Should say: ‘ That is not what I meant at all. That is not it at all. ‘(T.S.Eliot)
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The Critique of Metaphor
Two words, just spoken out, touch each other
And dissolve into an unknown meaning
Which has nothing to do with them
For in the head there exists the one and only word
And the poem is being written just that
This word wouldn’t have to be spoken
That’s how words teach each other
That’s how words imagine each other
That’s how words lead one another astray
And a poem is a row of blinded words
But the love of theirs is quite obvious
They live on the account of your comfort
The more beautiful they are, the less strength you have
And when you use all your strengths when you die
People say: really, such good poems he wrote
And nobody doubts the word you have never said
(Branko Miljkovic, (my translation))
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i have put these three poems in a row since i see each of them reflecting a certain aspect of the (in)finity of language, or making a point which can be related to it. having a concordance of one’s life would be similar to Borges’ Aleph, it would be an attempt at squeezing the universe into a ball. It would all be there, every word as a witness. It would be beautiful and scary at the same time. It would show the insignificance of what seemed to have been significant and the other way around. And yet, the most intriguing words would be noted under zero.
