At that moment, I felt as if I could see my surroundings even without my glasses. It was the instant I managed to verbalize what I had always prioritized in my own creative work, and more broadly, in all forms of linguistic expression. That day, I was awoken by the sound of my alarm clock, with the morning sunlight seeping through the edges of the curtains. I searched for my glasses, but they were nowhere to be found. My head was still foggy with sleep. The previous night, I had stayed up late, intrigued by and researching the words left behind by the famous philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. As a result, I had gone to bed much later than usual.
Regarding the description of “facts”—or the state of the world—Wittgenstein deemed descriptions that could be defined through logical relations as meaningful, while categorizing all others as meaningless. He argued that linguistic description has its limits, and attempting to describe anything beyond those limits results in nonsense. Thus, he reportedly left these famous words:
“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”
The things of which one “cannot speak” were realms that did not pertain to the “facts” of the world; they were the domains fundamentally connected to human existence itself, such as ethics, religion, art, beauty, and the meaning of life.
Having learned this much, I became curious about how he viewed literary arts as a form of linguistic expression. What did “meaning” signify to him? What did it mean to “speak”? It seemed to me that, at the very least, these were not things suggested directly through the act of language alone. For me, these words resonated deeply, regardless of the specific background in which they were originally uttered.
However, it seems that he himself discussed and referred extensively to the very things he claimed one “cannot speak” of. I believe the true intent of his words was not a stern command like, “You must not speak of it, so shut up.” Rather, it was a desire to speak nonetheless—or perhaps, an inevitability. When one confronts and touches that “something” which becomes a falsehood the moment it is spoken, failing to mention it at all would be to treat it as if it never existed. One simply cannot allow it to be erased by silence. Conversely, speaking of it renders it false or nonsensical. To resist this contradiction, he must have been tracing the contours of that unspeakable “something.”
What resonated with me was how to speak of the periphery of the unspeakable. In my own writing, I feel I have tried to question the validity of the act of speaking itself. For example, is it valid to describe a character’s internal feelings from a certain perspective? Is it invalid? How does one make it valid? And especially when it is not valid, how does one express that? Exploring these boundaries is a form of respect toward the unspeakable. But does that indicate something profound, or is that the essence itself? For me, the expression of the unspeakable is a query into the validity of narrative—nothing more, and nothing less. And I believe these efforts do not suggest the limits of expression, but rather expand its possibilities.
By the time I reached this conclusion, I finally found my glasses. I felt that even the slight discomfort I usually feel when putting them on had been somewhat lifted.
